Thoughts on the Causes of the Collapse of the Socialist System

INTRODUCTION

In this first chapter I am going to present a broad spectrum of views about the causes of the collapse of the socialist system. Of course, this will be only a selected group of opinions.

I will start out with general views on the inevitability of the collapse and only later present views which deal with the concrete causes of the collapse in the countries under review. This division will not be fully applied consistently.

VIEWS ON THE INEVITABILITY OF THE COLLAPSE

Von Mises’ Views

The idea of socialism had already been called into question in the nineteenth century. In the twentieth century perhaps the most intellectually powerful challenge came from the Austrian economist, L. von Mises. He launched his challenge in his study ‘Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth’, which was published in 1920 (1963) at a time when the Soviet model of a planned economy only existed in the minds of some economists. Therefore it is no wonder that Mises’ model of socialism, which was the basis for his analysis, was in many respects different from the Soviet model which came into being in the 1930s. In Mises’ model of socialism, the means of production belong to the community which makes decisions about their use. Money and prices, as we know them, do not exist.

Mises believes that such a system cannot be efficient because it lacks the properties needed for a rational allocation of resources to possible alternative uses. He is not concerned about the lack of consumer market prices; these he believes will emerge spontaneously. Individuals have preferences for certain goods and as a result an exchange will develop. In this process exchange ratios (prices), determined by supply and demand, will arise. Not only this, but money too will arise: some consumer goods will serve as a medium of exchange. Of course, the role of the money will be limited to consumer goods.

To Mises the real obstacle to an efficient working of the socialist system is primarily the lack of market prices for producer goods (goods of a higher order). Without such prices it is, according to him, impossible to attach a rational value to producer goods and engage in a rational economic calculation, which has two prerequisites. Even a socialist community may have no trouble with one prerequisite, with the formulation of its needs, mainly the most urgent. According to Mises the problem is with the other prerequisite, the valuation of the means of production, which is the basis for the most efficient satisfaction of needs. Needs can be satisfied in different ways, and the means of production can be used for multiple ends. The solution to the problem is the existence of rational prices and an exchange medium (money) for producer goods which can arise only in market conditions.

Mises maintains that not just any price can be used for economic calculation. He argues that prices based on the labour theory of value are not fit for such a purpose. In addition, he maintains that ‘Exchange relations between production goods can only be established on the basis of private ownership of the means of production’ (p.

He is a staunch advocate of private ownership. In one place he writes, ‘Every step that takes us away from private ownership of the means of production and from the use of money also takes us away from rational economics’ (p. 104). To him private initiative and responsibility, important factors for the efficient performance of the economy, are possible only under private ownership. Managers of private corporations work efficiently because their interests are tied to the interests of the corporation they work for. They are owners of a fraction of the shares of the enterprise they manage and have the prospect of placing their heirs in the company. All this is impossible in a nationalised unit, where it cannot be expected that the manager will act on his own initiative. First, the authorities set limits for initiative, and secondly it is impossible to transfer power Tor in practice the propertyless manager can only be held morally responsible for losses incurred’ (p. 122).

Hayek’s Views

As far as I know F.A. Hayek did not discuss the reasons for the collapse of the real socialist system. In his writings he tried, however, to show that a system different from the market economy cannot work well and is doomed to failure. He did so in his The Road to Serfdom. which criticised primarily the planned economy of Nazi Germany. In Collectivist Economic Planning (1963), a volume of studies on the possibilities of socialism (which included inter alia the study of von Mises) which he edited and contributed to, he tried to show that economic calculation under socialism is theoretically possible but practically impossible. Here I would like to discuss his The Fatal Conceit, the Errors of Socialism (1989).

In this book he tries to substantiate, mainly on a philosophical level, the viability of the market economy and the failure of the socialist system. He maintains that the market economy, which is the result of spontaneous development, is necessarily superior to an order deliberately produced and based on collective command, and that a competitive market economy can produce more wealth and prosperity than a socialist system.

One can pose the question: how did the author arrive at such conclusions? Hayek believes that the present social order is the result of a development which led mankind between Scylla and Charybdis, instinct and reason. Both instinct and reason played an important but not a decisive role. Decisive for the present social order are the rules of human conduct which evolved gradually. These rules (or more precisely, institutions), among which the author mentions private property, competition and gain, constitute morality, which is handed down from generation to generation by ‘tradition, teaching and imitation’ (p. 12).

