16 SOCIAL SCIENTIST happened can only be explained by the Opposition of the privileged bureaucrats and other recipients of scarcity premia that are the essential characteristics of the system. The possible overthrow of these entrenched groups is too messy a circumstance to act as the midwife of a rational and feasible system of socialism as described in the counterf actual. I am very grateful to my colleagues, Stephen Cullenberg and Victor Lippit, for their helpful comments and suggestions. NOTES 1. These are western estimates based on the facts obtained from the Soviet sources. See Ofer [13]. 2. Official Soviet estimates of growth are higher than the western estimates. They however confirm the sharply declining trend in growth in GNP and productivity since 1970. 3. Chinese growth rates are trends based on the official time series published in China in recent years. See State Statistical Bureau [14]. 4. These Gini coefficients are reported in Morrison [11]. For 1975 the Soviet Gini coefficient was 0.30 without an allowance for the non-monetary income of the elite and 0.34 with an allowance for the non-monetary income of the elite. The Gini coefficient was 0.23 for Denmark (1963), 0.27 for Sweden (1970), 0.35 for the then Federal Republic of Germany (1969), 0.37 for France (1973) and 0.38 for the U.S.A. (1976). 5. For evidence see Khan [4], Griffin and Saith [3] and World Bank [16]. 6. This would appear to be the conclusion especially if these countries are placed in a Kuznets curve along with other countries. 7. See Barone [1] and von Mises [15]. 8. See Lange [7]. 9. Lange's model does not appear to have been taken seriously in any socialist society including his own although he became an important personality in socialist Poland. 10. See, for example, Lenin [8]. 11. I also believe that the rejection of political democracy by the Bolsheviks was largely a consequence of the need for an instrument of revolution in a pre-industrial society in which the vanguards of revolution—the industrial proletariat—were a tiny minority. The choice of a strategy of accumulation that alienated the vast peasantry exacerbated the situation by destroying the possibility of a meaningful coalition with them. 12. See Mao [91. Like Stalin before him Mao argued that collectivization was necessary to enable agriculture to reap the benefits of economies of scale of mechanization and to prevent the small and weak peasants being gobbled up by the more efficient. It is also important to note that the Chinese revolution was immensely popular and the first few years after the revolution saw a remarkable national consensus on which a popularly democratic system might have been based. That this was never attempted must mean that in some sense 'dictatorship', a product of the particular circumstances of the Soviet Union, had also become a part of the vision. 13. More complete blueprints of 'feasible socialism' have been prepared by others, e.g., Nove [12]. The present outline draws upon these models. 14. There would also be plenty of opportunity of vertical complementarity of the two types of ownership. 15. Admittedly, the type of equipment used would depend on the size structure of plots which could differ between individual and collective ownership. But this is a different issue. In any case it is widely believed that the size of equipment in Soviet agriculture was inappropriate.