SEMAINE D'ÉTUDE SUR LE ROLE DE L’ANALYSE ECONOMETRIOUE ETC 
t1) Professor FriscH has made some very strong criticisms of the 
market economy, and I agree completely with him. At least in some 
aspects, I recognize that the market economy has many, many draw- 
backs. But such criticism should not remain limited only to some 
points. It should be extensive. 
Rightly, Professor FriscH has critised private monopolies, but 
he did not say anything about public monopolies. He did not say 
anything about trade union monopolies, the impact of which may 
se much greater. Personally, I think that the unions play a very 
useful role but it seems impossible to me to criticise only those 
leviations which relate to the market economy, without simultane 
ously analyzing the other deviations. 
[f we want to be objective, we must compare the drawbacks of 
‘he market economies with the drawbacks of the politically and eco- 
aomically centralised systems. One needs only to look at the history 
of the collectivist society in the U.S.S.R. to be convinced that central 
planning has some drawbacks which can do more damage to social 
justice than can those of the market economy. The millions of unem- 
ployed in the United. States in the thirties can be compared with 
the millions of dead in the U.S.S.R. during the same period. 
Is it scientific to give an idealistic view of the planned economy 
by comparing it with the reality of the market economy? If we want 
‘0 compare, we must compare things which are comparable. In other 
words, if we look at the reality of market economies, we must at the 
same time look at the reality of the collective and centralised econo- 
nies. And if we discuss what a collectivist and centralised economy 
would be ideally, we should discuss what a market economy working 
n an appropriate institutional framework could be, not what it is. 
But it is not fair to compare the real aspects of a free economy with 
the ideal aspects of a collective and centralised economy. 
[t is absolutely scientific to stress the aspects of the market eco- 
nomy, but if so one is faced with the necessity of stressing at the 
same time what happened in U.S.S.R. in the thirties and in the 
forties and what has happened in communist China in recent years. 
71 Frisch - pag. 15