26 SOCIAL SCIENTIST could be made about what constitutes rationality in the given situation. He argues that planning through command and obligatory tasks could lead to an egalitarian level but at a lower level of performance of the economy (closer to Kornai's concept of 'vegetative economy*). At the same time, in an economy in which there is competition for efficiency and profit making, gross inequality in income and status, differences between successful and unsuccessful people are bound to emerge. This is one of the biggest contradictions of economic reform.43 If today's social value consensus is any guide as far as Hungary is concerned or other European CMEA countries for that matter, the present author is of the opinion that these countries will uphold the socialist principles rather than submit to the prescriptions of the ideologies of free market economy. The latest set of measures of reform is not likely to include the element of unemployment as an unavoidable measure, but rather provision for shift from one sphere to another when necessity arises, as T. Zaslavskaya has suggested, within the framework of the present Soviet reform. NOTES AND REFERENCES 1. I.T. Berend and G. Ranki, The Hungarian Economy, Croom Helm, London and Sydney, 1985, p. 241. 2. Tamas Bauer, 'The Hungarian Alternative to Soviet-Type Planning', Journal of Comparative Economics, September 1983, p. 305. 3. Ibid., p. 306. 4. Ibid., pp. 307 and 310. 5. J. Komai, Economics of Shortage, 2 vols.. North Holland, 1980; and Bauer, op. cit, p. 308. 6. M. Ellman, Collectivization, Convergence and Capitalism, London, 1984, p. 294. 7. R. Nyers and M. Tardos, 'Enterprises in Hungary Before and After the Economic Reform' in W.J. Baumol (ed.). Public and Private Enterprise in a Mixed Economy, New York, 1980, p. 187. 8. L. Szamueli, 'The Second Wave of Economic Mechanism Debate and the 1968 Reform in Hungary', Acta Oeconomica, 1984, nos. 1-2, pp. 58-59. 9. Ibid. 10. I. Schweitzer, 'Some Interrelations Between Enterprise Organization and the Economic Mechanism in Hungary', Acta Oeconomica, 1981, nos. 3 & 4, p. 296. 11. Ibid. 12. J. B. Hall, 'Economic Planning and Economic Reform in Hungary', Cateuropa Wirtschaft, June 1986, p. 113. 13. Ibid., p. 115. 14. E. Neuberger and W. J. Duffy, Comparative Economic Systems: A Decision-Making Approach, Boston-London, 1976. 15. L. Szamueli, Dva doklada o khoziaistvennom mekhanism v vengrii, Budapest, 1983, p. 40. 16. L. Antal, 'Development with Digression', Acta Oeconomica, 1979, nos. 3 & 4, p. 260. 17. L. Szamueli, op. cit., p. 41. (It may please be noted that while indicating the features of micro-units and structural changes of these, I have leaned substantially on this work.) 18. T. Laky, 'Mechanism of Recentralization', Acta Oeconomica, 1980, nos. 1 & 2, p. 96. 19. L. Balcerowicz, 'Organisational Structure of the National Economy and Technological Innovations', Acta Oeconomica, 1980, nos. 1 & 2, pp. 151-67. 20. J. Mocsary, 'Centralisation of the Hungarian Enterprises System and Its Impact on the Efficiency of Production Control and the Regulatory System', Eastern European Economics, Winter 1982-83, p. 83.