>>> Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> 06/08/99 03:36PM >>
My point is that the achievements of Soviet industrialization were not
insubstantial. We can argue about what numbers to put on this, but the
central point is being forgotten. We can say that it happened at tremendous
social cost, which it did, but so did British industrialization.
(and earlier)
While Charles's "most rapid" ever characterization may be a bit hyperbolic, it's still way up there. And why is the Soviet Union always compared to Japan and/or the US? In comparison to other "underdeveloped" regions, the 1929-73 period was pretty damned spectacular.
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Charles: A number of issues are now in this thread, which is fine. I just want to remind of the original points at issue when I said the Soviet industrial growth was "the most rapid " in history. I copy below the larger context of my words that Brad D. responded to. Basically in that , Brad thought the IMF would get good historical marks for its influence on the world economy from the mid-90's to the late 90's. This was in response to my asking whether a recent post to the lists estimating 200 million people thrown into poverty by the recent recession ("in Asia and Russia", etc.) didn't demand that the Clinton/IMF regime should be compared to Stalin and Mao regimes. Because Brad has blamed them for causing 30 million deaths (premature deaths, I assume he means).
It is in this context that I hyberboled the "most rapid of all times" Soviet industrial growth. Even if it is the third or second most rapid (or IS it the most rapid starting from 1922 after the revolution and the imperialist encirclement and civil war were ended ) the point is that if Soviet industrial growth was one of the most rapid in history, IT DOES NOT SEEM AS PLAUSIBLE THAT IT IS BLAMEWORTHY FOR 30 MILLION PREMATURE DEATHS, as is Brad's basic assertion on this thread and its antecedent threads.
On the other hand, to the extent Soviet economic policy is to blame, Clinton/IMF policy throwing 200 million people into poverty would be under suspicion for equivalent blame. The latter of course doesn't fit with the typical anti-Soviet propaganda that Brad is espousing.
Charles Brown
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PORTION OF EARLIER POST: Brad D. I do think that the U.S. regimes of the 1980s and 1990s--Reagan and his Congress, Bush and his Congress, and Clinton and his Congress--are going to be judged very, very harshly indeed by History. Their failure to find the resources to do a real Marshall Plan for eastern Europe that might have made what is optimistically called "transition" a great success is a great disaster. (I very much hope that our failure to seriously support reform is not going to make us very sorry after the fact--that the regime that follows Weimar Russia will be much better than the regime that followed Weimar Germany.) And our cutting foreign aid budgets (including debt relief funds) to the bone over the past two decades has greatly worsened possibilities for rapid development on the periphery.
On the other hand, I think that the senior IMF officials of the mid- and late-1990s--Michel Camdessus, Stanley Fischer, Michael Mussa and company--is going to be judged very positively by historians. The 1982 global economic crisis was followed by a near-decade of recession and stagnation--the so-called "lost decade of development"--throughout practically all of Latin America, Africa, and much of South Asia. By contrast the 1994-5 Mexican crisis caused only a one and a half-year long interruption in economic growth. And it looks as though (Indonesia aside, which is still hanging in the balance) the 1997-8 East Asian crisis is also causing only a one or two-year long interruption in economic growth.
Stanley Fischer thinks that the difference is that in the 1990s the IMF went in on a much bigger scale, providing much larger loans in order to try to keep the web of international financial intermediation from unraveling and requiring *immediate* policy changes as a condition for large-scale IMF support. I think that he is right: certainly those in the Reagan and Bush Treasuries who argued that the IMF and the U.S. should play a minimal role in the 1980s Latin American debt crisis, which should be worked out between lenders and borrowers, seem to have done no good service.
Moreover, I suspect that Fischer believes that if the G-7 had given the IMF twice as much in the way of resources it could have done much more, and made the recessions both in Mexico and in Asia much shallower than they turned out to be. I am on Jeff Sachs's side in this one: the big problem with the IMF is that it doesn't have enough money, and so can't make loans big enough for long enough periods at low enough interest rates to be a real world lender-of-last-resort.
Reducing the "slump" phase of the international business cycle at the periphery from a period measured in years to one measured in months is--if it in fact comes to pass--a major, major victory for human possibility.
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Charles: In the larger historical picture the Russian Revolution of 1917 and following most rapid economic development in the history of industrial civilization ; and the Chinese Revolution of 1948 did make great leaps forward economically ( despite the problems of the program of that specific name) and advanced , on balance, the quality and quantity of life for the overwhelming majority of the people in those nations and the many nations who freed themselves from paleo-colonialism based on the support of the Russian and Chinese Revolutions. Many of the shortcomings in this regard were proximately caused by the imperialist nations hateful wars and economic blockades of revolutionary countries, not by the Mao-Tse tung or Stalin and their governments.
This revolutionary enhancement of the quality and quantity of the vast majority is the substance of democracy.
The Reagan/Bush/Clinton and IMF regimes do not have a better record than the communist regimes you criticize on this thread in administering life over death.
Charles Brown