Changing Priorities

Abstract

Since we have had the pleasure of having Professor Sik in our midst some important events have taken place. They are important enough to reconsider the relationships between the centrally planned and the market economies. Until recently the first priority for the former was to establish a communist society and for the latter to prevent that from happening. The centrally planned economies were and are governed by the Communist Party and this party’s main vision of socio-economic history is that a country’s social order is moving from a feudal to a capitalist and from a capitalist to a socialist order. In the latter the means of production are owned by the community and the production and distribution processes carried out along the lines stipulated by the Central Plan. Whereas Karl Marx felt strongly convinced that these main features of social development could be anticipated on the basis of scientific research, he added that ‘recipes for the future’ on details could not be given.