Thoughts on Evsei Liberman

What do comrades here think of Soviet economist Evsei Liberman? He seems to be best known for his reform proposals which included transferring more decision-making power to firms and firm managers and introducing profitability as the major goal of Soviet enterprises as opposed to annual quantitative targets.

A basic article on Liberman and his reforms can be found here: http://www.yivoencyclopedia.org/article ... rigorevich

I have encountered some internet discussions that seem to presume that Liberman and his reform ideas were necessary to prevent an early stagnation of the Soviet economy. See http://www.alternatehistory.com/discuss ... p?t=117723

The arguments in favor of Liberman seem to intimate that his more "capitalistic" ideas were needed to set the USSR on a better economic footing, which of course sits well with Western assumptions that capitalism is inherently superior to socialism. Is this a fair characterization of Liberman's reforms? Were they actually salutary socialist reforms or a kind of creeping capitalism? How necessary were they to keep the Soviet economy going, and to what extent were Liberman's reforms actually implemented?

Anti-revisionist works mentioned Liberman a lot. This work by Bill Bland in particular quotes various writings of his to demonstrate that he was basically arguing for capitalism: http://www.oneparty.co.uk/html/book/ussrindex.html