The instinct of fear and danger led primitive people to combine into small groups where solidarity and altruism were the rules of behaviour. But these rules were not applied to other groups. The same is true about the present situation. ‘An order in which every one treated his neighbour as himself would be one where comparatively few could be fruitful and multiply’ (p. 13). Spontaneous cooperation between individuals develops, which owes little to instincts of solidarity and altruism. The cooperation is guided by the invisible hand.

‘Man is not born wise, rational and good’, writes Hayek. All these properties must be learnt. ‘It is not our intellect that created our morals; rather, human interactions governed by our morals make possible the growth of reason and those capabilities associated with it.

To Hayek private property ‘is the heart of morals of any advanced civilisation’ (p. 30) and no civilisation can last long if the government does not see as its main objective protecting private property (p. 32).

Hayek criticises some of the rationalists who wanted to rearrange society according to ideas thought out in advance and thus to let reason play a decisive role in changing the order and in imposing new rules of behaviour on society. He subjected, inter alia, Rene Descartes, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Karl Marx and John Maynard Keynes to criticism. (Rousseau was criticised for challenging the existing order by making private property suspect in his work The Social Contract and private property ‘was no longer so widely recognised as the key factor that had brought about the extended order’ (p. 50).) He also complains about the great influence of rationalism and maintains that the more an intellectual is educated the more likely he is at the same time not only a rationalist but also a socialist (p. 53).

What has been said up to now is on a very general abstract philosophical level. Hayek also tries to underpin his arguments against socialism with more concrete reasoning. He has primarily two arguments. One is that planners cannot have the necessary information in order to be able to issue correct commands. The second is that, when no rational prices exist because they can only arise in competitive markets, it is impossible to allocate capital efficiently among different uses (pp. 86-7).

Brzezinski’s Views

Brzezinski’s book The Grand Failure (1989) was written at a time when the European socialist camp was already in an economic and political crisis. The author was already sure that his old dream of communist destruction was becoming a reality. He called the chapter in which he summarised the reasons for the upcoming communist breakdown⁴The Agony of Communism’.

Brzezinski admits that the communist regime achieved some progress (he is, however, not very specific), but the social costs were disproportionally high. He writes:

Communism’s grand failure has thus involved, in summary form, the wasteful destruction of much social talent and the suppression of society’s creative political life; excessively high human costs for the economic gains actually achieved and an eventual decline in economic productivity because of statist overcentralization; a progressive deterioration in the overly bureaucratized welfare system which represented initially the principal benefit of Communist rule; and the stunting through dogmatic control of society’s scientific and artistic growth (Brzezinski, 1989, p. 241).

In his book Brzezinski tried also to predict what kind of a regime would arise in the post-communist era. He was not very optimistic; he suggested that the ‘totalitarian model of social organization’ char­acteristic of Soviet-type regimes precluded political pluralism. Still he did not give up on East European countries: the emergence of a civil society in some of the countries and the use of modern mass communications by Western countries to break down the monopoly of communist propaganda might pave the way to democratisation. The transformation might be eased by the fact that pluralistic democracies have assimilated some constructive aspects of Marxism, a more developed social consciousness (pp. 252-7).

It is interesting that Brzezinski, who put forward a whole list, one can say, of crimes of the Soviet system, at the end gave communism some acknowledgement. ‘The bitter but also hopeful irony of history may, therefore, be that for some communism will come to be ultimately viewed as an inadvertent, and costly, transition stage from preindus­trial society to a socially developed pluralistic democracy’ (p. 257).

Fukuyama’s Views

When Fukuyama wrote his book The End of History and the Last Man (1992) socialism in East European countries had already collapsed, and the Soviet Union was on the brink of collapse. (He outlined in substance his views in an earlier article, ‘The End of History?’, in 1989 and therefore I present his ideas in this subchapter.) Unlike the three previous authors, he could back up the discussion of his philosophy of history with experiences from the collapse in the East. Fukuyama, like Marx, looks for a final social system which would meet human longings and aspirations. Marx believed that such a social system would be communism, whereas Fukuyama opts for liberal democracy. His philosophy of history consists of two fundamental elements: Marx’s interpretation of history and Hegel’s desire of people for recognition. He writes (p. 204)

The universal and homogeneous state that appears at the end of history can thus be seen as resting on the twin pillars of economics and recognition. The human historical process that leads up to it has been driven forward equally by the progressive unfolding of modern natural science, and by the struggle of recognition... capitalism is inextricably bound to modern natural science.

