LECTURE No. 9. State socialism. Pricing

1. Emergence, development, crisis of the economic system of state socialism in the USSR and in the countries of Eastern Europe

The system of state socialism as a form of economic management is based on:

1) powerful centralized regulation penetrating all spheres of public life: social, material, spiritual, political;

2) public ownership of the means of production. Reliance on communist ideology in the USSR and the countries of Eastern Europe was a feature of socialism, the main idea of ​​which is the idea of ​​progress in human well-being.

The Soviet leadership, mistakenly believing that communism, like a house, can be built by some predetermined date, nevertheless, developed methods and means to ensure stable high growth rates, while planning was "the best socialist form of struggle for pace," covering all types of activities of enterprises without exception, and the management of scientific and technological progress, with its planning, was carried out through state regulation of prices for all products manufactured by commodity producers.

Thus, the core basis of the mechanism for managing the national economic complex both in the USSR (1920-1980s) and in the countries of Eastern Europe (1940s-1980s).

2. "Directive planning" in the system of state socialism

At the 1927th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks in 1988, JV Stalin gave the following definition of the status of the state plan: plans-directives are obligatory for the governing bodies, and they determine the direction of our economic development on the future scale of the whole country. A quarter of a century later, N. M. Yuryev gave the following description of the system of "directive planning", which retained its form until XNUMX.

1. In the first half of the current year, enterprises submit and develop to their departments (ministries, departments) the so-called application plans for the coming year, for which the main departments either provide the enterprises with the opportunity "to preliminarily outline the tasks facing them in the planning year", or they send enterprises control figures for budget appropriations, as well as tasks for the most important nomenclature (products ordered by the government and their own ministry).

2. Until September 1 of the current year, the application plans of the ministries are submitted to the State Planning Committee of the USSR, which considers and mutually links the draft plans in monetary and in-kind terms in the following sections: material and technical supply; production; development of new technology; capital construction; finance; after which, already in the form of an assignment to the ministries, it is submitted for approval to the Council of Ministers.

3. Tasks approved by the Council of Ministers for the development of plans a few months before the beginning of the year are brought to the attention of ministries, departments, departments, enterprises, after which the stage of development and approval of economic and social development plans for the year begins, culminating in the adoption of the plan and the state budget for Sessions of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. In accordance with the established procedure, only after the approval of the plan, it acquired the force of law and, as a directive, was brought to the attention of ministries, enterprises and departments. In this sense, Stalin was absolutely right: these plans were not conjecture plans, but directives that were twice agreed upon at all levels of management of the national economic complex of the country.

3. Price revolution. Pricing "from what has been achieved" as a mechanism for managing the progress of society

Geographical discoveries in Europe responded, first of all, with inflation, a huge amount of gold and silver was exported from open lands, mined by cheap forced labor of the native population. During the 155th century prices have tripled. Naive people of the 30th century. this inflation, first confronted with this phenomenon, was nicknamed the "price revolution". In England in the XNUMXth century the prices of goods rose on average by XNUMX%, while the wages of hired workers only by XNUMX%. The nascent bourgeoisie gained a lot from the "price revolution": manufactured products became more expensive, while labor became cheaper.

The price revolution turned out to be beneficial for the dependent peasantry, too, since with the fall in the purchasing power of money, the amount of quitrents decreased, and the prices of peasant agricultural products rose fabulously. As a result of the rise in prices, the feudal lords seriously lost - the amount of their cash rent was fixed, and life became much more expensive.

Thus, the main socio-economic results of the great inflation of the XVI century. consisted in the general lowering of the social position of the feudal lords and the same rise of the capitalists. Thus, the "price revolution" played an important role in the formation of the capitalist economy.

One of the most important "directive" indicators was profit, the distribution of which could be planned only if there were known prices for manufactured products, as well as prices (tariffs) for all cost-generating factors: materials, raw materials, energy resources, labor, etc.

Various methods of developing prices for pricing provided instructions.

However, all these methods were focused on:

1) profitability standards;

2) known levels of costs;

3) terms of application of prices.

Each ministry (department, administration) had temporary and permanent price lists for products manufactured by all enterprises of this ministry, while list prices for new products were formed on the basis of so-called "weighted average" calculations.

