RousseauX
Donor
The Soviets had a decent standard of living even in 1989 it just sucked compared the OECD countries.
WI: Humanitarian Soviet Union
- Thread starter Squall
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The Soviets had a decent standard of living even in 1989 it just sucked compared the OECD countries.
North Korea had only a fraction of the resources the Soviet Union did and it's industrialization was very effective. Then again, this example was admittedly partially bankrolled by the Soviet Union.
You have basically just say they are not a good way to industrialize unless your only goal is to industrialize regardless of the cost to human life. Okay. Yes, and?
As to the "no overall benefit" part: overall benefit to who? Because one can definitely say that the Soviet State benefited overall from its industrialization.
Don't misrepresent what I said. Command socialism is an effective means to rapidly industrialize. It is not an effective means to rapidly industrialize without also paying a large cost in human lives. And it is also not an effective means of sustaining an economy once industrialization is complete.
Do not confuse me saying an action is effective at achieving a goal as either a comment on the morality of it or the suggestion that it is the only effective means of achieving a goal.
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Overwhelming majority of analysis huh? I'd like to know what corner of economic academia you are hanging out in, because there are plenty of papers analyzing successful applications of the command economy to development problems.
Heard of Singapore? Successful example of a command economy. How about South Korea? Command economy for most of its history and generally considered successful. Or that funny little island they call "Japan"? Yeah, command economy kicking ass again. How about a more obscure example - interwar Poland - again, a shining example of what a command economy can do if it's done right. Of course Poland then got flattened with added rape, massacre and looting from both Germany and the Soviet Union, so that ruined the work of a generation, but getting invaded by Nazis and the Soviets isn't a failure of economic policy.
Of course, they key to all the really successful command economies is that they were not ideological exercises. They were adopted as the best model for that country at that time - so when conditions changed, all the successful command economies stopped being so commanding. With the socialist command economy, the selection of policies was corrupted by politics. So sometimes they chose bad options for the sake of pleasing certain power-groups within the state (who of course had convenient ideological explanations for why their interests were the most "communist").
Also, in the case of the Soviet Union, the command economy mostly delivered the goods. When you consider the ideological stupidities built into the system, the corruption that accumulated during the Brezhnev years, the vampire squid that was the Soviet military-industrial complex, the self inflicted wounds caused by the purges - that it only lagged South Korea's growth by fractions of a % is incredible. By 1980, the Soviet Union was one of the wealthiest countries on the planet (per capita) and was in the top ten in the world as far as availability and quality of consumer goods is concerned. The main problem was not that the system didn't deliver the goods, it was that the leadership - and to a lesser extent the public - felt that the "superiority" of Communism should translate into superior provision of goods. Since the USSR was manifestly behind the USA and Japan in these measures, this economic problem threatened the core narrative of the Soviet Empire.
Long story short: never underestimate the ability of bad politics to sabotage the economy.
fasquardon
Did you get this from a an economic report produced in Cuba? Their agricultural production declined 40% from 1978-1982. They needed western imports to feed their people despite controlling the breadbasket of Europe. Their industrial base was old and decrepit from underinvestment. They lagged tremendously in information technology and never really figured out how to make a semiconductor. The best one, their life expectancy actually DECLINED during the 1970's. Something like 64 years to 62 years. Did that happen anywhere in the developed West post WWII? The only thing they did effectively during the 70's and 80's was pump millions of barrels of oil and gas. And when prices declined during the 80s, so did their economy.
You may find this to be splitting hairs, but I think there is a vitally important distinction between "command socialism" (Soviet economic policy from Kruschev on, for example) and Stalinism.
Bluntly, Stalin wasn't a nice guy. Stalin didn't care if millions of people died in the pursuit of his goals, indeed, Stalin was quite happy to actively cause the deaths of millions in order to achieve his political goals (for example reducing the threat of minorities deemed hostile to the state by reducing the size of the populations in question). Indeed, there are indications that Stalin may well have gotten a kick out of his mass murder.
None of Stalin's mass murders were needed to achieve Soviet economic goals. The deaths were simply the product of a state that was either uncaring about human suffering, or actively causing human suffering in the pursuit of its political goals. The nature of the state was largely (though by no means exclusively, I grant you) caused by the malicious nature of the man on top.
