Economic institutions in the USSR. Institutes of Economics
In this Lecture we will look at four specific institutions:
1) party,
2) Gosplan,
3) enterprise,
4) deficit 1,
and related problems. Why do we need to talk about this? The fact is that these institutions set the framework for the Soviet economy, and we will feel its consequences for another 20-25 years. Up to 80% of the fixed assets used by today's enterprises were created under Soviet rule. During the same period, it grew to 70% of workers who are working now, and to 50% of workers who will be working in 10 years. Their economic, legal, and technological culture were formed under the conditions of a Soviet-style economy. Once upon a time, the classics of Marxism spoke about the birthmarks of capitalism. We can now talk about the birthmarks of socialism.
In this course, we touched several times in one way or another on the features of the Soviet economy, the socialist economy. Note that the use of the word “socialist” in this context is not entirely correct. “Socialism” is usually interpreted (more sensibly) as a system of equalizing redistribution of the results achieved by private owners. Moreover, the word “socialism” must be used more carefully, not only because socialism necessarily presupposes the socialization of the means of production, but also because, in particular, socialism as an economic system aimed at equalizing consumption and a person’s opportunities to make a career is achieved to a much greater extent by market mechanisms and market economies (as evidenced by the successful experience of a number of European countries) than was achieved by the Soviet Union. Many dissidents quite rightly accused our system of being essentially not socialist, but oligarchic, and the difference in opportunities between our oligarchs and ordinary mortals is approximately the same or even greater than that of representatives of big capital and ordinary mortals in the West.
The consignment.
Let's try to characterize the top of the Soviet-style economy. Who was the owner (residual claimant) in the economy (in the system of property relations) of the Soviet type? In the literature, the Soviet people, members of the CPSU, the Politburo, and no one were positioned as such. I am inclined to think that no one. Let us prove this by contradiction by successively refuting the first three positions.
Soviet people. It is enough to remember how the elections to party bodies were held to abandon the idea that the Soviet people were residual claimants.
Members of the CPSU. Our existing political structure opened the way to the top of the bureaucratic pyramid only to people who were party members. This was an option from 17 million party members.
Politburo (PB) of the CPSU Central Committee. 17 people could enter the PB, i.e. one person in a million. But at least they didn’t choose from non-party members; only party members had a chance to enter. On the other hand, it is wrong to reduce everything to the PB, because PB members could be re-elected if they lost the support of regional committee secretaries, members of the Central Committee, or clearly did not fulfill the tasks assigned to them, etc. Thus, it was a totalitarian self-sustaining system, and since it was self-selecting, interest was always concentrated at the top. There are a number of serious works on this subject. Svetozar Pejovich, the leading institutionalist who wrote about the Soviet economy in the 1970s and 1980s, sees the PB as the ultimate owner because its members bore some liabilities for their decisions. However, in my opinion, the fact that the PB was the final decision-making authority does not mean that its members were the real owners.
Members of the PB did not exist as real owners - they were very significantly limited in their decisions and could not go beyond fairly strict consumption standards. All members of the PB (and there were 100-150 of them in the history of the Soviet Union) had preferences exclusively in relation to power, and not personal consumption. A member of the PB in the powerful state of the USSR lived like a big bourgeois, but far from being a millionaire, far from being a person who had at his disposal at least 10-20 of the funds, which is typical for free countries. And in unfree countries, what is controlled by, say, a tyrant is not comparable to what a member of the PB controlled. Limited opportunities satisfaction of personal interest, material consumption for themselves and their family, which the members of the PB possessed, clearly demonstrate that they were not owners. They were the top executives, and they were as squeezed as the party bureaucrats subordinate to them, if not more so. For example, at one time PB member G.V. Romanov (formerly First Secretary of the Leningrad Regional Committee of the CPSU), one of the most likely contenders for the position of General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee, which was later taken by M.S. Gorbachev was removed from all posts and sent into retirement due to the fact that a rumor (by the way, false) spread that he had borrowed the royal service from the Hermitage for his daughter’s wedding.
It should be noted that the secretary of the regional committee (i.e., a person one level below a member of the PB) could have done something different, and no one noticed it. However, the higher the position a person occupied, the more people claimed for it, the more his position was “blown away”, the more risks he bore. Ultimately, the man who reached the top of the Soviet system was tied hand and foot. Naturally, he was not an owner either in the sociological or economic sense. The owner is free in relation to the subject of his property, and the members of the PB were as unfree as possible. Collective responsibility is a very accurate description of the system that existed in our country.
The hypothesis was widely discussed (and it is closest to the truth) that the nomenklatura was the collective owner in the USSR. This point of view was shared, for example, by M. Voslensky and M. Djilas. The nomenklatura included all leaders included in the administrative and party subordination systems (i.e., about 1 million people). Party organizations nominated and approved their candidacies. All personnel movements were carried out from the corresponding department or the Central Committee, or regional committees, or district committees of the CPSU. By controlling personnel appointments, the party thus controlled the very replenishment of the “new class” 1.
The idea that the nomenklatura is a collective owner is interesting. And, nevertheless, how can one characterize a collective owner consisting of several hundred thousand people, where the lower classes limit the upper classes? What kind of owner is this if the lower classes have the right, when they are sufficiently consolidated, to refuse to trust him? What kind of goals can this owner set for himself, and, most importantly, how can he formulate them?
The Soviet-type economy is often compared to the “Asian” mode of production, which was also characterized by a pyramid of officials (though there was a king at the top, but in many states he after some time became a ritual victim).
