Carmelo Mesa-Lago (Editor) Carmelo Mesa-Lago is distinguished service professor emeritus of economics and Latin American studies at the University of Pittsburgh. He has published about ninety books in seven languages across thirty-nine countries and received many awards, including the International Labour Organization Decent Work Research Prize (shared with Nelson Mandela) for his work on social protection in the world.Carl Beck (Editor) Carl Beck is professor of political science and sociology and director of the University Center for International Studies at the University of Pittsburgh. He is also executive director of the International Studies Association, chairman of the Pittsburgh Inter-University Program on Comparative Communism, and director of Pitt's archive on Political Elites in Eastern Europe.

Its purpose is 'to advance the methodology to compare socialist systems,' . . . a multidisciplinary effort. . . . Socialism is not viewed as an end, as a movement that (in some places) represents an attempt to revolutionize the totality of social and economic existence; rather, it is seen as an alternative means to an end-industrialization. Socialist economies are believed to be necessarily inefficient and repressive, and most of the observers represented in this volume feel that these economies must ultimately give way to more market-oriented, capitalist-propelled devices to reach the goal of industrialization.