Laissez faire was planned.
--Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation,1944

The collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe demonstrated the failure of a command economy. The subsequent crash in output and employment induced by "shock therapy" has suggested the limits of laissez faire. Rather than replace the excesses of communism with excesses of capitalism, it is time to lay extreme ideology aside and begin the practical work of economic reconstruction. Even more than in the West, which was viable capitalist institutions, this enterprise requries a mixed economy.