Crowning Failure

The frustrations and failures of rigid Communist economic planning are just as keenly felt in Czechoslovakia--perhaps because the Czechs have always known better. In prewar (and preCommunist) Czechoslovakia, "Made in Czechoslovakia" was a label of quality respected the world over. No longer. So shoddy have Czech goods become that in some cases even Moscow has re jected the output of its Comecon daughter.

For nearly 18 months, Prague economists and apparatchiks have been hard at work on "NEM"--a New Economic Model for the nation designed to liberate the Czech economy from the worst rigidities of Stalinist central planning and to introduce widespread Western profit incentives for factory managers. Though the plan has yet to be unveiled, last week Prague's Central Committee published a 19,000-word preamble to NEM that was remarkable in its candor about past mistakes.

"The problems that have not been solved," said the committee, "represent the loss of many thousands of millions of crowns." (There are 7.2 Czech crowns to the dollar.) "Consumers have not had a large enough influence on assortment, quality and range of production," the preamble continued, and production is so low that "living standards in this country greatly lag behind those of mature capitalist countries." Frankly admitting that it will take years to shake the economy out of its planning straitjacket, the committee justifies the switch in ringing words: "The development of the socialist way of life has nothing in common with the antiquated ideas of ascetic socialism that do not take into account the material needs and interests of the people."

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