t directives
were frequent because of their complexity and the constraints they
placed on the day-to-day operation of economic enterprises.

In the search for a more efficient organization and management pattern,
heavy reliance was placed on the introduction of complex automation into
all economic processes with the aid of a nationwide computer network--a
system of automation that would extend from the highest levels of
national economic planning down to the individual factory shop and cow
barn. No ideas have been advanced, however, on how complex automation
would solve the basic problem of the economy--the widely acknowledged
and pervasive lack of incentives to work. The methods used to grapple
with this problem were limited to a tinkering with the wage and bonus
system, administrative sanctions, political indoctrination, and
exhortations.

ORGANIZATION

State ownership of the means of production predominates in the economy.
Collective ownership has prevailed in agriculture, but it may be
gradually eliminated in the course of the agricultural reorganization
initiated in 1970 (see ch. 13). Private ownership of productive
resources is limited to subsidiary farm or garden enterprises of
collective farmers, industrial and state farmworkers, and artisans; a
small number of individual farms on marginal lands; and noncollectivized
artisan shops. In 1971 private ownership encompassed about 10 percent of
the agricultural land but only 2.5 percent of the fixed assets used in
production. Private ownership of personal property and homes is allowed.

The proportions of national income (net material product) generated in
each of the ownership sectors in 1971 were: state, 70 percent;
collective, 21 percent; and private, 9 percent. The importance of
private enterprise in the production of food, however, is much greater
than its contribution to the national income may suggest. The private
sector has provided more than one-fifth of the crop output and one-third
of the livestock production (see ch. 13).

Whereas the leadership has promoted livestock production on private farm
plots, since 1968 it has placed increasingly severe restrictions on the
activities of private artisans, who had originally been encouraged to
expand their operations through liberal regulations issued in 1965.
Aside from providing essential services, private artisans played an
important role in supplying a variety of consumer goods for the
population. The re