ABSTRACT
There will, of course, be foreign trade. Either some of the world will not be socialist, or there will be separate socialist countries, though naturally a union of several socialist countries would be both possible and desirable, and/or a socialist ‘common market’ with close co-operation and perhaps a common currency. One would hope that the clumsy ‘state monopoly of foreign trade’ of the Soviet type would be unnecessary, but, yet again, the only known alternative is a market, i.e. exchange, and since multilateral trade has evident advantages over bilateral barter, this would seem to imply currency convertibility, and the right of economic units to buy and sell across borders. This in turn means realistic prices and exchange rates. It means also that an individual citizen wishing to travel abroad, or a productive or wholesaling enterprise, will be able to acquire foreign currency without necessarily seeking permission from some government office. Internal and foreign trade prices in tradeable goods would be mutually consistent. Prices would emerge partly as a result of bargaining over specific deals, partly as a result of international price agreements for specific important commodities.
