It was most often Engels who had the task of presenting the future society, by commenting and developing the indications by Marx, and then, after the death of this latter, in making corrections of great importance. The aim of the article is to show that Engels did not defend just one single notion of socialism, but several. Inhis mind they corresponded to different stages in the construction of communism. For the period of transition following the coming to power of the (...) proletariat, he envisaged a state controlled market socialism. For the period of socialism, as such, he recommended integral planning, abolishing the market. But later he moved away from this idea and approached an associative socialism, more in tune with the aims of communism: in brief, co-operatives, and a plan of orientation, which correspond to two levels of democracy. Finally, the article presents a certain number of critical commentaries in the light of past history and of current research on models of socialism. (shrink)

La thèse défendue dans cet article est que le gouvernement chinois, chapeauté par un Parti qui se revendique encore du communisme, se sert du capitalisme, en le contrôlant strictement, afin d’accélérer le développement, mais sans dévier d’un objectif prioritaire : la construction d’une société socialiste ; et il s’appuie sur le Marx qui pensait que le communisme supposait un haut développement des forces productives. En France, cette thèse est minoritaire, et combattue ; peut-être, paradoxalement, parce que des similitudes existent entre (...) les deux pays. Cependant, les malentendus entre eux sont aussi nombreux (1 re partie). Cela pourrait tenir notamment aux différences de modes de pensée de ces deux peuples, en particulier vis-à-vis des contradictions et des mouvements de la dialectique (2 e partie), comme aussi en matière de mobilisation de la morale par le discours politique (3 e partie). Pour finir, les auteurs analysent les effets de cette comparaison sur l’interprétation du « socialisme aux couleurs chinoises » (4 e partie). Classification JEL : B24, H59, N45, O53, O57, P20, P52. (shrink)

The Privatisation of Public Services : a Privatisation of Democracy ? The article argues that the role of public services goes beyond the provision of « public goods », insofar as they provide « social goods » which form the necessary conditions for the exercise of citizenship, in its political, social and economic dimensions. The article shows that the arguments put forward in support of privatisation are in fact specious, and have been refuted by what has emerged in the wake (...) of privatisation : in essence, a privatisation of democracy, insofar as universal democracy has given way to a consumer vote conditional on a property qualification, a process carried out in dutiful subservience to the interests of financial capitalism. (shrink)