Though Fukuyama rejects Marx’s communism, he nevertheless accepts more or less Marx’s interpretation of history² as one of the driving forces in the development of mankind. Unlike many authors, who deny that any pattern exists in the development of mankind, Fukuyama, like Marx, believes that there is some regularity. From Marx’s assertions in his Preface to a Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (see Marx-Engels Reader, 1978, p. 3) one can conclude with great certainty that he regarded production forces as the driving force of development. Marx was, however, not specific about the meaning of the term ‘productive forces’. It is possible to agree with O. Lange (1975, p. 221) who defined productive forces as all the factors which determine productivity, including, of course, technology at a certain stage of economic development.

To Fukuyama modern natural science is the mechanism³ of directional historical change. He believes not only in a pattern in economic development, as has been already mentioned, but also that there is constant progress in this development and that history does not repeat itself in the sense that a form of social organisation once abandoned is not readopted by the same society. He writes, ‘if history is never to repeat itself, there must be a constant and uniform Mechanism or set of historical first causes that dictates evolution in a single direction’ (p. 71). And such a uniform mechanism is to him natural science, which is the basis for technological progress. Military competition between nations and wars are an important accelerator of technology and modernisation. In order to withstand any threat to sovereignty, nations are forced to develop technology and adapt social structures accordingly.

The desire to satisfy growing human needs is another accelerator of natural science. Industrialisation, the instrument for satisfying these needs, is manifested in economic growth and this produces ‘certain uniform social transformations in all societies’ (p. 77). In this sense wars and industrialisation are a unifier of nations.

The second driving force of human development is psychological in nature. It is the desire for recognition, a concept taken from Hegel, as interpreted by the French-Russian philosopher, A. Kojeve. Human beings seek recognition by others; they want their worth, dignity and freedom to be respected. What we call economic motivation is, to the author, largely the desire for recognition. The desire for recognition has led to violence and unequal relations among nations (colonialism) and people, but at the same time it has made people aware of their situation. The choice of democracy is inspired by the desire for recognition and equality. Fukuyama states explicitly that there is no economic rationale for democracy because ‘this is a drag on economic efficiency’ (p. 205). In another place he maintains that democracy is not the result of a natural development; ‘it must arise out of a deliberate political decision’ (p. 220).

Modern natural science with its prerequisite, education, and its results, industrialisation and urbanisation, has helped people in subordinate position to fight the inequalities. Recognition links ‘liberal economics and liberal politics’ (p. 206).

To Fukuyama liberalism and democracy are two separate concepts. Democracy (the right to vote and to participate in politics) does not guarantee human rights and freedoms which are the essence of liberalism (pp. 42-3). As mentioned, he believes that liberal democracy, as it already exists in the West, is the last stage in political development, though he acknowledges that liberal democracy has competitors in Asia and in the Islamic world.

Liberal democracy in its economic manifestation is capitalism or the free market economy. To him this is the system which can best satisfy human needs and therefore was victorious in competition with socialism.

Fukuyama believes that one of the main reasons for the collapse of the Soviet system was its economic failure. This had such a far-reaching effect because the legitimacy of the system was based on the promise of a high standard of living. However, the most fundamental reason was the failure to control thought (pp. 28-9). He also believes that the failure to respect the desire of the population for recognition was one of the reasons for collapse (p. 205). He does not, however, criticise communism for its social engineering, as Hayek did, because he himself applies social engineering to some extent.

VIEWS ON THE COLLAPSE OF THE SOCIALIST SYSTEM

In my opinion, it is useful to distinguish three groups of theories about the collapse of the socialist system. One has some affinity with Hayek’s ideas even if the authors do not mention his name or may distance themselves from him because of Hayek’s adherence to laissez-faire. Hayek’s underlying idea is that a system thought out behind a desk, by the mind, cannot succeed. All those who believe that social engineering cannot be successful must come to the conclusion that the socialist system was doomed, if they are consistent in their thinking. The second group includes views that the socialist system itself carried the seeds of destruction. Some simply believe that a system which is not based on market forces is not a viable system. Others believe that the reforms destroyed the socialist system. Most of this group’s ideas will be discussed in connection with economic reforms but some in this chapter. In the third group I include divergent views about the collapse of the socialist system.

