NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #31/NN_1992_31.iso/spool/ne/politics/3158

Internet Message Format | 1992-12-23 | 6.5 KB

Path: sparky!uunet!noc.near.net!nic.umass.edu!dime!chelm.cs.umass.edu!yodaiken
From: [e-mail] (victor yodaiken)
Newsgroups: ne.politics
Subject: Re: State Socialism
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 23 Dec 92 17:26:51 GMT
References: <[e-mail]>
Sender: [e-mail]
Organization: University of Massachusetts, Amherst
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In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Mike Cherepov) writes:
>In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (victor yodaiken) writes:
>>Perhaps not. Unfortunately, I have been unable to get to the library
>>to find the oxford history of the xUSSR, but I have not ceded this battle.
>
>Better do it fast: the way the remnants of the ex-Soviet state sector
>are crumbling, it's increasingly harder to claim that it ever worked
>well.

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?


>I suppose, you can always blame that on their turning off that
>proven Stalin/Khrushchev/Brezhnev true communist wealth-creating path.

Well, if I adopted the propositional logic approach to history that seems
to be at the heart of your deductive method, I might. But, I am not
convinced that the law of excluded middle is valid in historical reasoning,
so the obvious failures of Soviet Communism do not lead me to believe that
the Romanovs offered a wonderful alternative. Let's, however, first
deal with your orignal claim. If we look at a reputable economic history of
the Soviet Union, for example Nove's Economic History of the USSR
(Penguin 1982), we will see that there is no doubt that the communist
regime *did* create a great deal of wealth.  For example, in the period
between 1928 and 1970 machine tool production went from 2k to 240k, oil
went from 11,6million tons to 353 million tons, motor vehicles went from
0.8k to 916k. While, as Nove points out, the exact figures are not certain,
it is clear that the USSR went from an agrarian nation in collapse to a
major industrial power (and it now appears to be re-entering the cycle).
Gregory and Stuart in "Soviet Economic Structure andPerformance" (Harper and
Row 1974) write:
       The speed with which the Soviet Union tranformed itself from relative
       economic backwardness into industrial and military strength must be
       listed as a major acheivement. Russia in 1917 was predominantly
       agrgricultural, with high mortality rates, especially among infants.
       Nearly 60% of the population was illiterate. The industrial sector's
       shares of output and labor force were quite small, and the domestic
       machinery sector was poorly developed, requiring heavy dependence
       upon the capitalist world for capital equipment. By 1937 most of the
       above indicators had been reversed; the USSR had been transformed
       into an industrial economy without reliance upon foreign aid or
       extensive imports from the west (with the exception of industrial
       technology).

So, on an absolute measure, it is obviously absurd to claim that Soviet
Socialism did not create wealth unless you want to either introduce evidence
to the effect that there was no rapid industrialization, or you want to
argue that industrialization does not involve wealth creation. But, you will
no doubt object that under the benign guidance of the fabled modernizers and
trailblazers of capitalism, the Romanov dynasty, everything would have been
better, and without the terror. Ignoring, for the moment, the well-known
bloodthirstyness, anti-semitism, and fondness for torture that marked
Czarist Russia, let's see if these economic claims are plausible.
Well, it is true that Russia was industrializing rapidly in 1914,
but the figures are not conclusive.
Nove points out that, by some measures, Russia was falling
behind its competitors at an equally rapid rate. And, percentage increases
from a small base are not necessarily indicative. Furthermore, as Paul
Johnson may have neglected to point out, a substantial part of Russian
industrial infrastructure was in territory lost during WWI and the Civil
war. For example 70% of wool, 50% of paper, 25% of chemical, 25% of cotton
fabric, and 20% of metal goods were produced in the lost territories.
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. Ironically, Nove
comments that Witte's policy bears some resemblance to Stalin's -- both
built industrial power by squeezing the peasants. In fact, I contend that if
you managed to look at economic history as on object of study and not as raw
material for your ideology, you might find that the alliance of the state
against the peasantry and for industry is a common feature of all
industrializations.
Here is Nove's conclusion
    We could, perhaps  agree that the U.S.S.R. did industrialize rapidly
    after 1928, the in doing so it had to overcome grave difficulties of
    a kind whith the United States did not have to face (social,
    political, geographic, very different historical traditions, etc. )
    and the that word "rapidly" cannot, from our present information,
    be given precision. A few other countries appear to have grown as
    fast, and to have recovered from disasters too: Japan, for instance.
    But it makes little sense to derive from this a moral concerning the
    efficacy of systems of government, as if Japanese methods could have
    been applied in Russia (or Pakistan, or Mexico).


In understanding history, tidy little diagrams in which bad Bolsheviks
are contrasted agains the the imagined wonders of Romanov valley, are bound
to be incorrect. If we want to understand what economic development works
and what doesn't, it does not pay to impose a simple minded ideological
dichotomy (wealth creating capitalists vs wealth distributing communists) on
a complex historical record.

>
>But then there is China, whose economy has been growing at record rates
>after tuning off that path 15 years ago.  How confusing this must be.

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.


Victor Yodaiken.

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