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History of the world economy - Polyak GB

30.4. The economy of socialist countries in the fourth stage (1970 - mid-80's).

The role of the crisis in 1973-1974 . The CMEA countries

In these years attempts have been made to solve the economic problems of the socialist countries by modernizing the administrative system of management without resorting to radical changes. Exhaustion of resources of extensive growth forced the countries of Eastern Europe to resort to the use of foreign loans.

The world energy crisis of 1973-1974, expressed in the growth of oil prices, had a great influence on the development of the socialist countries.

Western countries, trying to weaken dependence on imports of raw materials and fuel, promptly restructured the national economic structures through the introduction of resource and energy-saving technologies (like the production of microprocessors) and biotechnologies, while the inexhaustible reserves of resources in the USSR, while the tight system of pricing in mutual trade deprived the CMEA countries All kinds of incentives for such innovations. This turned out to be a very serious lag in the key areas of scientific and technological progress.

The most important economic groupings of the countries of the world

1) The CMEA countries did not experience rising oil prices, since the main supplier, the USSR, exported oil and oil products to the CMEA countries at prices significantly lower than the world prices.

2) The non-market economic system has not been able to absorb the fruits of a new stage in the scientific and technological revolution. Between the developed Western countries, on the one hand, and the socialist and the majority of the developing countries, on the other, a gap has arisen and not only in levels and rates of growth, but in the structure of the economy.

Conflicts began to appear within the CMEA. The countries that carried out the most radical economic reforms, Hungary and Czechoslovakia, as well as Yugoslavia, a number of special agreements related to the CMEA, set the task of more actively joining the world market. The external economic turnover of these countries has broken up into two streams: the most high-quality and competitive products went to Western markets, and the rest was exported through the CMEA channels. One of the most acute problems was the question of world prices. Countries - exporters of finished products considered themselves bearing losses from the sale of goods at low prices. As a result of the intensification of these contradictions, the CMEA share in the foreign trade turnover of the countries of Eastern Europe stabilized (60% in 1960) and began to decline, reaching 50-55% by the beginning of the 1970s.

The problems that confronted the CMEA required changing the forms of its activities. In 1971, the Comprehensive Program of Socialist Economic Integration was adopted . The task was to develop higher forms of economic integration - production cooperation and specialization, scientific and technical cooperation, coordination of economic development plans, joint investment activities. In the 70-ies. The role of CMEA in the economy of the socialist countries has somewhat increased. A 1% increase in national income in Eastern Europe accounted for 1.57% of the increase in the physical volume of trade within the CMEA. This was due to the global energy crisis and increased dependence on oil imports from the USSR, as well as the implementation of joint projects within the framework of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (under the Comprehensive Program) (for example, the construction of the Ust-Ilimsk pulp mill, the Orenburg-Western border gas pipeline, the Mir energy system) , During the period 1971-1978. 100 multilateral and 1,000 bilateral agreements on production cooperation were concluded. The greatest development of cooperation and specialization was in the automotive industry.

Meanwhile, the scale and forms of production cooperation within the CMEA significantly lagged behind Western standards. This gap increased due to the non-susceptibility of non-market economy to STD. In the late 70's. Another attempt was made to modernize the CMEA activities: long- term targeted programs for economic cooperation were being developed.

During the 80's. There was a gradual increase in problems within the CMEA. The CMEA crisis and the cessation of its activities were predetermined by a number of factors:

1) The barrier of the initial intersectoral scheme of the division of labor, based mainly on the interest of partners to Soviet raw materials, was not overcome, despite the attempts repeatedly made to introduce a technological model of cooperation. For example, the level of development of cooperation between the USSR and the CMEA countries in the field of machine building was four to six times lower than in trade between Western countries.

2) Within the framework of the CMEA, "greenhouse" conditions for the development of mutual ties were formed. Being closed from the rest of the world (although not always for reasons that depend on us), the CMEA countries' producers were not affected by the main engine of scientific and technological progress - competition. The CMEA played a strategically negative role in the period of the fuel and energy crisis of the 1970s.

3) The general increase in crisis phenomena in the socialist countries.

4) The deterioration of the positions of Eastern European goods in the world market.

5) Continuing disagreements and conflicts over prices and principles of the balance of trade.

6) The striving to return to the Western market path of development, which has intensified since the second half of the 1980s, to return to the Western market path of development, which is organic for most Eastern European countries (especially Poland, the GDR, Czechoslovakia, Hungary). The termination of the CMEA in 1991 had a different effect on the economy of the countries that had previously entered it. For the Russian economy, the cessation of supplies through the CMEA channels meant an additional factor in deepening the crisis. The reaction of different countries in Eastern Europe was determined by the extent to which their economy depended on the supply of raw materials from the USSR and what are the alternative sources of imports and the prospects for transition to resource-saving technologies in these countries.