Social Engineering

N. Petrakov (1993) can be regarded as one of the representatives of the group explaining the collapse of the socialist system as due to social engineering. He juxtaposes a market economy with a socialist economy. The former is ‘an evolutionary form of economic organiza­tion... [resulting] from a process of many centuries of natural selection of effective forms of interaction* whereas the socialist ‘was purely speculative from the very beginning*. He criticises Marx and Engels’ Marxism for confining itself to a suggestion that the capitalist system would be destroyed without presenting a concrete concept of transformation to a new society. Therefore he calls Marxism a ‘pseudoscientific apologia for social destruction.’ In Petrakov’s view Lenin and Stalin, who formulated the socialist system, drew from the Utopians of the seventeenth through to the nineteenth centuries.

Petrakov tries to complement his view of socialism as a utopia by analysing its working. To him the greatest shortcoming of the Stalinist system was the lack of incentives and the use of non-economic instead of economic coercion. The reform of the system had to collapse because the tradition of state control made decentralisation impossible.

If P. Murrell, who is an adherent of an evolutionary approach to the transformation of the socialist system to a market economy, is consistent in his views, he must necessarily take the position that one of the main reasons for the collapse of the socialist system was social engineering. He developed his evolutionary approach in several papers. In his 1992 paper he distinguishes two schools which provide under­pinnings for an evolutionary approach to economic reform.⁴ To both schools ‘socioeconomic mechanisms are information processing de­vices’ and therefore in the forefront of their interest is the examination of intellectual capacities and how they can be improved (p. 83).

The evolutionary approach is based on the idea that experience should be the guide for action. It views with ‘skepticism reforms... derived purely from theory, particularly those that exhibit speed, irreversibility and large scale’ (p. 90).

In his 1993 article Murrell develops in greater detail his theory of an evolutionary approach by contrasting it with the shock therapy applied in Poland’s and Russia’s transition to a market economy.⁵ He argues that the difference between the evolutionary and shock therapy approaches is not only in the economic sphere, but, more precisely, is also foremost in the idea about how human societies function. Taking as an example Lipton and Sachs’ paper of 1990, he shows that these two authors in conceiving their strategy did not take into consideration the existing institutional structures. Murrell, referring to the two authors, writes, ‘History, society and the economics of present institutions are all minor issues [to them] in choosing a reform program’ (p. 113). He characterises shock therapy as ‘Utopian Social Engineering’ (ρ. 115). He also tries to show through the example of Poland and Russia that the shock therapy model cannot be successful in the long run.

Murrell maintains that shock therapy comfortably fits the views of Plato, Rousseau and Preobrazhensky. It is known that Preobrazhens­ky’s ideas about the transformation to socialism, expressed in his New Economics, were used by Stalin in the elimination of NEP and the introduction of the centrally planned economy.

Indigenous Reasons

In a 1987 paper, which was reprinted in a book (1990), I. Szelenyi, a well-known Hungarian sociologist, expresses the view that the economic crisis in the 1970s and 1980s in the socialist countries, which he characterises as a general crisis, resulted from the difficulty of transition from an economy based on extensive growth to an economy based on intensive economic growth. The problem is how to ensure growth when surplus labour is exhausted. According to him capitalism was faced with a similar problem; he implicitly assumes that the origins of the Great Depression of the 1930s were also in the transition from extensive growth, an idea which I doubt is well-founded (1990, p. 410).

He called the period of the 1970s and 1980s, in which economic growth had stagnated or declined, the crisis of transition. It was a period when socialism was close to collapse. But he did not share the view of those who believed that an intensive type of economic growth was possible only under conditions of private ownership and therefore socialism was doomed to collapse. Rather, he believed that socialism would turn into a socialist mixed economy (1990, pp. 426-32). Taking into consideration his characterisation of the mixed economy, one can call it market socialism.

Szelenyi appreciated primarily the rise of the second economy in the Hungarian reform. Such a rise was possible because the bureaucracy wanted to achieve political stability even at the price of giving up some of its power. The second economy started first in agriculture, spread later into services and affected industry too. Its expansion was the first step in the direction of a consumer society. To Szelenyi this was the start of the process of embourgeoisement (1990, pp. 417-20). In his 1990a article the author maintained that embourgeoisement brought down the socialist system. (See more about this in Chapter 9.)

