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Economie reform and basic issues of anti-inflationary policy in Poland All countries of Eastern Europe suffer from more or less serious economic disequilibria. Recently, however, a new and especially disturbing fact has captured the attention of economists : those countries of the region which have experimented with market-oriented reforms have fallen prey to inflation, coupled with persistent disequilibria as they tried to check the rise of prices by preserving the remnants of price control. The really disquieting fact is that inflation tends to accelerate despite all efforts to stop it. Inflation has thus become the main economic problem in that part of the world. It threatens to undermine the attempted reforms and to revese the prevailing trend toward a more productive economy and a more liberal society. Poland is a particularly vivid illustration of the difficulties of transforming a system based upon the monopoly of political power and bureaucratic control of the economy into a democracy with a freely operating market. Over the past two years, the problem became particularly acute as inflation clearly entered the phase usually described as galloping inflation, threatening to degenerate into hyperinflation. The critical turning point seems to have been the failed « price and income operation » (February 1988). The present article is an attempt at clarification of the interrelationship between reform and inflation in the light of the Polish experience.

The way back. (The evolution of opinions about the market and property in Poland, 1956-1982) The economic aspects of the changes which have taken place in Poland since 1956 may be analysed in the light of the successive revisions of ideology. This goes from the reform of marxism during the first years of Gomulka's accession to power, to the general liberalization of 1986, by way of the return to orthodoxy at the end of the 1960's, and the renewal of reforming ideas after 1975 and particularly after 1980. To-day the debate has moved on, and the question is one of speculation on whether the socialist economy should be abandoned. The two opposing camps are divided on this point, as is shown by the author, after his account of the evolution of Polish thinking on the subject of the market and property during the period under discussion, and his description of the policies adopted.

In search of an identity. (Seventy years of real socialist economy) Seventy years of real socialist economy are a long enough period to justify making and assessment, which is what the author has in mind, by tracing in parallel the evolution of the system, and the gradual development of the economic theory which accompanied these changes. He recalls that war communism was an attempt at applying, to the latter, the marxist vision of a non-market, non-monetary economy. Its failure was cause of the « march backward » and the introduction of NEP. After the changes of 1929/30, there developed a type of economy which came to be known as a command and allocation economy. Created in specific conditions in the USSR, it has survived until the present day with a greater or lesser degree of adjustment, in the majority of real socialism countries. A lively theoretical debate, begun in Poland in the second half of the 1950's, left the way clear for research into an alternative system, and the article reviews and analyses all the theories which aimed at simultaneous transformation and justification of the socialist system : « plan-market » models, « indirect centralization », « macro-economic optimization ». His conclusion is that, until the beginning of the 1980's, a minimum condition for a socialist economy was held to be direct distribution by the State of the economic surplus and accumulation. It is accepted that the role of money should be expanded to take account of the circulation of the means of production needed for current production. But there is sustained affirmation of the argument that money must not play an active part in the growth process. Since the outset of the 1980's, we have witnessed the transition of theory to a new, qualitatively different phase. The active role of money in the distribution of surplus and accumulation is accepted. In other words, households in a socialist economy may henceforth reach decisions about their savings, and enterprises about their expansion, financed by a variety of means. The last years, in Hungary and Poland, fresh ground has been broken, and state ownership described as « uniform and inert » is more and more violently criticized.

Developing countries and their programme of adjustement : the case of Yugoslavia The first part of this article, which is the work of S. Pintaric, is concerned with the measures that nave been taken in Yugoslavia to adjust to a market economy. Three major aspects are involved : the efficiency of economic subjects (circulation of information in an exchange economy, the system of production, physical yield of the factors of production, material responsibility of the decision-makers, etc.), sectors of production (agriculture, light industry, crafts and services, heavy industry) and the economic policy followed by the State (budgetary and fiscal policy, foreign trade and monetary policy). To begin with, he recalls the solutions recommended by Jean Marczewski on each of these questions, and draws a parallel with the measures adopted by the Yugoslav authorities. The second part, compiled by G. Nikic, examines the lines along which the Yugoslav economy is going, and the implementation of the programme of adjustment set out in detail in the first part. The author begins with a historical outline of the Yugoslav crisis (its arrival, the forms that it assumed and their development) and goes on to describe the Yugoslav authorities' attempts to free their country from the economic morass in which it was, and still is, foundering. 'The two authors sum up, in conclusion, the successes and the shortcomings of the programme of adjustment to a market economy that has been taking place of recent years in Yugoslavia. They recommend longer term consideration, and the setting up of a whole new institutional system, since the present system acts as a brake on the adjustement programme from a whole number of aspects.

