Central Planning in Czechoslovakia: Organization for Growth in a Mature Economy

Two basic national aggregates have been used so far in centrally Planned economies: national income and gross social product. Both are basically different from national income and gross national product under the definition generally accepted in the West.¹

National income and social product, as presently defined in Eastern Europe, refer only to the sphere of material production or the "productive" sphere. This does not mean that they exclude all services. They include services connected with the production and distribution of material products, such as trade (wholesale, retail, and foreign), transportation of goods, legal services, etc. In the Czechoslovak framework, the branches of material production are industry (mining, manufacturing, electricity, and gas); construction; agriculture; forestry; transportation (in principle, freight transport only); communications and servicing production; state supplies of materials and state procurement of agricultural produce; trade and public catering.

Explicitly excluded from the official Czechoslovak computations of national income are the following branches of the "nonmaterial" or "nonproductive" sphere: passenger transportation; communications (the part servicing the population); science and research (but probably not industrial research); communal services (such as barbers, cleaners, etc.);

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