And where Stalin marked a path, leaders like Mao were proud to follow. Because, you know, Stalin was awesome, and great communist leaders should be like Stalin.
fasquardon
I kind of do find it to be splitting hairs, but we'll have to agree to disagree. Khruschev may not have been as brutal or paranoid as Stalin, but he was still a totalitarian dictator who had no problem executing dissidents if he felt it was necessary.
I don't really agree with this. Many (not all, but many) of the famines were an effect of collectivization, not a act of maliciousness on Stalin's part, and he was far from the only one in the Soviet leadership to show callous indifference to the suffering caused by those famines. And both the purges and gulags probably would have been smaller in scale (how much smaller is a matter of some debate) but make no mistake that they would still have occurred. In short: the way the Soviet political system was set-up was guaranteed to lead it into a totalitarian police state. It is not a question of whether there would have been mass murders in that system, only how big those mass murders would be.
Actually, they did. Almost. Kind-of.
See the story is that in the late-60s the Soviets actually had a pretty thriving electronics development industry which was close to developing a 16-bit microprocessor, something that wouldn't be seen in the West for another decade. Then the KGB got their hands on a copy of the Intel 4004 4-bit processor and the leaders of GOSPLAN, who had no background in electronics and were operating under a assumption that "western technology is always better", ordered that the 4004 be reverse engineered and implemented as the mainstay semiconductor and the basis for future development. As a result, they killed their domestic electronics development.
It strikes me as a pretty clear failure of command economies in a post-industrialization environment.
It then shot back up in the late-70's before absolutely collapsing along with the USSR after 1991.
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Have you looked at US measures of agricultural productivity, industrial technology and life expectancy over the last 40 years?
I cherry pick the right figures, I could make it look like the US from 1990-2010 is just like the Soviet Union from 1970-1990 - i.e. a tottering inefficient economy crumbling around the edges and ready to collapse the first time the political leadership does something really stupid.
Or I could make the UK look like the Soviet Union. Or Germany, or France, or Japan... Indeed, there are people out there who are genuinely convinced that all these countries at various points in the last 40 years have been only one step away from well and truly going to the dogs.
Any number of countries have their problems - this does not mean that things do not also go right in those same countries.
So was the Soviet economy deeply dysfunctional in the 1980s? Yes. Was it also one of the most developed and productive economies in the world? Again, yes.
As Adam Smith said, there is alot of ruin in a nation. Listing all the things that go wrong in any place proves very little.
Similarly, listing all the things that go right in a given place also proves very little.
If you don't look at the whole picture, your view is going to be skewed.
Really my point here is that people are fools if they try to apply simple narratives to this sort of situation.
fasquardon
Collectivization wasn't the reason for the famines. It was a contributing cause, and a large one. But more was going on.
Significantly, the great depression hit the grain prices Russia could obtain around 1932/33, meaning Russia needed to export more grain in order to get the same amount of hard currency.
Then there were communist attitudes towards the peasantry, memories of the Russian Civil War, simple institutional weakness, a couple poor harvests... Combine them all, and you have the makings of a problem. But ultimately Stalin chose to ignore that problem because it suited him (apparently at least - of course there are those who say the Holodmor was the product of intentional policy too). Most likely, had Lenin and Trotsky been running the show, they'd have made the same choice. Like Stalin, those guys were real unmentionables. But would, say, Zinoviev or Bukharin? Or Kruschev, if he'd been transported back in time to rule at that time?
I think whoever was in charge of Bolshevik Russia, there would be a famine when the great depression's effects combine with poor harvests - how bad that famine would be, however, was not set in stone.
fasquardon
Developed, yes. Productive, god no.
I picked the examples, because sitting here at work, those were the data points I could pull out from memory. If you dont believe that my data points are representative of the whole, spend some time on the internet and at the library. You really have to work hard to make a case that the Soviet economy of the 70's and 80's was anything other than an inefficient, unproductive mess. Hell, the Politburo itself knew it, which is why Andropov was so intent on making reforms before he died. Again, oil was the only thing keeping that economy going during that era.
