Under Stalin, "input-output tables" were an unacceptable heresy because they had been devised by Wassily Leontiev, a left-Menshevik emigre. Post-Stalin, the concept of "linear programming" was advocated by H. Kantorovich-- but this too was unacceptable because Kantorovich proved that real planning depended on a realistic set of "shadow prices," and this was incompatible with the colossally irrational price structure of the really existing "Soviet" economy. And so all through the periods of growth, stagnation, decline, and collapse the "Soviet" planners remained lumbered with the clumsy method of "material balances," whose fundamental flaw (emphasizing quantity to the near-total neglect of quality) contributed mightily to the ever-growing inefficiency of the "Soviet" economy.
Shane Mage
"When we read on a printed page the doctrine of Pythagoras that all things are made of numbers, it seems mystical, mystifying, even downright silly.
When we read on a computer screen the doctrine of Pythagoras that all things are made of numbers, it seems self-evidently true." (N. Weiner)