Historical test of Soviet planning
"Justin Schwartz" <jkschw at hotmail.com>
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>CB: The world market is not quite a good judge of "adequate" consumer
>goods. I'm thinking anthropological and historical and UN type standards
>must be brought to bear , from the standpoint of the best interest of the
>human race.
Here and elsewhere you amke the point that many of the goods we have under capitalism might not be so regarded from the perspective of humanity. Presumably you mean things like widespread individual ownership of cars and the like. That is true, but it's not my point. My point is comparative. Centralized planning systems produced a much lower level of material wealth,
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CB: I have adduced argument and evidence which raises big doubts about your ability to generalize like this about centralized planning systems and material wealth. You started out talking about "adequate consumer goods". Now you have gone to "material wealth" . They are not the same thing. I your statement here is not supported or supportable. ^^^^^^^
with a lot of stiff that didn't work, at far gereaterwaste of resources and effort than developed market systems.
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CB: You in no way have demonstrated far greater waste of resources and effort than in capitalist market systems.
Further, you can't isolate the "advanced" part of the capitalist market from its backward sectors. Brazil, Mexico, Indonesia are all counted on the capitalist marke side of the ledger in this comparison. That brings the capitalist market score way down in the competition. The Market is always international, with colonies as part of the system.
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Maybe in a socialist market of the sort that I described we'd make different things--fewer cars, for example. But that's consistent with my critique.
>CB: lso, not only did 20th Century world market include many explicitly anti-communist blockades and slanderous campaigns, but most of the world's countries and certainly most of histories peoples did not have "world market 20th Century" most favored goods. So, my statement is substantially accurate.
Justin:Not at all. I don't say capitalism is fabulous in every way. I say, rather, that for conser and producer goods, markets are better than planning. They don't solve all the problems. Among otherthings, they don't solve problems of inequality taht you mention. That is why we need socialist property relations as well as markets, and democratic control of the economy as well.
>Even by not producing goods that the world market endorsed, the Soviet
>Union produced an godzilla sized basket of "adequate" goods.
>
But it wasn't good enough.
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CB: What capitalism is doing is not good enough.
The Soviet Union didn't fall because of central/holistic planning failing , but rather because of war and threat of war by imperialism.
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>jks: The USSR was not competing with ancient
>Sumeria.
>
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>CB: Relevant for what ? You said they didn't produce adequate consumer
>goods. Adequate for what ? If with all that was put on the Soviets after
>being an extremely backward economic country before the revolution, the
>system produces goods better than all countries but the most advanced
>capitalist countries, better than or as good as all the minor capitalist
>countries, that's the relevant comparison for the real.
But thsi concedes the point, that the advanced capitalsit countries beat the USSR on the consumerist virtues.
^^^^^^ CB: But "beating " on consumerist virtues is winning in commodity fetishism, the illusory victory from the standpoint of humanity. Such virtues are not something that makes capitalism the better choice over socialism for humanity. Consumerist values are illusory wealth. They are part of the workers' labor being alienated from them and then turning back on the workers in a form that oppresses and stresses them. Goods turn into their opposite: bads.
>
>CB: It is not accurate to portray the [capitalist west and the USSR] as
>chosen competitors. The Soviets' preference was for revolutions in the
>capitalist countries, not competition with them. Also, the "competition"
>you keep referring to , is not the main test of whether a planned system
>can produce adequate consumer goods.
Well, revolutional would have been a lot more likely if the USSR had been able to produce the level of prospersity the advanced west offered the working classes in the core countries. So yes, there was an ideological competition that the USSR lost on economic grounds as well as political ones.
CB: The main cause of that failure was the imperialist war and threat of war and blockades of the USSR, not central planning as you are claiming on this thread.
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>CB: I do not at all think that the world market of the 20/21st Century is
>an all around optimum measure of the goods that are best produced for the
>human race. Some of it is good. A lot of it is horrible.
Agreed.
> So. in that regard using the record in the world market for goods is just
not a good instrument for deciding what is not only adequate but actually
good, in both senses. And no I don't think the market reflects the good
judgment or free judgment of the great mass of consumers just because they
buy "all" the stuff. Advertising , keeping up with the Jones, bourgeois
ideology, et al. contaminate the thinking of the actually existing mass of
consumers. In other words, there's a lot of disinformation in the price
system.
