Science, Science and Marxism
From: "Justin Schwartz" <jkschw at hotmail.com>
Planned systems are OK at simply defined crash projects to which unlimited resources can be devoted. The Soviets had a handful of good products in machine tools, weapons systems, and the like. But you can't eat that stuff. Despite decades of efforts under Brezhnev, they failed to develop adequate consumer goods because you can't treat them like Kalashnikovs.
^^^^^^^^
CB: My thought would be that Soviet consumer goods were more "adequate" than those of just about every country in the world except the U.S. , Britain, France ( somewhat), and a couple others. The Soviet consumer goods were more "adequate" than those of all the other societies in history and most of the countries of the world during its existence.
Also, you can't eat machine tools, but it should be noted that the Soviet system definitely provided adequate food for its whole population. So, the problem was not that the system produced things that couldn't be eaten. They did not lack food consumption goods.
Without being subject to the biggest war and threat of war of all times from the imperialist capitalist countries, it is not clear that the Soviet production could have rivalled capitalist consumer good production. Capitalism was able to prevent a true test of the ability of the Soviet socialist and planned system to produce consumer goods, by forcing the Soviet Union to be on a war prepartion and war footing for its entire existence. The history of the Soviet economy does not prove the unplannable thesis of Hayek for that reason.