However, I believe that the Soviet system is a unique system in which there was no supreme owner who had free choice in relation to objects of public property. How could a society exist in which there was no supreme owner? Was public property demountable? How was it regulated? The specificity of the USSR and other socialist countries was that this property was not really disposable in the absence of the supreme owner. The situation of disposable property occurred only in those enclaves of property that remained outside the attention of the nomenklatura, but not in those that were the focus of its attention.
How were the main goals and priorities formulated? Let us assume that the nomenklatura represents not the owner, but the executive in the absence of the owner. But (an important addition!) there is a formal owner - the Soviet people. This is written down in the Constitution, and the nomenklatura layer itself exists insofar as it seems to serve the Soviet people. In reality this is not the case: the people are not allowed to vote or have a real choice, nevertheless, formally they are the owner. From this follows the creation of a kind of canon that suppresses not only the Soviet people, who serve as a field for various experiments, but also the nomenklatura itself. A system of self-suppressing tradition arises, which replaces the absent supreme owner. Those. the nomenklatura must constantly pretend that there is an owner.
Economically, for her, this is expressed in the obligation to give signals that her activities and main goals, the main strategies that she chooses, are aimed at increasing well-being and strengthening the stability of existence of the Soviet people in the person of their specific groups. The interests of the people are clearly formulated by the nomenklatura. But she cannot replace them with her own interests. She can only try to realize own interests already at the technical stage under the guise of declared popular interests. Hence the global ineffectiveness of property rights in a Soviet-style economy.
But if the main interests are formulated by the nomenklatura as national interests, then there must be a mechanism feedback. The people must feel that the nomenklatura is working in their interests. How can he obtain confirmation of the increase in his well-being in the target function that is being implemented?
Firstly, this is visual confirmation. There should be constant reports of increases in the welfare of specific social groups(let’s say that the military gets a pay raise, pensioners get a pension, a new school is built somewhere). The specificity of the situation is precisely that goal No. 1 “Increasing the well-being of the Soviet people and strengthening the stability of their existence” cannot be purely formal. After all, if this goal is not realized, other goals cannot be realized either! It was not purely formal; some of the resources were focused on its implementation.
Secondly, these are some signals about following the general interests of the people, about meeting the needs of the entire people, which must also be constantly received. Perhaps the construction of the Bratsk Hydroelectric Power Station and BAM was not needed by anyone, but it was a clear signal. The signal about strengthening the country's defense capability convinces citizens of the growing stability of their existence - hence Belka and Strelka, Yuri Gagarin, missiles, tanks on Red Square. The signal that should indicate the power of the USSR was, for example, the construction of the Palace of Soviets that had begun under I.V. Stalin. Let us note that the enormous expenses that the Soviet state incurred, both of a defensive and purely pretentious nature, were not used to satisfy the needs of the people (in other words, not to pay off the people) and not to satisfy the needs of the nomenklatura. Instead of building the Palace of Soviets, the same funds could have been used to build two villas for each member of the Central Committee, but they didn’t build it, but for some reason they built the Palace of Soviets!
The point is that there are three goals:
- meeting the needs of the people;
- satisfying the needs of the ruling elite (these needs are quite earthly, related to the well-being of members of this elite and their families);
- "whistle".
There is an old joke: “Why doesn’t our locomotive go to communism? Because 90% of the steam goes into the whistle.” This anecdote perfectly characterizes the situation in the Soviet-style economy. Its global ineffectiveness at the level of property rights was due to the emergence of a third signaling goal - the “whistle”, the implementation of which served as a spacer between the first and second goals. This was a signal to the population that the ruling elite was working for them. Moreover, both specific groups of the population and the ruling class - the nomenklatura (also like a set of families) understood that these signaling expenses were obviously ineffective, but, nevertheless, they did not refuse them.
The same thing happened with the “Asian” method of production. Why did the ancient Egyptians build these crazy pyramids? After all, instead of them, the ruling class, which was truly collective at that time, could build better houses for themselves. But the construction of pyramids is the same signal need. The people had to fear the ruling elite and obey it. He was assured that if the pyramid was not built, the god Ra would descend to earth and punish everyone. And in the USSR they said: “If we do not produce 10 thousand tanks a year, the imperialists will capture us and take away your last cow, Ivanovich. Read the newspapers! Do you see what they do to the blacks there”?! The absolute identity of the situation proves a fundamental position from the point of view of economic theory: a complete unconditional private owner is always and everywhere needed; if the interests of the private owner are not protected, then with any distribution of property the system will be economically ineffective (the steam will run out).
The dualism of purpose inherent in the Soviet-type economy was pointed out by most analysts in the 1960s and 70s. However, in reality, there was not a bifurcation, but a disruption of the goal and dissipation of that social surplus, which was concentrated in the hands of the ruling elite due to the positive feature of public property. This means the following: in the 1920-30s. national property was collected by expropriating all valuables from the vast majority of temples, museums, as well as a mass of private individuals, and then the property thus accumulated, which included many unique works of art, began to be sold on the cheap to foreigners. Thanks to this, coupled with the robbery of the peasantry, Soviet Union got the opportunity to industrialize in a short time and create defense industry. Moreover, during the war the Soviet economy turned out to be an order of magnitude more efficient even than the mobilization German economy.
The German economy, even during the war, stood on the fact that, despite the Gestapo, SS, and concentration camps, private enterprises remained, although their owners had severely limited rights. As the leaders of German industry wrote after the war, in 1943, when Germany had been at war for four years, up to 50% of its production assets continued to work on civilian goods. For example, at the height of the war, Germany produced passenger cars, and the last such car was created in December 1943. (For comparison: in the USSR during the war, only 15% of industry worked for peaceful purposes, and half of them could be interpreted as dual-use goods , like soap.) This is the level of effectiveness of the most terrible mobilization economy! Germany, by massively exterminating its population, intimidated it politically, but could not do anything with it economically. And our economy turned out to be ideal for conducting military operations, although today this is little consolation for us (we hardly need to fight with anyone today).
