68 SOCIAL SCIENTIST
capitalism, but this is an issue that needs to be debated not only in the abstract but as a concrete case, after taking full account of all the historic constraints, opportunities and temptations. The same caveat also applies to the discussion of socialism anywhere on earth.
NOTES AND REFERENCES
1. Mikhail Gorbachev, Perestroika: New Thinking for Our Country and the World, Collins, London, 1987, especially chapters I and III. For a top Soviet economist's view, see Abel Aganbegyan, The Challenge: Economics of Perestroika, Hutchinson, London, 1988.
2. For a discussion of the similarities and differences, see A.K. Bagchi, Public Intervention and Industrial Restructuring in China, India and Republic of Korea, ILO-ARTEP, New Delhi, 1987, chapter 2; and M. Dietrich, 'Organisational Requirements of a Socialist Economy: Theoretical and Practical Suggestions', Cambridge Journal of Economics, 10(4), December 1986.
3. In the flurry of justified and not so justified criticisms of the Cultural Revolution in China, we must not forget that Mao Zedong himself was one of the most profound critics of traditional socialism.
4. W. Brus, The Market in a Socialist Economy, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1972;
J. Kornai, The Economics of Shortage (in 2 volumes), North-Holland, Amsterdam, 1980.
5. A.K. Bagchi, 'Technological Self-Reliance and Underdevelopment,' Occasional paper No. 97, Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, October 1987, Calcutta, section 4. The Chinese methods of transfer and absorption of technology have been briefly discussed in Bagchi, Public Intervention and Industrial Restructuring, sections 4,5.
6. D.M. Nuti, 'Socialism on Earth', Cambridge Journal of Economics, 5(4), December 1981.
7. Ibid., p. 398.
8. Cf. C.P. Chandrasekhar, 'State Intervention and Industrial Change: Towards a Synthesis', Social Scientist, 16(5), May 1988.
9. It would appear that big capitalists in Russia either belonged to minority group—rsuch as the Jews or the 'Old Believers'—or were foreigners, the capitalists in, China belonged to the majority Han community. Could this nave something to do with the greater aversion to 'capitalist' methods displayed by the Russian leadership compared with their Chinese comrades?