ABSTRACT
Post World War II, Czechoslovakia went over to an administrative, centralized type of planning and management that had evolved in a different environment, under different conditions. The authorities at the center literally confiscated all financial resources in the factories, allotting them as they saw fit to investment, raw materials, and wages. The consequence was that the Czechoslovak economy lost its last asset — objective information about needs, reserves, and potentialities. In Czechoslovakia, there is an unbelievably low skill structure among socialist management teams, with an absurdly weak level of management in the enterprises as the most striking feature. If we manage to make radical changes in the economic field, we can create a system of guarantees that will be bound to affect life in the political sphere as well. At the moment we want to break up the entire directive machine that has been managing our economic life with such a notable lack of success.
