ABSTRACT
Laws are thus necessary in a socialist state both for economic efficiency and for the protection of citizens’ interests and capacities for political action. This implies that institutions of regulation and review have some definite political autonomy, that they can check, rebuke and compel to desist or to make recompense powerful bodies like large enterprises, state agencies, etc. ‘Pluralism’ in the non restricted sense - that is, a genuine diversity of autonomous social and political forces - is necessary if such elementary benefits o f the ‘bourgeois-liberal’ era as freedom of public discussion, respect for the interests o f minorities, etc., are to exist in the allegedly superior socialist form of society. It should be emphasized that such benefits are not some hangover from individualistic humanism, ‘merely’ a matter of human rights; rather they are a condition for rational and efficient economic decision-making and public policy-making.