So, the need to “whistle”, inherent in the Soviet-style economy, was a source of waste of resources. But thanks to the imperfection of property rights, another source of costs arose - a colossal asymmetry of information due to the deliberate concealment by the nomenklatura of all levels of information about their true interests.
Until the 1960s balancing of interests in conditions of strong information asymmetry took place in our economy against the backdrop of the ruling class not declaring its interests. It was considered indecent to declare them. In response, they would hear: “They hang blacks there [in the USA], but you want bread and butter!” Only in a critical situation did the manager dare to go upstairs with a request to “throw some bread.” Under N.S. Khrushchev, and then under L.I. Under Brezhnev, the situation changed somewhat - the nomenklatura was no longer afraid to talk about their interests, but before that, interests were constantly hidden. The elite could not voice, clearly formulate, or make obvious its material interest for the same State Planning Committee. The secretary of the regional committee, who wanted not only his son, but also all his relatives to study at MGIMO, was afraid to voice this desire, was afraid to propose opening three more similar institutes for this purpose. As a result, competition and bribery took place (and they paid both in money and in administrative currency).
The economically conscious concealment by the nomenklatura of information about the interests it actually pursues objectively leads to the following. In general, the nomenklatura represents a colossal multi-level pyramid - PB, Central Committee, Central Committee apparatus, ministries, regional committees, district committees, directors of enterprises, etc. The nomenclature of each level has its own hidden interest and, therefore, will misinform higher authorities regarding their real needs in order to constantly pump resources to themselves. She can satisfy her needs only by carrying bricks from the construction site of communism!
Therefore, she informs the higher nomenklatura - the same regional committee - that it is necessary, for example, to urgently build a large House of Culture, because this is required by a society that has no place to practice wind music (although an old house crops just need to be repaired!), and on the basis of this construction it solves two problems. Firstly, the wife of the second secretary of the district committee becomes deputy director of the new big house culture, receives a stable salary, an office, etc. Secondly, the chairman of the district executive committee, due to the shrinkage and destruction of building materials, gets a dacha. The wife’s salary will cost (in Soviet prices) about 2000 rubles. per year, and over 10 years, taking into account discounting - approximately 12,000 rubles. The dacha probably cost 25,000 rubles. As a result, all expenses over 10 years will be about 37,000 rubles. And the estimated cost of this wonderful structure is 600,000 rubles, plus additional staff for the new House of Culture, the costs of which for the same 10 years are another 150,000 rubles, total: 750,000 rubles. Thus, the effect will be 5%. And it’s also good if new house the culture will be filled at least 20%, but in some cases this will not be the case!
The story of the construction of BAM is a completely unique example of creating a “whistle” in order to build your careers around it. Obviously, it is much easier to make a career not by increasing the level of well-being of the people subordinate to you, but by building some grandiose structure that everyone will use. While building it, the manager understood that he would soon move to the next step of the administrative hierarchy. As a bureaucratic incentive, this is fine. However, it is not normal that the Soviet higher decision-making bureaucracy had no criterion for the effectiveness of its projects. This is already connected with the next problem - the problem of the State Planning Committee.
2) Gosplan.
Let us note that the classics of Marxism were humanists, and none of them spoke about egalitarian communism. He saw the system of social production under communism as a “single factory.” They believed that commodity relations in society are harmful because they stimulate selfishness, and they viewed them from a purely technological point of view, believing that it was possible to collect all resources and all information in the center, systematically calculate and optimally distribute.
The idea of a “single factory” dominated our political economy. In the 1960-70s. major mathematicians who worked at the Central Economics and Mathematics Institute (among whom was, for example, S.S. Shatalin), created the theory of optimal functioning of the socialist economy - SOFE - which assumed the possibility of optimizing all flows at the level National economy, which he saw as a “single factory.” Naturally, this was only a theoretical model; it was not applicable in practice. The fact is that Shatalin, when developing it, did not take into account the presence of transaction costs, which is less excusable for him than for K. Marx and F. Engels, since by that time the main works on this topic had already been published in the West. In reality, three types of transaction costs prevent society from functioning as a single factory - measurement costs; costs of acquiring and transmitting information; agency costs. But still, public property, which acts as the property of a socialist state, had to find in itself some mechanisms for implementation, and state planning became such a mechanism.
Gosplan was the center where all information about the production capabilities of all enterprises was collected, and where forecasts were made, i.e. several resource allocation strategies were calculated in order to satisfy certain needs (say, b O Most of these resources could be directed to the defense sector or, conversely, to the consumer sector). Thus, we have been conducting a unique experiment for 70 years. In fact, it began from the times of war communism, although the State Planning Committee itself, as an institution that collects information and gives commands to the localities, arose about five years later, in the early 1920s. This experiment had limitations because there was no market in which resources were valued.
All that the State Planning Committee could do and honestly did, because many brilliant specialists worked there, was to collect information and plan the distribution of resources in the amount of 2000 items (of which, for example, there were about 50 assortments for various grades of steel). In the State Planning Committee itself, about 2,000 responsible employees were involved in this. In addition, the State Planning Committee gave tasks to approximately 50 line ministries, which detailed them. The range of products controlled directly by the ministries amounted to 38,000 items. 2000+38000=40000 product items in physical terms, described with a certain standard - this is the maximum that the Soviet system was capable of at the apogee of its information and computing capabilities. (By the way, the building of the Main Computing Center of the State Planning Committee of the USSR was located at 12 Sakharova Avenue. There, on four-meter-high floors, there were lamp-based computers. It was on them that the information that flowed here from all over the country was processed.)
