Q.Mention any three features that distinguish the Soviet economy from that of a capitalist country like the US.

The Soviet economy rested on state ownership of all productive assets—land, factories, mines—whereas capitalist economies like the US built themselves around private ownership and the profit motive. This meant that in the Soviet Union, the state decided what to produce, how much, and at what price through a central planning authority (Gosplan), while in the US market forces of supply and demand guided those decisions through competition among private firms.

Second, the Soviet system aimed explicitly at full employment and social welfare, guaranteeing jobs, free healthcare, and subsidized housing to all citizens. Capitalist economies tolerate unemployment as part of the market mechanism and leave many welfare services to private provision or means-tested public programs. …

The Soviet Union constructed an economic model that stood in deliberate opposition to Western capitalism, particularly the American system. Where the United States allowed markets, private enterprise, and individual profit-seeking to drive economic decisions, the Soviet approach placed the state at the center of all economic activity. This wasn't merely a difference in degree but a fundamental reimagining of how an economy should function and whom it should serve.

State ownership of productive resources formed the bedrock of the Soviet system. The government owned factories, land, mines, and all means of production. No private individual could own a steel mill, a farm collective, or even a small workshop in the way American entrepreneurs owned businesses. This meant that all economic surplus—what capitalists would call profit—flowed to the state rather than to private shareholders or business owners. The logic was straightforward: if the community as a whole owned the resources, then the community as a whole should benefit from what those resources produced. In contrast, the American economy rested on private property rights, where individuals and corporations owned capital and reaped the rewards of successful enterprise.

Central planning replaced the market mechanism as the coordinating force of the economy. In Moscow, the State Planning Committee (Gosplan) drew up detailed Five-Year Plans that set production targets for every sector—how much steel, how many tractors, how much wheat. Factories received instructions about what to produce, in what quantities, and at what price. Wages, employment, and investment decisions all flowed from planners' desks rather than from the invisible hand of supply and demand. The US economy, by contrast, relied on millions of decentralized decisions made by consumers, firms, and investors responding to price signals. If Americans wanted more cars, rising demand and prices would signal manufacturers to produce more; Soviet planners would simply decree the number of vehicles to be built, regardless of what queues at shops might suggest about actual demand. …