1.7 - Brus, Wlodzimierz - Enterprise and Socialism - are they compatible¿ Lessons from Eastern...

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Enterprise and Socialism - are they compatible? Lessons from EasternEurope and China

Enterprise and Socialism - are they compatible? Lessons from Eastern Europe andChina

by Wodzimierz Brus

Source:

PRAXIS International (PRAXIS International), issue: 1 / 1988, pages: 99-108, on www.ceeol.com.
http://www.ceeol.com/http://www.ceeol.com/http://www.ceeol.com/http://www.dibido.eu/bookdetails.aspx?bookID=467d4faf-0559-446f-94e8-db67f71c7a00http://www.ceeol.com/


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DISCUSSIONS: SOCIALISM, MARXISM AND POLITICALECONOMYEnterprise and Socialism - are they compatible?

Lessons from Eastern Europe and ChinaWlodzimierz Brus

Almost forty years ago, Joseph Schumpeter delivered an address to theAmerican Economic Association under the title "TheMarch into Socialism."lAs he stressed, he did not advocate socialism, nor did he "prophesize" orpredict it; the title was merely to present, in his own words, "observabletendencies and to state what results would be, if these tendencies should workthemselves out according to their logic."2 Among the tendencies that thedistinguished analyst of the entrepreneur's role in economic development hadin mind was the process by which the entrepreneurial function could becomeobsolete in socialism. "The management of industry and trade would becomea matter of current administration, and the personnel would unavoidablyacquire the characteristics of a bureaucracy. Socialism of a very sober typewould almost automatically come into being."3

In the closing decades of the twentieth century, in most of the "realsocialist" countries (this is still the designation used in offical Soviet languageto describe countries ruled by Communist parties), a frantic search-is going onto find tools to revive the entrepreneurial function - in order, again usingSchumpeter's terms, to be able "to reform or revolutionize the pattern ofproduction by exploiting an invention or, more generally, an untried technological possibility for producing a new commodity or producing an old one ina new way,by opening a new source of supply ofmaterials or a new outlet forproducts, by reorganizing an industry and so on".4 This is true not only forcountries like Yugoslavia where the search is already almost 40 years old, orHungary, which introduced the (then) "New Economic Mechanism" in 1968,but also of the two giants and ideological standard bearers of the communistworld: China, where reforms have been in full swing since the end of the19705, and the Soviet Union, where from the platform of the CommunistParty's XXVII Congress and from pronouncements of Secretary GeneralMikhail Gorbachev, the repeated calls for socialist entrepreneurship can beclearly heard.

These calls cannot be attributed to the desire simply to find a more palatablename for old practices. The term "enterprise" was, curiously enough, neverbanned from Soviet, East European or Chinese official vocabulary. To thecontrary: it may come as a surprise, but when the foundations of the economy(usually called the "command economy" or a "centralistic model" in my ownterminology), still dominant today in communist countries, were codified(during the late '20s and early '30s) the enterprise was elevated in mostauthoritative documents to the status of "the main link in the system ofPraxis International 8: 1April 1988 0260-8448 $2.00


