Perestroika, Economics and Morality Available to Purchase

Mikhail Gorbachev's “restructuring” of the Soviet economy has, in his words, created “turmoil”. It has also led to protests on moral grounds. This restructuring attempts to decentralise decision making, introduce effective cost accounting, expand consumer choice, and relate production to anticipated demand. Fundamentally, it is aimed at involving more people in the choices which the economy demands and attempting to increase efficiency. But though the reforms involve ideas championed by supporters of liberal economies in which choices are made through the ordinary workings of the marketplace, the moral complaints are not primarily the commonest Marxist ones about capitalism — that the system creates large concentrations of corporate power which inhibit or distort individual decision making and action, or the conversion of the individual into a debased kind of property through the sale of his labour. And, though Gorbachev clearly plans to increase production of consumer goods, the contemporary objection that capitalism tends to press all available resources into service in an uncontrolled way, destroys the present environment and puts in question the human future, does not seem to be the centre of the debate.