On Sep 10, 2010, at 10:17 AM, Wojtek S wrote:
> I would not use the GDP as the basis for measuring socialism, because
> it reflects mainly the volume of market transactions and defines away all
> non-market transactions as being "outside production boundaries."
For sure, but these eminently bourgeois numbers show that the USSR made great material progress during the first decades of its existence - especially impressive considering the declining trends that pre- and postdated it - using bourgeois standards. And even some fairly Soviet-friendly sorts would concede that the 1970s and 1980s were pretty stagnant in every sense.
Doug