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507 Annals Am. Acad. Pol. & Soc. Sci. 9 (1990)

handle is hein.cow/anamacp0507 and id is 1 raw text is: PREFACE Socialism in this volume means the centrally planned, administrative command economies that make up what is sometimes called the Soviet-type system. The emphasis is on the achievements of and the problems that beset central planning and on the remedies that are currently being tried, with varying degrees of determination and success, in parts of the socialist world. In this review the participation of economists from socialist countries has been secured. Their contributions are welcome not least because of their hands-on experience of the economies with which this volume is concerned but for broader glasnostic reasons as well. This introduction serves as a sort of reader's guide to the articles contained in this volume and the many themes raised by the authors. As special editor, I have tried to summarize the authors' arguments accurately, to show where they logically link up and where they diverge. I hope that I have understood the various theses correctly, but the interpretation is mine alone and certainly does not bind the authors in any way. In any cooperative project involving busy contributors from different parts of the country and different countries, for no financial reward, over many months, last-minute accidents are bound to happen. This undertaking has not escaped them. A promised essay from France on the ideological implications of socialist privatization and marketization failed to materialize at the last moment, creating a gap that, unfortunately, for scheduling reasons it was not possible to fill. But the damage, although annoying, is not lethal. The articles in this collection implicitly make the point-some do so quite explicitly-that an economic system consists of both a set of integrated institutional arrangements for resource allocation and a set of ideas that explain the workings of the institutions and provide ethical guidelines for the system. Any changes that go beyond surface adjustment and affect the foundations of the system require not only radical transformation of institutions but also new positive and normative theories that explain the laws governing the reformed system's operational mechanisms and moral code. In the context of a closed philosophical system, economic reform necessitates the removal of Marxist-Leninist dogma- and its Stalinist, neo-Stalinist, Maoist, latter-day Dengist, and other extensions and accretions-at both the level of economic theory and that of economic ethics. Consequently, systemic reform is a very arduous and usually painful undertaking, a wrenching institutional, intellectual, and moral experience, which few socialist power holders have so far been willing to carry through to its logical conclusion of their self-liquidation. China is the latest illustration of this thesis, but other less blood- splattered examples abound, some currently in the making. SOCIALIST PRINCIPLES AND INSTITUTIONS AND THE NEED FOR CHANGE The principles and institutions of the centrally planned, administrative command system are discussed by Paul Gregory. He notes the intimate involvement of the Communist Party elite in economic decision making-the party's leading role. This involvement represents a hefty hindrance to efficiency- and rationality-tending reforms 9

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