Introduction

Abstract

Establishing a socialist economy, managing it through centralized controls, and steering it most effectively into the direction that the societal vanguard perceives it to be most consonant with its quasi philosophical precepts pose highly involved questions. To narrow down the range of vexing problems that I shall be concerned with here, it might be useful to revert back to the stylized concepts of ‘plan’ versus ‘market’ that were so common in the debates about the international socialist division of labor (ISDL) and socialist economic integration (SEI) in the 1960s and early 1970s, respectively. This tome is concerned with one particular aspect of the ‘market’, namely with prices and price policies as integral constituents of the most crucial determinants of coordinating economic decisions by indirect policy instruments rather than through direct plan assignments. I should like to touch here briefly upon:

• (i) the place of pricing and its relevance to the entire debate about the functioning of the PE, as well as the feasible ways of transforming the centrally planned economy (CPE) into a modified planned economy (MPE) and its basic prerequisites with respect to the coordination of economic decisions;

• (ii) the major objectives of this study;

• (iii) the institutional background required to place the debates here in their proper perspective; and

• (iv) the overall flow of the arguments that will be pursued in this monograph.