The core of the Soviet system was public property and cooperation, and production was aimed at the fullest satisfaction of the growing material and spiritual needs of each person and society as a whole.
In the USSR, crises, poverty and unemployment, competition, class and national enmity have become a thing of the past. Equality, cooperation and mutual assistance among people have been established. Conditions for harmonious development of the individual were created. In capitalist models, the purpose of production development is mainly to make a profit, and they are based on private property and competition.
The economic system of the USSR was based on public ownership of the means of production in the form of State (national) and collective farm and cooperative property. At the same time, it should be noted that Article 10 of the USSR Constitution says that "no one has the right to use socialist property for personal gain and other mercenary purposes".
The state owned: land, its subsoil, water, forests.
The state also owned the main means of production in industry, construction and agriculture, banks, property of trade, communal and other enterprises organized by the state, the main urban housing fund.
The basis of personal property of the citizens of the USSR was to be the labor income. Citizens could use land plots for auxiliary farming, horticulture and horticulture, as well as for individual housing construction.
The dominant social and economic entity in the USSR was the collective worker, the owner of the basic resources of the socialist society. It was supposed that the source of growth of public wealth, welfare of the people and every Soviet person should be labor free from exploitation (Art. 14). It also says that the state, in accordance with the principle of socialism "From everyone - by ability, to everyone - by work" exercises control over the measure of work and consumption.
In such a model, the position of a person in society determines socially useful labor and its results. The state, combining material and moral incentives, encouraging innovation, creative attitude to work, contributes to the transformation of labor into the first vital need of every Soviet person. The duty and honour of every capable citizen of the USSR is to work in good faith in the field of socially useful activities chosen by him or her and to observe labour discipline. Evasion from socially useful work is incompatible with the principles of socialist society (art. 60).
The constitutions of capitalist countries, at best, only refer to the right of a citizen of the state to work. If a citizen can work, but does not wish to do so, he has the right to do so, and the state will not force him to perform socially useful work.
The relationship between Soviet economic actors was based on cooperation, solidarity and mutual assistance. This is understandable, since the collective worker himself was the owner of the main productive resources of society, and the government disposed of these resources on his behalf. Competition took place between Soviet enterprises and foreign ones.
The main link of the Soviet economic mechanism was the centralized management of the economy.
The need for such management resulted from the fact that the USSR economy was a single economic complex, covering all the links of public production, distribution and exchange in the country (Art. 16).
The centralised management was based on planning, i.e. the government's activity on development, coordination, approval and delivery of plans to the executor, as well as on control over their execution. Economic management in the USSR was carried out on the basis of the state plans of economic and social development, taking into account sectoral and territorial principles, combined with centralized management with economic independence and initiative of enterprises, associations and other organizations. At the same time, the economic calculation, profit, cost price, other economic levers and incentives were actively used.
The legal basis for Soviet planning was the Law on the State Plan. The Regulation on the State Plan was adopted on February 22, 1921 by the Council of People's Commissars. During 1928-1929, a unified system of sections and indicators of the five-year plan was created in the State Planning Committee, which formed the basis of the first five-year plan. Since 1928, the economic life of the Soviet Union was fully guided by five-year plans. During the 70 years of its existence, the USSR State Planning Committee was the initiator and the main driving force behind the implementation of the economic policy of the state.
The mechanism of formation and realization of the plan was, it is possible to tell, a core of all economy and a social life of a Soviet society. The law on the State Planning Committee was annually approved in November at the session of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. This event was preceded by a large and continuous work, which practically did not stop.