Abstract

Well before the attempted coup of August 1991 and the accelerated movement toward privatization that followed it, many Soviet philosophers and political figures had argued for the need to introduce private ownership of the means of production into the socialized Soviet economy, at least to a limited degree. This issue of Soviet Studies in Philosophy is devoted to four theoretical formulations of that need—formulations that differ both in the justifications they offer for private ownership and in their conceptions of the extent to which private ownership should be allowed.