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100 Praxis Internationalmanagement." However, not simply the designation "enterprise", but theinstitution's actual role is what matters. In a centralistic model the enterpriseis the lowest distinct organizational and accounting unit in the economy, withits own balance sheet and the formal right to conclude contracts with othersimilar units (as well, although in a different respect, with the bank), butwithout actual possibilities for taking aliocational decisions without disregardingthe rules of the system. Thus, the enterprise is in principle an organizationalunit designed to implement, in the most accurate way possible, decisionscoming from above (ultimately, from the centre) in the form of obligatorytargets and plan-determined resource limits. I am not in a position to offera more detailed description of the centralistic model here; however, we at leasthave to be aware that under the conditions of this model, the "enterprise"does not exercise the entrepeneurial function: it does not make choices eitherabout objectives or means, and it does not bear the resultant risks andresponsibilities. In a peculiar sense, one could say that the locus of theentrepreneurial function is shifted upwards to the centre. Hence, thefrequently encountered references to "USSR Inc." in western literature on theSoviet economy contains a grain of truth, yet it goes without saying that asovereign state in general, and a communist state in particular - because ofits monopolistic political and economic position - cannot behave as anenterprise that adjusts itself to external pressures and constraints under theperil of being driven out of business. Political responsibility ultimately doesexist, even in a highly coercive system, but - as experience shows - itbecomes manifest only when economic failures reach crisis dimensions. Itwould therefore be wrong to accept the "USSR Inc." parable as an indicationthat all that happens in a centralistic system is the replacement of, say, anumber of companies like Ford and General Motors with a single "USSRInc." which runs an aggregated profit-and-Ioss account, but otherwiseoperates in a way similar to giant capitalist corporations. It is much moreaccurate to state that in a communist command economy the entrepreneurialfunction in the traditional sense disappears.This does not mean that a unit called the "enterprise" is not concerned at allwith the monetary facet of the allocation process. Money is used in planning(as a means of aggregation) and in the implementation of plans (as a controldevice). It plays, however, a passive role in the sense that money-flow followsthe plan-determined flows of physical resources, and not vice-versa: crudelyspeaking, if an enterprise is scheduled to build a new plant, use a givenamount of materials, or employ a particular number of people in particularskill (and wage) categories, it will be provided with sufficient monetaryresources. There may be problems with "overspending" on the physical side.This obviously has its monetary side as well, but because the final responsibility for setting up the enterprise, describing its operations, selecting itsmanagers, and so on, lies with the state, the shortfall will, as a rule, be madeup. In the nowadays widely acepted conceptual framework introduced by theHungarian economist Janos Kornai, this means that enterprises in a commandeconomy operate under a "soft budget constraint" .Two peculiar types of entrepreneurship must be mentioned in the context

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Praxis International 101of the command economy: manipulation of the superordinate level ofeconomic admistration and informal t.ransactions between enterprises themselves. Both are linked to the limited capacity of the center (and itssubordinate agencies of economic administration) to collect independentinformation and to process it ("imperfect knowledge"). The first typeamounts to exploitation of "imperfect knowledge" for the sake of local"interest'; while the second amounts to a correction of its consequences. In thefirst case, the center has to rely at least in part on information supplied by aninterested party: if an enterprise is rewarded for plan fulfillment and punishedfor underfulfillment, it tries to hide its capacities (in order to receive a lessdemanding target) and exaggerates its needs (in order to get a more generousallocation of labor and material inputs). Skillfulness in these operations hasdeveloped in communist countries to a degree comparable to the skillfulnessof western companies operating in a market environment, but the consequences for the overall performance of the communist economies seem to bemuch more unequivocally harmful. As for the second case, the mismatchbetween supply of and demand for production factors on the spot is oftencorrected by enterprises arranging swaps, which only go against the rules ofvertical channels of allocation, but - as some analysts think - are absolutelyessential for keeping the economy moving. This is undoubtedly a positivepiece of entrepreneurship - linked, however, with breaking free from thestraitjacket of the command economy.Has the suppression of the entrepreneurial function damaged the communist economies? Insofar as this suppression is tied to the dominant position ofpublic ownership and central planning, this is still by no means obvious toeveryone and references to the achievements (e.g., of the Soviet Union, whichsucceeded in transforming itself from relative backwardness to a super-power)should not be lightly dismissed. On the other hand, the evidence from othercommunist countries where the Soviet system has mainly been imposed fromwithout after the second World War is at least mixed, and the weaknesses ofSoviet-type modernization have come increasingly to the fore. In my view theterm "conservative modernization" is an appropriately paradoxical description of the results obtained: increase in output, mainly as an effect of largerinput of capital and labor, predominantly imitative technological change withdisproportionally little endogenous innovation, obsolescent industrial structures, and foreign trade which bears a striking resemblance to that ofunderdeveloped countries.6 One of the most visible signs of the weaknesses ofSoviet-type modernization is the strongly pronounced downwards growthtrend - a phenomenon which not only led to the abandonment of the onceconfident claims of entering the "higher stage of communism" by thebeginning of the 1980s, but also to worries about the ability of the system tomaintain any dynamic poterltial over the long run.It is obviously beyond the scope of this paper to discuss in depth theconsequences of the suppression of the entrepreneurial function for the pastand future development of the communist economies. However, the reformefforts mentioned earlier seem to indicate unequivocally that the leadersthemselves - in China, in the Soviet Union, and in a number of European


