ABSTRACT
Hence the great importance of the calendar, and the phenomenon of ‘storming’, of a mad rush to fulfill the plan in the last few days of the month, quarter or year, followed by a slack and disorganised period in which production falls sharply until the next mad rush. The storming cycle may then be suitable as a characteristic indicator of the presence of a central planning regime, much as the progressive predominance of market relations and as manufacturing mode of production in nineteenth-century Europe was signalled by the emergence of the modern capitalist business cycle. The issue can be resolved by a more extensive examination of the data than was undertaken by Hutchings. An important proximate but, of course, ultimate explanation for storming is that once it exists in certain parts of the productive chain it may be forced upon other sections of the economy, since they cannot proceed with production in the absence of the necessary inputs.
