These are a few statements I have taken from the book
Economic Thought in Communist and Post-Communist Europe, edited by Hans-Jurgen
Wagener. The book is a good scholarly presentation of economists ways of
thinking under repression and later under more liberal or free sovereignty of
thought. The only thing left out of the book that I wish was there would be
Pre-Communist Economic Thought.
These first ones come from Wagener himself. Other quotes
will follow as I have time to post them. Italics are mine and not the authors,
unless otherwise stated.
When political guidance, or even repression, is mentioned,
it becomes immediately clear that science, teaching and research could not
enjoy any constitutionally guaranteed liberties under a communist regime. This leads
to the question that Lukaszewicz (1997: 13) asked in the course of discussion
of the present project: “is it possible that under conditions of an abortive
civilizational mutation any cognitive process can proceed and bring about
successful results in terms of general scientific progress?” he answered in the
affirmative claiming, at least within the Polish environment, the possibility
of intellectual sovereignty. The claim did not remain unchallenged: sovereignty
presupposes liberty which is precisely what was not given. -p. 4
It is tempting, even if counterfactual, to ask what would
have happened if the evolution of the socialist system had been allowed to
continue without too much political interference. Would the Czechoslovak “socialism
with a human face” have proved viable? Would there have been real systemic
innovations? One possible result of such a development can be hypothesized:
perhaps what appeared as radical change in 1990 would have evolved continuously
anyhow. A socialist market economy would not have worked properly, practice and
thinking would have propelled the system to further liberalization and,
finally, privatization. Isn’t that the Chinese
reform path? It is too early to draw such sweeping conclusions, but in face
of this hypothesis the notorious dichotomy of shock versus gradualism seems
ill-placed within the radical change of transformation as it happens in Central
and Eastern Europe. Once continuity has
become a stationary rather than an evolutionary process, radical change is the
only emergency exit if stagnation is to be avoided. The chance for gradualism
has been missed. This is one of the lessons the experience of state socialism
has taught. - P.6
7 false pretenses of socialism, these may also be called the
core of the Stalinist doctrine. They remained more or less unchallenged in the
open until the mid-1980’s:
1.
Under socialism there are no contradictions
between productive forces and production relations, because the latter are
always in advance of the former. Hence, socialism does not know stagnation,
structural crises, and any system that is going to supersede it.
2.
There are no fundamental conflicts between
individual, collective and social needs. Democratic centralism mediates between
all levels and provides for organizational unity.
3.
In socialist production labor has a direct
social character due to planning. A market transforming individual into social
labor is redundant.
4.
Collective social production is superior to all
other (cooperative, individual) forms of production. From this follows the hierarchy
of ownership forms.
5.
Workers as bearers of labor power are the
objects of central planning, i.e. planning is not coordination of independent economic
subjects, but conscious organization from above.
6.
Utility functions of individuals contain only
material arguments. Hence, the economic system can be separated from the
social, cultural and emotional system, and can be organized from above.
7.
Really existing socialism is scientific
socialism: the level of knowledge is sufficient for conscious order and
planning. -
p. 11
Several features of real socialism have been isolated that
lead to the unreformability of the system:
·
Priority belongs to politics. The central taboo
of the primacy of politics made universal state ownership control and universal
interference of party organs a property of the system which could be abolished
only together with the political power structure.
·
Soft budget constraints. It has been disputed
theoretically whether central planning is in principle incapable of making the
firms budget constraints really hard and thus inducing the efficient use of
scarce resources. In practice this has undoubtedly been the case.
·
State monopoly of foreign trade with a tendency
to autarky. To subject foreign trade to political decision making and to
exclude the national economies from international division of labor has grave
consequences, especially for small open economies. Again, some theoretical
solutions of the problem of calculating foreign trade advantage under such
conditions have been offered (e.g. Trzeciakowski 1978). In practice, political
foreign trade control remained on of the central instruments of socialist
economic policy.
·
Secondary role of money and finance. Economic calculation
and prices, despite valiant theoretical attempts and numerous policy reforms,
never functioned properly. The Lange solution to this problem was never
implemented – it may be assumed for good reasons. And where market socialism
was tried out, as in Yugoslavia, it was unable to put all needed markets into
operation (including a capital market and foreign exchange market). The importance
of economic calculation was theoretically recognized, put practically it
collided with the parties planning autonomy.
·
Unity of economic activity and social policy. The
provision of a great part of social services and (existing) unemployment was
the task of state-owned enterprises, and this impeded the development of efficient
business management and structural change. A separation of economic activity
and social policy would have spoiled the system’s alleged major achievement –
full employment.
·
Closed-shop system of nonmenklatura. The selection
mechanism for higher personal was biased in favor of political conformity and
against professional qualification, in order to stabilize the ruling elite.
·
Reliance on paternalism. Political control was
exercised in a discretionary manner. This led to patronage by the party
secretary on all hierarchical levels instead of objective rule of law (a
rational ‘Weberian’ bureaucracy). The ensuing governance regime resembles
pre-modern enlightened absolutism and mercantilistic policy rather than the
hoped for post-capitalist rationality and glasnost. -pp.13, 14
This one is particularly interesting to me because I see
continual reforms and preferred stagnation of our country today.
Politics in other socialist countries, notably the Soviet
Union and the GDR, noticed the inevitability ever progressing requirements of
continued market oriented reforms and preferred stagnation to transformation
which would not have left the political system, i.e. their power base,
untouched. In other words, party elites in the Soviet Union and East Germany,
for instance, recognized the unreformability of the existing politico-economic
regime and deliberately decided to go on with it at the price of efficiency. This
also implies that by the end of the 1960’s the stage was set in Central and Eastern
Europe for gradual system transformation. The power structure of the individual
countries saw the danger and was still vigilant enough to prevent it: ‘normalization’
as it was called. From 1970 on the system was only ‘perfected’, and no longer
reformed. Stagnation was the inevitable result. In order to overcome it,
radical change became unavoidable. -
pp. 14, 15
Socialist claims of installing a progressive and fair
society were deeply rooted in the region and could be shaken only by persistent
system failure. Closer research would probably reveal that they are still in
place and that transformation is considered to be an attempt to find more
suitable institutional solutions. -
p. 21
Stalin was quite far-sighted when he said: we will either
catch up within 10 years with what the West has attained within 150 or we will
perish. His major error was to confine the insight to material production and
to disregard the systemic resilience of capitalism. - p. 29
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