My analysis of Czech economist Radoslav Selucký's 1969 book: the Czechoslovak Model of Socialism (El Modelo Checoslovaco de Socialismo)

As promised some time ago to a few comrades, here's my analysis of the book. I think it's a very important piece of socialist history since it reviews the ideology, both economic and political, behind the Czechoslovak "revolution" in the late 1960s, one of the most controversial moments of socialist history. The book was published in German in West Germany in 1969 (sus), and in Spanish in the same year in Fascist Spain (even more sus), and since I speak Spanish, all text quoted from the book has been translated by myself, so I apologize for possible mistakes. Let's get to it, shall we?

The focus of this analysis is on the economic, sphere as I’m not knowledgeable in the political situation of the Czechoslovak socialist republic. The author makes the classic criticism of lack of democracy, overcentralization of the political power, rigidity of the economic plan, and subordination of the interests of the private sphere to the state’s directives. Each reader can make their own analysis of this. The focus of the book seems to be to provide an analysis of the problems of the Czechoslovak socialist pre-revolts model and historical situation, an analysis of the so-called Stalinist model, and to outline the reforms proposed by the Czechoslovak “new socialism”. My analysis will follow the book in its written order.

The author commences the book with a description of what it calls the “Stalinist” model and its problems: it describes Stalinism as:

a State steered by dirigisme, with a strongly centralized administration, a monopoly of power by the Communist Party and a total bureaucratization of society, in which the principle of competition is eliminated. This concentrates the political power in the hands of the upper sphere of the Communist Party, which avoids social control and decides <

<in an infallible fashion>

> about any political question, both economic and ideological. In the field of economics, the Stalinist model implies a planned and centralized economy which has been disconnected of competition as a stimulus. This economic system supports itself on […] the substitution of the self-regulating economic mechanisms by a system based on orders, prohibitions and administrative directions, with economic plans being both the means and the end-goal, and carrying them out constitutes the criteria for all economic activity.

Notice the focus on “competition” and on “self-regulating economic mechanisms”. This will soon become the obvious core idea in the book and the foundation of the author’s analysis.

The author proceeds by making a satisfactory analysis of the economic and political conditions of the pre-revolutionary Russian Empire and the reasons why the Stalinist model of centralized planned economy was implemented, primarily the lack of industry due to the feudal conditions of most of Russia and the external threat of invasion by capitalist powers. However, it does so with a focus on how the Soviet Union “had no choice” to do this, and less on the actual material results of this: the author talks of “painful sacrifices on behalf of individuals for the sake of the industrial revolution”. This is far from correct. The industrial revolution in the Soviet Union was not a “painful sacrifice”, almost the entirety of the peasantry and working class already lived in painful sacrifice, with a life expectancy of 28 years of age at birth, and a total lack of education of the most basic level for the vast majority. The Soviet industrial revolution is described correctly as opposed to the classic path of industrial revolution which starts “from light industry to heavy industry”, but this was not to the detriment of the working classes. The Fel’dman model applied in the Soviet industrialization correctly predicted that initial strong investments in heavy industry could make way for a faster growth of light industry in the mid-term, and allow for greater material living conditions of the peoples than an early focus on light industry which would rapidly stagnate without the industrial and infrastructure basis to support it. This led to yearly growths of 15% in the total economic output of the Soviet economy in the decade leading up to the Great Patriotic War.

In a revealing lack of anti-imperialist theses, the author claims that “as in every industrialization process, the USSR had to fund this process with surplus from agriculture”. This is a reoccurring topic in this book: we will not find a trace of analysis of western colonialism or imperialism. No, Mr. Selucký, British industry was NOT funded exclusively by surplus from agriculture, it was funded through imperial gains from slave-colonies in the imperial periphery.

After describing Stalinism and providing some background, the author follow with what, to me, is the most positive chapter of the entire book in my opinion. Chapter 4 focuses on criticism of the “extensive” economic development model instead of “intensive” development. The extensive model of development is roughly defined as mass investment in heavy industry means of production with low technological component with the main goal of moving as many peasants as possible from preindustrial farms to industry in cities without a primary goal of economic efficiency and technological development, whereas intensive development is described as a focus on the efficiency of industry and adoption of advanced technologies in industry. The author admits that for the first years of this model’s application, the results were very positive, but then goes on to criticize that upon the slowdown of economic growth after the country had been mostly industrialized in this extensive fashion (especially for Czechoslovakia as an already industrially developed country pre-WW2 as opposed to most of the eastern block) this model was not significantly altered.

