THE ECONOMIC crisis in the West inevitably raises the question of the state of the so-called 'communist economies of Europe and, in particular, the Soviet Union. Does the Soviet economy suffer from the mass unemployment, raging inflation and production characteristic of capitalist crisis?
The short answer is no', but the Soviet economy beset by a series of major problems which derive part from the crisis in the West, in part from natural limitations, but particularly the existence privileged bureaucracy.
The October Revolution • of 1917 destroyed the capitalist Russian state and replaced it with a workers' state based on the nationalisation of the land and all basic industry. However, not until the late twenties that serious planning was instituted. By then a bureaucratic elite with Stalin at its head had gained control of the Communist Party and the state apparatus as a result of the defeat of socialist revolution internationally and the quent isolation of the Stalin began a programme of rapid industrialisation tivisation of agriculture financed by harsh exploitation of the peasantry working visalon resure m a calastropnic decline in agricultural production. In industry, persistent overfulfilment of the disproportions. Nevertheless, the industrial growth of the USSR in the thirties revealed the gigantic potential of the nationalised economy at a time massive crisis in the This damentals of planning which remain unchanged to this day; the working class was excluded from the planning process and became the passive executant of centrally determined orders; planning priorities werę determined num) 1971-75 - 1976 7.4 4.8 num average)
National income utilised Gross industrial output Gross agricultural output Investment Electricity output Petroleum output Steel output Coal output a = growth rate between five year averages 1971-75 1976 1977 6.8 3.3 4.1 Eastern in the sector of a rate than Sector A.
Priorities The Ninth It was (1971-75) conseSoviet decline in Table 1).
collecForced colleccapitalist Table 1: Claimed rates of growth of industrial production (per cent per an1977 1978 1979 5.7 4.8 Table 2: Tenth Five-Year Plan targets and achievements (per cent per an1976-80 Plan 4.7 6.3 2.9a 4.7a 5.8 2.8 Table 3: Annual increase in industrial output per person (per cent)
1978 1979 1980 3.6 2.4 2.6 terest groups within the bureaucracy.
These two factors have meant that the economy has continually suffered from a major disproportion between producing means of production (Sector A) and the consumer goods sector (Sector B). It was only in the late sixties that Sector B production grew at a greater but unplanned Five-Year Plan was tne nrst to actually foresee a larger output from Sector B than Sector A, but growing problems in the economy resulted in a rapid switch in planning priorities back to Sector A. The bureaucracy's inability to ensure a plentiful supply of good quality consumer goods threatens a major social crisis in the future.
Nor has the bureaucracy's desire for stability been aided by the steady the rate of growth (see 1980 1981. 3.6 3.4creases output.
ed with genuine workers' control ly tories for supplies. gains. Lenin and the bolsheviks establis the first workers state on the bas of a planned economy appears acutely aware of the poten disaster of too great a gap between come and the availability of consu His first therefore, been a campaign to cla down on 'parasitism' and impr ment of the availability of goods at the place of work discourage absenteeism. measures have already recorded se
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in crisis? by the struggle between competing in-