Allisson, François Value and Prices in Russian Economic Thought: A Journey inside the Russian Synthesis, 1890–1920 (review)

Abstract

SEER, 94, 2, APRIL 2016 394 anti-blackness and why/how is this thinking being used to make whiteness? Addressing these questions would complement the strengths of this study. Department of Slavic and East European Jennifer Suchland Languages & Cultures, Ohio State University Allisson, François. Value and Prices in Russian Economic Thought: A Journey inside the Russian Synthesis, 1890–1920. Routledge Studies in the History of Economics, 173. Routledge, London and New York, 2015. xx + 179 pp. Illustration. Tables. Notes. Bibliographies. Index. £95.00. This is an original, valuable and easy-to-recommend contribution to understanding the development of Russian economics in a crucial period of its development,althoughitisnotwithoutits‘niggles’ofunnecessaryoverstatement and incompleteness. Allisson takes the reader on an enlightening journey inside what he characterizes as ‘the Russian Synthesis’, or an all-encompassing effort at a synthesis between classical political economy and marginalism, between the labour theory of value and marginal utility, and between value and prices that he argues occurred in Russian economic thought between 1890 and 1920. Six chapters examine the prehistory of the synthesis, classical political economy in Russia, marginalism in Russia, notions of capitalism and socialism, and then two detailed accounts of the synthesis as theory. The synthesis itself is defined as the inclusion in a general framework of two different theories, not a Hegel-style merging of them. Perhaps ‘argues’ should be put in quotation marks because Allisson does not really argue for this interpretation, as readers are told it has always surprised him that the story of this synthesis was not previously written, i.e. he implies that everyone knew of it before he completed his book, they had just not yet found the time to write about it. Consequently Allisson is merely documenting the synthesis movement, which without any doubt existed. Yet, there was no ‘school’ of the Russian synthesis, Allisson explains, but rather a ‘tradition’ of economists engaged in similar investigations. It should be recognized that Allisson’s idea of ‘the Russian synthesis’ is both enlightening as a means of expositing the specific content of Russian economics under review, and a valuable tool for sketching aspects of a broader overview of the period as a whole. As such he has provided readers with a new perspective from which to understand aspects of Russian economics as a national trend in the period under review. But it is certainly Allisson’s own interpretive construct, albeit a plausible and interesting one. He devotes most space in the book to five economists: N. I. Sieber (Ziber), V. K. Dmitriev, M. I. Tugan-Baranovskii, N. N. Shaposhnikov, and L. N. REVIEWS 395 Iurovskii, with some others such as E. E. Slutskii and L. von Bortkiewicz being considered in less detail. Allisson’s account of their contributions is both very knowledgeable of the source materials and theoretically well-informed. His choice of these five is also well-considered. However, whether five economists on their own can make a ‘Russian synthesis’ flock is less convincing. Undoubtedly, these five individuals were engaged in syntheses of the type that Allisson documents, but whether they were part of a much larger trend across all of Russian economics as a whole is less apparent. A similar-length book could be composed that focused on Russian economists of this period who were not engaged in syntheses of this type: for example, P. P. Migulin, A. I. Chuprov, N. D. Kondratiev and others. Even so, Allisson should be allowed some interpretive leeway as he has produced a novel, very interesting and theoretically interwoven account of a period that is usually only studied in terms of isolated individuals or formalinstitutional groups. This is Allisson’s most significant contribution: to locate some revealing conceptual patterns across the mountainous and sometimes isolating landscape of Russian economics between 1890 and 1920. Readers should certainly look forward to his next effort, perhaps a return journey of some type. London Vincent Barnett ...