The system of material balances for more than 2000 items - a huge table that showed in dynamics which industry what went where - was a huge achievement of Soviet economic science. The heir to this scientific school is the Institute of National Economic Forecasting (the only institute that is still effectively working Russian Academy Sciences), which was headed by the late academician Yu.V. Eremenko, and now headed by V.V. Ivanter. However, despite this amazing planning system, it should also be noted that it has a very significant negative side.
The fact is that with 40 thousand planned (passed through 50 thousand officials) range of products, its actual range in the 1970s. was by no means 40 thousand, but somewhere around 1-1.5 million. Those. Gosplan captured and aggregated only 4% of the real product range, even if it amounted to 1 million items. This coarsening of assessments, teams, and strategies led primarily to our lag in the system of technological approvals for products.
Let’s assume that the State Planning Committee has planned that Sverdlovsk Plant No. 14 supplies steel of a certain range (one item out of 40 thousand planned product range) for the missiles that the Yuzhmash plant makes. But Yuzhmash needs a specific grade of steel, determined not from 40 thousand, but from 1 million items. There is no such detail in the State Planning system. Then the General Director of Yuzhmash Leonid Kuchma (the current leader of Ukraine) goes to the Central Committee of the CPSU or to the Council of Ministers to see L.V. Smirnov, the permanent deputy chairman in charge of defense equipment, and says that he needs steel of a different range than what is supplied to him according to plan, and therefore it is necessary to prepare a resolution of the CPSU Central Committee and the Council of Ministers, according to which steel of the required range will be included in the nomenclature . But the problem can be resolved so quickly and simply only if the general director is a member of the CPSU Central Committee. This right belonged to the directors of enterprises in high-priority industries - defense, space and a number of others (as is known, at the initial stage we were faster than the Americans in achieving success in space program, although they started it later).
However, if the matter concerned non-high-priority industries, this problem was not so easily solved. For example, the VAZ was built by the Italians, and using their technology, during the first three years, a large batch of Zhiguli cars were produced from Italian steel (some of them are still driving today - they have not yet rusted). And then this happened. The then director of VAZ V.N. Polyakov, by the way, is also a member of the CPSU Central Committee, went to the Council of Ministers and began to prove that he was being supplied with the wrong steel. However, the steel he needed was neither in the nomenclature of the State Planning Committee, nor in the nomenclature of the Ministry of Ferrous Metallurgy (S.V. Kolpakov) and cars were considered a consumer product. And they answered him: “There are 2 thousand in the State Planning Committee, and another 38 thousand in the ministries. We cannot endlessly add to 40 thousand. Therefore, work with the steel that is available and that we can control.” As a result, the quality of Zhiguli cars underwent changes that were notorious for Soviet people (their bodies began to quickly rust).
Another classic example also involves cars. Externally, our car differs from foreign ones, in addition to the design, in the size of the gaps (the extent to which the hood, trunk, and doors fit to the car body). Our gaps are an order of magnitude larger, and these are the same natural meters. The fact is that abroad the market values any car model out of a million, the first million, the second, as soon as it appears. We did not have such a built-in stabilizer as a market filter (market valuation), but rather a purely bureaucratic filter in the person of specific Gosplan officials who had to make this or that decision. In some cases this filter worked effectively, in others it did not. And now these gaps, these lowered, coarsened requirements for technology are a terrible burden on our industry.
Moreover, this concerns the requirements not only for technology, but also for the current generation of workers. We still assemble a car with a sledgehammer. When a screw does not fit into a pre-bored hole, they take a sledgehammer and drive it into this hole using the most brutal method - such is our technological culture! The best illustration of its level is the fact that the South Koreans, who opened their Daewoo car assembly plant in Uzbekistan, hired almost everyone there, except those who had worked in the past at our automobile factories. It would seem that everything should have been the other way around. But the South Koreans understood that our autoworkers had such an attitude to work in their blood; it was not just laxity, but a production culture developed over decades, and it was impossible to retrain them. Let us note that it was impossible to work differently in our industry. You couldn’t get a panel from a “subcontractor” in which the holes would be drilled with German precision, and you had to drive the screw in with a sledgehammer. And if you took a brace and started boring these holes, you would simply be fired from the plant, because then the plant would not be able to fulfill the plan for the number of cars produced.
This is a situation that follows directly from such simple things as measurement costs and bounded rationality. It is the limited computing ability that explains the presence of 2 thousand in the State Planning Committee and 40 thousand in total across the country of product names. Now, probably, taking into account the use of Western electronic computing technology, there would be not 40, but 100 thousand of them!
The aforementioned inevitable coarsening often had rather funny consequences. In the 1960s Krokodil magazine published a famous cartoon, over which the entire Soviet people cried, because it was true: in a store, one man shows another a huge saucepan standing on the counter and says: “It’s our factory that has fulfilled the plan for the shaft.” Indeed, back then there was tons of consumer product planning going on, which no one was paying attention to. Obviously, in such conditions, you can quickly and easily fulfill the plan for pots if you make them very large. Which is what was done! As a result, all the store shelves were filled with pots of unusual sizes, but there were no small pots at all. It must be said that after the performance of “Crocodile”, which was a kind of control indicator (controlling device) in our system, an additional indicator was introduced into the plan - the number of pots.
