Centralization

Justin Schwartz jkschw at hotmail.com
Wed Jul 3 14:11:39 PDT 2002



>
>Justin Schwartz wrote:
>
>>Read The Turning Point by, damnh I forget, a couple of top Gorby advisers,
>>lots of graet stories to this effect.
>
>Nikolai Shmelev, I believe, who was quite the Market Stalinist, as I
>recall.

Right on the name, anyway.

I'm familiar with all these stories. They provide as fair a
>picture of the Soviet economy as a tale of nothing but fraudulent
>accounting and mass homelessness would of American capitalism.

OK, you and Charles can cozy up with stories about how good it was in the good old days. I actually know, or knew, a lot about the Soviet economy, and in my judgment the picture in the Thurning Point was fair, sober, reasonable, and realistic. It is not the case, as your analogy suggests, that the Soviet economy basically healthy with some glitches. One thing that is reasonably certain is that in 1979-85, the Soviet economy went into deep crisis, and this was geberally recognized. That's why the appointed Gorby to be the GS and let him essentially dismantle the economy and their old structures of power. Moreover, thsi was not new. The deterioration had been obvious to the Soviet leadership since the mid 1960s, and to everyone else. Furthermore, we were addressing a very aprticualr point, having to dow ith the incentives involved in plan targeting. Here Smelev's examples are right on point.

jks

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