Regarding comparable rates of agricultural production, production in the US fluctuates due to market prices and the corresponding demand for consumption. And we have, for a long time been a net exporter - we have no problem feeding ourselves. In contrast, the Soviets were actively trying to increase their production but couldnt. And they could not feed themselves. When Carter placed an embargo on them following the invasion of Afghanistan, they had to scramble to secure grain from Argentina. Big difference there.
But feel free to prove me wrong.
CthulhuFhtagn
Banned
No, it wasn't. The USSR in the 70s and 80s was extremely unproductive and inefficient compared to its western counterparts.
Even if it falls behind thirty or forty western nations it's still leaps and bounds ahead of most of the world.
In terms of military technology, the Soviets were still at near-parity (even ahead in a select few areas) with the western nations until the late-1980s but that is primarily because of the extreme over-investment into the Armed Forces. In terms of other technological fields though... well, 30-40 is rather extreme (that is current day North Korea-levels of backwardness). I would say 10-20.
Try comparing the Soviet economy to India in the 70s and 80s. Or Argentina. Or Brazil. Compared to them, the Soviet economy looks shiny.
Or try comparing the Soviet economy of 1960 with the Soviet economy of 1980.
In agriculture? No question, it was a huge mess.
But, as an exercise, compare the Soviet car industry to the British car industry. Or indeed, the whole British economy with the whole Soviet economy from, say, 1976 to 1985.
Again, I think it is important to revisit this: the USSR was doing very poorly in comparison to, say, Japan and the USA - but Japan and the USA were the two leading economies in the world during the period of Soviet collapse. And we forget by just what a large margin they were ahead by! Outside Europe, Canada/USA, Oceania, Japan and the Soviet Union the world was really darn poor back then. South Korea was still a 3rd World country. Taiwan, Malaysia, Singapore - also all third world. China was not just third world, but really, painfully, stonkinly poor, even for the third world.
So being "one of the leading economies" back then was a much lower bar than it is now. And lo, the Soviet Union was providing goods and services to its citizens that were well ahead of what was available to the average citizen in the third world. By most measures (both then and now - though analyses done in the 90s tended to severely overestimate Soviet economic weakness - sort of an overreaction to the unexpected collapse) the Soviet Union was providing goods and services at about the the average level available in the developed world (but where exactly they came is still something of a hot argument - after all, how do you compare the value of economical bus fares on an extensive public transport network against economical Japanese cars than can be driven on an extensive state-run highway system?)
It isn't that what either of you are saying is wrong - the Soviet Union WAS an unproductive, inefficient mess. But I fear you are focusing on those messes, and in doing so ignoring the context of what the larger Soviet economy and the world of 1980 were like.
Possibly, my opinion on Soviet economics may owe something to my opinion on Soviet politics.
To illustrate: Had the world economic circumstances or the internal political circumstances been different, then the USSR might well have overcome her 80s malaise, just like Britain overcame her 70s malaise. But the USSR wasn't Britain. It didn't have the internal political flexibility and it didn't have the external political flexibility (i.e. it had less capability to cooperate with the rest of the world). So if GOSPLAN had successfully planned the Soviets a bit more growth in the 80s, it wouldn't have mattered. If GOSPLAN had planned the economy worse in the 80s, also, I don't think it would have mattered. The political problems were sufficiently severe that I think it could have snatched defeat from the jaws of any victory the planners could have achieved.
fasquardon
AsGryffynn
Banned
That would create a different series of problems. Automating purchases (like giving everyone credit cards and doing away with bills altogether) would've allowed to upload all that date onto a magnetic band, send it to the planners and attempt to sort out areas that need work and those that are fine.
Not really. The problem was that many of those who worked were idling. The USSR had no unemployment, but sometimes, that meant a large amount of people would do nothing, and that's the POD that can be used. Since the USSR is planned, workers can overproduce stuff like the US did before hitting depression. With people working in different places, the economy is diversified and growth transitions from industrialization to post industrial development and consumption.
The Soviets had it almost on their faces, but they missed the chance in favor of going "hurr durr military badassitude".
You see, that's a vicious cycle that didn't exist when it started industrializing. Back then, they were pouring money on everything at similar rates. In fact, there were no complaints in the East until this changed towards military development.
Also, a few Lada owners I know still own the car and it's solid as a rock.
And that was when their economy was nosediving.
