ABSTRACT
Aware that at least for the foreseeable future the large public farms will not be able to increase food production to the extent required by the needs of the population, the Gorbachev leadership is looking to private interest, initiative, and labor to come to the rescue. Official benevolence towards the private sector is thus prompted by a desire to have "personal subsidiary" producers contribute more to the solution of the food problem, or at least not cause the situation to become worse by letting what they now contribute fall off. This benevolence is, however, accompanied by an unmistakable intention insofar as policy is concerned not to allow private food production to become a part of the economy that is independent of the public sector and its central planning authority. It is also accompanied by an effort to instill a greater element of private, or personal, motivation in socialized production by introducing an output-oriented system of labor organization and remuneration in subunits of the public farms. The hoped-for result would be the integration of private into socialized production and the reorienting of the latter towards a kind of individualization. Both would have to market their produce through state-controlled public channels.
