They could certainly see that it was a disaster for them personally. I don't think they thought in terms of "oh no, this is wasting resources." More of, "oh crap, my children just died of starvation."
I mean, really. I don't think anybody doubts that what made Soviet victory in WWII possible was precisely the boggles-the-mind industrial growth of the 30s, which was quite beneficial for the (non-starving) majority of the population. That's why Stalin is posthumously popular in most of the former USSR today.
--- On Thu, 8/13/09, James Heartfield <Heartfield at blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:
>
> On a far greater scale, many peasants could see that forced
> collectivisation was a disaster. You can argue that they did
> not have a viable political alternative, but thousands, if
> not hundreds of thousands of them did indeed alert the
> soviet leaders to the disastrous consequences of their
> policies, that they would lead to famine and the wrecking of
> basic tools and wasting of resources.
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