Oskar Lange
| Oskar R. Lange | |
|---|---|
Oskar Lange
|
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| Born | 27 July 1904 Tomaszów Mazowiecki, Congress Poland |
| Died | 2 October 1965 (aged 61) London, United Kingdom |
| Nationality | Polish |
| Field | Political economy |
| School or tradition |
Neo-Marxian economics |
| Influences | Karl Marx, Vilfredo Pareto, Léon Walras |
| Influenced | Abba P. Lerner, Don Patinkin, Jan Tinbergen,Robin Hahnel |
Oskar Ryszard Lange (27 July 1904 – 2 October 2 1965) was a Polish economist and diplomat. He is best known for advocating the use of market pricing tools in socialist systems and providing a model of market socialism. During his stay in the United States, Lange was a sought-after academic teacher and researcher in mathematical economics. Later in communist Poland, he was a member of the Central Committee of the Polish United Workers' Party and a believer in centrally-managed economy.
Lange was born in Tomaszów Mazowiecki as son of Arthur Julius Lange and Sophie Albertine Rosner. He studied law and economics at the University of Kraków, where he defended a doctoral dissertation in 1928. From 1926 to 1927 Lange worked at the Ministry of Labor in Warsaw, and then was a research assistant at the University of Kraków (1927–31). He married Irene Oderfeld in 1932. In 1934, a Rockefeller Foundation fellowship brought him to England, from where he emigrated to the United States in 1937. Lange became a professor at the University of Chicago in 1938 and was naturalized as a U.S. citizen in 1943.
Joseph Stalin, who identified Lange as a person of leftist and pro-Soviet sympathies, prevailed on President Franklin D. Roosevelt to obtain a passport for Lange to visit the Soviet Union in an official capacity, so that Stalin could speak with him personally; he also proposed offering him a position in the future Polish cabinet. The State Department was opposed to Lange traveling as an emissary because they felt that his political views represented neither Americans of Polish descent nor American public opinion in general. Lange's trip to the Soviet Union in 1944 caused further controversy, as the newly-establish Polish American Congress condemned him and defended the interests of the London-based Polish government-in-exile. Lange returned to the United States at the end of May and met, at Roosevelt's request, with Prime Minister Stanisław Mikołajczyk of the government-in-exile, who was on a visit in Washington. Lange stressed how reasonable Stalin was prepared to be (Stalin told him of the Soviet desire to preserve independent Poland under a coalition government), and asked the State Department to put pressure on the exiled Polish leadership to reach an understanding with the Soviet leader.
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