Beginning: "Soviet industrialization - to the 90th anniversary of the beginning."
Part 2: "On the sources of financing for Soviet industrialization."
Long before the emergence of transnational corporations, the USSR was the world's largest corporate economic structure
The transition of the Soviet Union from NEP to industrialization meant that the country moved from a wagon that began to fall apart to a powerful car. With this "car" Soviet Russia made a sharp leap forward, without which it would not have survived. Now almost no one remembers how that wonderful machine was arranged. I will try to give a schematic diagram of its device, without details.
Upon completion of work on the design, the machine was a single whole, a well-coordinated mechanism, even an organism. It was the embodiment of a mobilization economy that provided the Soviet Union with economic independence and invulnerability against any blockades and sanctions. A powerful defense industry was also created. By the way, in the 1980s, when the authorities allowed criticism of the USSR economy, all the criticism concerned the economy that began to take shape from the late 1950s. and was already losing the dignity of the economy of the era of industrialization (let's call it Stalinist).
The model of this machine can be likened to a huge corporation, consisting of separate workshops and production sites that worked to create the final product. Such a product was not a financial result (profit), but a set of specific goods. Cost indicators played only the role of a benchmark.
Due to the division of labor, specialization and cooperation, synergy of the participants in the process was achieved, the production efficiency of the entire corporation. In principle, there could be no competition between workshops and sections. Such competition only disorganizes the work of the corporation. Instead of competition, there is cooperation within the framework of a common cause. Separate workshops and sections produce raw materials, energy, semi-finished products, components, from which a social product is formed, which is then distributed among the participants in production. There is no distribution of the social product at the level of individual workshops and sections.
All this huge production machine was controlled by the governing and coordinating bodies of the "USSR" corporation - the government, ministries, departments. First of all, the branch ministries, the number of which constantly increased as the structure of the national economy of the USSR became more complex. Within the framework of each union ministry there were subdivisions (chapters), territorial institutions on the ground. The coordinating and controlling role was played by the State Planning Committee, the Ministry of Finance, the State Bank, Gossnab, and the State Committee for Prices. They also had their own territorial network.
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A similar structure of organization and management exists in the largest Western corporations, especially transnational ones, associated with the real sector of the economy. There are no market relations within them. There are imputed settlements based on transfer (intra-corporate) prices. Western corporations differ from the Soviet economic machine in that their activities are focused on financial results (profit), and financial results are not distributed among employees, but are privatized by their owners (shareholders).
Comparison of the Stalinist economy with a huge corporation can be found in a number of works. I quote: “Long before the emergence of large domestic and international transnational corporations, the USSR became the world's largest corporate economic structure. Corporate economic, economic goals and functions of the state were written down in the Constitution. As an economic corporation, the USSR developed and put into effect a scientific system of reasonable internal prices that would make it possible to effectively use natural resources in the interests of the national economy. Its peculiarity was, in particular, low prices for fuel, energy and other natural resources compared to the world prices … The corporate approach to the economy as a whole organism involves the allocation of sufficient funds for investment, defense, army, science, education, culture,although from the standpoint of selfish and narrow-minded subjects of the market it is necessary to eat everything immediately "(Bratishchev IM, Krasheninnikov SN Russia can become rich! - M.:" Graal ", 1999, pp. 15-16).
I will list some principles of the model of the Soviet economy during the industrialization period:
- public ownership of the means of production,
- the decisive role of the state in the economy,
- centralized management,
- directive planning,
- a single national economic complex,
- mobilization character,
- maximum self-sufficiency,
- focus primarily on natural (physical) indicators,
- limited nature of commodity-money relations,
- accelerated development of the group of industries A (production of means of production) in relation to the group of industries B (production of consumer goods),
- combination of material and moral incentives for labor,
- the inadmissibility of unearned income and the concentration of excess material wealth in the hands of individual citizens,
- ensuring the vital needs of all members of society, the social nature of appropriation, etc.
I will dwell on some principles. Critics of the Soviet model who shattered the USSR in the 1980s have come to love the derogatory term "administrative-command system." But behind it were attacks on national economic planning, the opposite of the so-called market, behind which there is an economy oriented towards profit and enrichment. In the Soviet model, we are talking about directive planning, in which the plan has the status of a law and is subject to mandatory execution. In contrast to indicative planning, which was used after World War II in Western Europe and Japan, having the character of recommendations for economic actors. Incidentally, directive planning is inherent not only in the Soviet economic model. It exists today in any large Western corporation.