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102 Praxis Internationalcountries, realize how important it is to imbue economic actors with the spiritof entrepreneurship. Thus, we are entitled, I think, to put forward theproposition that the damage from previous entrepreneurial practices wassubstantial. Given this fact, what then are the chances of reviving genuine

e n t r e p r e n e ~ r s h i p within the framework of a communist system? A briefsurvey of the essence of the reform ideas may help us in this task.From this sketchy description of the centralistic (command) model, itshould be clear that the scope for entrepreneurship is related inversely to thedegree of administrative regulation and directly to the degree of marketregulation. Hence the dominant thrust behind reforming the system has beena call to free the units, called enterprises, to make their ~ n d e p e n d e n t choicesbased on market considerations: prices, costs and demand. On the otherhand, the desire to retain the principles of national economic planning meansthat the freedom of enterprises l could not be unlimited. Hence, compromisesolutions of various kinds, with the boundaries between administrativeregulation and market regulation were set differently. Conceptually the mostradical attempt at reform was the Yugoslav model of self-managed socialism,which was supposed to evolve gradually towards full market regulation (withenterprises taking decisions not only with regard to current operations, butalso with regard to investment, i.e., fixed capital formation). State regulationwas to be limited to some sort of indicative planning, conducted through anetwork of agreements between the self-managed enterprises and stateauthorities (also formed on the principles of self-management) at differentlevels of the state organization. Yugoslavia - which in the first post-warperiod was the most faithful imitator of the Soviet command model- startedits reforms soon after the break with the Soviet Union in 1948. By 1965, themarketization measures reached their peak.In other communist countries, the dominant reform trend was morerestricted. The prevailing idea hovered close to what this author described(and advocated) as a "model of a planned economy with a regulated marketmechanism." This model distinguished between two types of economicdecisions: main macro-economic ones (including the determination of thescale of investment activity and allocation of the main bulk of investmentfunds among sectors, regions, or even large individual projects) on the onehand, and current (standard) decisions (including smaller investment projects) on the other hand. Enterprises were to be free to take the second type ofdecisions. With commands (obligatory targets of the plan) and administrativeallocation of production factors abolished, they were to be exposed tomarket-type self-regulatory mechanisms in their current operations. Profitwas to become the main success criterion, as vvell as the source of incentivesfor the workforce (wage rises dependent on financial viability plus a profitsharing fund for bonuses). Profit was also to be the source of self-financing forautonomous illvestment activity. The coordination of the market-regulatedactivites of the enterprises with the general provisions of the plan wassupposed to rest on: (1) the macroeconomic framework determined byfundamental decisions taken directly by planners; (2) determination of the"rules of behaviour" for enterprises (success criteria and their incentive


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Praxis International 103consequences) in such a way as to direct local interests onto a converging pathwith the general ones; (3) fiscal, monetary and price policies which wouldeffectively support the regulatory features under points (1) and (2) (ofparticular concern was to guarantee that enterprises became price-takersonly). Thus, the macroeconomic plan would remain effective in setting theeconomy on a broadly delineated course, but without exercising directcontrols over the enterprises. It even relinquishes central control altogether inmatters outside well-defined social preferences (recognition of broad economic"zones of indifference"). The interaction between an effective central plan soconceived and a market mechanism was to be made possible by, on the onehand, providing the central planner with the right to issue binding rules, buton the other hand by making these rules general (except for major investmentprojects) so as to create the necessity and the room for both the planner andenterprises to adjust to changing conditions.

