Economic Thought in Communist and Post-Communist Europe by Wagener Hans-Jurgen;

Author:Wagener, Hans-Jurgen;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ebook
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Group
Published: 2011-09-09T16:00:00+00:00

Radicalization amidst political stalemate

The strange deal was well-reflected in a position paper by the two leading personalities of the CCEM, Pulai and Vissi (1984), bringing a new medium-term reform project to the fore. It contained important deadlines—such as 1987 for the introduction of a new system of taxation, similar to that of the EC countries. Furthermore, it contained important new elements going way beyond the confines of the CCEM project, dated only six months before. Some features mentioned were a demonopolization drive, delineation of legal, market and ownership control, as well as the issue of capital markets.

It would be hard to comprehend this swift change of mind without the widespread feeling of a crisis. This had to do with the loss of perspective; clearly, the writing was on the wall for a regime that had pacified its citizens by buying them out with constantly, though modestly, growing living standards. And 1984 was already the sixth meagre year. If new growth prospects had been around, a sigh of relief could well have been heard. But this was not the case. The chief planner (Hoos 1984:16) was quite plain in stating that recovery of domestic demand could not be expected before the 1990s. This meant the drying up of the base for the post-1956 social compromise. Others (Nyers and Tardos 1984) contended that there was an alternative available, if systemic reforms had proceeded more radically than envisaged in the CCEM paper. This, however, would have called into question ‘proven’ ways of controlling social consequences of economic processes, like price and wage controls, entry and exit of firms, the monopoly of foreign trade and centralized money management—precisely what the party disliked the most.

The fundamentals of economic policy were often questioned in the literature on foreign economic relations. However, Kádár (1984) questioned the rationale of contemporary policy priorities in toto, when he proved that considerations of supply security, the priority of the primary sectors, aiming at technological invulnerability were all at odds with main tendencies to be observed in successfully adjusting developed and developing countries. He stressed the relevance of joining the multinational inter- and intrafirm networks, especially in technologically more advanced subsectors, for R&D, product development and for market entry. This added up to a full-fledged horizontal attack over the whole policy front.

In a much quoted monograph, Antal (1985a:146–66), synthetizing his previous findings, came to an integral vertical critique of economic policy. He talked about regulatory illusion reigning among those on the commanding heights and highlighted the role of invisible, interest-related mechanisms of decision-making. In a second part he presented the NEM in general as an illusion, where some softening up occurred, but its major principles—like tying incomes to profits, or applying generally valid financial rules—had proved to be impractical. In a third part he identified minimizing of strains and frictions, rather than any idea or model, as Leitmotiv of the system, where restrictions only breed new restrictions, and even all the remnants of rationality are lost. With no increments to be redistributed,

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