Abstract
As proposed above, neither market capitalism nor command socialism escapes unemployment. In this respect, the two types of economic system are similar. The difference between them lies in that different forms of unemployment prevail under each. At the same time, the form unemployment assumes has an impact on its visibility. The purpose of the present chapter is to substantiate this proposition which, of course, is in conflict with what the official Soviet and East European ideology contends.
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Notes and References
John A. Garraty, Unemployment in History: Economic Thought and Public Policy (New York: Harper & Row, 1978) pp. 4–11,
Robert J. Barro and Herschel I. Grossman, Money, Employment and Inflation, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980, reprinted) pp. 189–191.
P.J.D. Wiles, ‘A Note on Soviet Unemployment by US Definitions’, Soviet Studies, vol. XXIII, no. 4 (1972), p. 619.
See in this connection Martin Godfrey, Global Unemployment, (Brighton: Wheatsheaf Books Ltd, 1986) pp. 5–23, where he discusses the definition and measurement of unemployment in relation to industrialized and underdeveloped economies.
Morris Bornstein, ‘Unemployment in Capitalist Regulated Market Economies and Socialist Centrally Planned Economies’, The American Economic Review, vol. 68, no. 2 (1978), pp. 38–43.
János Kornai, Economics of Shortage (Amsterdam: North-Holland Publishing Company, 1980) vol. A, pp. 4–5.
It is sometimes argued that the notion of structural unemployment is messy and as used by many economists obscure, that, inter alia, it should not cover technological unemployment. See eg. Guy Standing, ‘The notion of structural unemployment’, International Labour Review, vol. 122, no. 2 (1983), pp. 137–53.
See e.g. P.J.D. Wiles, Economic Institutions Compared (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1977) p. 369.
As to Soviet-controlled Eastern Europe see Josef Goldmann and Karel Kouba, Hospodářský růst v ČSSR (Praha: Academia, 1969, second edition).
In addition see Bary W. Ickes, ‘Cyclical Fluctuations in Centrally Planned Economies: A Critique of the Literature’, Soviet Studies, vol. XXXVIII, no. 1 (January 1986), pp. 36–52.
J.L. Porket, review of Jan Adam (ed.), Employment Policies in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, in Soviet Studies, vol. XXXV, no. 4 (1983), pp. 586–7.
Guy Standing, ‘The notion of voluntary unemployment’, International Labour Review, vol. 120, no. 5 (1981), pp. 563–79.
John Maynard Keynes, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (London: Macmillan, 1936) pp. 6 and 15–17.
Mass involuntary unemployment was also discussed by E. Malinvaud, The Theory of Unemployment Reconsidered (Oxford: Blackwell, 1980, reprinted).
Marie Jahoda, Employment and unemployment: A social-psychological analysis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982) p. 8.
The unemployed worker is sometimes said to move through four phases, namely, that of shock, that of optimism, that of pessimism, and that of fatalism. The phase model of unemployment was discussed by David N. Ashton, Unemployment under Capitalism (Brighton: Wheatsheaf Books Ltd. 1986) pp. 140ff.
It has been suggested, too, that the unemployed individual who has access to and partakes in the informal economy is psychologically not defeated, not apathetic. Peter Kelvin and Joanna E. Jarrett, Unemployment (Cambridge University Press, 1985) p. 26.
Gerald Mars, Cheats at Work: An Anthropology of Workplace Crime (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1982) p. 218.
Hermione Parker, ‘Social Security Foments the Black Economy’, The Journal of Economic Affairs, vol. 3, no. 1 (1982), pp. 32–5.
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William H. Beveridge, Full Employment in a Free Society (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1945, third impression) p. 19.
Ralf Dahrendorf, On Britain (London: British Broadcasting Corporation, 1982) p. 182.
K. Mandelbaum, ‘An Experiment in Full Employment’ in The Oxford University Institute of Statistics, The Economics of Full Employment (Oxford: Blackwell, 1948, reprinted) Part VI, and Walter Eucken, ‘On the Theory of the Centrally Administered Economy: An Analysis of the German Experiment’, in Morris Bornstein (ed.), Comparative Economic Systems: Models and Cases, (Homewood, Illinois: Richard D. Irwin, Inc., 1965,) pp. 158–9.
Open unemployment fell from 5.6 million in 1932 through 4.8 million in 1933 to 2.7 million in 1934 and 2.1 million in 1935. Dieter Cassel (ed.), Wirtschaftspolitik im Systemvergleich (München: Verlag Franz Vahlen, 1984) p. 176, Table H-l.
International Labour Office, Year Book of Labour Statistics (Geneva: 1980) p. 283.
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Quoted by Paul Johnson, The Recovery of Freedom (Oxford: Blackwell, 1980) p. 110. Conversely, an increase in the growth rate of disposable real income by 1 per cent increased the government’s poll lead by about 0.8 per cent.
F.A. Hayek, 1980s Unemployment and the Unions (The Institute of Economic Affairs, 1980) p. 23.
Norman L. Webb and Robert J. Wybrow (eds.), The Gallup Report (London: Sphere Books, 1981) pp. 15, 18, 48, 60–1 and 70;
Norman Webb and Robert Wybrow, The Gallup Report: Your Opinions in 1981 (London: Sphere Books, 1982) pp. 68–9 and 165; The Times, (4 December 1982.)
The effects of open unemployment on government popularity in Britain between 1966 and 1983 were discussed by Christopher T. Husbands, Government Popularity and the Unemployment Issue, 1966–1983, Sociology, vol. 19, no. 1 (February 1985), pp. 1–18.
Some East European definitions of full employment were discussed by Jan Adam, Employment and Wage Policies in Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary Since 1950 (London: Macmillan, 1984) pp. 60–6.
See also David G. Green, The New Right (Brighton: Wheatsheaf Books Ltd, 1987) pp. 58–73.
John Hicks, The Crisis in Keynesian Economics (Oxford: Basil Black-well, 1974) pp. 61–2.
Derek H. Aldcroft, Full Employment: The Elusive Goal (Brighton: Wheatsheaf Books Ltd, 1984) p. 77.
More precisely, the change took place in 1976, when traditional demand-boosting full employment policies were abandoned by the Labour government. Samuel Brittan, The Role and Limits of Government (London: Temple Smith, 1983) p. 249.
Ingemar Ståhl, ‘Sweden at the End of the Middle Way’, in Svetozar Pejovich (ed.), Philosophical and Economic Foundations of Capitalism (Lexington, Massachusetts: D.C. Heath and Company, 1983) Chapter 9.
Charles Handy, The Future of Work (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1984) pp. 90–5.
P. Bihari, ‘On (Structural) Unemployment’, Acta Oeconomica, vol. 28, nos. 1–2 (1982), pp. 53–70.
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© 1989 J. L. Porket
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Porket, J.L. (1989). Types of Unemployment. In: Work, Employment and Unemployment in the Soviet Union. St Antony’s. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-10930-2_2
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