It was amongst the richest during the mid 60's. It started falling apart shortly afterwards.
Indeed, the Soviets put a ridiculous amount of ideological handicaps on themselves. While America did the same, it wasn't nearly as widespread. Also, the USSR was fine and dandy until Brezhnev ousted Khrushchev and his allies. There's a reason the Era of Stagnation starts as soon as Brezhnev rose to power.
Brezhnev killed the USSR.
That was because of Khrushchev's "experimenting"
That's a rather simplistic phrase to describe the complexity of the Soviet CPE.
You have Leonid Brezhnev to blame for that and his inefficient planning.
What would that be though, 70s or 80s at the earliest?
It seems like a good centrally planned economy must have computers, and preferable something like the internet to properly gather information.
Even better would be what we have now, people encouraged to have an online presence and post everything about themselves.
The over-emphasis on the military pre-dates Brezhnev by quite a bit. Even Khruschev didn't really cut it in a manner that wound-up meaning anything. It was under Gorbachev that the whole thing starts cycling backwards but by then it was too late.
Really, it looks like we can blame a combination of Hitler, the Cold War, and Soviet paranoia for this one: the percentage of the economy devoted to the military first really start eating into the overall economy back in 1938 and then (for quite obvious reasons) absolutely explodes in 1941. After 1945 it goes back down... but nowhere near to the level it was pre-War. Then it boosts up a bunch again in 1948 with the Berlin Crisis really pushing the Cold War forwards, dials down a bit under Khruschev before snapping back upwards after the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Not to mention the devastation suffered by the USSR in WW2 probably had an impact all on it's own. Sure Stalin killed ~20 million Soviet citizens over a period of 24 years, but the Great Patriotic War killed 27 million Soviet soldiers and destroyed 31,500 industrial facilities in 4 years.
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RousseauX
Donor
High military spending plays a part but really, let's say the USSR dumps 15-20% extra of its GDP to consumer industries it doesn't solve the problem because increasing the quality of life by 15-20% per capita in the USSR means the majority of the country is still really poor by western standards.
This is another one of those arguments I've never found convincing.
If the damage from WW2 was the key to Soviet stagnancy then you would have expected slower economic growth in the 1950s and then faster growth in the 80s as the effect of the damage wears off. But in reality the opposite is true, the Soviets grew rapidly during the 50s and stagnated in the 70s-80s.
This conforms perfectly with what every other developing country experienced, which is rapid initial growth due to industrialization but once you've moved all your peasants into cities as factory workers you need to improve efficiency to generate continual improvements in quality of life. And the Soviet system failed to deliver on that.
RousseauX
Donor
Idling don't (just) exist because of promised full employment, it's a symptom of structural inefficiency of the planned system.
Idling in planned economies existed because state firms hoards labor. Basically what happens is the state owns your firm and won't let you go bankrupt. So it leads to a situation where firms can basically just hire workers for free (since the state bank will keep loaning them money which they may or may not have to repay) and so everyone just hires as much as possible (to beat out all the other firms trying to do the same thing), and yeah that leads to idleness because firms don't hire on the basis of any rational cost-benefit ratio, they hire on the basis that "we might need this person 10 years down the road but since there's basically no cost to keep him for 10 years doing nothing let's do it".
In a market system this can't happen (as much) because if you do this you'll eventually lose money. And hence why labor allocation is much more efficient.
"Well, we'll just order them to produce more to solve the shortages!" doesn't solve any of the structural problem behind why there are shortages in the first place.
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RousseauX
Donor
Computers are another one of those supposed magic bullets that doesn't solve any of the structural problems with planned economies.
Unless of course, they post anything politically disagreeable or spread discontent.
RousseauX
Donor
That was because of Khrushchev's "experimenting"
What are you talking about? The last time Soviet agricultural was doing well was the NEP in the 1920s. Collectivization of the 1930s was a disaster what's even more hilarious/sad is the Soviets tried to do the same thing in other countries and it was a disaster as well. The whole get rid of the Kulaks and build collective farms thing got tried in every Socialist country and it was a disaster literally every single time.
It's basically Communism's version of deregulation and let the free market reign. Someday they'll get it right and no then more hunger ever (no it won't it failed pathetically every time).