The economic structure and mechanisms blocking the process of reforming the economy

The authors undertake the problem of efficiency of reforming the economy in a situation of which Poland in the end of the 70 may be a typami example. In the first place the subject of the analysis is a so-called "typical reaction" of an enterprise in the centrally controlled economy. This analysas, carried out by means of microeconomic theories of balance of an enterprise, leads to the conclusion that the purpose of an enterprise functioning in a traditional socialist economy is to maximize the difference between the outlay received to carry out a given production task and the outlay which is actually necessary. The next argument of the article is that a long-lasting persistence of such a typical reaction leads in the whole economy not to a common imbalance of a demand type but to the asymetrie imbalance. The latter phenomenon manifests itself through the fact that the closer is to the beginning of a technological cycle, the higher the imbalance proves to be. In turn, asymetry brings to life a specific economic structure with the production potential growing higher the closer it is to the beginning of a technological cycle. Changing the topic of their considerations, the authors then introduce the differentiation between the three systems of managing the socialist economy, i.e. the discretionary, formal-individualized and market systems. In Poland, attempts are made to introduce the second system, consisting in a strict and regulated dependence between the level of production and the level of reward. Coming back to the former line of considerations, the authors introduce the notion of structural imbalance. It is the result of the asymetry of imbalance persisting for a long time and the subsequent emergence of the economic structure of a respective kind. If the structural imbalance extends over the good which in the formal-individualized system is to become a "reward", then the reform consisting in introducing such a system may only evoke inflation and is bound to fail. The authors state that in Poland there are no other goods but those encompassed by the structural imbalance. The article ends with the characterization of the course of retreat from the reform. According to the authors, such a retreat is inevitable if the reform is that of formal-individualized and not market type.Digitalizacja i deponowanie archiwalnych zeszytów RPEiS sfinansowane przez MNiSW w ramach realizacji umowy nr 541/P-DUN/201