Evsei Lieberman on Socialist Economic Planning

The exact date of this episode is unknown. We've filled in the date above with a placeholder. What we actually have on record is: 196u-uu-uu.

In this interview (dramatized in English) Ukranian economist Evsei Liberman explains how emphasizing profit in soviet industry will improve production and quality of products, which will strengthen the socialist economy.

According to the announcer, "Rates of development in this country are three and four times higher than the American, largely because of socialist planning, and it was certainly, chiefly, because of planning that the Soviet Union was able to make the leap from a poorly developed, semi-literate country, to the industrial power that launched the world's first man-made satellite."

Liberman explains that the burgeoning Soviet Union had to first develop a centralized currency and system of economic planning. However, since the spread of the socialist economic model, demand for quality and quantity of goods is rising. Supply, labor costs and quality must be balanced at the manufacturer level by using profit as the main criteria for success.

A central government will still conduct economic planning to make investments and determine which products to produce. "In a socialist society, there is no private property. Hence, no one can take the profits of industry for himself and turn them into capital. Profits in this country go into the national budget and are used for the needs of all of society."

[Most likely recorded in the mid-1960s]

Audio courtesy of the NYC Municipal Archives WNYC Collection

WNYC archives id: 150278
Municipal archives id: T2122