This chapter evaluates the major concern and, ultimately, failure of communism: to catch up with the economic advance of the West. Section 1 discusses the motivation underpinning the major policy objective, common to all socialist economies at all times, namely their excessive emphasis on growth.

Despite the intertemporal injustice that heavily penalised the first generations under socialism through very high forced savings, later generations did not reap the benefits of their forebears' sacrifices. Socialist economies seemed doomed both to fail in their bid for sustained growth and to be quite unable to let their citizens enjoy the fruits of sacrifice.

Section 2 deals with the preliminary issue of measurements, as Soviet accounting standards are not easily reconcilable with Western practices. Section 3 starts from a growth-accounting framework and shows the contributions of the accumulation of factors of production (labour, capital, land) and of productivity growth. If the Soviet economy had been able to put its immense accumulation of productive factors (extensive growth) to efficient use, it would have been at the top of the world's growth league. Unfortunately it was not. Section 4 provides an overview of the successes and failures of Soviet communism and section 5 concludes.

Growth: the overriding plan objective

In all poor countries, catching up with advanced nations is a top policy priority. Socialist revolutionaries came to power on a promise to achieve exactly that (and to redistribute income in favour of the working classes).