From: yodaiken@chelm.cs.umass.edu (victor yodaiken)
Newsgroups: ne.politics
Subject: Re: State Socialism
Date: 28 Dec 92 14:37:49 GMT
Organization: University of Massachusetts, Amherst

In article <20434@ksr.com> cher@ksr.com (Mike Cherepov) writes:
>In response to Mr. Yodaiken:
>
>I seem to have failed yet again to get across the difference between
>saying that Soviet economic growth was meager compared to the West's
>(my claim), and that growth was nonexistent (what you would
>have me claim). 

Your original claim was that the communism was incapable of creating
wealth. You now seem to have backed off of this. 

>The current order-of-magnitude difference in GNP
>per person between Russia and OECD countries about nails it.

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.

>You also labor under the delusion that I offered some fulsome
>endorsement of the Romanovs, whereas the best I could say about
>the Romanovs was that they looked OK compared to the monstrosity
>which replaced them.

I'm not convinced that the Romanovs offered a superior path. The White
Russian armies did not show by their behavior a regard for human life or
liberty that was superior to that of the Reds. On the contrary. 

>As for the main proof of Soviet economic success, I am not at all
>impressed with Nove's figures, and even less with his conclusions.

 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.


>Pre-Gorbachev Soviet stats have to be treated with great doubt.  The
>CIA claimed as late as mid-80s that Soviet GNP per person was nearly
>$10k, whereas now it now looks at best like one tenth that (here is
>another stick for you to beat CIA with).  The Russian national stats
>for Sep 92 show the GNP of 15 trillion roubles; at the September
>exchange rate that works out to about $600 per person per annum.  The
>economy contracted about 40% since 1989, which gives us $1000 per
>person per year at the peak.  The US is in mid-$20K.
>Crude as this measure is, it leaves no doubt Nove's conclusion that
>Soviet economic growth was in the same league as Japan's through 1982
>is absolutely indefensible in light of the new information.  Amalrik's

Where did Nove make this claim? Not in anything I cited. 
And, a little reflection will tell you that these figures mean very little
for an economy which was largely not a cash economy. 

>> As with many of your arguments, the logic in this claim is elusive. You
>> began by asserting that Soviet communism was unable to "create wealth".
>> Is it your contention that the economic collapse of the  post-communist
>> xUSSR supports your claim? If so, how?
>
>Here is how the economic collapse supports my claim about the
>inadequacy of the Communist economy: note that the plummeting
>rouble failed to cause any surge in Russian exports (a more
>favorable exchange rate should, you know)  The reason is that a
>large portion of Comecon industry is uncompetitive at any exchange
>rate, and a sizeable segment of enterprises are value-subtractors,
>ie, the value of their products is less than the energy and raw
>materials that go into their making.  One study put these two

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. Again, I am not
a fan of Soviet industrialism, but I am also not enamoured of oversimplified
propagandistic analysis.

>Oh, I like the cute phrasing "post-communist collapse" which pushes
>the blame away from the guilty.  The stagnation set in at least in
>the early eighties, while the collapse was evident with Gorbachev
>still in place and contributed to his downfall.

Yes there was a stagnation (of coure, you are now admitting that 
there was a period of growth prior to the stagnation), but it's also obvious
that what little that worked in the old system has been broken by the
collapse of political unity and the current massive restructuring.

>It is almost double the US's (but enormously wasteful).  And raw
>stats do not translate into well-being of population.  Per unit of
>GDP Russia's economy uses 15 times as much steel, 9 times as much
>rubber, and 6 times as much energy as the US.  One curious stat
>was that an average Soviet was less likely to own a car than a
>black South African.

But more likely to live past 35. Sam Huntington was denied membership in
the National Academy of Science for just such "scholarship".

>It is more interesting that per-person grain production in 1913
>(~0.7 metric tons) was higher than in some years during the 1970s.

Sure. During crop failure years. Statistics are dangerous tools. Try
to use them a little more carefully. 

>> Nove and other reputable historians stress the uneven and unstable nature of
>> pre-soviet russian economic growth --- noting for example that the policies
>> of Witte in protecting Russian industry impoverished peasants.
>
>On the other hand, the Stolypin reforms were a partial success, creating
>a few million small land owners.  They later made NEP a success (recall
>Bukharin's slogan "prosper!") and paid for this with their lives under
>Stalin.  One epithetical correction from me: a check with a dictionary
>convinced me that "burgeoning" was too strong a word in describing the
>pre-WW1 Russian capitalism, "fledgling" seems more appropriate.

I'll buy that. Read Nove to see an argument to the effect that the reforms
had the parodoxical effect of weakening the ability of the government to
survive.


>can of worms, I am just puzzled that this bold generalization comes from
>somebody who opposes calling communist economic model laggardly as too
>broad a claim.

A gross mischaracterization of my position.  

>> As I do not share your faith in some all explaining dogma, the vast
>> complexity of human history does confuse me. How comforting it must be to
>> imagine that one owns a simple key which can reduce all the intricacy of
>> human cultural and economic history to a straightforward conflict of good
>> and evil.
>
>Well, the Communist economic model has failed everywhere it had been
>tried.  The differences between South and North Koreas or West and East
>Germanies are quite stark.  No all-explaining dogma, simple key, or
>battle between good and evil here, just a specific empirical observation:
>free-market economies vastly outperformed the communist kind.  I think of
>them as of a better kind of mousetrap for now.  Cheers.

Sigh. These comparisons are only useful for rallying the faithful around
one flag or another. The Northeast of Brazil, Harlem, Bangladesh, and 
the Rhur show that capitalist nations and nations within the world market
have been quite as capable of creating misery and poisoining the planet
as their communist rivals. When I traveled in China in 1982 I met more than
one Indian student who was wildly enthusiastic about a poor nation where
children on the street looked well fed and healthy. And none of us had
any illusions about how despotic, corrupt, and inefficient the Maoist
government was. 


-- 


yodaiken@chelm.cs.umass.edu