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fourth, the soviet economy was extravagantly wasteful and
搖neconomical.?the system favored extensive growth, that is, growth by
increasing inputs of labor, raw materials, factories, and investment capital. |
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in the 1930s and 1940s the soviet union had a large pool of
unemployed workers, seemingly infinite supplies of oil, coal, and
other raw materials, ample land for cultivation, and capital
squeezed from the rural sector through collectivization. but in the
postwar decades the ussr no longer enjoyed surplus labor, land, or
capital resources waiting to be exploited. new gains in production
had to be achieved through intensive growth梩hat is, through more
efficient use of existing resources梑y increases in labor
productivity, automation, mechanization, and the application of new
technologies. all of the reforms introduced by successive postwar leaderships梖rom khrushchev to gorbachev梐ttempted to shift
away from the stalinist model of extensive growth, but all produced
little or no effect. |
fifth, the system of centralized planning seriously failed soviet
consumers. endemic deficits of consumer goods, chronic food
shortages, overcrowded housing conditions, and primitive consumer
services became the hallmarks of a soviet-type economy. all attempts
by soviet leaders to find ways of making the system more responsive
to consumer wants proved futile. in contrast to the capitalist
economy, with its periodic crises of overproduction, the
command-bureaucratic economy could never overcome the
underproduction and constant deficit of consumer goods despite all
the promises and exhortations of soviet leaders.
finally, the soviet system was severely handicapped as a result of
its tendency toward self-isolation. no modern national economy can
develop successfully without many ties to the economies of other
countries, and without participating in the global economic division
of labor. the soviet system was isolated not only as a result of
ideologically motivated political decisions of its communist
leadership but also on account of its technological backwardness and
inability to compete with the more advanced economies.
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