“Celestial” snapshots: Moral economic revisitations of János Kornai's the socialist system

Abstract

Significant parts of the work of the great economist and economic visionary János Kornai function as a magnifying glass in economic theory, philosophy and history. Kornai examined economic systems and system-mixes with substantial details, for then being able to focus his audiences' attention on the most relevant and critical aspects of them. One of Kornai's masterpieces, The Socialist System – a book which recently passed its 30-year publishing anniversary – is such a political economy lens on communism. I am attempting a concise conversion of this magnifying glass, to apply a Galileian metaphor, into an economic telescope. In other words, I am adding another economic lens – that of moral economics – to the Kornaian viewpoints. In a short analysis going through various dimensions of The Socialist System, I am coupling Kornai's thoughts with moral economic ideas, both from the classical and the contemporary moral economy streams. The goal with this exercise of respectfully refreshing a toolkit and style of economic analysis is to then gaze into, and partially describe a potential multitude, or spectra of economic systems, which may manifest in econodiversity.