False Dawns: The Failed Crucial Reforms of Capitalism and Socialism

For almost half a decade, after World War II, capitalism and socialism coexisted on the European continent. Some believed that these systems would converge, with state intervention stabilising capitalism in the west and socialism became more democratic in the east. Michał Kalecki, in his last published article, co-written with Tadeusz Kowalik, wrote about how governments had implemented a crucial reform in the developed capitalist economies. State investment had filled the demand gap, which could potentially result in the long-term mitigation of capitalism's slumps and crises. Tadeusz Kowalik later extended this notion of the crucial reform, to the troubled socialist systems in Eastern Europe during the 1980s. He argued that previous economic reforms had failed in the socialist countries as they had not been accompanied by sufficient democratic political reforms, which needed to be extended in order to fully revitalise the socialist economies. Ultimately the proposals for a crucial reform of capitalism and socialism were not realised and these systems did not converge economically or politically. This chapter examines the theses of Kalecki and Kowalik within the historical and intellectual tradition of Polish socialist and Marxist thought.