David Laibman

Biographic Data

ID4190636
NAMEDavid Laibman
GIVEN NAMESDavid
FAMILY NAMELaibman
SIGNATURELAIBMAN D
AFFILIATIONSBrooklyn College and Graduate School City University of New York
VERIFIEDNo
TOTAL WORKS70
TOTAL CITATIONS62
AUTHOR COUNT70
EDITOR COUNT0
FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR1973
LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR2026
H-INDEX4

  • Science & Society at 90: A Personal Memoir

    Open AccessDavid LaibmanARTICLEScience & Society2026

  • Systemic Socialism: Creative Construction and the Challenge of Democratic Planning

    Open AccessDavid LaibmanARTICLEScience & Society2025References: 2

  • Cuba’s Socialism: Is There a Path Beyond Crisis? A Reflection on Science & Society ’s Special Issue, “The Cuban Revolution at 65

    Open AccessDavid LaibmanARTICLEScience & Society2025

    The S & S Special Issue admirably brings together a range of Cuban and external authors to reflect on the Revolution, its problems, and possibilities, at 65 years. It also, however, combines support for the Revolution’s goals and values with an underlying unease about extricating those values from the crises of the present and enunciating a positive vision for the future. A major source of the impasse is a view of the possibilities that is limite…

  • Transnational Capitalist Class Theory: An Assessment

    Open AccessDavid LaibmanARTICLEScience & Society2024References: 1

  • Systemic Socialism: A Model of the Models

    Open AccessDavid LaibmanARTICLEScience & Society2022Cited by: 3References: 1

    Ameliorative socialism is a set of democratic, egalitarian and humane values. Systemic socialism, by contrast, projects the general features of a social structure distinct from capitalism - a qualitatively different and superior way of organizing the core metabolic processes of society's production and reproduction. Diverse models of systemic socialism have been debated. These vary widely in their conceptions of organization - from highly central…

  • A Comment, but Not A Rejoinder

    Open AccessDavid LaibmanARTICLEScience & Society2021Cited by: 1

  • China: In the Perspective of Historical Materialism

    Open AccessDavid LaibmanARTICLEScience & Society2020Cited by: 6References: 2

    Much is being written currently about the rise of China as an economic power, and about the nature of China's presentday social, economic and political reality. Most of this literature, however, while richly descriptive, does not seek grounding in an organized, theoretical, framework for the study of social structure and evolution. A rigorous re-development of historical materialist theory, in the Marxist tradition, can help in situating China's …

  • Electoral Politics: A Rejoinder

    Open AccessDavid LaibmanARTICLEScience & Society2020References: 1

  • Incentives, Optimization, and Democratic Planning: A Socialist Primer

    David LaibmanARTICLEScience & Society2020Cited by: 2

    Socialism has traditionally been identified with central, top-down planning, which is seen as impossible and irrational. The only alternative is “the market,” identified with capitalism. The 20th-century socialist experience, by contrast, put forward a multilevel (central–local) model, in which enterprises form their own detailed plans, under incentives to plan both ambitiously and realistically. The incentive design literature in Western economi…

  • Forces of Production and Relations of Production

    David LaibmanCHAPTERThe Oxford Handbook of Karl Marx2018

    Marx and Engels based the movement for socialism and communism on a scientific analysis of social evolution rather than on ahistorical moral longings. This, however, requires replacement of vague evocative formulations by rigorous theoretical foundations. Two recent proposals for grounding the theory of the forces and relations of production—“intentional primacy” and “competitive primacy”—provide elements for this project but fail to drive it hom…

  • The Russian Revolution at 100: Sorting through the Interpretations

    David LaibmanARTICLEInternational Critical Thought2018References: 3

    The Russian Revolution is being celebrated worldwide, at its 100th anniversary. There are, however, diverse interpretations of this historic event. Three of these are common among progressive scholars and activists: (1) “Dawn of a New Age,” which sees the Revolution as the beginning of a line of unbroken progress toward communism; (2) “Shangri-La,” the Revolution as an all-but-impossible dream of a working-class utopia, which may or may not ever …

