Communism is vulgar capitalism; that is, the communist command economy is based on mistaken notions of how capitalism grew by exploiting workers. Command economies not capitalism fulfil Marx's predictions, collapsing because they are unproductive and immoral, basing economic choices on corrupted personal relations. Without competition, decision in command economies are unproductive through negative selection, and immoral, being based on corrupt personal relations. Each and every Marxist and neo-Marxist prediction about capitalism, from commodity fetishism to the alienation of the citizen from the state, comes true under communism. The explanation is straightforward: Marxist assumptions about the state and the economy are far more true for communist than for capitalist countries.

The medical profession is reputed to control decision-making in medical care to such an extent that one can speak of professional dominance. Yet West European health policies have radically changed the working conditions and incomes of doctors in many countries. Why have some governments been able to ‘socialize’ medicine? This article seeks to refute the view that the medical profession exercises a universal veto power. In contrast to scholars who explain medical influence in terms of singular characteristics of the medical profession or through the historical process of professionalization, this essay focuses on the properties of distinct political systems that make them vulnerable to medical influence. It argues that we have veto points within political systems and not veto groups within societies. By comparing the lobbying efforts of medical associations in Switzerland, France, and Sweden, the article analyses the role of political institutions in accounting for different patterns of medical association influence on health policy.

European Community policymaking has been predicated upon the member governments acting as gatekeepers which mediate between their respective domestic political systems and EC institutions. However, the sweeping changes associated with Project 1992 threaten the gatekeeping status of the Twelve. This article explores the domestic and international consequences, which are cast in terms of three scenarios: the maintenance of the status quo, the emergence of a ‘Europe of Regions’, and a variegated set of outcomes. As an attempt to move beyond the realm of pure speculation, concrete lessons are culled from the reform of the European Regional Development Fund since 1979 and its effect on national and subnational interests in Britain and the Federal Republic of Germany. The theoretical premise is that national and subnational actors respond to Community initiatives within a structured context, the domestic policy networks in which they are embedded. These clusters of interorganizational relationships at the domestic level reflect the underlying distribution of resources among actors, and endow them with different capabilities and vulnerabilities as they seek to cope with changes administered to their policy environment by the EC. The findings suggest skepticism of the image of strengthened regions breaking out of the orbit of weakened states with the assistance of the EC. While the ability of member states to retain their roles as gatekeepers varies, this capacity remains strong. Moreover, subnational actors often view the EC as yet another exogenous institutional constraint on action.

This article examines a neglected phenomenon in the existing literature on social regulation, namely political opposition to regulation that comes not from business but from consumers. It examines four cases of successful grass-roots consumer opposition to government health and safety regulations in the United States. Two involve rules issued by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, a 1974 requirement that all new automobiles be equipped with an engine-interlock system, and a 1967 rule that denied federal highway funds to states that did not require motorcyclists to wear a helmet. In 1977, Congress overturned the Food and Drug Administration's ban on the artificial sweetener, saccharin. Beginning in 1987, the FDA began to yield to pressures from the gay community by agreeing to streamline its procedures for the testing and approval of new drugs designed to fight AIDS and other fatal diseases. The article identifies what these regulations have in common and examines their significance for our understanding the politics of social regulation in the United States and other industrial nations.