COMMENTS ON 'HISTORICIZING THE PROBLEMS OF SOCIALISM' 71 The first is no doubt true, so long as flexibility is alone the issue involved. However, if the latter two arguments prevail, then there is a technologically determined inevitability about the movement to a high level of decentralisation of economic decision-making, even if this brings in its train the anarchy and cyclical fluctuations more characteristic of capitalism. Does the development of technology in recent years necessarily suggest such an inevitability? No doubt, implicit in such an argument is the assumption that there exists only one route to innovation in the area of civilian technology, exemplified by firms like Apple and Micrososft in the USA. Needless to say, even if we take examples from the successful innovators, the picture is more complex. Not only is there a considerable degree of divergence in the relationship between firm size and innovation as we move across industries—say from personal computers to mainframes to telecommunications—but also within the same industry, there exist divergences in the firm size-innovation relationship as we move acroos countries—from the US to Japan for example. The case for the move away from the gigantism of the second Industrial Revolution is of course more complex, since it involves an element of futurological speculation. At present, however, there are two aspects of the evolving experience. First, there exists a considerable lag in time and nature between miniaturisation at the product level and that in processes. Second, product and process miniaturisation has not always been accompanied by a similar trend in organisations, which have often grown even more gigantic in terms of turnover and world market shares. And finally, the race for innovation linked to the third Industrial Revolution between firms and nations has resulted in a high degree of coordination between firms and governments within and across nations (as for example, in Europe). Finally, if organisational size is not necessarily technologically determined, neither is the extent of democratisation. Glasnost and the democratisation at the political level that it involves is not necessarily a means to the destruction of the gigantism thAt underlies bureaucratisation but a means of preserving democracy despite the existence of 'large heirarchically organised industrial organisations'. Thus, while the move towards decentralization implicit in perestroika is no doubt to be welcomed as a necessary response to the growing complexity of the economy in the socialist world which can no more tolerate the waste associated with the inflexibility of centralised systems, the judgement of whether the extent of decentralisation and the move towards the market has been excessive can yet be judged only in terms that were implicit in the classic defence of socialism as a system that permits overcoming the Waste and anarchy characteristic of capitalism. C.P. CHANDRASEKHAR Centre for Economic Studies, JNU.