Użyteczność publiczna jako sfera funkcjonowania przedsiębiorstw państwowych okresu PRL — kilka uwag w odniesieniu do ustawy z 25 września 1981 roku o przedsiębiorstwach państwowych
Public Utility as a Sphere of Functioning of State Enterprises during the Polish People's Republic — A Few Remarks in Relation to the Act of 25 September 1981 on State Enterprises

Summary/Abstract: This article offers and analysis of state-owned enterprise as one of the basic entities of the planned economy of the Polish People’s Republic—a centralized, somewhat authoritarian economy, subordinated to the leading idea of the totalitarian state of the time, determined on economic grounds, among other things, by the need to implement top-down economic plans. The economic system based on dominant state ownership, not taking into account the issue of supply and demand on a rational basis, was thus subordinated to the political principles of its time—which entailed limited freedoms, including economic ones, with a negligible role of private property—implemented and carried out by the totalitarian state that was the Polish People’s Republic. Economic entities operating within this system—particularly the dominant state-owned enterprises—can be considered a very particular breed of entrepreneurs due to their ownership structure (by the state), role in the legal and economic structure of the totalitarian state of the time, and the scope of implementation of its tasks (based on top-down imposed economic plans). On the one hand, these enterprises could or were supposed to—at least formally—conduct their activities based on economic calculation, the principles of rational economy and a kind of self-financing. On the other hand, this activity was subordinated to the idea of top-down economic plans defined and imposed for implementation, both those of a global nature, i.e. national, and those of a smaller degree and scale of territorial scope, i.e. local plans. Hence, these entities, despite a certain formally defined (at least in the case of enterprises operating on general principles) rationality, operated in realities and conditions that limited their independence in terms of tasks, decision-making, economic and financial matters due to their functioning in an authoritarian political system and the economic system derived from it. The above restrictions concerned both state-owned enterprises operating on general principles and those that conducted their activities in the public utility sphere. This sphere, due to its characteristics, was not precisely defined by law, and it seems to indicate a certain lack of decision-making, implementation, and consequently economic independence of the then state-owned enterprises in conducting their activities in the public utility sphere. Non-independence, which seems a sine qua non characteristic of totalitarian state systems, also manifested in a certain dependence or interdependence—which occured both on formal and legal grounds and financially—of these enterprises from their founding bodies (usually local state administration bodies). The founding bodies of enterprises conducting activities in the public utility sphere, under the then statutory regulations, could influence both the scope of the tasks of these entities, their internal regulations, and their revenues.

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