ABSTRACT
In 1956, the Polish political landscape was rocked by a revolt against Stalinism and the desire for "socialist renewal." In The Market in a Socialist Economy, written in 1959-1960 and published first in Polish in Warsaw in 1961, Wlodzimierz Brus presented the key themes of this first wave of reform with remarkable theoretical clarity. In the functioning model of socialist economy, defined as planning with a regulated market mechanism, Wlodzimierz Brus built his analysis around two central actors: the state and the enterprise. The center develops a macroeconomic plan based on long-term "social preferences." During the 1970s, Gierek adopted a voluntarist strategy calling for accelerated growth, attempting to combine an improved standard of living with a strong expansion of investment. In early 1980, a more radical and wide-ranging reform than that of 1973-1975 was envisaged at the same moment that the increased economic tensions reached a boiling point; declining production, shortages, inflation, growing foreign debt, and balance-of-trade problems.
