Administrative-command system
| Part of a series on |
| Marxism–Leninism |
|---|
 |
The administrative-command system (
centralization of economic planning and distribution of goods, based on the state ownership of the means of production and carried out by the governmental and communist party bureaucracies ("nomenklatura") in the absence of a market economy
.
The term is used to describe the
Stalins
' in a nested dictatorship".
Historian
shortages. Stalin's formulations of national plans in terms of physical quantity of output was also attributed by Daniels as a source for the stagnant levels of efficiency and quality.[3]
History of the term
Already in 1985, John Howard's article "The Soviet Union has an administered, not a planned, economy" argued that the common description of the Soviet-type economic planning as planned economy is misleading. While central planning did play an important role, the Soviet economy was de facto characterized by the priority of highly centralized management over planning. Therefore, he writes the correct term would be "centrally managed" rather than "centrally planned" economy.[1]
The term administrative system was introduced by Russian economist
Gavriil Kharitonovich Popov during the perestroika period in the Soviet Union as the title of a section in his 1987 article "From the Point of View of an Economist"[4][5] which analyzed the novel of Alexander Bek, New Assignment banned in the Soviet Union. It was published in Russian in 1986 with the beginning of perestroika and was widely discussed in the society.[6] The term was picked up by Mikhail Gorbachev, who used the expression "administrative-command system" in his November 2, 1987 speech.[4] The concept was further expounded in Popov's 1990 collection of his essays Блеск и нищета административной системы [The Splendors and Miseries of the Administrative System].[7]
See also
- Cameralism, German science of administration in the 18th and early 19th centuries that aimed at strong management of a centralized economy for mainly the state's benefit, closely associated with the development of bureaucracy.[8]
- Economy of the Soviet Union
- Soviet-type economic planning
- State capitalism
- State socialism
References
- ^ JSTOR 151614.
- ISBN 978-0-230-54697-4.
Realization of these facts led in the 1970s and 1980s to the development of new terms to describe what had previously been (and still were in United Nations publications) referred to as the 'centrally planned economies'. In the USA in the late 1980s the system was normally referred to as the 'administrative-command' economy. What was fundamental to this system was not the plan but the role of administrative hierarchies at all levels of decision making; the absence of control over decision making by the population [...].
- ISBN 978-1-134-92607-7.
- ^ ISBN 5425049846 p. 821
- Science and Life, no. 4, 1987
- ^ Олейник А.Н, "Экономика как триллер. О книге Ю.Л. Латыниной «Промзона»", Mir Rossii [The World of Russia], no.4., 2003
- The Splendors and Miseries of Courtesans.
- S2CID 144013696.
Further reading
- Paul Roderick Gregory, The Political Economy of Stalinism: Evidence from the Soviet Secret Archives. 2004
- Paul Roderick Gregory, ISBN 1285657373, Chapter 14: "The Soviet Command Economy", P. 381