J. Staniszkis (1991), a well-known Polish sociologist, maintains that contradictions in political, economic and international relations created a very critical situation for the existence of the socialist system. Some ‘chance events’ caused the systemic contradictions to deepen and destroyed the socialist system. In the political sphere the contradiction lay in the claim of the CP to be the executor of objective laws of history and in the ‘subjectivism and anarchy inexorably resulting from such a formula’ (p. 2).⁶ The lack of democracy and civil society encouraged people to act collectively during a crisis in order to defend their interests. In this way Solidarity was born.

In the economic sphere there were contradictions between the rise of state ownership and the impossibility of controlling the economic process. The working of a state-owned economy depends on effective structures of control. The absence of the market in such a system and the resulting lack of reliable information makes control of the economic process impossible.

To Staniszkis the contradiction in international relations lay in that socialist countries were in double dependency. The socialist bloc as a whole was dependent on capitalist countries and in addition on CMEA. The second dependency had to mitigate the first and to redistribute the cost of the first. Such adjustments enabled the ‘empire’ (meaning the Soviet Union) to be consolidated and engage in competition with capitalism (pp. 3 and 120). The socialist countries were dependent for technology on the West, but the latter blocked the export of important innovations to socialist countries. The dependency also had another effect: socialist countries suffered from the economic fluctuations in the West.

The bad situation was compounded in the 1980s by the fact that the application of methods used in the past (such as changes in investment plans, shifting of resources) to overcome crises was more difficult. Sources of extensive development were exhausted and the demand for energy and raw materials was growing (p. 5).

One of the chance events which intensified the contradictions was a change in the composition of elites in the Soviet Union and the ascendancy of Gorbachev with his reforms (pp. 10-17).

Divergent Views

The opinion of G. Therborn (1992) about the collapse can be regarded as a voice from the left of the spectrum of views. First, let me mention Therborn’s view on the substance of socialism. To him socialism is the combination of a culture (which provides its members with an identity, world view and a set of values) and a set of institutional structures (p. 17). According to him socialism collapsed as the result of a political and economic crisis in the 1980s and three epochal shifts. One of the epochal shifts was the end of colonialism, which crucially affected the viability of classical socialism (the socialists played an important role in fighting colonialism) (p. 22). In my opinion, this did not play any role in the defeat of real socialism in Eastern Europe. However, the defeat of socialism in Eastern Europe and later in Russia had a devastating effect on the socialist movement in the Third World.

The second shift was the transition in the post-industrial society to services alongside the declining role of industry, and with it the decline of the proportion of industrial workers in the total work force. The post-industrial society also brought a change in the relationship between enterprises and markets. ‘Socialist theory was predicated upon the tendency of the former to replace the latter.’ Services concentrated in smaller facilities required more markets (p. 23). The third shift was from modernism, which was combined with concepts of progress and development, to post-modernism, which questions the possibility of predicting the future.

He mentions two reasons why socialism may be regarded as a failure. First, it was not applied in any advanced capitalist country, as Marx and Engels had assumed it would be. Second, socialist countries had failed to catch up with the most advanced capitalist countries economically and politically.

Nevertheless, Therborn believes that it would be wrong globally to characterise the socialist system as a failure. He advances figures about the development of socialist countries compared to advanced countries. In addition, he maintains that the socialist countries managed to achieve basic industrialisation and economic modernisation. However, they failed to develop mass consumption and services (p. 28).

Therborn takes the position that the socialist system was reformable and its demise in the USSR was conjunctural rather than systemic. The reforms in China and the rapid economic growth there are, according to him, the best proof of this. The postponement of reforms in the USSR was fatal for the regime (p. 21).

Finally, mention will be made of a line of reasoning about the collapse of the socialist system which cannot be directly linked to one author, but which is implicit in some views on the collapse and has popular support. Some believe that the traditional socialist system failed because it was in substance contrary to human nature. According to this view people are driven by selfishness, envy, greed, and the desire for property and wealth - in brief, qualities which breed individualist rather than collectivistic attitudes which were the philosophical foundation of the socialist system. However people are able to bring out the best in themselves when they arc confronted with competitive­ness and rivalry. The architects of the socialist system believed that it was possible to mould human nature and behaviour to be in tune with the requirements of some thought-out, ideal, social and economic system, and that, if people were properly enlightened about the intricacies and wrongs of the old system and about their interests, they might be won over to new ideas. Because the architects of the socialist system tried to suppress human nature and create a ‘socialist man’ (cf. Roemer, 1993, p. 91), it is argued, people were not motivated to work hard, produce quality products, assume initiative and behave responsibly. In East European countries, this argumentation was often expressed in a laconic and joking way: why did Marx not first try his ideas on animals?

