Constructing an economically democratic society in the former Soviet Union: Post-Keynesian Institutionalist insights in historical perspective

Building on Institutionalists' pioneering recognition of concentrated economic power and the need for comprehensive democratic economic restructuring to achieve a more just and equitable approach to social provisioning, this chapter presents a Post-Keynesian Institutionalist approach to constructing a more economically democratic market order in advanced industrial societies. In particular, it outlines a framework for progressively reforming neoliberal capitalist orders in the emerging markets of the former Soviet Union, with a focus on state capitalist Russia and oligarchic Ukraine. Since important features of post-Soviet economies have much in common with an earlier era of Western industrial capitalism, insights from Post-Keynesian Institutionalist forerunners and early contributors are especially relevant, but so too are ideas Soviet reform economists of the 1960s-1980s. The outlined template for progressive reform includes democratization of relations of large-scale productive property, progressive regulation of industry by the state, and the nurturance of all-encompassing participatory processes throughout the economy.