Delta Force
Banned
The topic came up in this thread, and I'm wondering how it would have worked in practice. Computers have significantly improved logistics and information handling in modern economies. However, computer systems have also served as information bottlenecks, as many commercial systems and even ones designed for government are incompatible with each other. Early Soviet computerization proposals called for the development of a dual purpose network for military and civilian use, and presumably network integration would have remained a major priority going forward. At the very least integration of information was a continuing priority.
Within the Soviet Union, there were differing views on how it might impact things politically. Some thought such centralization would risk creating a kind of computerized neo-Stalinism or cyber-Stalinism, because a small group of people would be able to easily control the economy. They also thought computerization would make it simple to spy on the population, because it would be possible to track people's activities. There were even some proposals to replace all money in the Soviet Union with computerized cards, achieving the Marxist goal of a non-money economy.
Another group thought it could make the Soviet Union more competitive with market economies, and perhaps even surpass them, by allowing computers to rapidly change production in response to demand and search for more efficient ways to assign production. Computerization would also improve information on supply and demand, and a combination of the Soviet Census and internal passport system and computerized location handling could help to improve resource allocation.
There were pragmatists whose concerns helped lead to the system not being adopted historically, as a computerized network would literally be a network from a public administrations point of view, and would require bureaucracies to share information (as good as currency, especially in a centrally planned economy) and give up some of their power to the computer system. There would also be issues with assigning production and supply at short notice, as budgets would have to increase or decrease in response, and rapidly. Of course, perhaps the biggest issue for getting bureaucrats to sign on is that such a system would be more efficient and reduce their numbers and power.
For the purposes of this though, let's assume that such a system actually was created. How would it have performed relative to a market economy, and how would politics in the Soviet Union and other communist states have changed? Could computerized communism have followed two paths, one a form of cyber-Stalinism, and the other a kind of liberalized cyber-socialism?
Within the Soviet Union, there were differing views on how it might impact things politically. Some thought such centralization would risk creating a kind of computerized neo-Stalinism or cyber-Stalinism, because a small group of people would be able to easily control the economy. They also thought computerization would make it simple to spy on the population, because it would be possible to track people's activities. There were even some proposals to replace all money in the Soviet Union with computerized cards, achieving the Marxist goal of a non-money economy.
Another group thought it could make the Soviet Union more competitive with market economies, and perhaps even surpass them, by allowing computers to rapidly change production in response to demand and search for more efficient ways to assign production. Computerization would also improve information on supply and demand, and a combination of the Soviet Census and internal passport system and computerized location handling could help to improve resource allocation.
There were pragmatists whose concerns helped lead to the system not being adopted historically, as a computerized network would literally be a network from a public administrations point of view, and would require bureaucracies to share information (as good as currency, especially in a centrally planned economy) and give up some of their power to the computer system. There would also be issues with assigning production and supply at short notice, as budgets would have to increase or decrease in response, and rapidly. Of course, perhaps the biggest issue for getting bureaucrats to sign on is that such a system would be more efficient and reduce their numbers and power.
For the purposes of this though, let's assume that such a system actually was created. How would it have performed relative to a market economy, and how would politics in the Soviet Union and other communist states have changed? Could computerized communism have followed two paths, one a form of cyber-Stalinism, and the other a kind of liberalized cyber-socialism?
