USSR Domestic & International Success

[Killer300]

Well, it's not exactly possible for me to talk much about it since I work in financial analysis, but there's a bit of that in these articles. http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/381ba69a-01e3-11e4-bb71-00144feab7de.html#axzz38udN1B6j, http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-06-27/china-profit-rise-masks-state-enterprise-weakness

Only able to read the 2nd source, which leads to an interesting point(albeit perhaps not one that really discredits yours).

Namely, if there whole point is stimulus, wouldn't it possibly matter less if their profits grew? If they're providing economic stimulus mind you.

Then you have the fact that high-tech foreign firms working in China typically form JVs with a state-owned enterprise, with agreements to transfer production technology. The state-owned enterprise then gets the blueprints and then takes separate orders from domestic buyers. It's all in line with China's stated policy of nurturing industrial champions (as with most other East Asian states).

Interesting to note.

 

[Oba]

I would dispute that planned economies are less innovative than market economies, at least when one factors in the use-value of their inventions.

For example, in a planned economy - which, as Killer300 pointed out, need not use a command system like the OTL USSR did (by contrast, the decentrally planned economic system of Allende's Chile is a great example of this and of the usage of computers in economic planning).

And innovation was more impressive in the USSR than you may be aware of: Space stations; orbital spaceflight; satellites; interplanetary probes and sample-return probes; blood banks; carbon nanotubes; civilian nuclear power; fast-neutron nuclear reactors; Kalina cycle heat engines; Tetris; ion-drive spacecraft; volumetric holography; masers; LEDs; theremins; and so on and so forth: These are all Soviet inventions and discoveries.

But it's important to mention that economic planning in market economies also allowed: The Integrated circuit; the (manned) moon landings; Interstellar spaceflight; and the Sequencing of the Human Genome come to mind.

And by the way: The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is in no way incentivized by the free price system or a free market economy, it exists in spite of it. Besides, Bill Gates is still the one choosing what to do with the money, as in the economic system he is in, it's "his", even though he really just got it from creating an artificial scarcity of information, by patenting Windows, Word, the XBox, and so on.

 

[crooked s]

success of revolution in a major industrial economy, probably Germany, is a prerequisite of an internationally successful USSR. Defeat of the german revolution was a disaster for the communists

 

[TumblrShipper]

Pretty much have the USSR more 'democratic', and that World War I goes worse so Germany and Hungary join the communist sphere. Poland falls/goes communist as well so the red tide spreads across all of Eastern Europe, and swallows France too (France also has similar issues as well as Italy)

ENDPOINT: Continental Europe except for Norway/Sweden and Spain are communist

also, the US is neutral in WWI.

Also, have the US go down the shitter with race wars and revolutions and attempted fascist coups and whatever.

 

[RousseauX]

And innovation was more impressive in the USSR than you may be aware of: Space stations; orbital spaceflight; satellites; interplanetary probes and sample-return probes; blood banks; carbon nanotubes; civilian nuclear power; fast-neutron nuclear reactors; Kalina cycle heat engines; Tetris; ion-drive spacecraft; volumetric holography; masers; LEDs; theremins; and so on and so forth: These are all Soviet inventions and discoveries.

Soviet planned systems (and planned economic systems in general) are pretty good at developing "first-generation" technologies. Just as government agencies developed computers or ARPNET or nuclear weapons in the US.

But planned economics are pretty terrible at developing them for consumer uses. This is why once the government pioneered computing languages or the internet it's the private sector that actually developed them into consumer products. This is why, for instance, one the most popular product, the Iphone, is developed by a private firm as oppose to some government agency. Bell laboratories developed C, Microsoft developed accessible OSes and Blizzard made Warcraft etc.

And by the way: The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is in no way incentivized by the free price system or a free market economy, it exists in spite of it.

Well actually Bill Gates donates his money to feel good about himself which I would argue is exactly how the market incentives donations because it's ultimately about spending money to feel good whether it's donating to charity or through buying a Mercedes or w/e.

Besides, Bill Gates is still the one choosing what to do with the money, as in the economic system he is in, it's "his", even though he really just got it from creating an artificial scarcity of information, by patenting Windows, Word, the XBox, and so on.

The Xbox is an actual physical commodity so I would argue the scarcity is not artificial.

