The administrative-command system (), also known as the command-administrative system, is the system of management of an
economy
An economy is an area of the Production (economics), production, Distribution (economics), distribution and trade, as well as Consumption (economics), consumption of Goods (economics), goods and Service (economics), services. In general, it is ...
of a
state characterized by the rigid
centralization
Centralisation or centralization (American English) is the process by which the activities of an organisation, particularly those regarding planning, decision-making, and framing strategies and policies, become concentrated within a particular ...
of
economic planning
Economic planning is a resource allocation mechanism based on a computational procedure for solving a constrained maximization problem with an iterative process for obtaining its solution. Planning is a mechanism for the allocation of resources ...
and distribution of goods, based on the
state ownership
State ownership, also called public ownership or government ownership, is the ownership of an Industry (economics), industry, asset, property, or Business, enterprise by the national government of a country or State (polity), state, or a publi ...
of the
means of production and carried out by the governmental and
communist party bureaucracies ("
nomenklatura") in the absence of a
market economy.
The term is used to describe the
economy of the Soviet Union and the
economies of the Soviet Bloc which closely followed the
Soviet model.
In his 2004 book ''The Political Economy of Stalinism: Evidence from the Soviet Secret Archives'',
Paul Roderick Gregory argues that the
collapse of the Soviet Union
The Soviet Union was formally dissolved as a sovereign state and subject of international law on 26 December 1991 by Declaration No. 142-N of the Soviet of the Republics of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union. Declaration No. 142-Н of ...
was due to the inherent drawbacks of the system, namely poor planning, low expertise of planners, unreliable supply lines, conflict between planners and producers and the dictatorial chain of command. Gregory writes that "the system was managed by thousands of '
Stalins' in a nested dictatorship".
Historian
Robert Vincent Daniels regarded the
Stalinist period to represent an abrupt break with Lenin's government in terms of economic planning in which a deliberated,
scientific system of planning that featured former
Menshevik economists at
Gosplan had been replaced with a hasty version of planning with unrealistic targets, bureaucratic waste,
bottlenecks and
shortages. Stalin's formulations of national plans in terms of physical quantity of output was also attributed by Daniels as a source for the stagnant levels of efficiency and quality.
History of the term
Already in 1985, John Howard's article "The Soviet Union has an administered, not a planned, economy" argued that the common description of the
Soviet-type economic planning as
planned economy
A planned economy is a type of economic system where investment, production and the allocation of capital goods takes place according to economy-wide economic plans and production plans. A planned economy may use centralized, decentralized, ...
is misleading. While central planning did play an important role, the Soviet economy was ''de facto'' characterized by the priority of highly centralized management over planning. Therefore, he writes the correct term would be "centrally managed" rather than "centrally planned" economy.
[
The term ''administrative system'' was introduced by Russian economist Gavriil Kharitonovich Popov during the '']perestroika
''Perestroika'' ( ; rus, перестройка, r=perestrojka, p=pʲɪrʲɪˈstrojkə, a=ru-perestroika.ogg, links=no) was a political reform movement within the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) during the late 1980s, widely associ ...
'' period in the Soviet Union as the title of a section in his 1987 article "From the Point of View of an Economist"[ which analyzed the novel of Alexander Bek, ' banned in the Soviet Union. It was published in Russian in 1986 with the beginning of ''perestroika'' and was widely discussed in the society. The term was picked up by ]Mikhail Gorbachev
Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev (2 March 1931 – 30 August 2022) was a Soviet and Russian politician who served as the last leader of the Soviet Union from 1985 to dissolution of the Soviet Union, the country's dissolution in 1991. He served a ...
, who used the expression "administrative-command system" in his November 2, 1987 speech.[''Словарь современных цитат'' 'Dictionary of Modern Quotations'' 2020,]
p. 821
/ref> The concept was further expounded in Popov's 1990 collection of his essays ''Блеск и нищета административной системы'' 'The Splendors and Miseries of the Administrative System''
See also
* Cameralism
Cameralism ( German: ''Kameralismus'') was a German school of public finance, administration and economic management in the 18th and early 19th centuries that aimed at strong management of a centralized economy for the benefit mainly of the ...
, German science of administration in the 18th and early 19th centuries that aimed at strong management of a centralized economy for mainly the state's benefit, closely associated with the development of bureaucracy.
* Economy of the Soviet Union
* Soviet-type economic planning
* State capitalism
State capitalism is an economic system in which the state undertakes business and commercial economic activity and where the means of production are nationalized as state-owned enterprises (including the processes of capital accumulation, ...
* State socialism
References
Further reading
* Paul Roderick Gregory, ''The Political Economy of Stalinism: Evidence from the Soviet Secret Archives''. 2004
* Paul Roderick Gregory, Robert C. Stuart, ''The Global Economy and Its Economic Systems'', 2013, , Chapter 14: "The Soviet Command Economy"
P. 381
{{Authority control
Economic ideologies
Economic planning
Economic systems
Former communist economies