HISTORICIZING THE PROBLEMS OF SOCIALISM 67 armaments. This is an aspect about which both Mikhail Gorbachev and Deng Xiao-Ping have spoken candidly3; the systemic problems of socialist economies driven into endemic shortage have also been explored by such economists as W. Brus and J. Kornai4 and so I will not elaborate this point here. The third challenge before the socialist world is to move from being mainly an adapter and absorber in the area of civilian technology to becoming an innovator in those areas. Both the Soviet Union and China have very successfully travelled what I have called the 'mobilization' and the 'associationist' routes to the absorption of technology5; both have used their own technological powers to build defence systems against the menace of capitalist imperialism. But barring a few outstanding cases, they have not been on the frontline of innovation in civilian technology, and it is partly their urge to absorb the new vintages of civilian technology from the affluent capitalist countries that has led countries such as Poland and Romania into the jaws of international indebtedness. How does one set about building an intimate association between scientists, technologists and workers and managers of production plants without sacrificing democracy and egalitarianism, so as to generate new ideas that can be productively implemented? As a fellow-economist ruefully admitted some years back, there is as yet no perfect socialism on earth.6 But along with him, I would also plead that we have to go on striving for a better system along the socialist path. For, plainly, we cannot afford the endless waste of capitalism, and the ever-present threat of having the earth blown up in a nuclear holocaust. In order to strive for socialism, we will need staunch commitment. But at the same time, we must be able to look critically at the existing systems of 'transitional socialism'. The leaders of the socialist countries have been certainly doing so. Those living outside those countries must also get away from the shibboleths of our professions. One of those is plans vs. markets. Just as there is no watertight line of demarcation between centralization and decentralization in planning, as Maurice Dobb taught7, there is no clear demarcation line between markets and state intervention.8 One reason for this is that markets and market operators themselves vary with the climes and the times. Is the apparently greater success of China after 1978 in using prices and private incentives for the restructuring of agriculture and retail distribution due to the fact that China had a more successful, more internationalized local business community than Russia had before the communist revolution?9 Or is it because the Chinese communists continued consciously to use the overseas Chinese as a way of beating the US blockade during the 1950s and 1960s, whereas the Soviet Union closed its doors to all capitalists from the 1930s onwards? Is the Chinese 'success* a success along the path to socialism or is it a portent of a slide-back to capitalism? I myself do not believe that the Chinese are treading a primrose or a slimy path to