2. The economy of Soviet Union can be looked at as one huge enterprise.

Describe the main

organizational task to run this or any enterprise. What are the similarities with and differences to
a “normal” enterprise in a market economy? Why may this comparison be misguided after all?

in a normal enterprise many factors must be managed. there is capital, labor, output. and
in out modern world there is venture capital, seed money, angel investment, debt, debt ratio,
stocks, the notion of “going public,” advertising, market image and public relations.

the market economy, in a present tense sense, involves a balancing of debt and profits and
assets.

as the soviet union coalesced all assets and all enterprise, all land and all resources under one
unitary entity “the state” or the Union, it then might be conceived of as an unified enterprise.

whether or not to do so is useful, i am not sure.

the oversimplification that occurs with this imaginative step runs a risk of overly abstracting that
which is very particular.

the level of interference being run is also critical dependent of outside trade, foreign investment,
defection rates, and resource allocation.

it also perhaps unfairly presumes a unified mission.

as an enterprise in the market economy has a primary duty to stockholders, and a purported
primary duty to its clients, the megalith cannot truly serve both masters.

the state as it functions with so many complicated industries conjoined towards the operation of
the nation state entity, contains within itself many conflicting value systems.

if factory workers want to merely get by with doing as little work as possible, they are not
operating with a unified aim. if factory overseers are incentivized, their psychological motivation
might be towards personal gain.

they that run the state might seek a more efficient mechanism, but have little concern for the toil
of the workers, say for instance they interred in gulag work camps.

so to provide a unitary narrative that glosses over individual needs and desires, and say the
soviet union operates as an enterprise, obscures more than it reveals.

a normal enterprise must manage many countervailing needs. the allocation of resources must
not damage the public relations and exterior of a firm. if conspicuous bloodshed occurs to
gain materials, the firm may damage ultimate profitability in wrecking their social responsibility
appearance.

an enterprise must mitigate the stress of liabilities whether they be offset through legal risk
management, preventative market guaging, market research, prospective advertising outreach,
or resource management. maintaining clear consistent labor and management are critical.

while these same conditions would affect the soviet state on the macro level as it subsumed the
many micro industries, the proportionality is so drastically different between market economy
enterprise and communism, that equivocating them thusly reduces the recognition of the
psychological effects of the stratification which genericizes all things, and reduces the profit
excitement factor, so seized upon to be thought of as critical to competative capitalism.

as infrastructure too was often failing in the soviet system, the imbalance of critical technical
resources, makes for an ill comparison. as technology has exploded world market potentials
and made drastic shifts in what was thought of as first or third world economies, the slow uptake
of technological systems, had a dramatic effect on the enterprise effect.

a true enterprise in the market economy would do everything in its power to ascend the market
profitability ladder, whereas in the slower to develop soviet system, halting in technological
growth, as impacted by tariff and embargo, and restriction of international trade was not in the
best interest of the nation-state as a whole.

if the soviet system were convincingly acting as a cohesive enterprise, in a capitalistic sense,
profitability would be the primary motive, and every possible means to increase and maximize
profit would be essential to enterprise strategy.
and this was not the case.

as the failure to participate in the world market colluded with the thriving black market, the
obstruction of free speech and consequent innovation, and the failure to achieve a high level f
technological prowess retarded the development of the overall enterprise profitability. and so
in a sense, the mass acted more as a slow demi-enterprise, apathetic to the normal angst and
struggle and vibrancy of competetive capitalist enterprise, at least in theory.