44 SOCIAL SCIENTIST ways to energise the working class, of creating appropriate institutions for the active participation of the working class in economic and political life, and not of re-establishing the reserve army and the fear of the 'sack', which are reversions to capitalist methods and constitute a retreat from socialism.15 To be sure many of the social and political changes being introduced in the socialist countries as a part of the reform would result in a reversal of the process of depoliticisation of the working class which underlies the economic predicament of these countries today. These changes are important and welcome, but it would be a mistake to believe that democratisation in the political sphere and re-establishment of market relationships are somehow complementary to one another, and constitute an intrinsically coherent package of policies. Precisely the opposite in fact is true, as the experience of third world countries has demonstrated repeatedly. Economic liberalisation, i.e. the so-called 'freer play of market forces', which invariably is associated with trade liberalisation as well, brings in its train phenomena such as growing external debt, currency devaluation, domestic deflation, etc., whose political fall-out is a curtailment of the democratic rights of the working people. Thus, in order to strengthen the democratisation process in socialist countries, which also holds the key to their economic revival and advance along the socialist path, it is important to recognise the misconceived nature of the present economic reforms that are going along with it. NOTES AND REFERENCES 1. The two main works of Janos Kornai which I use in this paper are Economics of Shortage, Amsterdam 1980 (2 volumes), and Growth, Shortage ana. Efficiency, Oxford, 1982. In addition there is a useful early article 'Resource-Constrained Versus Demand-Constrained Systems', which is the text of his Presidential Address to the Econometrics Society, published in Econometrica 47 (1979), pp. 801-820. As will be made clear later in the text, in talking about the 'slack' in resource use, Komai focuses on an altogether novel concept of inefficiency, which one may call 'inefficiency of indiscipline' as distinct from the usual notion of 'allocative inefficiency'; since it is this concept which gives some theoretical intelligibility to the current reforms. I discuss Kornai's work in some detail in the present paper. 2. Komatl982,p.90ff. 3. Ibid, p. 108 4. Ibid, 1982, pp. 91-92 5. This of course is not the only aspect, or even the most notable one, of the reforms. Simultaneously there are important changes being introduced in the form of private leases in agriculture, cooperative enterprises, and even legalisation of wage-labour on a significant scale in privately-run farms and non-farm production units. All these reforms have far-reaching consequences for the future of the socialist economy. If I do not discuss these aspects in the present paper, the reason lies in the fact that their implications are well-known and most people would agree on them, including even the proponents of the reforms, who however consider the risk worth-taking. There is however less theoretical agreement, and also less theoretical discussion, on the implications of autonomy for socialist enterprises. I concentrate therefore upon the theoretical implications of this particular reform, or, looking at it differently, upon the implications of the reform process seen at its best, i.e. even abstracting from that particular aspect of reforms which introduces non-socialist forms of property relationships.