I agree with the author that there was a slow response in general in the eastern block to the limits of extensive industrial growth, with this being one of the main reasons for the economic growth slowdown of the USSR in the 1970s. The author brings up data such as an exponentially decreasing efficiency between 1950 and 1963 in the growth of national income stemming from investments in heavy industry, which led to a reduction of 9.5% yearly national income figures in the early 50s to already 3.5% in the early 60s (though living in the contemporary EU, I can’t but laugh at 3.5% yearly national income growth being considered sluggish). I fundamentally agree with the author: Czechoslovakia, as a previously industrially powerful country, would have probably benefit from more intensive growth in industry after the 1950s.

HOWEVER, the brainworms that the author had advanced in his introduction in which he mentioned the self-regulating market mechanisms and the competition, start to be shown in full-swing: according to the author, the only way to carry out this intensive growth in industry is by:

involving in the restructuring not just the central plan but also the economic subjects: companies

Furthermore, the author goes on to say that:

the development had to be forcibly substituted by a model that 1) stimulates innovation; 2) forced the economic subjects [companies], by objective market criteria, to carry out efficient work; 3) protected intensive economic development; 4) started progressive structural modifications in which […] the dirigisme plan must be substituted by production for consumption by people […]

The author, in a total non-sequitur, takes his prior rightful critique of the efficiency of usage of means of production in the socialist planned economy, and uses it to for some reason argue that the only alternative possible must be based on “objective market mechanisms”.

The capitalist neoliberal brainworms continue, with the author literally using the words “homo economicus” to refer to citizens (the fallacy that all humans are market entities whose sole drive is to obtain the highest consumption power possible). I quote:

In the first phase of revolution, individual interests are trampled by collective enthusiasm. However, in a society which has reached a given material and cultural level, this situation cannot last for long. After a brief period, the revolutionarist romanticism gets tired […]. In general, after the first phase of revolution is extinguished […] each individual tries to act in such a way that they receive for their work the adequate equivalent which optimally satisfies their economic needs […].

The author has, in these short paragraphs, revealed that the basis of their economic analysis is bullshit neoliberalism and capitalist realism. He does not conceive a society in which individuals act for any other purpose than for the maximum satisfaction of material interests. What a socialist.His line of reasoning leads to him arguing that, since this is the case, and planned economies subordinate individual needs to the collective, they lead men to act unnaturally and in contradiction to their interests. In what the author likely considers a dunk against planned economies, he claims:

The demand reflecting the needs of the population stops therefore to be the criteria for production and, instead, it’s substituted by a centralized and detailed plan through quantitative characteristics. […] There is no rational link between plan and market; both concepts exclude each other from an ideological standpoint [in planned economies].

Again, the author cannot conceive decentrally planned economies (such as proposed in Philips and Rozworski’s “People’s Republic of Walmart” or by the theses of the Marxian economist Paul Cockshott). In a glaring lack of understanding of the idea of solidarity, the author makes the following outrageous critique against planned economies:

Moral critics indeed mean that men must think and decide daily about their work and their goal. These critics reach as far as to request that each individual acts against its material interest as long as it collides against against objective economic utility.

Oh, how much has neoliberalism damaged the human mind. In my homeland of Spain, being a doctor is a tough thing. 24h shifts are commonplace, salaries are mediocre, and it requires constant training and study of the latest medical advancements. Medicine is chronically underfunded, resident doctors are exploited for years, medicine takes 6 years to study in university compared to 4 years for most other university degrees, it’s famously extremely hard, and doctors need to take a difficult state exam to be able to work in public healthcare. In spite of all of this, medicine consistently ranks the highest in the most requested university degrees, and every year thousands of students are left out of the possibility of studying medicine because there is too much competition. However, Radoslav Selucký is incapable of believing that people may routinely act against their material interests for the common good. Mr. Selucký: you are NOT a socialist, you’re a capitalist realist.

