Starry Aspirant

“Almost 70 deputies work for Kolomoisky, and another 100 for Akhmetov” reads a recent headline in Ukrayinska Pravda . The article then catalogues some of the actions in the Verkhovna Rada, the Ukrainian legislature, that these parliamentarians are said to conduct on their patrons’ behalf. But Ihor Kolomoisky and Rinat Akhmetov are only the most high-profile of the handful of leading oligarchs who have dominated Ukraine’s political and economic life for more than two decades, usually to its detriment. Two sides of the same coin A striking feature modern Ukraine is not just the ongoing influence in public life of such figures, but also the resilience of the oligarchy as an institution across episodes of serious political disjuncture, including the Maidan revolt of 2013/14, which seemed for a short time to threaten its survival. An oligarchy is a political system dominated by a social minority of wealth holders. If wealth is the characteristic source of oligarchs’ social power, it is b...

Review of Is Socialism Feasible? Towards an Alternative Future by Geoffrey M. Hodgson It’s not that surprising, with so many major Western economies in mothballs in response to the coronavirus pandemic and the Bank of England warning of Britain’s deepest recession in 300 years, that lockdown has begun to encourage a rethink of how we live, prompting a plethora articles in the press on how the virus is going to change the world. In this context, Geoffrey Hodgson’s new book, Is Socialism Feasible? Towards an Alternative Future , is timely. In it, he makes a renewed case for the mixed economy and for liberal (or social) democracy, as well as for cautious, experimental reform. Against the small state, laissez-faire liberalism resurgent from the 1970s, he attempts to develop a strand of politics from within the liberal tradition that is more socially conscious. At the same time, he musters a strong case against “big” socialism, or systems in which state ownership and central planning ar...