Scarcity

[Michael Pugliese]

Did Sartre's argument in Critique of Dialectical Reason over the
practico-inert
and the descent into Stalinism have a side argument about scarcity?
And remember Trotsky's argument that scarcity inelectably leads to a
repressive apparatus that has to police those bread lines. Given the
pre-super computer age that Soviet planning had to exist in, how to balance
and abjudicate the conflicting levels of immediate social need and long term
infrastructure building, was something that overlaid with the vanguard
substitutionism, was bound to lead to disaster. Even w/o the inevitable
pressure of imperialism. All those inputs and outputs, not having a set of
democratic mechanisms, 'er popular, participatory feed-back loop
(cyberneticoid reification I know but don't wanna glide close to idealist,
utopian Albert/Hahnel zone!), the atrocious level of waste and low grade
quality of production, the production quota statistical mirror games
(reminiscent of those kill ratios of the US Army vs. the VC/NLF, (and yes we
killed 2.8 million Vietnamese, making allusion to Westmoreland [Waste More
Land, cf., "These people don't feel the same pain we do, " in Hearts & Minds
doc. '75 Oscar winner]

 Vs. 60 Minutes), the endemic trimphalist falsity of the  Ideology of the
regime vs. the realities, were clear to most Soviet citizens by the late
60's.Did the short circuited reforms of Khruschev's economists in the early
60's have a chance before  Brezhnev et. al. turned the clock back...
Michael Pugliese, disjointed musings...