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of influence of the political bureaucracy upon economy and - as a result of that - the request for democratic expansion in public political life. Naturally, one cannot claim that all the suggested reforms have met with an equal success as theoretical concepts, but they havc been basically inspired by the same motives and moving in the same direction. From the standpoint of socialism as a world process, they have been surpassing the boundaries of each country owing to these characteristics; they are not only their »private« affair, and they are of morę than »local« importance. The entire socialist movement is interested in them on account of their basie meaning which eventually tends to help socialism overcome the period of its crisis.

What will be, however, the destiny of economic reforms in socialist countries? Except for Yugoslavia, where an embittered struggle has been underway to eventually fulfill, after two unsuccessful reforming attempts, some of socialism’s principal goals at least, all other endeav-ours have failed: in the USSR requests for a reform have been liquid-ated by political and administrative measures, and in Czechoslovakia, for instance, by militarv force. The failure of reforms is the most evident sign of power of the political bureaucracy and of the crisis of present day socialism.

That failure reflects the crisis of its practice, and I would suggest, the double crisis of its theory. The crisis of practice has been expressed as the power of bureaucracy to liquidate reforms, to prevent any new, fresh ideas to develop within socialism. That twofold theoretical crisis has been reflected by the theoretical scope of the suggested reforming concepts, and by an almost absolute insufficiency of theoretical under-standing of the crisis on the part of top bureaucrats. Namely, many of the suggested reforms are remote from the real needs of contempor-ary socialism: they tackle the problem just partly, restricting them-selves - very often - to the economy only, and even in that field they aim at some changes which might inerease economic efficiency only. Some of the substantive issues of socialism, such as freedom, with-drawal of the state, self-management and the like, have been out of their reach. Even in their most complete forms such as the »economic model of democratic socialism« of Oto Sik, they have revealed some relatively serious theoretical drawbacks and deficiencies.¹

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How Sik’s conccpt of the reform, which might be regardcd as the most com-plcte one within the circlc of socialist countries, does not aim at a radical social transformation but remains within the boundaries of a bcncvolcnt »rci>aiiing« of_t c cxisting has been demonstrated by V. Sutlić in his »Comments on the Tcxt ot U. Sik« published in »Ku!turni radnik* No. 5/1970. To illustiatc it, 1 am quoting only some of Sutlić's objeclions to Sik:

»What is not acceptablc in Sik’s poslulations?

—    Dealing with self-management at the levcl of specific enterprises only, and disccming accordingly only the political moment from the economic one, which has been a permanent source of bureaucracy and social, conceptual and cvcn economic dcviations, errors, etc., including a newly created indcpendcnce of the State and other administration (communes, city, republic, etc.);

—    Perennial feature of the state element: Sik does not evcn givc a hint of a tendency of the state's »withdrawal« on account of the new economic and social relations;

—    A non-historical dealing with the capital;