ABSTRACT
The transformation in Eastern Europe and the USSR can be conceived as a transformation from command to exchange communication. This changeover is a change in the way a society communicates in the economic subsystem. The logic of the command system is resource economics, that is, a process of relating scarce material means to virtually infinite ends, where means and ends formulated in material terms are conveyed within a hierarchical structure. The weaving of the exchange network can and must be done at two levels: first, by de-etatization of the state economy, and, second, by development of small entrepreneurship. The market as a communicative network can only be started through a massive participation of Western capital. While market economies organize themselves by producing information on scarcities through the process of exchange, command systems lack internally produced information on scarcities and must imitate market economies.
