It is an overall thesis of this book that, at the level of instrumental analysis of structure and structural change, there is no basic difference between a laissez-faire market and a collectivist order. This thesis is fully confirmed by the findings reported in Chapter 14. The main phases of goal-adequate adjustment to a higher rate of growth of labor supply – reduction of consumer demand and the liberation of capacity, the application of such capacity to self-augmentation of primary equipment, and the backward shift of part of the capital stock so augmented for the complementary expansion of secondary equipment – are common features of the traverse in both systems. Thus, our earlier set of equations describing these processes is valid also in the collectivist case.

This is by no means true of the motorial processes that generate the structural path. In a collectivist system, not only are the strategic decisions centralized, therefore greatly simplifying coordination, but they are guided by a Plan outlining the future configuration of the overall structure. Hence they are free from the uncertainties that tend to deflect market behavior from the required course. As was emphasized before, collectivist systems have political and administrative problems of their own when it comes to assuring the loyal and effective execution of the directives of the Plan. However, to the extent that these problems can be solved through the proper gratification of bureaucratic incentives, centralized command is likely to overcome the obstacles in the way of an efficient traverse more easily than orientation on ex post variations of prices within a free market.