>>From: Kelley <the-squeeze at pulpculture.org>
>
>> excellent evidence for the failure of soviet socialism as specific
>> to the logic of soviet state socialism--internal to it, not the
>> result of external pressures or an accident of megalomaniac
>> leadership.
>> to which Chris sez:
> It does presuppose an outside world with elites Soviet elites could
> compare them too. Wouldn't have mattered much if the USSR had spanned
> the globe (until we make contact with the imperialist Martians).
the failure in order to be specific to the soviet state as it developed, was of necessity a failure of the soviet state as it existed under specific conditions, so Chris is surely correct. these conditions certainly included the "free world" - i.e. the cold war.
yet soviet socialism was a collective agent, and one of great power. able to defeat the nazis after the european bourgeois liberal democratic societies had succumbed. so Kelley is surely right that the soviet failure had (crucially) among its causes an internal failure, not the result of external pressures or an accident of megalomaniacal leadership.
of the explanations available (and i don't count "human nature" as an explanation, but more a verbal way of throwing up your hands and walking away), the best is from Paul Sweezy (now 93 & a sweetheart). he wrote:
"When the bureaucratically administered economy runs into difficulties, as it certainly must, there are two politically opposite ways in which a solution must be sought. One is to weaken the bureaucracy, politicize the masses, and ensure increasing initiative and responsibility to the workers themselves. This is the road toward socialist relations of production. The other way is to put increasing reliance on the market, not as a temporary retreat (like Lenin's NEP) but as an ostensible step toward a more efficient "socialist" economy....It is, I submit, the road back to class dominance and ultimately the restoration of capitalism."
he wrote this in 1970. if you want to argue with it, make a prediction and later we can discuss how well you understood how things work. in 2036, say.
john mage