The best proof of the fact that the architects of the socialist system did not take human nature sufficiently into consideration is found in the amount of stress put for a long time on moral incentives instead of money incentives. They did not see, or rather, did not want to sec, that sacrifices which people are willing to bear in revolutionary periods cannot be expected in peace time.

Another evidence of the inability of the architects of the system to reckon with the nature of the people was their treatment of the intelligentsia. They must have known that the success of the system and its stability depended to a great extent on the intelligentsia. Never­theless they did not do what was necessary to gain and maintain its support.

CONCLUDING REMARKS

I intend to comment briefly on some of the views. Much of what Mises and later Hayek argued about the importance of market prices for economic calculation and thus for the achievement of economic efficiency was correct. In his famous study ‘On the Economic Theory of Socialism’ (1956) O. Lange, who challenged Mises’ views, wanted to achieve rational prices by letting the Planning Office simulate the market.⁷ His suggestion was never applied in practice. Economic reforms, mainly in the 1980s, were supposed to rationalise prices gradually.

As has been noted, Hayek believes that a spontaneous system is superior to a system designed by human beings. To him private property, competition and gain arc the foundations of morality and, to exaggerate a bit, altruism and solidarity are not part of it. In other words, in the book discussed and in other works, he pleads for a system in which the ‘invisible hand’ is not impeded by government interference. In this respect there is no difference between him and Mises. However, Hayek tries to underpin his laissez-faire principle also with philosophical arguments, whereas Mises confines himself to economic reasoning.

Needless to say, none of the advanced capitalist countries has fully adopted Hayek’s views. The welfare system, applied in all countries, is the best proof of it. The whole trend in development, interrupted by some temporary backward movements, indicates that government interference in the economy will probably grow, despite strong opposition in some countries, mainly the USA.

The present democratic institutions in advanced capitalist countries are not the result of spontaneous forces but, as Fukuyama (see p. 9) indicates correctly, they are the result of deliberate political decisions or, more precisely, of a long-lasting fight which was not free of violence. Before the struggle for democracy started, its concept was already in the minds of its intellectual architects.

Fukuyama believes that liberal democracy is the final social system. When Marx talked about communism as the final social system, he assumed that this would be a system which would eventually prevail all over the world. In Fukuyama’s concept the final social system is not final, because as he himself acknowledges, liberal democracy has competitors in Asia and the Islamic world.

Liberal democracy manifests itself in the economic sphere as capitalism, as Fukuyama himself mentions. Therefore it is legitimate to call this system capitalist democracy. But this term contains a contradiction. Capitalism, understood solely as an economic system, is undemocratic in its foundations. It is a system where a large proportion of the means of production and the media are in the hands of or controlled by a small segment of the population, and this gives it disproportionate power and influence compared to its size (cf. Miliband, 1992). Needless to say, this has a negative effect on the nature of democracy.

Those who argue that the socialist system was not in tune with human nature have a point, as has already been mentioned. The architects of the socialist system suffered from the illusion that it was possible to change overnight people’s conduct acquired during a long epoch, in a way that is contrary to their interests. In the beginnings of the regime a great many intellectuals, maybe even a majority in Czechoslovakia, were attracted to the system which promised to right the wrongs of the past, eliminate exploitation and manipulation and create a system of social justice and equal opportunity. They were even willing to accept some limitations on their freedom. However, in the course of time most of the intelligentsia became more and more disillusioned. This was because the governments disregarded the traditional position of the intelligentsia in society, which was also reflected in pay, and a large proportion of the intelligentsia (physicians, engineers, lawyers) was put at the level of an average skilled worker in terms of remuneration. This was contrary to the principle, which the communists themselves propagated, that the distribution of income under socialism is carried out according to work performed. The disillusionment also resulted from the circumstance that the regime, being dictatorial, could not afford to cater to the requirements of the intelligentsia to develop and thrive and to fulfil itself.