Some Comments on the Politics of Full Employment.

Steindl, Josef

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Document type:: Works

Collection:: Josef Steindl Collection

Title:: Some Comments on the Politics of Full Employment.

Author:: Steindl, Josef

Scope:: Typoskript, 13 Blätter

Year of publication:: ohne Datum

Language:: English

Note:: Seitenzahlen handschriftlich notiert. - Erstmalig publiziert auf Italienisch (Salvatore Biasco, Alessandro Roncaglia und Michele Salvati (Hrsg.): Instituzioni e mercati nello sviluppo economico: Saggi in onore di Sylos Labini, Roma-Bari, 1990).

Topic:: Economic policy

JEL Classification:: E60 [Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook: General] E65 [Studies of Particular Policy Episodes] P16 [Capitalist Systems: Political Economy] P31 [Socialist Enterprises and Their Transitions]

Shelfmark:: S/M.51.3

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.48671/nls.js.AC14446084

The growth rate of socialist countries which originally had been very high gradually declined in the course of time and gave place to what is practically a stagnation. Professor Sylos Labini has something to tell us about the reasons for this change ( Sylos Labini 1986 Chapter 10 and 11 ): He argues that the tasks of building up a heavy industry and a certain basic infrastructure could be tackled without too great difficulties by a heavily centralised system because it did not involve very much innovation. Also, one might add, the best brains and the best skills were drawn into the armament sector which for security reasons was rather isolated from the rest of the economy; therefore the civilian sector was drained of skill and got no spin-off from the advanced military sector. Once the basic industry was built up further progress became much more complicated; The crux of the overcentralised burocratic system, as Sylos Labini argues, is that it is ill suited to innovation and to adjusting itself to changing conditions. It is static,not dynamic. This,Sylos Labini says,and not the difficulty of solving a very large system of equations (as Barone and Hayek thought) is the Achilles heel of the centralised system (Sylos Labini 1986,Chapt 11 p.106 ). The aim of the reformers, in full agreement with this view, is to introduce more flexibility into the system, to liberate the potential of initiative and spontaneity and to establish better communication all round. This requires a good deal of deconcentration of decisions and responsibilities. It will not only change the organisation of the state concerns but it will also in practice lead to the establishmentof a private sector of small enterprises in agriculture, industry and services and with it to the emergence of independent incomes - we may well call them profits - which are determined by the formation of prices in the

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