ABSTRACT
Stalinist political economy was to play an important role in two contradictory ways. On the one hand, it inspired conservatives, who strove to maintain the traditional system. On the other, it was the beginning of the evolution of reformist economic thought, which can be interpreted as a gradual but growing intellectual emancipation from the Stalinist dogmas. In Stalinist thought, the "socialist mode of production" was seen as the mirror image of capitalism. Socialism is a regime based on social ownership of the means of production under two forms: state property, and cooperative property. In Stalinist doctrine, the idea of a planned economy had a dual and ambiguous meaning. It implied that the system was subject to state planning but also that it was developing in accordance with the plan, at least potentially. The apologetic arid rather crude statements of the 1930s did not admit that any dysfunctional or disproportionate outcomes were possible in a socialist economy.
