From Reformation to Transformation: Limits to Liberalism in Hungarian Economic Thought

"Closet capitalists" was the term used by sympathetic observers and neo-Stalinist critics alike to label the reform economists in Eastern Europe. According to both camps , the market socialists were sui generis liberals who only spoke about "plan" and "market" because they were not allowed to speak about "market" without "plan . " This interpretation may imply that with the opening up of the reformer closet , a legion of Hayek and Friedman clones will march out of it. Such expectations have been especially high as far as Hungary is concerned , whose economists were considered to be among the most radical representatives of socialist reform thinking. [...]