ABSTRACT
The unresponsiveness of the existing system to user demand is built into its very nature; it arises from its own complexity and from the dominance of production ministries, who issue commands to enterprises and evaluate their performance, and also from the consequences of a sellers’ market. It is only to a limited extent a question of human attitudes: as has repeatedly been noted, even well-motivated directors, planning officials, or retailers are frequently unable to act, because other offices and departments are needed as suppliers, allocators, authorisers. This in turn arises not out of some abstract love of bureaucracy, but out of the functional necessities of a system based on directive planning and administrative allocation of resources.
