ABSTRACT
Technological and organisational innovation leading to increases in productivity play a determining role in the Marxist theory of social change. Soviet ideology also contains the claim that Soviet-style socialism is more effective at achieving rapid technical progress than is advanced capitalism. Much of the advanced technology that has been incorporated into Soviet industrial practice since the beginning of central planning has been imported from the West. Soviet research and development — the ability of the socialist economy to stimulate and direct innovation and technological achievement in the USSR — has attracted considerable interest among Western scholars and policy-makers. This chapter explains that the adoption of a market-socialist system which could promote the rapid diffusion of new technology appears to imply among other things the abandonment of the full-employment policy associated with Soviet-style socialism. Indeed, advocates of market socialism believe that the welfare gains from a reduction in mis-allocation will outweigh any additional losses attributable to an increase in visible waste.
