ket as unscientific. Instead, it asserted that production should be planned for direct use and distributed in kind, thereby eliminating the market exchange and the the crises and alienation which resulted from it. Scientific socialism was essentially symbolized by centrally planned production for direct use by society.
The seizure of power in Russia by Lenin and the Bolsheviks actually came as something of a shock to orthodox Marxists, for they viewed Russia as an inappropriate subject for a Marxist revolution. In fact, many of these traditional Marxists criticized the Bolsheviks for disregarding the Marxist principle of historical materialism. Socialism was supposed to emerge from capitalism since capitalism was necessary for the development of socialism. Russia, on the other hand, was only just beginning the transition from feudalism to capitalism; it was argued that a true socialist state was virtually impossible in Russia. Lenin disregarded these criticisms and attempted to directly transform the Russian economy from feudal to socialist.
Lenin declared that the Soviet economy would be governed by central planning; in reality, the planning was not based upon Marxist ideals. Instead, the "central" plan consisted of a summation of individual plans originating in the individual enterprises. Soviet managers, while more formally constrained than western managers, actually enjoyed a great deal of autonomy. While this sounded good on paper, in reality it worked terribly. Western managers followed demand and organized production according to price and profit movements; Soviet managers organized production by interpreting "success indicators" issued by the government. These success indicators were tied to "gross output" and were based upon targets specified by weight or volume. These targets could be met by neglecting other aspects of quality; thus a target specified by volume typically resulted in a large number of very poo...