His economic reforms undermined the moribund, centrally planned economy without establishing a functioning market to replace it, leading to widespread shortages, rationing, and public discontent.
The purpose of these reforms, however, was to prop up the existing centrally planned economy, unlike later reforms, which tended toward market socialism.
Because the means of production would be controlled by a single entity, approximating prices for capital goods in a planned economy would be impossible.
They presented various and contradictory solutions: communalism, cooperatives or corporations, return to the earth, planned economy, technocracy rule, etc.