The Persistent Bond of Socialism
The Persistent Bond of Socialism

Summary/Abstract: SUK, Jiří: Veřejné záchodky ze zlata: Konfl ikt mezi komunistickým utopismem a ekonomickou racionalitou v předsrpnovém Československu [Public lavatories made of gold: The confl ict between communist utopianism and economic rationality in Czechoslovakia before August 1968]. Praha, Prostor 2016, 325 pages, ISBN 978-80-7260-341-1. In the reviewer's opinion, this book is an important contribution to studies of the evolution of economic thinking in Czechoslovakia in the 1960s and of the reform process culminating in the Prague Spring in 1968, hitherto unparalleled in Czech historiography. However, the author does not focus only on the economic theory prevailing at that time, but also examines it, mainly from philosophical and sociological perspectives, in a broader historical context, including paradigmatic Marxist works and Soviet disputes concerning the economic policy after the Bolshevik revolution. He is interested in the form and viability of the new economic model, or the Czechoslovak concept of the “socialism with a human face”, including its internal conflicts and limits of thinking and acts of various players. The greatest deal of attention is paid to Ota Šik (1919–2004), then Director of the Institute of Economics of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences and the principal author of the “third way” economic concept; the author also describes the restorative reaction of the political regime against the concept after the defeat of the Prague Spring. The reviewer presents the content of each chapter of the book and formulates some partial reservations.

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