The Hungarian "New Economic Mechanism" of 1968 was conceptuallyclose to the model of a "centrally planned economy with a regulated marketmechanism". As far as one can tell, this idea also seems to appeal to theChinese reformers, although no formal blueprint has been adopted there. Inother countries, the officially proclaimed reform programmes have fallen shortof fully accepting this model (except, perhaps, in Czechoslavakia in 1968,aborted after the Warsaw Pact military intervention, and the as of yetunimplemented 1982 Polish reform blueprint). Nonetheless, the direction ofthese reforms was to some extent similar: not abolition, but a substantialreduction in the number of obligatory targets for enterprises and the amountof producer goods allocated hv the ceptre.When one turns to examine the experience of the implementation of thesereforms, one's overall impression must be of a very slow and limited process.Even if we leave aside Yugoslavia, which found itself in special circumstancesafter its break with the Soviet Union, a growing awareness of the need toreform the command system became evident in most communist countries asearly as the mid-1950s. Several countries in the Soviet bloc tried to carry outreforms unsuccessfully in the second half of that decade. Hungary abandonedthem after the bloody Soviet invasion; Poland slowly diluted its reformsdespite the fact that the new leadership (Gomulka) came to power under thereform-banner; in the USSR, Kruschev's fall put a stop to the reform process.Then came what I call "the second wave of economic reform" in the 1960s,again directed toward strengthening the position of the enterprise: the "NewEconomic System" in theGDR (formally condemned after some 8 years of notvery consistent implementation), the "Kosygin reform" in the USSR in 1965,(only to die slowly within a few years), similar attempts in Bulgaria (with asimilar fate), the economic component of the "Czechoslovak Spring" in 1968(suppressed with only slight delay after the invasion), and two clumsy Polishattempts (both short-lived, the second ending with the massacre ofworkers onthe Baltic coast in December 1970). The only ~ e n d u r i n g reforms emerged inHungary. The 1970s were characterized by fewer attempts at reform: one inPoland (the so called WOG-reform, WOG standing for "large economicorganizations" - again unsuccessful. The Hungarian "New Economic


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104 Praxis InternationalMechanism" survived despite mixed fortunes in the middle of the decade.The 19808 in contrast, display a strong, although hardly universal revival ofreformist attitudes, undoubtedly partly due to the mounting pressures ofeconomic difficulties and the collapse of the earlier "import-led growth"strategy which may have permitted political elites to avoid reforms. Apartfrom the sharpening of reform tendencies in Hungary and a more comprehensive blueprint in Poland, we are witnessing a return to the ideas of the"Kosygin reform" in the USSR, and another move in the same direction inBulgaria. Moreover, the 1980s are marked by the Chinese economic reforms,which, if for no other reason but their sheer scale, must be considered ofparamount importance.Most interesting in the history of these reforms is (1) that they persist,which should be taken as proof that a change is needed; that they (2) displaysome convergence in concepts, despite differences between countries; theelevation of the role of the enterprise is now a major preoccupation everywhere, and (3), that all this persistence and convergence notwithstanding,practical results are meager - either because of non-implementation orbecause reforms have failed to meet expectations. To explain this would be amajor step toward answering the question of whether entrepreneurship andsocialism are compatible.There are numerous hypotheses about the failure of East Europeanreforms. I see the roots of these failures in the interaction of three groups ofobstacles: political, the vested interests of social strata, and substantivedificulties in combining plan and market on the basis of public ownership. Itis the third of these groups which interests us most in our search for clarifyingthe issue of the compatibility of enterprise and socialism, so, I shall examinethe first two very briefly. Political obstacles are rooted in the fear of the rulingelites that economic reform presents a threat to the political system ofcommunist monoarchy.8 It is by no means certain that there is a straightforward and simple relationship between the evolution of the economic andpolitical system. Still, in all countries such a relationship seems to have beenidentified both by the supporters and opponents of the communist powermonopoly, and some features of the command model are virtually inseparablefrom the way political power is exercised: political principles of appointments("nomenklatura") on all levels of management, subordination of resourceallocation to political priorities, control over both the price- and the wage-sideof income distribution, etc. It would be wrong to perceive the political factorsacting in an anti-reform direction only. If economic reform could proveeffective, it would bring obvious political dividends, too. On balance,however, the political factor ought to be counted, in my view, as an obstacle.Moreover, even in cases when this obstacle has been somehow surmounted (asin Hungary), or when political interests demanded reform (as in Yugoslaviaafter the 1948 break), the ruling elites tried to do their utmost to keepreforms narrowly economic, preventing their spread to the political sphere.This opens up a new fundamental problem. What is the impact of thepreservation of monoarchy on the consistency and effectiveness of economicreform? I shall say a word on this matter before concluding.


