ABSTRACT
The regimes which pursue Socialist economic policies can be found in monarchist Sweden and in communist China, in developed France and in underdeveloped Tanzania, in Catholic Argentina, Moslem Algeria and in Buddhist Burma. All Socialist countries subscribe to Marxism-Leninism, which in addition to economic philosophy also embodies sociological, moral and political precepts. Economic processes are dominated by the hierarchical system of planning and management, the Central Planning Authority constituting the peak of the pyramid. The system presupposes a well-developed network of computers for collecting, processing and cross-checking economic data. Economic processes are conditioned by the market mechanism, thus replacing annual plans and directive targets. With the exception of Yugoslavia, the economic reforms that were carried out in Eastern Europe and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics before 1960 were practically all of the bureaucratic and administrative type. Up to about the mid-1950s, the science of economics, or 'political economy', in Socialist countries was in a deplorable state.