Being obliged, firstly, to produce the products necessary for the country (according to the directives received), and, secondly, to use constant or temporary prices that are uniform for all commodity producers in the country (according to pricing instructions), one or another enterprise could already at the planning stage unprofitable.

Despite the fact that the unprofitability of planned enterprises was always covered by the superprofits of others, this fact was never a source of pride for departments and ministries that took the most active measures to eliminate unprofitability: they either redistributed output in favor of efficiently operating industries, or directively demanded the introduction of technical improvements. And yet, the mechanism for implementing program settings for improving human well-being was not tasks for the introduction of new technology, but a mechanism for developing and adjusting prices. A feature of the use of permanent and temporary prices was the absence of any restrictions on the actual profitability.

A special group of prices consisted of one-time prices, which were set by agreement between customers and suppliers, for a small consignment of goods that does not repeat for two adjacent years and is not supplied simultaneously to two or more consumers.

In this case, the excess of the normative profitability was considered as overpricing, for which economic sanctions were applied to the violator in the form of the withdrawal of the entire amount of the overstatement to the budget, as well as the payment of a fine in the same amount. The lower limit of profitability was set at 10%.

4. Main macroeconomic indicators of the period of stagnation

At the very beginning of “perestroika,” a lot of words were said about the so-called “stagnation” in the economy. These political statements did not correspond to reality: manufacturing national income in 1970 amounted to 289,9 billion rubles, in 1980 - 462,2 billion rubles, in 1985 - 578,5 billion rubles, from what follows is that:

1) average annual increase in national income for the period from 1970 to 1980. amounted to (462,2 - 289,9 = 172,3) / 10 = 17,2 billion rubles, and the average annual growth rate for the same period ((462,2 / 289,9) x 100-100) / 10 = 5,9%;

2) average annual increase in national income for the period from 1980 to 1985. amounted to (578,5 - 462,2) / 5 = 23,3 billion rubles, and the average annual growth rate for the same period ((578,5: 462,2) x 100-100): 5 = 5%; We also note that the USSR economy had these indicators against the background of practically unchanged prices. Over a quarter of a century, industrial production in the USSR increased by 14 times, while in the USA over the same period - by 3,3 times, in England - by 2 times, in Germany - by 4,9 times, in France - by 3,9, XNUMX times.

Growth is increasing, while growth rates are falling - this general pattern of evolutionary developing economic systems, which is also true in relation to the USSR, refutes the thesis of "stagnation".

5. The crisis of communist ideology and the social cost of perestroika

The reason for the objective need to reform the system can only be found along the path from politics to economics and further to communist ideology, that is, in 1985 it would be more correct to talk about the crisis experienced by scientific communism. It is not difficult to explain the "stagnation" of thought: after 1956, when Stalin's personality cult was debunked, the party could not have leaders. If, however, we take into account the fact that during the entire Stalinist period the development of communist thought proceeded from the leader to the people, and exclusively "collective creativity" was supposed to be a "struggle against the cult of personality", the reason for the many years of stagnation of communist theory will become clear as the science of progress in the name of person.

The beginning of the third scientific and technological revolution required a scientific understanding of many years of experience in socialist construction: the time for "great leaps", the time for revolutionary upheavals had passed, the era of continuous, evolutionary development had begun, and the communist ideology, as the dominant one in society, was obliged to provide a system of new knowledge about the transition from old to new in all spheres of public life. Despite the fact that the founders of scientific communism repeatedly considered the issue of replacing the old with the new.

The social price of "perestroika" turned out to be too high: only during 1990-1992. Bulgaria's gross national product has almost halved, in Romania - by 1/3, in Poland - by 1/5. In all countries, including Russia, in the first years of "market reforms" unemployment arose and began to progress (from 5% of the working population in Czechoslovakia and 14% in Poland), poverty worsened, and the population was stratified into poor and rich.

6. Shifts in the structure of the economy of the leading capitalist states

In the years after the war (especially in the 1970s), changes began to take shape in the structure of the economy of the industrialized countries of the world, which were caused by the third scientific and technological revolution.

