General and Specific Problems of Economic Reform in Socialist Countries

Abstract

Socialism in different countries has both common regularities and specific features. Individual participants in the seminar reevaluated "national" aspects of economic mechanisms. In my view the common regularities that form the nucleus of the socialist system are dominant in all variants. This has nothing in common with a situation in which some countries force their ideas on others and try to make one size fit all. Unity in the given instance is understood as objective commonness, as the coincidence of basic features. The freer the new systems are from dogmatism and errors, the closer they approach the ideal, the more powerfully are these features manifested. In this sense the advantage belongs to those who carry out reforms, who take the strong and weak sides of the pioneers into account, and who are able to bypass elementary and rudimentary structures.