Moral criticism aside, let’s focus on the economic aspect: the only possible way according to the author of having an efficient representation of the amount of labor embodied in goods and services is through the laws of market. A cursory understanding of Marx’s Labor Theory of Value and the empirical power behind this proves that this is simply not the case. Socialist economic planners have consistently utilized measures (however rudimentary in their time period) of labor time to measure the actual human labor embodied in goods manufactured in planned societies, and with increasing technological and computing power, this becomes increasingly easy. It is possible that technological limitations of his era lead to his Austrian Economy School belief that only markets can truly represent average socially necessary labor embodied in goods, but I have the hindsight of talking from 2026: it is entirely possible to accurately measure the labor inputs in every single sector of the economy, and to instantly react to this using information technologies and widespread telecommunications. In fact, this is already the case in capitalism! When you click add to cart on your Aliexpress account on a product, an instant electric signal is transmitted to the storage unit in which it’s located, from there to its supplier, and from there through every step to the final manufacturer (and its suppliers and so forth and so on). Markets not only can be superseded by information technologies: they already have. Amazon or Walmart don’t operate by expertly understanding the market, but by having huge servers in which immense amounts of data are processed on the supply and the demand of commodities, and it’s exactly this that makes them capable of operating immense monopolies that effectively control entire supply chains NOT by market mechanisms, but by big data.

Limiting oneself as a socialist to rudimentary market mechanisms wasn’t just uncreative in the 1969 (time of writing of this book): it is entirely outdated in 2026. This is, by the way, criticism that I extend to market socialist economies such as China and Vietnam, not to minimize their immense successes but to extend them even further. The author firmly states that

This illusion [the possibility of finding the link between production and consumption outside markets] is the cause of all reform attempts of the market-less model which […] don’t alter the very essence of the system, excluding therefore any possibility of success.

This is the core of the Czechoslovak alternative of socialism in the 1960s: the belief that without markets there is no possibility of success. This chapter makes more criticism of rationing systems for goods and of some other aspects of planned economies, but the core criticism that is repeated over and over goes back to market worship. This is not socialism or Marxist analysis.

Chapters 5, 6 and 7 do some political and historical analysis of Czechoslovakia, Stalinism and the events of 1968. Enough analysis has taken place in other works about this that I don’t think I can meaningfully contribute.

Chapter 8 attempts to analyze the main reason for the deformations of the Stalinist socialist model as perceived by the author. Here, he makes clear what he believes to be the fundamental flaw of Stalinism:

[…] the absence in this system of the necessary permanent confrontation between the individual interests and social ones, which objectivizes the subjective ideas about future development. […] Said confrontation creates […] the real base for balanced relations in the economic and political sectors, and only it can guarantee the democratic modes of socialist society development. […] Its base is constituted by money-commodity relations, which in the history of mankind, are the only ones based in equivalence and equality, unique foundations for political democracy and individual freedom. I consider that the fundamental defect of Stalinism is having constituted itself as a market-less society. […] This defect must be attributed not just to the utopian elements of Marx’s theory, but also to the fact that a system applied on the reality and historical characteristics of a given country was transplanted to others, in which none of the conditions necessary for its long-term success existed.

There’s plenty to unpack here. First of all, the same market-worship reappears, going as far as to saying market relations are the only ones in the history of mankind that are based on equivalence and equality. The wonderful equality of the exploitation of workers, I guess? Furthermore, and perhaps even more painfully, the author declares that these are the unique foundations of political democracy and individual freedom. Democracy and freedom stem from markets. Not from worker organizing, not from the elimination of class society, but from markets. This argument destroys, in my opinion, the credibility of the entire work. When the author refers to “lack of democracy” , “human rights violations” and “top-down orders” in the so-called Stalinist mode, is he perhaps referring to markets and not to actual democracy and human rights as understood by socialists?

I will now invoke a passage from Chapter 5, where he’s discussing the origins of the Czechoslovak model:

[…] and to formulate the model that has become the hope of not just Czech and Slovaks, but too (if I’m not mistaken), of Western Europe.

The author is seriously telling the reader that he believes this socialist model has become the hope of Western Europe. Is he not aware of the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie in Europe? This is just one of many examples in the book of Eurocentrism and lack of critical analysis of European imperialism, some of which I’ll review later. Last but not least, the author has called to the “utopian elements of Marx’s theory”. Surely the utopian here is Marx for proposing a market-less economy, and not Selucký claiming that Western Europe will somehow transition to his socialist model without a revolution. This is pure revisionism and anti-Marxism, founded on the hegemonic dominance in the field of economics by the West and in particular the USA.