In a conversation on January 29, 1941, Stalin pointed out that it was precisely the planned nature of the Soviet national economy that made it possible to ensure the country's economic independence: “If we did not have … a planning center that would ensure the independence of the national economy, industry would have developed in a completely different way, everything would have started with an easy industry, not heavy industry. We have overturned the laws of the capitalist economy, put them upside down. We started with heavy industry, not light, and won. This would have been impossible without a planned economy. After all, how did the development of the capitalist economy go? In all countries, business began with light industry. Why? Because the light industry brought the greatest profit. And what business does individual capitalists care about the development of ferrous metallurgy, the oil industry, etc.?? For them, profit is important, and profit was brought, first of all, by light industry. We started with heavy industry, and this is the basis for the fact that we are not an appendage of capitalist economies … The business of profitability is subordinated to the construction of, first of all, heavy industry, which requires large investments from the state and it is clear that at first it is unprofitable. If, for example, the construction of industry were left to capital, the flour industry would bring the most profit, and then, it seems, the production of toys. From this, capital would begin to build industry. "heavy industry, which requires large investments from the state and it is clear that at first it is unprofitable. If, for example, the construction of industry were left to capital, the flour industry would bring the most profit, and then, it seems, the production of toys. From this, capital would begin to build industry. "heavy industry, which requires large investments from the state and it is clear that at first it is unprofitable. If, for example, the construction of industry were left to capital, the flour industry would bring the most profit, and then, it seems, the production of toys. From this, capital would begin to build industry."
Stalin constantly emphasized that a planned economy allows balancing supply and demand, production and consumption. Only on the basis of a planned economy can one overcome such a curse of the market (capitalist) economy as crises of overproduction that shook the capitalist world since the beginning of the 19th century, bringing suffering to millions of people, demonstrating the wasteful use of material resources.
In the USSR, some planning methods were used that were previously unknown to advanced foreign managers. First of all, this is the input-output balance (IOB), with the help of which the proportions of the input-output exchange of intermediate products are determined for a given volume and structure of production of final products. It is believed that intersectoral balance models (in the West they are called input-output models) were developed by the Russian emigrant Vasily Leontiev (1906-1999). For this he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics, but in the State Planning Committee of the USSR, the MOB began to be implemented in the first half of the 1920s. (experimentally), even before V. Leontiev published the first article on this topic. And then all the annual and five-year plans in the USSR were developed on the basis of the MOB.
Speaking about such a principle as focus on natural (physical) indicators in planning and assessing the results of economic activity, I would like to emphasize once again that cost indicators played a supporting role and were used not to maximize profits, but to reduce the cost of production.
As for the principle of accelerated development of the group of industries A (production of means of production) in relation to the group of industries B (production of consumer goods), this was not only the slogan of the "big leap" period of the 1930s. This was a constantly operating principle, given that from the very beginning the USSR economy was in a hostile environment, a successful struggle against which could only be ensured by a high level of development of a group of industries A. Although this principle was not a dogma, and after the war, the gap in the rates of development of groups A and B began to decline.
In the Soviet model, the principles of distribution of the social product are clearly defined. The most important of them was the elimination of the contradiction between the social nature of production and the private form of appropriation, which removed the threat of crises of overproduction. The principle of distribution according to work, supplemented by the principle of social appropriation, became the key. The surplus product created by common labor is fairly evenly distributed among all members of society through the mechanism of lowering retail prices for consumer goods and services, through the creation and increase of social consumption funds. In the medium term, Stalin proposed switching to the free distribution of such a vital product as bread (he spoke about this shortly after the end of the war and named the time when this could approximately happen - 1960). This is a prototype of the principle of "basic basic income" (AML), which has been talked about in the West for ten years, but to no avail.
The most important knots and details of the machinery of the Soviet economy, which I did not mention, were also: the state monopoly of foreign trade; state currency monopoly; state monopoly on banking; dual-circuit system of internal monetary circulation (cash and non-cash circulation); the use of a cooperative form of economy and small-scale (artisanal) production in addition to state forms of economy. Those who want to know the details are addressing to my book: "The Economics of Stalin" (Moscow: Institute of Russian Civilization, 2016).
Continuation: "Soviet industrialization - some results"
Author: VALENTIN KATASONOV