The Soviet economy was in practice run as if it was one huge company, with each industry being one division of the company, all the revenue flowing up to HQ then being allocated in budgets for each division, targets for each set, and so on.
This is "efficient" as it reduces friction - but when HQ makes mistakes in budgets or targets, the entire economy fails, whereas in the West, the failure is isolated to one company, and over the long term, that redundancy is massively more productive. In fact in the West, the assets of the failing company would most likely be bought by a rival, and no productive capacity would be lost. In the Soviet system, you might end up with a million tractors but no crops to harvest!
This is "efficient" as it reduces friction - but when HQ makes mistakes in budgets or targets, the entire economy fails, whereas in the West, the failure is isolated to one company, and over the long term, that redundancy is massively more productive. In fact in the West, the assets of the failing company would most likely be bought by a rival, and no productive capacity would be lost. In the Soviet system, you might end up with a million tractors but no crops to harvest!