Duhring's Socialitarian Model of Economic Communes and its Influence on the Development of Socialist Thought and Practice

Abstract

The paper considers the influence of Eugen Duhring 1876 socialist (or, socialitarian according to his terminology) model of economic communes on the development of a peculiar non-Marxian stream of market socialist models. These are characterized by two features: 1) the socialist economy is conceived as based on self-managed production units tied by market transactions (cooperative nature of the economy); 2) the socialist production units are open, in the sense that anyone has the right to be admitted according to given legal norms and regulations (openness). The economic ideology of the model can be an invisible market one, as in case of Herztka's Freeland model, or the alternative one that only limited competition, and managed trade are advisable, as in the case of Duhring. In the 1934 Breit and Lange model of market socialism the organization of the economy is thought to be in the form of large self-management trusts, whose market power is limited by the second characteristic above (openness). Very similar features can also be found in Franz Oppenheimer's previous model of industrial cooperatives. The self-managed production units can be also characterized as settlement cooperatives, as in Herztka's Freeland, or in Franz Oppenheimer's Siedlungsgenossenschaft. It is notable that Oppenheimer is said to have been the intellectual author of the most famous settlement cooperatives of all, the Jewish settlement cooperatives of Palestine. Otherwise Duhring's model of economic communes shows remarkable similitude with Mao's organization of the Chinese economy. One can therefore suspect that, notwithstanding its scathing criticism, Engels' AntiDuhring may have contributed to spread in unacknowledged ways the influence of Duhring's ideas in Marxist quarters as well.

JEL Classification: B1, P2