Background
BETTELHEIM, Charles Oscar was born in 1913 in Paris, France.
BETTELHEIM, Charles Oscar was born in 1913 in Paris, France.
Licence Lettres, Diplôme d’Etudes Supérieures de Philosophy, Diplôme d’Etudes Supérieures de Droit Privé, Diplôme d’Etudes Supérieures d’Economics Political, Dr d’Etat en Droit University de Paris, 1934, 1936,1936,1937, 1939.
Chargé de cours, Faculté de Sciences Economics, Caen, 1939-1940. Director, Centre de Recherches Sociales et des Relations Internat, du Ministère du Travail, Paris, 1944-1948. Répresentant, Conférence Internat, du Commerce, 1947.
Professor, l’Ecole National d’Administration, Paris, 1948-1952. Professor, l’Institut d’Etudes du Development Economics et Social, 1958-1964. Dr. d’Etudes, l’Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris, since 1948.
Editor, Problèmes de Planification, 1960-1972, Collection Economie et Socialisme (F. Maspero, 1964-1979).
I began my work as an economist with a descriptive study of Soviet planning, in the course of which I discovered the principal theoretical problems of a planned economy (1939). I continued these studies in a book on the Nazi economy (1945). I then became interested in the problems of employment and unemployment in connection with my post at the French Ministry of Labour (1944-1950).
More recently, I have worked on the planning problems of Third World countries, in particular India (1953-1956), Guinea and Mali (1959-1962) and, finally, Cuba (1962-1967).
My work is in the Marxist tradition
but, in the course of my studies, I have found myself forced to transform certain traditional Marxist concepts, such as the concept of productive forces as a determinant of historical change. From 1974 to 1983 I wrote on the economic, social and political history of the USSR with the object of characterising the dynamics of change in the Soviet economy since the Revolution. These caused me to revise some of my earlier views on Soviet planning.
Parallel to my work on the Soviet economy, I also studied the economic history of communist China, which belies many of the official declarations of what transpired there. I hope eventually to bring all these studies together in a reconsideration of the communist experience with centrally-planned economies.
Married Lucette Beauvallet.