Continuing in his Eurocentrism, Selucký argues that:

In European countries, the money-commodity relations have a millenia-old tradition; it’s not pure coincidence that the democratic forms of society were born in social orders in which such relations had managed to develop. […] That’s why the dissolution by the dirigiste system of the market, that is, of money-commodity relations, destroyed not just the economic life of the society as a whole, but also its political life

So, according to the author, democracy existed in Europe before socialism was there, and it’s through the elimination of markets that this democracy disappeared. I don’t think I have much to add here: this is the purest form of Eurocentrism, of belief in bourgeois democracy, and entirely opposed to Marxist analysis.

Selucký had clearly never had to live in a market economy before he wrote this book:

If people work in diverse sectors of the national economy and exchange the fruits of their labor, they must receive, in exchange for their contribution to economic development, the equivalent or a susbstitute of equal value. Even though the market-less model of socialism denies this foundation of the market relations, it cannot suppress it

Selucký has never been a day laborer in agriculture in market society, neither has he earned his living taking care of the sick and elderly in a market society, if he had he wouldn’t be saying that people receive compensation according to their labor in markets. We could talk about econophysics here and how market societies inevitably lead to immense levels of inequality (even in socialist systems like China), not even because of politics, but because of thermodynamics and the physical need of the maximization of entropy in a closed system (see Paul Cockshott’s video “Thermodynamics of money and capital” based on the work of Soviet physicist and economist Victor Yakovenko, see “Statistical mechanics of money). We could talk about empirical evidence of wealth and income distributions in market economies being immensely more unequal than in planned economies. But all of that would take too long in this already too long analysis. There’s a lot more brainworms in my opinion in the chapter, but I will recommend that to get a fuller picture, you actually read it for yourselves, in the meanwhile I’ll skip to the final chapter in this analyis, which focuses on the proposals of the economic reform.

Chapter 10 focuses on outlining the basic policies of the economic programme of the Czech movement of 1968. The basic premise, as expected: market socialism.

The market, as an objective measurement of the subjects of economic activity, continuously tests whether the work used by companies coincides, both structurally and quantitatively, with the necessary work for society, whether supply and demand are balanced, and whether companies satisfy with their goods and services the social needs. […] the political rule must establish in law their [companies] equality by creating identical conditions for their activity, which means it must end the administrative preferences and ensure to all companies equal rights and obligations; ensuring too that companies have the right to act on their own interest with full powers, and to enjoy the advantages and endure the negative consequences of their own economic activity

After a lot more market apologism, this revealing enumeration is made:

Two factors deform the consumer-producer relations in the market-less model. The first is the rationing system, which only allows for the distribution of product as the relation between producer and consumer. Among companies there is no competition, because the artificial administrative agreements force artificial monopolies […].

In societies in Eastern Europe in the 20th century, scarcity was very much a thing and rationing as a method of distribution of goods was used. The author seems to believe that this is a negative thing, probably because he hasn’t received the short end of the alternative. The alternative to rationing is not abundance, it’s simply that the poor can’t access most goods and services. There is no “housing shortage” in the West because poor people are simply forced out of access to housing unless through eye-watering-priced rent. There is no “car shortage” in the West because if too many people want cars, the suppliers and produces will simply hijack the prices, leaving the poorer people again without access. No shortage of apples, or meat, or milk, or fridges, or electric drills: simply let the poors without them!As for artificial monopolies, yes, this is actually an intended feature of planned socialism. Monopolies are intrinsically efficient because of economy of scale and the lack of unnecessary duplicities, the problem with monopolies is generally that we’re used to seeing private monopolies, not socialist ones. If competition is desired, the state also has the tools to create artificial competition, which has happened innumerable times during the Eastern Block, the easiest example coming to mind being the competition between aeronautics companies Yakovlev and Ilyushin.

The double standards applied are particularly enlightening when, just a few pages after complaining about systematic corruption in the so-called Stalinist model, the author goes on to outline this proposal in what to me is the most outrageous passage in this book:

Furthermore, the market model allows for the first time to implement the principle of freedom in choice of doctor and sanatorium even in public health services, or the possibility of obtaining, through additional payment, medical services of extraordinary character

Not only is the author advocating for literal private healthcare and leaving the poors without access to so-called “medical services of extraordinary character”, which is extremely alarming in and out of itself, but also frames this as “freedom of choice”. In the dreaded Stalinist healthcare system everyone is treated equally and if you pay your doctor to get preferential treatment, it’s a symptom of corruption and of the backwardness of the system. However, in the glorious market system, individuals have the freedom and right to hire doctors at an extra price to get extraordinary healthcare… that the poors can’t afford!