It was during these years that the sectoral, reproductive and technological structures of capital changed significantly (more than 70% of capital investments were directed to the replacement of fixed capital, its rationalization and modernization). Changes in the technological structure of capital caused intra-industry and inter-industry shifts in the economy. The general directions of these changes are:

1) a decrease in the share of agriculture and the manufacturing industry;

2) an increase in the share of construction, communications, banking and finance, healthcare, consumer services, and transport. Table 1 presents data on the actual as well as projected structures of the Japanese economy, which illustrate these trends, namely:

a) the increase in the share of infrastructure over 30 years will be 6,9%, and the sphere of intellectual services - 7%;

b) the share of material production for the same period will decrease by 13,9%;

c) the growth rate of the share of infrastructure - 27,5%;

d) the rate of decline in the share of material production will be 24,1%;

e) the growth rate of the share of the intellectual services sector - 40,7%.

Thus, using the example of Japan, we can rank structural changes as follows:

1) infrastructure;

2) the sphere of intellectual services (as the most dynamically developing);

3) material production.

The relations considered are the most general. Common to all countries are structural changes in the direction of science-intensive and resource-saving technologies, automation of production and management processes.

Table 1. Structure of the Japanese economy by value of products (in %)

7. Various models of a mixed economy

A mixed economy is a way of organizing national economic activity in which:

1) the planned economy uses certain market mechanisms;

2) the market economy introduces regulation through planning.

Thus, modern economic systems can be either purely market, or purely planned, or mixed. The experience of five post-war decades has shown that all economic systems, moving towards a mixed economy, tend to assume a stable state. This applies to both China and all developed capitalist countries, from the socialist countries that have begun to move towards market transformations, and the countries of Eastern Europe, and Russia, in which the transition to a market model turned out to be the most painful and unreasonably difficult in terms of its socio-economic consequences. Each country chooses its own path of development - one that best suits the nature of the economic tasks being solved.

The economies of the countries that are among the world leaders are mixed, with the highest share of the public sector in the economy of Sweden (over 60%), which is much higher than in modern Russia. The Swedish model is based on a system of state regulation of prices, including, most importantly, wages.

This principle is called the principle of equal pay for equal work, which:

1) does not encourage employees to change jobs;

2) does not allow unscrupulous business executives to transfer the income of their employees into the shadows,

3) contributes to the formation of the revenue part of the budget on a stable basis;

4) creates economic prerequisites for culling unprofitable industries;

5) removes social tension in society, practically minimizing the influence of trade unions (the main economic direction of their activity disappears).

State regulation in the form of planning has been developed in countries such as France (the functions of planning and forecasting in this country are assigned to the Ministry of Planning and Finance), Japan (where the Economic Planning Department has been established), Spain (Ministry of Economy and Finance) and others.

Born in the USSR and allowing it to implement such grandiose projects as the GOELRO plan, the space exploration program, the nuclear energy development program and others, they actively use the program-target method of planning. In all these countries:

1) the state budget of the country is developed and its execution is controlled;

2) appropriate recommendations are developed to the government and a forecast of market conditions is carried out (for the near future, as well as the next 5-10 years);

3) volumes and structure of the state order are formed;

4) prices are considered and approved, and an appropriate procedure for approving prices for the products of monopoly enterprises, as well as socially significant products, is established;

5) state target programs are being developed.

In the industrialized countries of the world, planning is concentrated on solving the most important tasks, taking into account the real situation in the country's economy, and is not total. In Denmark, for example, the markets for mass goods are completely controlled by foreign capital (this applies to such industries as engineering, metallurgy, oil refining), and therefore the main principle of the activity of Danish firms is to strive to capture a significant part of the narrow market for certain products, and not to try win a small share in a large market. The marketing strategy of domestic firms is also consistent with the content of state economic programs, which consider not all, but exclusively niche areas of production.

In the planning practice of industrialized countries, the most valuable thing is to take into account the long-term cycles of development of the world economy. In the 1920s The theory of cyclical development was born in the USSR, but in modern Russia it is not used, but at the same time it enjoys state support in almost all industrialized countries of the world.

Author: Shcherbina L.V.

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