No matter how large the failure of official Communist policy, there was no turning back. In the United States, when a policy fails, we simply throw more money at it as that is obviously why the failure. In the Soviet system, increased demands came to be the obvious answer to a failed policy.
Years ago, I learned that the Soviet Union built more tons of machines in a certain category than any other nation in the world. They built so many of them that they had warehouses of those machines, all locked up and rusting as they could not sell them. Why? Well, the order had come done to build so many tons of those machines so the plant executives, all good Communists, simply made their machines heavier; so heavy that in fact a standard factory floor would crack and collapse under their weight. No one wanted those heavy machines. But it gets better as after the good Communist managers had delivered their required tonnage of machines, they built a few more useless, heavy machines and for their efforts they all received medals for a job well done. The same games were played in agriculture (dampen the wheat so it is heavier, and you exceeded your quota) and other industries as the glories of centralized planning spread throughout the entire Communist system.
