[lbo-talk] BDL on Sweezy

[Grant Lee]

Brad said:

> To take a country that is a major, major agricultural exporter in
> 1913 and eliminate its agricultural surplus?
>
> To be "essentially self-sufficient" is the same as "not making
> anything anyone else would like to have."


IMO what this exemplifies is that liberal economists simply don't _get_ the
USSR, because (1) they tend to start with the premise that the
political/economic leadership was incompetent and/or evil, (2) it was
organised with long-term objectives which are alien to liberal economics,
such as abolishing (i.e. not reducing or ameliorating) poverty, and/or (3)
they ignore or deal selectively with the historical context/s.

To take (3) and (2) first: for critics of the Soviet economic record, 1913
is a convenient date for comparison, since it avoids dealing with the
non-economy that the Bolsheviks actually faced in _1917_,  i.e. the Russian
Empire was actually in the process of spontaneously _de-industrialising_,
100s of 1000s of people having fled the cities during WW1, as a result of
..... food shortages. (British India was also a major exporter of food
commodities, and the social corollaries of that phenomenon are also
well-known.)

More importantly, in relation to both points (1) and (2): how many Soviet
citizens were going hungry or homeless in 1952? I can guarantee you that it
was exponentially less than the number of the Czar's subjects who were in
1913 (not to mention 1917).

The USSR wasn't "making anything anyone else would like to have", because of
point (2), i.e. the economy was obviously geared to the production of
essential goods and commodities for the domestic market, rather than surplus
goods for export.

regards,

Grant.