Mark PS Ah, so it was *variable wages* that buggered up the USSR. I never knew that.
David Welch wrote:
> How about the Soviet press of the time, unless you really believe
> trotskyite saboteurs were to blame for the failings of the first 5 year
> plan. How about Stalin's decision to reintroduce variable wages and the
> profit motive for enterprises.
>
> On Fri, Jul 17, 1998 at 10:27:22PM +0100, Mark Jones wrote:
> > Jim Heartfield said:
> >
> > > Surely the argument of Soviet-US equivalence is blown out of the water
> > > now. Leftists find it difficult to face up to the truth of the matter -
> > > the Soviet economy was even less efficient that capitalism, where there
> > > was at least an unconscious regulator in the market. The Soviet Union
> > > lacked any meachanism for the distribution of labour in society, leading
> > > to grotesque shortages, fragmentation of the national economy,
> > > astonishing levels of waste. The picture of the totalitarian society
> > > owes more to the fears of Hannah Arendt that it does to what was really
> > > happening in the USSR, which was about as monolithic as the Ottoman
> > > Empire.
> > >
> > James, are you going to try and substantiate these wild assertions, or
> > just leave them to crawl off into the night by themselves?
> >
> > --
> > Mark Jones
> > http://www.geocities.com/~comparty
> >
>
> --
> David Welch (welch at mcmail.com)
>
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-- Mark Jones http://www.geocities.com/~comparty