>
No doubt. But you can't fool all the people all the time. If your TV explodes or your weashing machine doesn't work, no amount of advertising will sell it in the medium run.
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CB: There's a bumpersticker: shoot your tv. The thing is advertising gets people to buy tvs and then tvs show them lots of advertising and then they feel that if they don't buy all this stuff they see advertised on tv then they are consumer good poor, not up with the Jones.
There's is big question as to whether actuallly existing tvs are goods or bads, on balance when you consider their total effect on people. Television is integral to brainwashing the U.S. working class today.
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>I think if we were to have a world revolution today, within a very few
>years many of the "goods" that had been judged good by the capitalist word
>market would be discarded, not just because of some technological
>supercession, but because the want structure of bourgeois society is too
>phat. We can be readily happy with a lot less stuff.
>
Are you one of those socialsit puritand Joanna was worried about?
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CB: No a nudist. Why do we need so many clothes ?
^^^^^^^^
CB: Capitalist war not holistic planning caused the lack of food when it
occurred.
>
This is not correct. The two worst communist famines were the collectization famine in Ukraine in 1930-32, which was simply and straighforwardly due to Stalinist brutality--the "war against the kulaks"--
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CB: Assuming for a moment that it was due to Stalinist brutality, then you would be admitting that it is not due to holistic planning. So, we agree. This worst famine was not due to centralized planning.
I think the cause and effect are a bit more complex than you say. If there was no threat of war from the capitalists, the internal conflicts would not have to have been so sharp, and not resulted in deadly food fights.
I see we agree below
Justin: and the famine attendant on China's Great Leap Forward in 1958-59, which was due to appallingly stupid planning mistakes. Neither was attributable to capitalist war. But In general I agreed with you that actually feeding most people was a success of centrally planned systems.
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>A main lesson from the first era of socialism and a main obstacle that the
>next era of socialism must overcome is this advantage that capitalism's
>savage viabilty and preference for war gives capitalism over socialism
>
>
I am not persuaded. Communist countries went to war with each other; the USSR was a major arms dealer (weapons being among its few world market grade products), and their record with other countries isn't so marvelous--e.g., the USSR in Afghanistan.
^^^^^^^ CB: The only example, in remarkable contrast with the U.S. and imperialism, making the point of how different the USSR was.
The main response to what you say above is that the Soviet Union became militarized in truly exigent defense against the biggest wars and threats of wars in the history of humanity. That the SU was militarized , as you briefly allude to, _is_ a key link in the argument I am making. They had to overmilitarize for truly exigent defense, this drained them both economically and democratically. By putting so much military heat on the SU, capitalism was able to prevent it from having the democracy it needed to survive as a socialist socieity. Socialism needs peace and democracy to survive more than capitalism, yet capitalism can force socialism down to its level, especially when the military competition is between a less economically developed socialist country and developed capitalist countries.
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And in the last 50 yearsm the rich capiatlsit countries have not gone to war with each other, nor does it seem that they are likely to again.
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CB: Yes, they united against the SU , ending interiimperialist war , negating a major aspect of old imperialism ! This made the military assault on the SU even more concentrated . See above argument.
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>
> >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.
Why not vice versa?
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CB: Because the SU did not attack the capitalist countries and they did attack the SU. There is no symetry there.
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Capiatlsit countries had to deal with facism,
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CB: Fascism was the main weapon capitalism used militarily against the SU.
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and the military strength of the USSR created a pernament war economy in the west. How come it didn't cripple capitalist efforts at prosperity?
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CB: They were advanced. Russia was backward. This is part of the unspoken rationale why Marx, Engels Lenin all considered that a backward country could not make it alone in the long run without being joined by an advanced economic country.
>>
>CB: I have produced evidence which supports a different thesis as the
>explanation for the comparative quality and quantity of Soviet consumer
>goods.
>
>Perhaps there is some underdetermination of theory here :>)
Surely there is. But I have raised some problems for your theory.
^^^^^^^ CB; And I with yours