State (Government) Economic Programming under Capitalism, medium- and long-term regulation of capitalist reproduction to stabilise the rates of growth, alleviate structural disproportions, and ease social tensions. It is the highest form of state (government) regulation of the capitalist economy. Unlike other forms of regulation, it attempts to combine the objects, subjects, aims and means of state economic policy in a single system and for a long period. An industry, region, or national problem may become a focus of state (government) economic programming. Historically, programming evolved from individual industrial and regional to national. The major objectives of government national programmes are as follows: to smooth over the cycle, improve the economy’s structure by industry and region, stimulate scientific and technical progress and train personnel, to change the balance of irfcomes of various population groups, and to conserve the environment. Current (anti-cycle) and structural (by industry and region) programmes play the most important role; they may be either regular or emergency. Regular medium-term national programmes are usually outlined for five years, with annual revisions, and extensions made for another year (sliding programmes). Emergency programmes are launched in critical situations, e. g. during crisis or sky-rocketing inflation, and have set time limit. Some capitalist countries have recently started to map out programmes for periods longer than five years. The elaboration of programmes is the responsibility of state institutions, which compile them and must supervise and control their implementation. Programmes are also compiled by special government agencies (e. g.—Le Commissariat general du plan—the General Commissariat for Planning—in France), and if no such agency exists, by the ministries of the economy and finance. In compiling 340 programmes, the services of representatives of employers’ associations, chambers of industry and commerce, and central banks are widely employed, and various commissions and councils are established, staffed by experts and agents of the largest monopolies. The development of state economic programming is a result of the far-reaching qualitative changes in the productive forces, which have heightened all the intrinsic contradictions of capitalism. Programming is an attempt to adjust modern capitalism to the requirements of the productive forces, which are striving "to the abolition of their quality as capital, to the practical recognition of their character as social productive forces" (F. Engels, Anti-Diihring, p. 335). Under private property, however, attempts of this kind can be only partially successful. Despite the growing economic role of the bourgeois state and the evolution of state economic programming, the fundamental contradictions inherent in the capitalist system of relations of production have not been eliminated. Economic crises, unemployment, inflation, the squandering of national wealth and structural imbalances are graphic testimony of this fact. Although it does tackle certain economic and social problems, capitalist programming is in no position, either today or in the future, to resolve the basic contradictions of capitalism, because these regulating activities have objective limits determined by the very nature of the capitalist system itself. Private capital subjugates its activities to state programming only if the state ensures it higher profits. Hence state economic programming under capitalism, unlike socialist planning, can only be indicative, or recommendatory. Another reason why it is limited and contradictory is that the interests of conflicting groups of monopoly capital are involved. State orders and financial stimulation within the limits of state programming diversely influence the competitive power of individual monopolies and cause those whose interests are infringed upon to resist. State programming agencies are constantly subject to pressure from different monopoly groups with clashing interests. The restricted character of state economic programming is also manifest in its innate contradictions, involving, for example, the contradictory nature of emergency and medium-term, current and structural, regional and sectoral structural programmes. As a result—although state economic programming has a certain impact on the growth rates and structure of the economy, easing some of the contradictions typical of the capitalist mode of production—it is unable to overcome its basic contradictions or free capitalism of its intrinsic vices. Progressive forces led by the communist parties in the capitalist countries are working to introduce democratic elements into state economic programming and turn it from an instrument promoting the interests of finance capital into a way of dealing with social and economic problems in the interests of the working people.