ABSTRACT
Socialist development was a concerted project, subject to rational design and directed execution, unlike capitalism, which had developed 'anarchically' and spontaneously. Socialism was to be 'regulated not by the blind forces of the market and competition, but by a consciously carried out plan'. The legal and institutional machinery for planning was under construction from the outset; Gosplan, the state planning agency, was created in 1921, originally to perform consultative and advisory tasks, but soon assuming general directive tasks. An Economic Code might have made eminent sense to a certain faction of academic lawyers wishing to see the heart and soul of the entire Soviet project, the national economy, given the same legal dignity as the sphere of social relations, or that of the imposition of criminal liability, and duly systematised and rationalised. The treatment of labour is a particularly fraught example of the cross-currents and complexities that the Soviet style of regulation generated and that it in turn reflected.