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Praxis International 105vested interests is, the interests of various social strata) in

hindering economic reform is difficult to ascertain, let alone measure.However, on basis of my own observations and those pieces of evidencewhich can be gathered from sociological works published in the West as wellas some communist countries, I think that the following proposition can beaccepted: there is a constituency for economic reforms in all countries, but atthe same time there are considerable social forces against them, the latter notonly an10ng the upper strata close to the seats of power or at the middle levelsof the party- and state-apparatus (often the strongest resisters), but alsoamong rank-and-file workers, especially among the least skilled. The workersmay often be wary of the promise of greater efficiency and earnings if linked tohigher labor productivity, and they are wary of the possibility of losing thefamiliar cushions of absolute job-security, overstaffing, and a "take-it-easy"work atmosphere. Even among the managerial strata, regarded by conventional wisdom as the most ardent supporters of economic reform, attitudes areby no means uniform, especially in the USSR where the centralistic model hasoperated for over half a century. Managers of an already third or perhaps evenfourth generation raised under this system are not adjusted - and thereforeoften incapable and unwilling - to behaving in an entrepreneurial manner,with all the risks that independent decision-making entails.

What then of the substantive difficulties? They are best observed in countrieswhich claim to have carried out economic reforms, i.e., in Yugoslavia andHungary, the latter providing us with the most information because it lacksthe special problems tied to the federal structure of Yugoslavia. As I saidearlier, according to conventional wisdom, the effects of reforms - withoutdenying some positive achievements - have fallen below expectations. Bythis I mean not a country's economic performance (which varies betweendifferent countries and periods inter alia and also under the influence ofexternal, non-systemic factors, butmainly the lesser than expected actual changein the behavior of economic actors, particularly among enterprises within thestate sector of the economy. I stress this last aspect because the situation outsidethe state sector in the private and cooperative spheres is different. This hasinteresting implications for the issue of the compatibility of enterprise andsocialism. To most Hungarian economists (including Janos Kornai), the stateeconomy under the NEM is still coordinated in current operations, not by themarket, but by administrative means differing from the old model more inform than in substance (indirect instruments instead of the direct ones). Themain manifestation of this is seen in the failure to apply to state enterprises thegeneral rules mentioned above. Enterprises have not been given the freedomto act and to be exposed to the rigors of the market. Instead, the widespreadtendency has been to tailor financial norms in such a way as to keep everyenterprise afloat. Bargaining with the higher authorities over output targetsand input allocations has been replaced by new forms of bargaining overfinancial conditions. This means again that dependence on superior administrative bodies arises with a concomitant weak resistance to their power.9To what extent are these weaknesses due to the very idea of grafting amarket mechanism onto a fundamentally planned (centrally managed)


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106 Praxis Internationaleconomy, albeit in principle mainly on a macroscale? The pitfalls of suchgrafting seem rather evident. The exigencies of central control generatetendencies at variance with conditions propitious for the unhampered activityof enterprises. Among them is the tendency to retain a strong center ofeconomic administration - supposedly for overall control purposes, but withan obvious inclination to interfere with enterprise management. The tendencytowards industrial concentration is another consequence. It is easier to controla smaller number of larger units from the center, but this in turn threatens toundermine a number of preconditions for an effective market. It createsmonopolistic barriers to competition, especially as reliance on foreign compe-tition quickly proves futile in view of balance-of-payment difficulties (this isalso the Yugoslav experience) and it also creates powerful pressure groups thatbend the financial rules mentioned above, particularly those which seek statesupport for over-ambitious investment plans. Furthermore, it makes lessprobable a refusal on the state's behalf to bail-out a huge concern in troubleand hence the elimination of the "soft budget constraint".These problems are tied to another aspect of combining plan and market ina model of "central planning with a regulated market mechanism:"6 thedistinction between longterm investment decisions, largely assigned to thecenter, and current operations left to autonomous decisions of the enterprises.The latter can undertake minor investment initiatives, but they cannotembark on a wide-ranging diversification programme, let alone break out intoa completely new field of activity. In a situation where an enterprise is stuck inits old and unpromising line of activity, the choice often is between completeclosure and subsidization, the latter course usually the preferred one. Thisagain increases the degree of dependence of enterprises on their administrativesuperiors. Then there is also the question of responsibility for poor qualityinvestment decisions taken by the center that adversely influence conditions ofcurrent operationf (a source of frequent complaints about "lame ducks"created by political decisions in Yugoslavia).Thus, the Hungarian experience seems to indicate that in order to open thedoor to entrepreneurship, the degree of administrative coordination must befurther restricted and particularly that the emphasis on product- and labormarkets alone is insufficient: they ought to be supplemented by a capitalmarket which would make possible horizontal capital flows (between enterprises, enterprises and households etc.) through a commercial bankingsystem, bond issues, etc). This was recognized by the Yugoslav reformersquite early on, and solemnly proclaimed as being introduced in 1965). Inactual fact, however, very little happened in the way of creating a genuinecapital market; the level of government control has merely been shifted fromthe federal to regional level. Was this failure accidental, or did it havesomething to do with such a basic feature of a socialist system as thepredominance of public ownership?7 There are indications that the lattersupposition might be relevant although other factors are probably involved,too. The link is seen in the fact that the workers' share in enterprise income inYugoslavia is based not on any form of personal property rights, butexclusively on employment, the loss or change of which means the dis-


