Soviet Economic Power: Its organization, growth and challenge

The picture of the Soviet economy reflected in American public opinion is full of inconsistencies. On the one hand we have a long tradition of conviction that it is a very inefficient kind of economic system. The errors of the bureaucrats who manage (or mis manage) the Soviet economy provide stock themes for the jocularity of newspaper editors and cartoonists. We are fond of comparing the level of automobile production in the two countries, oblivious to the implication that by declining to make automobiles the Soviet planners have more resources to devote to other purposes. And until the sputniks, we were accustomed to laughing at Soviet claims of technical achievement, such as the claim of Russian priority in the invention of the radio. We virtually persuaded ourselves that such an economy could not be efficient or productive enough to be a serious rival in economic terms.

But recent events, on the other hand, have begun to challenge this complacency. The old conception of the Soviet planned economy as a creaking failure is being battered by the evidence that it can perform striking feats of technical achievement, and that it is able to win converts in the underdeveloped countries of the world. American tourists, now admitted to the Soviet Union, find that the standards of living they see, though certainly lower than American, are by no means as bad as the picture of a slave camp they had expected to see and even that, contrary to the old superstition, Russians do laugh. This new evidence leaves us in a state of confusion. Our old preconceptions are falling apart, yet we do not know how to fit together a new picture for our selves. The Soviet plant manager is a bureaucrat, but often seems to have the drive of an American entrepreneur.