Built-in mechanisms to counter the tendencies of coarsening in the Soviet economy.
1) Military acceptance. In this case, the consumer is directly involved in production, and administrative levers work here.
2) Consumer demand. The problem of consumer demand is quite interesting. Unlike countries with the “Asian” mode of production, the USSR had a sovereign (free) consumer, who very often had a fixed salary. Let's say that a junior researcher usually received 120 rubles at first, then 140 rubles, then, becoming a senior teacher, 250 rubles. Moreover, no matter how he worked, his salary did not change, but within this amount he was a sovereign consumer. In addition, he was hired freely, could freely quit and go to work elsewhere.
Consumer ratings, of course, played a role. However, its influence in scale was an order of magnitude smaller than in a normal market economy, since the production of consumer goods was never a priority in our system, and this led to a constant shortage of them. In conditions of shortages and fixed prices, you could vote in rubles for this or that product, but your options for maneuver were extremely limited - you could only refuse some goods. So, in the 1950s. the stores were full of caviar and crabs, but they were d O horns, and in most cities, except Moscow and Leningrad, where there were relatively high salaries, they simply were not bought, so after some time their production decreased. Sometimes the consumer refused to buy a completely ugly product, and no one could force him to buy it. After a year or two, the corresponding signal reached the enterprise, and it finally stopped producing this product.
3) System of technological standards. The USSR had one of the most extensive and well-functioning systems of technological standards. The fact is that in market economies, a system of standards can be formed horizontally (interconnected producers themselves set their own standards, and deviation from these standards is a personal matter for each of them - they personally risk whether their product will be bought or not). And in the Soviet economy, the role of Gosstandart was extremely important. He was a kind of supervisory body of the existing system of natural planning, and only his activity did not allow enterprises to misinform the center or replace planned targets based on the product range. Those. Gosstandart monitored the implementation of what the center formulated in natural parameters.
In a number of industries, our standards are still among the best in the world, or at least remained so until the late 1980s, when the world took another step forward and we did not. For example, these are clothing standards. Questions such as: how much clothing irritates the skin, what is the degree of use of natural fibers in it, etc. - in the West, independent ecologists dealt with them, but in our country, Gosstandart dealt with them. Scientific institutes have conducted objective research on this matter. We had wonderful standards in Food Industry(oddly enough, because there was nothing to eat) and, in particular, in the pastry shop, where they are still one of the best in the world. And those sectors of the food industry where we borrowed technologies, where our standards no longer worked, are some of the worst today (remember, for example, our sausages).
Disadvantages of the Soviet planning system and ways to mitigate them. It is clear that the planning system had its shortcomings - shortcomings, risks. Partially about them has already been said, but one more thing needs to be said. The planning system itself for the enterprise (to which we will now turn) very often failed. The enterprise received both a production plan and suppliers, and the suppliers of the enterprise were strictly determined (such and such a plant is connected with such and such), there were no alternatives. And if the supplier of a given enterprise disrupted deliveries, what then? Those. the system of natural planning, natural indication of production plans and suppliers for each enterprise was extremely fragile, which constantly led to some breakdown - to the failure of plans. How did the system react to its fragility, how did it try to dampen it? I would highlight three types of adaptation.
1) Nomenclature adaptation, so-called. adjustment of plans. The plans were adjusted as follows. If, due to a technological or social breakdown (the latter happened rarely), the manufacturing plant was not supplied with some important materials by its supplier, the manufacturer reported to its ministry that it could not fulfill the plan due to a disruption in supplies, the ministry reported this to the State Planning Committee, and the State Planning Committee, in agreement with the CPSU Central Committee, ultimately adjusted the plan for the manufacturer.
It should be noted that the adopted plan for the country was always fulfilled more or less decently (sometimes by 101%, sometimes by 102%), because for the Soviet people it was also a signal, and failure to fulfill the plan was considered a big disaster. However characteristic feature The Soviet plan was its constant daily adjustment in the context of enterprises and industries. The plan was adopted with pomp, like a law, and immediately began to be adjusted, and, as a result, the completed plan bore very little resemblance to the adopted plan. In fact, the adopted plan was not a plan, but a current system of guidelines that were set in in kind and enterprises, and their suppliers, and consumers.
2) Financial adaptation. In the USSR there was a monetary system, finance, i.e. some financial reflection of the natural flows and plans that prevailed among us. What role did the monetary sector play in the Soviet economy?
On the one hand, we had a real market - the consumer market and the collective farm market, i.e. a market of sovereign consumers and a market of albeit limited, but sovereign producers-collective farmers. To ensure the functioning of these markets and consumer sovereignty, cash existed.
On the other hand, along with them, there was non-cash money that accompanied natural flows and plans. The plan in physical units was accompanied by a financial plan for a given enterprise. Its essence was to ensure a certain specified ratio (in monetary terms) between input and output, between the resources of the enterprise and what it produces. Those. the financial plan additionally guaranteed that the enterprise would not deceive the state. The enterprise had to fulfill a production plan, and this plan was confirmed by a financial plan for the assigned prices. Note that each product had a price assigned at the top. The enterprise did not have the right to set a price either for the products it bought or for the products it supplied, which in fact was simply additional form control (the ability for the state to measure the same steel not only in tons, but also in rubles).