  • The Financial Assault on Greece: A Powerful Recollection

    Open AccessDavid LaibmanARTICLEScience & Society2018

  • Passion and Patience: A Grateful Rejoinder

    Open AccessDavid LaibmanARTICLEScience & Society2017

  • A Note on the Complex and Contradictory Effects of Rising Productivity in Modern Economies

    Open AccessDavid LaibmanARTICLEScience & Society2017References: 1

  • The Russian Revolution after A Century: Its Enduring Impact

    Open AccessDavid LaibmanARTICLEScience & Society2017References: 2

  • Marxist-Anarchist Dialog: A Two-Way Learning Curve

    David LaibmanARTICLEScience & Society2016Cited by: 1

  • Socialism, Stages, Objectivity, Idealism: Reply to Lebowitz

    Open AccessDavid LaibmanARTICLEScience & Society2015References: 2

  • The Participatory Economy — A Preliminary Rejoinder

    David LaibmanARTICLEScience & Society2014Cited by: 2References: 1

  • Horizontalism and Idealism in Socialist Imagination: An Appraisal of the Participatory Economy

    Open AccessDavid LaibmanARTICLEScience & Society2014Cited by: 2References: 3

    The model of the “Participatory Economy,” developed by Michael Albert and Robin Hahnel over the last 30 years, has attracted attention as a serious answer to “TINA” - “There Is No Alternative” (to capitalism) - and as a conception of socialism that claims superiority over proposals for central planning, “market socialism,” and “negotiated coordination.” The 2012 publication of Hahnel's Of the People, By the People: The Case for a Participatory Ec…

  • Political Economy After Economics: Scientific Method and Radical Imagination

    David LaibmanBOOKPolitical economy after economics2013

    This re-incorporation of economics into political economy is one (small, but not insignificant) element in a larger project: to place all of the resources of present-day social-scientific research at the service of increasing democracy, in an ultimate direction toward socialism in the classic sense. An economics-enriched political economy is, above all, empowering: working people in general can calculate, build models, think theoretically, and co…

  • The transition from feudalism to capitalism

    David LaibmanCHAPTERElgar Companion to Marxist…2012

  • Dialogue on Occupy Wall Street movement between Sino-American economists

    Enfu Cheng, Cheng Enfu et al.ARTICLEInternational Critical Thought2012

    Editor's note: The Occupy Wall Street (OWS) Movement began on 17 September 2011 in New York, the financial center of America, and originally started by a few hundred people, has spread to major capitalist countries and turned into a worldwide social movement. OWS is the largest protest both in scale and range since 1970s in the United States. However, the Western media beat the bush and distort the fundamental downside of American political insti…

  • Question 3: Incentives and Consciousness

    Open AccessXiaoqin Ding, Peihua Mao et al.ARTICLEScience & Society2012Cited by: 1

    If socialist society is not constructed out of pre-existing socialist individuals, then how does it handle the historical limitations inherited from pre-socialist conditions? What is the best way to advance beyond the limitations of short-term and irresponsible anti-social self-interest? What is the nature of the individual-social relationship

  • Question 4: Stages and Productive Forces

    Open AccessRobin Hahnel, Marta Harnecker et al.ARTICLEScience & Society2012Cited by: 1

    Does socialism progress through stages? Is there a higher, or communist, stage? How can stages, as a manifestation of the objectivity of social evolution, be reconciled with the marshaling of will and consciousness necessary for building socialist society? What role does (or should) development of the productive forces play in a) socialist social evolution; b) socialist theory? How does socialism envision the evolution of democracy? the state

  • Question 5: Social and Long-Term Planning

    Open AccessMarta Harnecker, David Laibman et al.ARTICLEScience & Society2012Cited by: 2

    What does socialism contribute to social planning, in the sense of shaping the social and physical environment over the long term (as distinct from the ever-present matter of short-term coordination of activities)? Can it incorporate genuine entre-preneurialism and/or inventiveness? What are the prospects for growth, and how will socialist growth differ from capitalist growth? How can/must socialism build into its core processes the transcendence…