Justin looks at the USSR as a developing society, but its own claim was to be a superior economic formation.
Also he talks down the question of waste and useless goods, but the bureaucracy, not surprisingly, were utterly preoccupied with such things, dedicating endless time and effort to trying to overcome this intrinsic tendency within the soviet 'economy'.
Given the destructive character of forced collectivisation, it is difficult to understand what kind of success Justin is talking about - unless military repression in the countryside and famine in the towns is what we call success. Nor is the reported state of agriculture after collectivisation particularly impressive, with most food rotting in un- refrigerated carriages and in sidings before it ever got to its destination.
The problem with the various estimates of the soviet economy is that they tend to take the soviet figures a a starting point. The CIA used to knock a few percentage points off but essentially still repeated the same base figures - unaware that what was described as output, was just waste (though of course the CIA also had an interest in exaggerating soviet strength to shake more apples off the budget tree). The much- discussed 'surprise' at the collapse of the soviet economy was a consequence of people believing in its fictitious growth, which was about as substantial as Wall Street's.
Why did the USSR fall? Did it ever rise would be a more useful question.
In message <26.4c0c0e8.2636c3da at aol.com>, JKSCHW at aol.com writes
>As everyone here know, I am no defender of planning or authoritarian
>socialism, but Jim's comment here is only one theory, and not necessarily the
>most plausible one. First, high growrth rates for developing societies are
>not unusual, and the USSR did in fact develop from an agricultural to an
>industrial society. Second, estimates of these growth rates do not depend on
>taking Soviet statistics as gospel; there was a lot of good independent work
>to the same point. Third, and on the other side, an average from 1928-41,
>45-75 is not very revealing, since it misses the big fall off from 1960-75,
>when growth rates fell a lot. The highest growth rates are 1922-41 and
>1945-60, reconstruction after war and industrialization, what you'd expect.
>Fourth, many Soviet factories produced much waste, but not all, or the USSR
>would not have attained the very real industrialization and increase in
>living standards it did.
-- Jim heartfield