Peasant community traditions and socialism in Yugoslavia When the Yugoslav communist party came to power in 1945, Yugoslav society consisted primarily of peasants and stockbreeders, with regional variations, and they made a major contribution to the success of the revolution in the struggle for national liberation. It might be asked to what extent the traditions of this peasant society might have influenced the building of socialism, and particularly, what might be the influence of community traditions as exemplified by the zadruga, a long-standing domestic grouping within the population, except in Slovenia. In the 19th century, the Serbian socialist Svetozar Markovic, who belonged to the Russian populist tradition, had held the view that these community traditions would facilitate the transition to socialism without passing through capitalism. In fact, it would no appear that peasant co-operative traditions made any contribution per se to the building of socialism, for example during the years of the collectivization beween 1948 and 1953. For one thing, traditions such as the zadruga were on the decline, and, for another, these peasant community institutions, and communist collective organizations, bore only an apparent resemblance to one another. However, under socialist self- management, peasant community co-operative traditions did influence the working of the political system, to the advantage of the authorities. The upholding of tradition was one of the elements of consensus between the leadership and the workers. This consensus was embodied in the structure of decentralized power at republican and also commune level, and was supported by economic modernization (industrialization) which made it possible to offer the peasants social advancement (jobs, albeit non- profitable and subsidized). Family ties, traditional solidarities, eased the process of economic modernization, the transition to the towns. In this process, which is common to a number of under-developed countries, it is typical that the communist authorities drew on such traditions, which for their part acquired a new sense and a new content. In addition to these peasant co-operative traditions, it would seem that traditional solidarities also penetrated the system and had an effect on self-management. However, the maintenance of peasant community tradition also had negative results : it was one of the factors which contributed to inefficient modernization (egalitarianism, etc.) and to a level of self-management that was not genuinely democratic, although it did not obstruct peasant integration into the nation at republican level. And this preservation of traditions may to-day act as a brake on the changes that appear necessary to the authorities themselves (political and economic reform) at a time when the consensus between the leadership and the population is weakened by economic crisis, and it is essential to make the economy profitable.

Development of the energy consumption as a function of production structure and of economic growth The international comparisons show that in Hungary further considerable increases of production can ben achieved by improving energy intensity. In order to realize it, the increase of the GDP should be accomplished in a structure of production considerably more up-to-date than the former one. This can be realized by the development of different pace of production blocks having various energy intensity, on the one hand and by the modernization of the product pattern within blocks, on the other hand. Though a great importance should also be attached to the different ways of using energy — and rationalization measures in the future — the resounding success in the improvement of the energy intensity of the country can be achieved only by producing up-to-date products and modernizing the production in accordance with the level of our days. The adjustment of the energy development conception to the varying structuro-political alternatives through the method described in the article can ben carried out rapidly. Moreover the application of the correlation among the generally prognosticate modernization possibilities, the energy consumption and the economic growth is a more utilizable procedure — and better corresponding to the new attitude — than the previously applied practice for calculating the energy intensity.

The problem of socialist parliamentarianism The idea of socialist parliamentarianism appeared at the apogee of Stalinism, nearly 20 years after the victory of soviet power. The author's aim is to show this idea is without foundation by demonstrating its internal contradiction, particularly at the historical and political levels. He tries to identify the causes for the theoretical and political refutation of bourgeois parliamentarianism, above all those which necessitated the creation of the soviet system in the post-revolutionary State. Why could « parliamentarianism » not be socialist, or why was « parliamentarianism in a socialist country » inevitably doomed to disappear ? These are the kind of questions which the author tries to answer, leaving to its partisans the task of « proving » that socialist parliamentarianism does truly exist, as they maintain.

Analysis of socialist economic systems, and the regulation approach Regulation theory was developed in the field of advanced capitalist economies, and partly Third-world economies. During the 1980's, quite a few works influenced by the regulation school have been published in France, dealing with socialist economies, which are particularly prone to such an interpretation. These works are shortly presented in the article on the following topics : the wage-labour relationship, the accumulation regime, the crisis, money, the regulation mode and institutional forms. A trend of thought with analogies with the regulation approach can be noted in Eastern Europe, that is the Hungarian school. Eventually the article stresses the importance of comparative analysis of economic systems for a widening of the regulation problem thanks to the methodological benefits which can be derived from this meta-branch of economic theory.