Communist Societies
The term "democratic=is used in communist societies to describe a system in which people. have no effective means of control but in which a one-party dictatorship claims to rule in their behalf. Overall coordination of the economy, including. the level of prices and wages and the kind of goods produced, is determined by central planning agencies. Agriculture is often organized in collective farms, which usually draw bitter opposition from the farmers [Hunt, 1977]. In China, disillusionment with collective farming has led to the growth, of private' markets and more individual responsibility and reward for activation [Domes, 1982]. The Soviet Union, one of the world's major food exporters before the revolution, has never the revolution only through from capitalist countries can the population survive [Barnett, 1982].
In recent years, some communist countries in Europe have reverted to a partially capitalist model, where each industry makes more of its own business decisions is expected to make a "profit" in its operations. These profits are retained by the government to be used as the government thinks best [Brand, 1981; Wren, 1982]. Yugoslavia i~ the communist country which allows the individual enterprise the greatest degree of independence in operation. While the communist countries have been reverting tu a capitalist model of trade, the so-called capitalist countries have been shifting toward government and worker ownership of capital. In some Western European countries, governments are the major stockholders of many corporations, while the investments of the Rockefellers and Kennedys in the United Stales are dwarfed by those- of union pension funds [Drucker, 1976]. Although there are variations between countries, some type of communist system operates in the Soviet Union, the satellite Eastern European countries, Cambodia; Laos, Vietnam, China, and Cuba'.
