The Law of Priority Development of Producers' Goods

One of the most commonly held theories among Soviet economists for a long time is that the production of the means of production should outpace the production of the means of consumption. This is indeed, one of the fundamental "laws" of development of a socialist economy, according to the official textbook Political Economy. Although Soviet economists have differed amongst themselves in their explanation of the "law", yet few, if any, have explicitly denied its validity. In more recent writings, some of the more extreme arguments used to demonstrate the law have come to be widely attacked; but even academician Arzumanian, who was most forthright in this respect, did conclude his set of two articles in the Pravda by upholding the law in a rather mild form.