Economists and economic engineers for various sectors of the national economy. They provide training in the following specialties: economics and planning of the national economy, industries, construction, transport, Agriculture, trade, labor economics and logistics planning, organization of mechanized processing of economic information, automated control systems, economic cybernetics, commodity science and trade organization, technology and catering, finance and credit, accounting, etc. In 1977 there were 36 employees. . (course of study 4-5 years): 13 institutes of national economy, 12 trade and economic, 4 financial and economic, 2 engineering and economic (Leningrad and Kharkov), Kuibyshev Planning Institute, Moscow Financial Institute, Moscow Economic and Statistical Institute, Saratov Economic Institute , Moscow Institute of Management named after. Sergo Ordzhonikidze (formed in 1975 on the basis of the Moscow Engineering and Economic Institute named after Sergo Ordzhonikidze). Most of them have evening and correspondence departments. Economists are also trained by economic departments of universities and other universities. See Economic education, Moscow Institute of National Economy. . . Plekhanov, Leningrad Engineering and Economic Institute named after. Palmiro Togliatti, Leningrad Financial and Economic Institute named after. . . Voznesensky. II (research) Economic research institutes, in the USSR scientific institutions leading research work in the field of economics. In Russia, the first special scientific institution dealing with economic problems was created in 1915 - the Commission for the Study of Natural Productive Forces (KEPS). After the Great October Revolution socialist revolution Research into the economic problems of building socialism and the world capitalist economy was carried out at the Socialist Academy of Social Sciences (SAON, 1918), which in 1924 was transformed into the Communist Academy. It included: Institute of World Economy and World Politics (1925), Agrarian Institute (1928), Institute of Economics (1930). Within the framework of the Russian Association of Research Institutes of Social Sciences (RANION, 1924-30), another Institute of Economics worked. In 1936 E. and. The Academy was transferred to the USSR Academy of Sciences. The Department of Economics of the USSR Academy of Sciences (1962) as a scientific and organizational center coordinates the study of the economic laws of the construction of socialism and communism, the problems of optimal planning and management of the national economy, the economic efficiency of social production, the construction of the material and technical base of communism and the scientific and technological revolution, the placement of productive forces, the economy of modern capitalism, the world system of socialism in developing countries and the economic competition of the two systems; unites economic institutes - Institute of Economics, World Economy and international relations Institute, Institute of Economics and Organization of Industrial Production (1958, Novosibirsk), African Institute, Institute of Economics of the World Socialist System, Latin America Institute, Central Economics and Mathematics Institute, Institute Far East, Institute of the USA and Canada (1968), Institute of Socio-Economic Problems (1974, Leningrad), Institute of Economics of the Ural scientific center USSR Academy of Sciences (1971, Sverdlovsk); Departments of Economics - Yakut and Buryat branches of the USSR Academy of Sciences, Dagestan, Komi, Kola named after. . . Kirov, Bashkir, Karelian branches of the USSR Academy of Sciences. The Association of Soviet Economic Scientific Institutions operates under the USSR Academy of Sciences (1957). E. and. operate under the USSR State Planning Committee: Research Economic Institute of the USSR State Planning Committee, Research Institute of Planning and Standards (1961), All-Union Research Institute of Cybernetics (1969), Council for the Study of Productive Forces (SOPS - 1930). In the Union republics, scientific research E. and. sectoral E. and. were created under the State Planning Committees of the republics. - under large ministries, institutes of economics - under the Academy of Sciences of the union republics of Belarus (1931), Ukraine (1936), Lithuania (1941), Georgia (1944), Uzbekistan (1943), Tajikistan (1946), Latvia (1946), Estonia (1946) ), Kazakhstan (1952), Armenia (1955), Kyrgyzstan (1956), Turkmenistan (1957), Azerbaijan (1958), Moldova (1960). The International Institute of Economic Problems of the World Socialist System operates in Moscow (1971). Economic issues are developed in special laboratories and departments at higher education institutions educational institutions- institutes of national economy and planning, financial and economic, engineering and economic, as well as at universities, higher schools and academies of the country, the largest of which are the departments of political economy of Moscow State University. M. V. Lomonosov, Leningrad State University named after. A. A. Zhdanov, Kyiv University, VPS and AON under the CPSU Central Committee. V.V. Oreshkin.
In the economic literature, two types of institutions are distinguished:
* External - installing in economic system the basic rules that ultimately determine its character (for example, the institution of property);
* Internal - which make transactions between entities possible, reduce the degree of uncertainty and risk and reduce transaction costs (enterprises, types of contracts, means of payment and credit, means of accumulation).
Therefore, the study of institutions, as well as other complex economic phenomena, must begin with their classification. Let us take a closer look at the typology of institutions depending on their functional role in the economy. This classification includes two types of institutions:
* system (or external)
* local organizational (internal).
Systemic institutions are those that determine the type economic order, i.e. dominant type economic system. These institutions establish the basic rules of economic activity, therefore they include not only purely economic rules and norms, but also political and ethical ones, without which the effective functioning of the entire economic system is impossible. An example of systemic institutions are institutions that specify and protect property rights, determine the procedure for making and changing economic decisions, norms of economic ethics, etc.
Local organizational institutions are institutions that structure interactions related to the conclusion of transactions, both on the open market and internally. organizational structures. Institutions such as, for example, stock and commodity exchanges, banks, and firms not only make transactions between various economic entities possible, but also reduce the degree of uncertainty and risk and help reduce transaction costs. The functioning of such institutions is associated with the activities of related organizations, which creates a dichotomy.
The division of institutions into systemic and local organizational allows us to deepen the analysis of institutional equilibrium. The institutional “markets” of the above two types of institutions are formed and function separately. This does not mean that the formation of systemic institutions does not influence the functioning and selection of local organizational institutions and vice versa. Their interaction can be compared by analogy with the goods of higher and lower orders in K. Menger. Consequently, systemic institutions are goods of a higher order, and local organizational ones are of a lower order.
