ABSTRACT
According to Marxist dogma, under socialism, i.e. in a system without private ownership of the means of production, products were no longer made for the market. They were distributed over the producers according to their respective achievements, but the distribution took place without the intervention of money under a form of direct regulation by the community or the state. That system was referred to by the term “direct product exchange.” In the early period of the Soviet system, the establishment of such a form of distribution was attempted, but this was at a time when agriculture was still in private hands. In other words, a socialist form of distribution was superimposed over a partly capitalist system of production. The New Economic Policy (NEP) put an end to this anomaly, later dubbed “war communism.” And the NEP not only placed the market between state industry and private agriculture but also introduced various money and market forms in the sphere of state industries themselves. But it remained dogma that, once the private ownership of the means of production had been overcome, money and the market would be replaced by direct product exchange.
