Louis: This is one of the reasons I delete most PEN-L messages unread from my incoming mail. I resubscribed because I am always interested in what Sid Schniad, Doug Henwood, Patrick Bond and Jim Devine have to say. What I have zero interest in is the sort of abstract textbook questions that people like Burns, Rosser and all the other contributors to academic journals specialize in. Unless you re-phrase the question in terms of "How did the Cubans manage their economy during the 1960s through the 1980s given the existence of Soviet aid..." In other words, you need to flesh the matter out by reference to history and politics. (That of course is the Marxist approach.) This sort of question smacks of the sort of sterile chit-chat that Burns would have with the guy who sits down the hall and teaches Microeconomics 103. It doesn't interest me whatsoever. I feel stupid now even opening up Burns' email and expecting something interesting with a heading like "Che and Cuba." He might as well have put a heading on it like "Gomulka and Poland" or "Hoxha and Albania". What a pedantic bore he is. At 12:40 PM 12/19/96 -0800, you wrote: > Question for Louis Proyect: > > How do the central planners know which relative prices to > set for all the goods and services in the economy? > > Peter > >
