From: cher@ksr.com (Mike Cherepov)
Newsgroups: ne.politics
Subject: Re: State Socialism (last one, for sure)
Date: 28 Dec 92 20:52:30 EST
Organization: Kendall Square Research Corp.

In article <58039@dime.cs.umass.edu> (victor yodaiken) writes:
>Your original claim was that the communism was incapable of creating
>wealth. You now seem to have backed off of this. 

You are still deluded about my original claim.  My position is unchanged.

>Nails what? The xSSR is undergoing a revolution, its entire previous
>economic system is being discarded. One expects a drop in living standards
>in such situations.

The peak of Soviet economic growth occurred in late 1980 and at that
peak there was the order-of-magnitude difference in GNP per person
between the USSR and the OECD.  Before the drop, as I made clear.

> You cite a polemnicist. I cite a serious economic historian.  You don't
>have to take Nove on faith, but he offers sources, makes an effort to look
>at all sides of disputed issues, and had no obvious ax to grind. Find
>a source who is trying to understand a complex phenomena rather than
>trying to make a point.

Nice ad hominem, but Johnson has nothing to do with the GNP figures I
quoted - they are current Russian National statistics.  They tell us
that Soviet per capita incomes at their peak were an order of magnitude
lower than the OECD.  Nothing I know, from current statistics to ample
personal exposure to both systems, contradicts that.
We know now that Soviet incomes were never better than third-world
level.  Historians who argued otherwise should re-examine their
methods and selection of sources - they were wrong.

>Your frame of reference is distorting your understanding. "Value" is 
>socially determined, not a physical quantity. The "value" of plastic
>lawn flamigoes is greater then the value of the petroleum used to make them
>only because people are willing to purchase them. The "value" of products
>produced under the old soviet system cannot be determined by figuring the
>price that they would have fetched in a world market.
>propagandistic analysis.

Such an approach towards value precludes all economic comparisons
between countries.  Using such Yodaikenomics, one could not conclude
that Americans are richer than the Costa Ricans.  I believe that no
mainstream economist or fair-minded person would buy your notion
that the value of pathetic East German Trabant cars or miserable Soviet
tape recorders is not reflected by their (low) market price.  The
Soviets' own attitudes belie your claim as they always paid exorbitant
ruble prices for Sonys and Levis, while leaving millions of pairs of
Soviet-made shoes unsold.

>Sigh. These comparisons are only useful for rallying the faithful around
>one flag or another.

Wrong.  These comparisons were useful for causing emigration to the
capitalist West from the communist East, knocking down the Berlin
Wall, breaking the Soviet empire and the USSR itself, and confining
the Communist economic model fans to basket cases like Cuba and
North Korea.  Nobody is rallying to your flag any more.

We seem to have come to a standstill, information exchange-wise,
and I know your opinions well enough by now.  I'll make this
my last salvo, and thanks for the discussion.
	Mike Cherepov
		not representing my employer's opinions, etc