Despite an extensive literature, we still know relatively little about how the industrial ministry, or the People's Commissariat as it was called in the 1930s, really operated. Industrial ministries were the highest managers of production (khoziaistvenniki). They, not Gosplan, carried out most operational planning. Insofar as ministers were responsible for final results, they took selfish actions to protect themselves (see Chapter 6). The struggle over control of resources was an even more basic source of conflict. The dictator desired to own and control resources, but producers had operational control of capital assets and, at least initially, physical control over output. Whoever controlled capital and output exercised power.