It's not even all that scarce for Windows and Word (because they are trivial to pirate and nobody cares because even if MSFT sues you an individual don't have enough money to make it worth it), the way Microsoft actually make money from that is through enterprise. Which is to say they mostly make money by selling it to other companies (who can't pirate it because you can actually sue them and they'd have money to pay you with) and I really don't have a problem with Microsoft charging Exxon Mobile $500/per Windows license.

 

[RousseauX]

Not disagreeing per say, but doesn't China sort of contest the first? Yes, they're state capitalist, but from what I understand they have state capitalist elements.

The Chinese economy is pretty nefarious when it comes to ownership. But planning per see has being moribund since the 1990s. SoEs functions more as government owned corporations than as part of a planned economy.

There's a bunch of clearly state-owned industries in the "commanding heights", but those are pretty much either losing money and require subsidies from other, more profitable industries, or provide shitty service but survives because there's no alternative (Chinese telecom lol).

There's a bunch of industries where ownership is pretty clearly private but in between there's a lot of industries in which ownership is...difficult to determine. How much % share does a Party official need to have in a factory for it to be state owned? Is it state owned if it got "privatized" but the guy running it is the exact same guy who ran it when it was state owned and seems to be bribes from his former superiors?

But in general though, the pattern is for semi-private and private industries to actually make profit, which results in large foreign exchange reserve which in turn gets funneled into state banks which then gets funneled into SoEs to keep them afloat so I wouldn't call it a glowing success or anything.

 

[Charles RB]

If the proposed collectives-and-oblasts model works, what impact does this have on other communist movements around the world? Do you still get China going its own way (and the rivalries that caused)?

Do you still have the Comintern in the same form for that matter, because would a less centralised USSR where Stalin never rises be able to pull it off?

You pretty much need the U.S. to either balkanize or become Communist, this I agree with.

I'm assuming that would be more likely to happen if the USSR was seen to be functioning - "look how things work there, why can't we have that?". If there's a Red Scare and people thinking Luther King is a commie in OTL, what backlash would you get if there's a bigger domestic communist movement? Things could get nasty and nastiness can weaken states at bad times.

 

[GeographyDude]

Alright, the guy who comes after Lenin, it could be a lady but I think most of Lenin's lieutenants were guys,

. . . so this guy is loosey-goosey. He keeps NEP going.

and he realizes that if the laws are pro-union, say if the union has 60% of the power and the company 40, that will get pretty much achieve everything we want.

And if the workers drive a company into the ground, well, the 3rd, 4th, 5th time, they'll learn. And being out of work for two or three months is plenty of punishment.


PS Oh, yes, importantly, Stalin is relegated to something like making steel or building a train line. He can be a fiery leader, he can get things done, but everything he does is largely transparent. And he has no control of a security force whatsoever.

 

[Killer300]

The Chinese economy is pretty nefarious when it comes to ownership. But planning per see has being moribund since the 1990s. SoEs functions more as government owned corporations than as part of a planned economy.

There's a bunch of clearly state-owned industries in the "commanding heights", but those are pretty much either losing money and require subsidies from other, more profitable industries, or provide shitty service but survives because there's no alternative (Chinese telecom lol).

There's a bunch of industries where ownership is pretty clearly private but in between there's a lot of industries in which ownership is...difficult to determine. How much % share does a Party official need to have in a factory for it to be state owned? Is it state owned if it got "privatized" but the guy running it is the exact same guy who ran it when it was state owned and seems to be bribes from his former superiors?

But in general though, the pattern is for semi-private and private industries to actually make profit, which results in large foreign exchange reserve which in turn gets funneled into state banks which then gets funneled into SoEs to keep them afloat so I wouldn't call it a glowing success or anything.

True, although in some cases, it doesn't quite seem the nationalized firms are supposed to make money, but honestly, that's a debate for another time. (Nationalized firms aren't something to use China as an example of, to say the least.)

But really, that goes back to my earlier point. The USSR could've had its cake and eaten it too by just using cooperatives for agriculture and consumer goods. Decentralized, yet still Socialist.

 

[GeographyDude]

What if during the later days of Lenin and afterwards, some of the senior Soviet leadership get into the British utilitarians, like James Mill, Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill, and all those cool cats. In part to quote it back to the British, but it's also a new intellectual flavor.

And it lightens the leadership up to some extent.