Comments at a Symposium to Discuss the Planned Economy as Primary and the Market Economy as Supplementary

Recently Comrade Chen Yun has repeatedly raised the important question of maintaining the planned economy as primary. Socialism should stress the planned economy at all times. Long ago Marx and Engels explained from a theoretical perspective that socialism is bound to implement a planned economy, that is, to implement conscious regulation of the economy on the basis of public ownership and within the whole society. In recent years, in order to enliven the economy, we have adopted reform measures with respect to the microeconomy. However, in the macroeconomy our work in planned management has not caught up. Consequently, although we have made progress in the economic arena, we have also come up against a few problems. They include, for example, the short supply of vegetables in urban areas, the vying of cash crops with grain production for more land, the willingness to work only when the benefits are great, etc. Therefore, we must stress a socialist planned economy in both our theory and practice.