Gosplan’s experience and the Russian economy: is it possible to combine

The coming year 2023 poses problems for the country, on the solution of which, without exaggeration, our future depends. And they need to be addressed immediately. The main ones are in the economic sphere, and they are well known: sanctions, the state budget deficit, this year’s economic downturn (albeit small, but not the growth that is typical for, say, the EU) and a not too optimistic forecast for 2023.

Is it possible to solve all these problems while maintaining the economic model that has characterized our system over the past 20 years and which has given an average annual growth of … less than 2%, increasing our lag behind the largest economies in the world? I think the answer is an unequivocal no.

Deep changes are needed, and one of the main ones is the development of planning. So what is a plan in a market economy?

Before answering this question, a few words about the contradictions of the Soviet planned economy, with which planning is often identified, and about the experience of planning in the market economy of the countries of Western Europe and Asia.

The word “planning” in the modern public consciousness is often associated with the Soviet five-year plans and the activities of the State Planning Commission. This is both right and wrong.

That’s right, because a hundred years ago the GOELRO plan was adopted in the USSR, and then the compilation of the so-called “control figures” began, and this was the world’s first experience of macroeconomic (nationwide) indicative planning. Let me remind you: on February 22, 1921, the State General Planning Commission was established – the prototype of the State Planning Commission, which was created to develop and implement a single nationwide economic plan.

Only many years later this experience began to be used (and on a much smaller scale) by the most developed countries of the world, and only after the Second World War did indicative planning become one of the most important tools for stimulating industrial growth in Europe and Asia. National economic planning developed on the basis of indicative planning and became the main mechanism for coordinating the economy of the USSR. This planning was a form of a qualitatively new, post-market way of interconnection between producers and consumers, the formation and maintenance of proportions, and the provision of technological and socio-economic development.

These relations provided the Soviet system, on the one hand, with the possibility of mobilizing and concentrating resources in key areas of economic and social development. Thus, the tasks of accelerated industrialization and the creation of a material and technical base were solved, which allowed the USSR to defeat the armies of not only Nazi Germany, but almost all of Europe occupied or joined by it, to implement space, nuclear and other programs, to ensure the priority development of science, education, culture (Note: in the 20th century and in countries with a market economy, space and other projects were also implemented mainly on a planned basis).

On the other hand, directive planning in the USSR was largely bureaucratic in nature, and this led to the development of the so-called “deficit economy”.

So is it possible to identify planning only with the experience of the USSR?

This identification is not accidental, but not legitimate. The reason for this is simple: the economy of late capitalism has been in widespread use of some form of planning for more than half a century. This is forecasting and the selective regulation of economic proportions agreed with it, the preparation and implementation of various state programs, significant (in volumes of tens and even hundreds of billions of dollars) projects for the production of public goods through state investment programs, etc. Many areas of healthcare, education, science, culture, defense, and ecology have been moving along this path for more than half a century in a number of the most successful market economies. State indicative plans were widely used in 1950-70s in France, Scandinavian countries, Japan, South Korea, India, a number of Latin American countries, and in recent decades in China.

Consider, for example, post-war France. This country was one of the leading market economies of post-war Europe, but at the same time used indicative plans and an active industrial policy. Thus, the goal of strengthening its national power and sovereignty was realized. Let me remind you that at that time France withdrew from the NATO military organization, had strong trade unions and left parties, a democratic (as far as possible under capitalism) political system and social guarantees for workers. For us, this experience is interesting primarily because it shows the potential for combining planning with a powerful national modernization breakthrough, political democracy and socially oriented development.

The Asian planning model was implemented in fundamentally different conditions. Thus, in Japan, indicative planning developed in a country that suffered a crushing defeat in World War II and combined the features of a developed and peripheral economy, a traditionally semi-feudal and democratic-bourgeois society. South Korea was generally a country of peripheral capitalism dependent on the United States, with a very tough authoritarian regime, but even there indicative planning was used as one of the important mechanisms for modernization.

It is noteworthy that despite all the significant differences between these economies, the planning institutions there were very similar and were used to achieve largely similar, modernization goals.

Isn’t it time in our country to move from drawing up forecasts and disparate, inconsistent programs for the development of individual sectors of the economy to integral development planning within the framework of the market economy that remains predominantly?

What kind of planning is necessary and possible in modern Russia? The answer to this question can be given by the critical integration of the experience of both the USSR and countries with market economies.

This synthesis, in the case of a deep reform of the existing capitalist system (and even better, its qualitative change), will allow us to form a national planning system, including the plan itself, state institutions that develop and implement its installations (an analogue of the State Planning Commission, but with a new content and forms work), plus control institutions (with mandatory feedback and responsibility), plus a system of scientific support for planning and training.

The plan, under the conditions of a predominantly market economy, will inevitably be two-circuit. One circuit is for those public sector enterprises that will work on the basis of mandatory planning targets (having in a market economy the form of a state order or similar). The second contour is planned guidelines for the market sector, in the space of which not only private, but also a number of state-owned enterprises “live”.

Here, a direct, binding plan is impossible (although there must be competition for government orders and investments). But here, firstly, planned standards that limit the market are possible. Their area is the quality of products in a number of areas (food products, medicines, etc.), ecology, social obligations (starting from an 8-hour working day and labor protection to the obligatory real social partnership and participation of employees in management), etc. . Secondly, indirect regulators are possible and necessary: ​​differentiated taxation and lending, government orders, investments, benefits. They will create a kind of “travolators” for business. Let me explain: if an enterprise working for a market result, at the same time, produces products that meet planned targets, it receives tax and credit benefits, investment support, profitable government orders and other incentives for accelerated business development. This business falls on the state “travolator”, which allows it to stay ahead of competitors. If not, another “travolator” arises (high taxes, etc.), which hinders the development of business, hindering the implementation of the plan and the accelerated development of the country.

In this regard, the question arises: how to avoid the main “failures of the state” in the field of planning – bureaucracy and corruption? No country in the world has yet succeeded in completely getting rid of corruption and bureaucracy, but the examples of countries that actively use state regulation and planning show that it is possible to minimize losses from these evils. The path to this, however strange it may seem, is openness, transparency and democracy in the activities of the state, the active participation of producers and consumers in the process of drawing up a plan and monitoring its implementation, a strong civil society that limits the bureaucratic autocracy of officials.