Soviet Planning: What and Why Is Relevant in the XXI Century

Abstract

Planning has become widespread in countries with different socio-economic systems. At the same time, both the evaluation of the results of using planned methods and these planned methods themselves have significant differences. They depend both on the features of the socio-economic systems in which planning was applied, and on the tasks that it solved. To study these dependencies, it is useful to turn to the experience of planning in the USSR, which demonstrates different options for using planning methods. During the years of the new economic policy, planning functioned in the conditions of a broad development of market and capitalist relations. Therefore, the planning methods were adapted to the market conditions. The planning itself was mainly indicative, and the achievement of planned results was built by influencing the economic interests of economic entities. Therefore, it is possible to find a significant similarity in the model of Soviet planning during the years of the new economic policy and those planning methods that were used in the post-war period in Europe, Japan, and then in the new industrial countries. The model of directive planning, which was developed in the USSR in the 1930s of the twentieth century, provided both certain advantages in the development of the economy (the mobilization and concentration of significant masses of resources for deep structural changes in the economy, the implementation of large scientific, technical and social projects), and was burdened with serious contradictions. The Soviet model of directive planning did not have effective institutions that expressed the economic interests of enterprises and their collectives, did not create incentives for technical re-equipment of existing enterprises, and ultimately led to the predominance of the interests of the top government departments. To prevent the development of such contradictions, one-sided reflection of the interests of narrow social groups, the planned system should be built on democratic grounds.