The State of the Debate on Planning in Hungary

Abstract

The 1968 reform in Hungary meant great progress over what had existed before, but it was still far from what was needed to bring about a definite turn-round in the economy, one reason being that the space carved out for the working of market forces was quite narrow. ‘We have abandoned the command planning system but we have not anchored in the port of regulated market,’ wrote Bauer (1982). In addition, the reform came to a halt in 1972–3. Only under the pressure of the worsening economic situation did the authorities again start, at the end of the 1970s, to consider changes in the management system. It took some time for the Party (in 1984) to come up with a package of suggested changes which meant not only a return to the principles of the 1968 reform, but in some respects an advance beyond them. The promised changes were implemented slowly and inconsistently. Only when the situation started to worsen again, after a short recovery, did the authorities devise a stabilisation programme in 1987 (for more see Adam, 1989, p. 129); at a 1988 conference, the Party carried out far-reaching changes in its leadership and promised further reforms in the economic as well as the political field. In the economic field, the reform was to create ‘conditions for the working of a socialist market economy’ (see the Standpoint of the Conference of the Party, Supplement to Népszabadság, 23 May 1988).

I would like to thank the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, Ottawa, for the extended research grant which enabled me to work on this study.