To be completely fair to the author, he doesn’t advocate for fully unregulated markets:

In the market model there’s no place (theoretically) for direct dirigiste decisions that impose determined tasks to companies through an authoritarian way. However, if the state wants to fix priorities in certain economic branches, it concedes these preferences in a general fashion in the following manner: <<To any company using this or that technology to produce this or that product or for the supply of this or that social service, or which carries out its activities in this or that geographical area, the corresponding general conditions that control its activity will be set>>. […] This form of economic direction cannot only be applied to make up for the economical differences between regions with a different developmental level, but also for the achievement of structural transformations.

One asks oneself: if it’s so obvious that the state can and should carry out legislation regarding production of certain preferential goods, services, or economic activities according to different goals (for example carbon neutrality) or in different regions (for example in order not to centralize the economic activity), doesn’t this violate the market principle? Maybe, just maybe, political decisions intervening the markets are fully necessary, and markets aren’t the perfect and efficient tool that the author has been proclaiming until now? The author again contradicts himself:

The separation between power and ownership is derived from the fact that the political goals of power stop making sense for the economic activity and, in their place, appear economic goals, so that the economy acquires a functional character

The author at least seems to believe that this market socialism is not at all a return to capitalism, and claims he doesn't want it:

The activation of the market model does not mean a return to the 19th century, nor to competitive capitalism, nor to any form of capitalism. Our ideas are based on comprehending that without the market mechanism it’s not possible to ensure the efficacy of the socialist economy- The market won’t make the plan disappear, nor will it have the same meaning than in the fully developed capitalist countries. […] the goal followed by the events after January 1968 was not to copy the western consumer society […] but a new model of a solution for the organization of the socialist economy. […] Besides the national companies, whose economic activity would be determined by the profit criteria, state and public companies should be created in the sector of supply and services […] for railway service, energetic economy, mail and telegraph services, woodlands and waters, for the construction of roads, etc.; and also public local companies in the local sphere, for urban traffic, for communications, for graveyards, heating networks, public lights, street cleaning service, garbage collection and similar

All of this sounds awfully like European social-democracy, but weirdly enough, the most fundamental rights of education, healthcare and housing don’t seem to be included. Perhaps because the author considers them luxury since they affect the people more than they affect the companies (unlike energy supply and road infrastructure).

I said I’d go back to the alarmingly Eurocentrist claims of the author, and that’s because he lays them out in full-swing in Chapter 12. Surprisingly, up to this point, there has been no discussion of how this model will defend itself from the ideological and economic onslaught of the imperialist west. Let’s see what the author has to say about this:

This system didn’t need (since its programme had convinced practically all the Czechoslovak people) to close itself up against the world, but it could allow for open confrontation against any present system or any country in the world. Thanks to its theory and ideology, this system could sustain completely open discussion with any opponent or critique […]. It wasn’t based on an artificially constructed base, but instead expressed the human desire of improving their fortune and deploying in a balanced synthesis all the viable values of the European civilization.

If this isn’t Eurocentrism and idealism, I don’t know what is.

But the author is even clearer:

In my opinion, the model of democratic socialism was connected with European thought, with European tradition and with the values of European civilization. In this sense, it can be qualified as European socialism, whose realization was started in a small country of Central Europe, a country in which during centuries the streams of European spirit flowed, and which often spearheaded the efforts of giving a humanist character to the society of men.

Vomit-inducing levels of Eurocentrism and borderline white supremacy. In one thing he is right: the idea of laissez-faire as a liberating and democratic force is definitely European. It’s just that this is not a good look for Europe. Those European values of “freedom, equality and fraternity” were only applied to the privileged ethnicities of their own countries. Basques, Irish, Occitanians, or Roma people were left out of this even within Europe, and there are no words to describe what the European continent did in Africa, America or Asia in those centuries. Why is Radoslav Selucký so eager to put distance with the Russians, but so eager to frame himself as morally European? How is it that this socialist left his socialist homeland and the following year was publishing this very book in West Germany and in Fascist Spain?

I will leave each reader to reach their own conclusions and I will welcome you all to read the book yourselves and share your insights. I think this analysis is long enough and, since I’ve commented along, doesn’t need any conclusions. Thanks for your time, and have a great day!