It seems very important, especially for an economy in transition, to distinguish between external institutions as fundamental prerequisites for a market economy and internal institutions created by corporations in the course of their development. External institutions form a set of fundamental norms and rules on the basis of which the implementation of a market economy is possible. These are institutions that guarantee and protect property rights, ensure responsibility, freedom and obligatory fulfillment of contracts, form the basis of a market economy, while at the same time being derivative elements of a general legal democratic and free state order.
Within this given framework, numerous direct market (internal) institutions arise that make connections and transactions between subjects possible, reduce the degree of uncertainty and risk, that is, they represent forms of economic adaptation to external institutions. Their formation proceeded from the bottom up and continued for a long time, being tested for strength, efficiency and compliance with the interests of economic entities. The functioning of internal institutions is constantly carried out under double control: legal - from the state - and economic - from the market.
All these institutes are united common features:
* they are characteristic of the division of labor system;
- they operate on the basis of the principle of contractual relations.
Systemic institutions mean institutions that determine the type of economic order. An example of systemic institutions are institutions that determine the procedure for making and changing economic decisions, norms of economic ethics, etc. Local organizational institutions are institutions that structure interactions associated with concluding transactions, both on the open market and within organizational structures. This category includes institutions such as, for example, commodity exchanges, credit, financial, investment and other institutions.
External institutions– these are institutions imposed from the outside.
External institutions may:
1) External rules of behavior - universal prohibitive rules, general laws.
2) goal-specific directives - they prescribe what people should do to achieve certain results (the rules for admission to the HSE, maybe!)
3) Procedural rules - rules of conduct for power structures (what they can and cannot do).
Internal institutions– arising within society:
Agreements are equilibria in a repeated coordination game. A rule of conduct R is an agreement if and only if each agent
o - follows the R rule,
o - expects others to follow R
o - prefers to follow R if others follow R.
Deviations are disadvantageous for agents. Agreements are not always effective
Internalized (learned) rules are learned through habit, through the accumulation of experience. At a certain stage, they cease to be restrictions and are included in the system of preferences. They allow you to save on coordination costs and ensure trust in society. Such trust is more effective than within the framework of implicit contracts, since contracts need monitoring (public morality).
Customs. Customs and rules of good manners. Violation does not carry with it any organized sanctions, but members of society keep an eye on everyone. You can earn a bad reputation or be ostracized.
ü Formalized internal rules - arise in the process of evolution, but then are formally fixed within the group (for example, hockey rules).
Internal ones are better because:
flexibility, better adaptation to external shocks
External ones are better because:
the expected sanctions are clearer, there is a greater likelihood of equal interpretation of the rules by all agents, the prevention of discrimination (it is often present in internal ones), the solution to the free rider problem (for example, literally, on a bus!), the solution to the prisoner’s dilemma in case of inconsistent interaction (reputation does not work)
Concept and types of transactions
The classical school, when considering a product as a basic unit of analysis, ignored the social aspects and rules that affect the incentives of participants in the exchange process. The representative of the old institutionalists, John Richard Commons, tried to approach this problem differently.
Commons believed that such an analysis should take into account all factors that influence the relationships of individuals in the production and consumption of goods. Therefore, the basic unit of analysis of their activities must link the economic, legal and ethical aspects of their relationship. Only then can the relationships (interactions) in question be analyzed without losing important components, such as the moral obligations of the parties, their differences in legal status, etc.
Commons writes: The original unit of activity linking law, economics and ethics must contain within itself the principles of conflict, mutual dependence and order. Such a unit is the Transaction - the initial element of institutional analysis 1 . Thus, the concept of transaction was first introduced into scientific circulation by John Richard Commons.
Transaction– this is not an exchange of goods, but the alienation and appropriation of property rights and freedoms created by society 2.
Commons distinguished three main types of transactions:
1. Deal transaction serves to implement the actual alienation and appropriation of property rights and freedoms. When implementing it, mutual consent of the parties is necessary, based on the economic interest of each of them.
Distinctive feature transaction transactions, according to Commons, is not the production of new goods, but the transfer of goods from hand to hand.
For example, you decided to purchase a piano and, having studied the market, found a seller with the most attractive conditions for you. A “piano-money” exchange will be mutually beneficial if the seller values the piano he has for less money than you value it. This interaction involves the participants exchanging ownership rights: you receive ownership of the piano that the seller has, and the seller receives ownership of your money. Such an interaction, or transaction, Commons calls a transaction transaction (or simply a transaction).
Figure 1. Deal transaction
Picture 1.In this transaction (as in any other) there are at least two participants - the Seller and the Buyer. However, when buying a piano, you must keep in mind an alternative option that is slightly less profitable for you - another Seller-2. Similarly, the piano seller takes into account possible alternatives: to whom else can he sell the instrument he has, and on what terms. Alternative Seller-2 and Buyer-2 are also included in the number of participants in the transaction transaction, since their inherent characteristics (for example, how much less Buyer-2 is willing to pay for the goods compared to the Buyer) affect the nature of the transaction concluded between the Seller and the Buyer. Indeed, the tenacity with which you will insist on your price depends on what price your competitor is willing to offer for the piano. In turn, the Seller’s position will depend on whether there are other piano owners in the immediate environment who want to sell them.
Thus, there are actually four parties involved in the transaction. “Second” agents are necessary for the freedom to enter into this particular transaction, which ensures the same legal status of the participants. The presence of other economic agents of the market is assumed only potentially.
