Economic Initiative and the Organization of Centralized Planning

Abstract

The problem of combining centralized planning with economic initiative, with a creative approach by the working masses to the organization of planning and the fulfillment of plans, is a central part of the many-sided effort to improve the economic mechanism. The July 12, 1979, decree of the Central Committee of the CPSU and the USSR Council of Ministers envisaged a number of measures to strengthen both principles of democratic centralism. Among them an important place is occupied by the question of increasing the scientific substantiation of plans; the question of making plan targets correspond more fully to social needs; the transformation of the five-year plan into the basic form of planning; the introduction of a new system of plan indicators and cost-accounting incentives in addition to targets based on stable economic norms; the broad dissemination of the practice of counterplanning, etc.