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Praxis International 107appearance of any stake in the productive units' assets. In contrast, theoperation of a capital market, even in a rudimentary form, can hardly beenvisaged without a longterm interest in the growth of the value of assets. Ifwe take into account another piece of evidence, namely the much greatersuccess of reform measures outside the state sector in cooperatives andparticularly in the private sector - this is clearly the experience of Hungary,and especially so in China, it looks as though the revival of entrepreneurshipwould require reconsideration of the question of property rights. This doesnot mean, in my view, that private ownership is the only possible environmentfor the operation of the market, but a mixed economy - both in the sense ofhaving a larger share of non-state enterprises and a greater diversification ofownership relations within the state sector itself - seems to me the necessarycondition for entrepreneurship.It is in this context that another word is needed about the political factor:the strong (some would say - asbolute) dominance of the political over theeconomic system, as it is the case in countries of "real socialism", is clearlyincompatible with such a mixed economy. The success of communistleaderships in countries like Yugoslavia and Hungary, in introducing changesin the economic system while keeping the political system of monoarchybasically intact must have been an important source of the meager effects ofpast economic reforms. The more comprehensive and deeper changes ineconomic life that we have been discussing stand a lesser chance of emergingwith the monoarchy left in place.Needless to say, ours has been only a short discussion of the immenselycomplex issues involved in the question posed in the title of this paper.Nevertheless, I think, some kind of an answer can be given.An enterprise - in the proper meaning of the term - is incompatible withsocialism as it exists now in communist countries, not only in the unreformedversion of a command economy, but also in the reformed varieties it hasreached so far. The minimum conditions necessary for entrepreneurialbehaviour require a far more profound change in the principles of operation ofboth the economic and political systems. Whether creation of these conditions is possible in "real socialist" countries, is a matter of speculation whichwould have to take into account aspects well beyond my theoretical analysis(for instance, the evolution of international relations). In any case, it is a muchmore difficult task than any of us - who at some stage became part of thereformist movement in communist countries - has ever envisaged. Still, as Ihave indicated above, I do not regard the minimum conditions for entrepreneurship as being outside the boundaries of a socio-economic order whichcould rightly be called socialism.My discussion focussed on the compatibility problem, and not on thedesirability of entrepreneurship. The latter was merely assumed as an indirectcorollary from the efforts undertaken in communist countries to revive it.However it may well be that when the full scale of the problem comes intoview, not entrepreneurship's economic efficiency, but other economic goals(stability, job security, relatively low income differentials etc.) would bepreferred. I am not suggesting that this might be a correct choice, but I should


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108 Praxissimply like to point out that even evidence theentrepreneurship and socialism is not tantamount to assertinglack of any historical alternatives, however they may be.

NOTES1. Joseph Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (London, 1976).2. Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy, 42.3. Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy, 13l.4. Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy, 132.5. J.Kornai, Economics of Shortage (Amsterdam, 1980).6. W.Brus and T. Kowalik, "Socialism and Development," Cambridge Journal ofEconomics, 7 (1983).7. W.Brus, "General Problems of Functioning of the Socialist Economy", Market in a Socialist Economy

(London, 1972).8. Monoarchy is a term I use to decribe a political system in which power is monopolized by a singlegroup (the upper echelons of the Communist Party) without the possibility of being contested by anyoutside groups whic'h lack the f r e ~ d o m to form independent organizations.9. An econometric study published in the Journal afComparative Economics (no. 3, 1986) unveiled thephenomenon of "storming," i.e., a visible increase in output towards the end of the planning period,although obligatory plan targets were supposed to disappear in Hungary beginning in 1968.

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