The Economic System of China

By the end of the 1970s, the main features of the economic system of China were formed. It covered finance, banking, labor and wage management, control over prices and distribution of products. Its characteristic feature is super - centralization. The role of the state in the economy and other spheres of society was total.

The state supplied enterprises with means of production and bought all their products at prices that they themselves established. The state completely withdrew all incomes of the enterprise and covered their expenses.

The role of the market and the commodity economy were also rejected. The commodity shortage became usual. In life consistently embodied the principle of equalization ("everyone eats from the same boiler").

The country maintained a card system for industrial and agricultural goods and strictly regulated food. Prices grew in state trade, in the markets prices were five to seven times higher than state prices. There was a "black market" in the country, speculation was a mass phenomenon.

The main methods by which the impact on the economy was ensured were military-administrative and coercive measures and the use of the army. More than a third of the state budget was spent on building up military capabilities (the creation of a nuclear missile complex and the expansion of military production, the construction of military installations). In the second half of the 70's. In China, there were significant economic difficulties. In 1977, the volume of industrial production did not reach the level of 1975, the output of agriculture declined, food imports sharply increased, and the standard of living declined.

The course for reform was adopted in December 1978. Officially, the tasks of reform were formulated as the need to more fully reveal the potential of socialism and improve its economic mechanism. Since 1979, it was planned to implement a settlement policy (that is, to eliminate the imbalance of the economy caused by the government's excessive attention to heavy industry), the policy of transformation (changing economic structures in the interests of socialist modernization of the country), ordering policy (it meant consolidation of financial resources on the most promising Directions of economic construction) and policy of improvement (ensuring higher quality of output and planned work in general).

The first stage of the reform continued until 1984, at this time the focus was on transforming rural areas. The most important element of the new policy in the village was the transition to a family contract, but the land still remained in the whole people's state, i.e. State property. For the production agricultural teams, a "system of responsibility" was introduced for the results of labor, to which by 99 99% of all production brigades had been transferred, subsidiary farming was allowed. The transition to a family contract caused an upsurge in the labor activity of the peasantry. For six years (1979-1984), annual grain collections in China increased from 300 to 400 million tons. The cotton and oilseed crops collections increased twice.

By the mid-80's. China has become the world's largest producer of grain, cotton, rapeseed, sugar-bearing crops, peanuts, soybeans, tea, meat, and the world's most numerous livestock. The standard of living of the people has risen. Given the increase in prices, China's per capita income has almost doubled. During this period, foreign capital began to be attracted to the economy. By 1982, there were six "special zones" in China, where foreigners were granted benefits. The total amount of investments in foreign and joint ventures was estimated at more than $ 1.5 billion. China was particularly active in developing cooperation with the United States, Japan and West Germany.

Since the adoption in 1984 of the decree "On the Reform of the Economic System", the second stage of economic reforms has begun in China. The reform envisaged the creation of a planned system based on the conscious use of the law of value and aimed at the development of a socialist commodity economy, the establishment of a rational price system by ensuring the freedom of action of economic levers with the strengthening of the leading role of the Communist Party.

Enterprises were allowed to buy equipment and raw materials on the market and sell additional products not included in the plan of the enterprise, and sometimes part of the planned production. From the part of the profit remaining at the enterprise, promotion funds were formed.

The activity of small private and collective enterprises, handicraft workshops, mainly in the sphere of trade and services, was allowed.

As a result, in the second half of the 1980s, China took the first place in the world in gross production of cotton fabrics and cement, the second - in TV production and coal mining, the third - in the production of sulfuric acid and chemical fertilizers, the fourth - in smelting become.

New industries were created: the production of metallurgical and mining equipment, aviation, automotive, machine tools, nonferrous metallurgy, nuclear and space power engineering, production of circuits and computers. The share of industry in the gross national product increased from 25.2% in 1949 to 53.7% in 1985.

At the same time, the dominant role of the state remained unchanged. It controlled the stocks of the most important goods for the national economy, carried out unified measures to supply the city and rural markets throughout the country, coordinated the relations between various spheres of trade, and distributed goods between settlements.

The policy of expanding ties with foreign countries was actively pursued. An open door policy was launched . There were opened 14 seaports.

Since 1979, the economy of socialist China has been developing at a staggering pace, increasing by an average of more than 10%, and in some periods - by 13-14% annually, which required even a special policy and tightening the rear of the infrastructure and some reduction in the growth of the gross domestic Product (GDP) for "reducing the overheating of the economy."

Over two decades of reform and opening up, GDP has increased in comparison with 1978 by 5.92 times (!), Which almost means an almost sixfold increase over 20 years of the country's economic potential. In 7 times it was possible to increase labor productivity in agriculture, and to increase the annual production of grain to 500 million tons.