Through transactions, a redistribution of existing benefits occurs (agreements on the exchange of property are reached and implemented). The interdependence of the participants in the transaction is due to the scarcity of resources and the presence of potential for mutually beneficial exchange. In the transaction, the condition of symmetrical relations between counterparties is observed.
A good reputation provides high negotiating power, allowing you to conclude contracts on favorable terms. For example, in the contracts of the Sony company for the sale of professional equipment, the conditions are not specified: advance payment - 100%, delivery time - in four months, no guarantees, except for the good name of the company! And at the same time they have a huge number of clients.
2) Control transaction– the key here is the relationship of subordination management, which involves such interaction between people when the right to make decisions belongs to only one party.
For example, you hire a programmer for your company to support a database. The “programming services - payment” exchange will be beneficial to you if the programmer values his services at an amount less than the costs that are associated with you to independently support the database. Commons called this interaction a control transaction.
In transactions of this type, there are two participants, and one of them, entering into a transaction, voluntarily recognizes the other’s right to give orders, which he agrees to carry out in exchange for a certain reward. That is, one of the parties consciously recognizes the status of subordination. An example here would be the relationship between an employer and an employee (master and servant, shareholder and manager, etc.). The parties have different sets of powers, and the transfer of rights is unidirectional: the subordinate party transfers some of them to the other party. It is through these transactions that wealth is created. Their goal is to increase operational efficiency by redistributing tasks between economic agents. For example, it is more profitable for a shareholder to entrust the care of shares to a manager than to optimize his portfolio himself.
So, individuals enter into management transactions voluntarily, and not forcibly. And those whose free will within this type of transaction is limited by the terms of the contract receive some compensation. These transactions typically characterize the employment relationship and are aimed at creating wealth.
In a management transaction, the behavior of counterparties is clearly asymmetrical, which is a consequence of the asymmetry of the position of the parties and, accordingly, the asymmetry of legal relations.
3) Rationing transaction describes relationships that are built not on the rights of equality and freedom, but on the rights of coercion and obedience. There is no control in the rationing transaction.
An example of a rationing transaction is the determination by the legislature of tax rates, which, in turn, affect the operating costs of business entities. Please note that making such decisions does not imply negotiations with market participants; These are volitional decisions of the authorities that are binding. Business entities must obey them, regardless of whether they like them or not, whether they are profitable for them or not.
There are two parties involved in a rationing transaction (as in a management transaction), but the difference in their legal status in this case is not voluntary. It is determined by the initially given legal structure that exists in society and is external to the given transaction. Another fundamental difference between a rationing transaction and a management transaction is that the role of the highest party here is played by a collective body. This transaction distributes the costs and benefits of wealth creation through the dictates of agents who have higher legal status. With her asymmetry remains legal status parties, But the place of the managing party is taken by a collective body, which performs the function of specifying rights.
Rationing transactions include: drawing up a company budget by the board of directors, the federal budget by the government, and an arbitration court decision on the distribution of wealth.
Table 1. Comparative characteristics transactions (according to Commons)
Related information.
Introduction. 3
1. External and internal institutions of the economy. 4
2. Institutions of the Soviet economy. 9
3.Institutes of modern economics. 15
Conclusions. 24
Introduction.
The economic actions of an individual take place not in an isolated space, but in a certain society. And therefore has great importance how society will react to them. Thus, transactions that are acceptable and profitable in one place will not necessarily be appropriate, even under similar conditions, in another. An example of this is the restrictions imposed on human economic behavior by various religious cults.
In order to avoid the coordination of many external factors that influence success and the very possibility of making a particular decision, within the framework of economic and social orders, schemes or algorithms of behavior are developed that are the most effective under given conditions. These schemes and algorithms, or matrices of individual behavior, are nothing more than institutions.
The purpose of this work is to consider internal and external Soviet economic institutions.
Tasks:
- define the concept of “institution”;
-find out which institutions are called external and which are called internal;
- consider Soviet economic institutions;
- consider modern economic institutions;
- draw conclusions based on the material being studied.
During the research, the works of domestic and foreign authors on economics, institutional economics, encyclopedic publications, as well as data posted on the Internet were used.
1. External and internal institutions of the economy.
First, you need to define what an institution is, in particular, an economic institution. An institution is a set of roles and statuses designed to satisfy a specific need.
Definitions of institutions can also be found in works on political philosophy and social psychology. For example, the category of institution is one of the central ones in John Rawls’s work “A Theory of Justice.” In economic theory, the concept of institution was first included in analysis by Thorstein Veblen.
Institutions are a common way of thinking as regards the particular relations between society and the individual and the particular functions they perform; and the system of life of society, which is made up of the totality of those acting at a certain time or at any moment in the development of any society, can be characterized from the psychological side in general outline as a prevailing spiritual position or a common idea of a way of life in a society.
Institutions are the dominant and highly standardized habits of society. Institutions are the rules, the mechanisms that enforce them, and the norms of behavior that structure repeated interactions between people.
We can also say that institutions are formalized rules and informal norms that structure interactions between people within economic systems.
Institutions regulate access to the legal use of rare and valuable resources, and also determine the principles of this access. They determine what these or those interests are and how they should be realized, taking into account the fact that the very rarity of these resources, which makes accessing them difficult, forms the basis for rivalry and even conflicts in the struggle for their possession. Institutions regulate (structure and consolidate as publicly recognized practices) such a struggle between various interests. They define the rules of the game, as well as the goals that can be achieved in that game, but not the moves that players must make during the game, remaining within the institutionally defined space of opportunities, choices and incentives. Institutions determine the ways in which resource scarcity...
