Reform in China and Other Socialist Economies.

• Author: Lichtenstein, Peter M.

This volume is a collection of eighteen essays, all but one of which were previously published. Fifteen were published on the eve of Central Europe's transmutation and of China's Tiananmen debacle (between 1986 and 1989). The central theme is that capitalism is superior to socialism and that China and other (formerly) socialist countries need to undergo a radical transformation to capitalism. It follows that the malaise of mainland China since 1949 has been its failure to adopt this capitalist gospel. The same applies to the formerly socialist Central Europe and USSR.

Part One (Chapters 1-4) lays out Prybyla's ideological and theoretical predilections. Chapter I opens with the assertion that the problem with state socialism is its Marxist foundation. That foundation necessarily leads to "lies, hate, and depersonalization" [p. 3]. These and all the other heinous crimes associated with China and the Soviet Union directly stem from adherence to Marx's social theory. Prybyla does not substantiate this broad historical assertion. Chapters 2 and 3 argue that the economic problems in socialist countries are symptomatic of an irrational and inhumane arrangement. Only a free market economy based on individual freedom, voluntary exchange and private property can efficiently deliver the goods and solve these problems. China's attempts to reform socialism by combining the market and the plan are doomed to fail. Market and plan are inherently contradictory and systems based on both will eventually resolve themselves into one or the other. Thus, central planning must be completely abandoned: "to become modern the socialist system must deny itself" [p. 37]. Moreover, such a transformation "requires for its proper functioning an ethic rooted in the Judeo-Christian tradition, more specifically in the tradition's Protestant manifestation" [p. 32]. Prybyla argues this is not ethnocentric because other Asian economies have adopted this requirement without injury. In this reviewer's opinion, Prybyla does not succeed in escaping the charge of ethnocentrism. Chapter 4 is a sensitive and beautifully written essay about the author's visit to China in 1974.

Part Two (Chapters 5-8) assesses the performance of the Soviet-type economy and critically compares the experiences of economic reform in China, the Soviet Union, Hungary and Poland. Chapter 5 examines three main sectors of the Soviet-type economy: the military/public security economy, the centrally planned and...