Former World Bank chief economist Justin Lin Yifu's book, The Quest for Prosperity, reviewed by Clive Crook ("A middle way around the economic errors of the past", December 24) suggests that the "structuralism" of the Soviet Union failed because of "isolation from global markets".
American economist Richard Wolff and others suggest that a much greater force was at work.
The Soviets failed to resolve the central conflict between workers and their employers.
As in capitalism, the surpluses created by workers were appropriated and distributed by others, in this case party leaders and the apparatchiks of government. It was a kind of state capitalism.
No matter what "reforms" or "structures" are put in place, capitalists and party leaders use the great profits created by the labour of others to unravel them and reduce wages and taxes.
This creates an endless cycle of regulation and deregulation, booms and busts.