5 ms·

State Capitalism / Socialism in the USSR did the same in less than half the time.

mixmastamyk 9y ago
But was not sustainable.
adventured 9y ago
Was that before or after it murdered millions of Russians through poverty and gulags? And was that before or after American industrialists and corporations built up most of the Russian-USSR industrial foundations pre-Stalin? Because post that, the USSR was barely able to feed itself for four decades.
- WalterBright 9y ago
  Do you mean during WW2 when US industry massively helped the USSR? That was under Stalin.
- rev_bird 9y ago
  The murder thing gets brought up a lot, and it seems nonsensical to me for two reasons: First off, Russian communism gets blamed for millions of deaths, while American capitalism has never killed anyone. How many thousands of Americans die every year from lack of medical care? How many workers had their lives shortened (or ended) by unsafe working conditions? How many of those workers were children? How many millions will die of famine caused by runaway climate change that capitalists had no incentive to address? I'm not demanding answers, I just wanted to point out that if we're keeping score, we should consider both sides. The other part that I can never square up in my head, particularly as it relates to the Holodomor and gulags and whatnot, is that those things don't seem particularly related to communism itself -- the starvation of the Ukrainians is a travesty, but one that was enabled by an authoritarian government, not a communist one. Unimaginably terrible things happened in the USSR, but was that because of communism, or because of the communist rulers?
  - pfisch 9y ago
    Historically most attempts to engineer society through force of law have had disastrous side effects, and have led to some of the most deadly atrocities in history. Communism is all about engineering society. The Great Leap forward is probably the most intense example of this. The Five Year Plans of the USSR are another. The one child policy, prohibition, the war on drugs. All of these policies go against human nature and while they are all at least somewhat effective at achieving their aims, they all have had massive terrible side effects. We are just not very good at predicting the outcomes when we try to engineer society and we should be very careful about its application, and probably we should attempt to not do it when possible. The natural state of man is capitalism, it predates recorded history.
    - EGreg 9y ago
      The problem is that the natural state leads to a lot of death as well. Monogamy is not a natural state either by the way. Because after a war, there were far more women than men. Technology has caused unprecedented peace among man. It is technology, far more than capitalism, that has enabled plenty and endef slavery and feudalism. You think people couldn't own things before the 1800s? People owned tons of things. The ideology of free-market capitalism says that every era of human history that was miserable was that way because they didn't have free-market capitalism. But free-market capitalism as you conceive of it only became possible after a certain technological prosperity had been achieved. And it still doesn't exist today. The USA is more socialist than some other less prosperous countries. Look for example at Africa. There were never any large empires there and as a result the tribes engaged in endless fighting against one another. As a result the technological (and military) capabilities of the peoples fell behind and they were easily conquered by Europeans later. This would have happened whether they had capitalism or socialism, the political units (of unified language or religion, no fighting between inside the polity etc.) were just too small for any meaningful growth to take place and knowledge to be disseminated. If the natural state of man is capitalism and it predates recorded history, then it sure takes a long time to achieve anything. All the populaton explosion has happened in the last 200 years.
  - vixen99 9y ago
WalterBright 9y ago
US industrial agriculture kept the USSR afloat in the 70s as it was unable to feed itself. Kansas was dubbed "the breadbasket of the Soviet Union". The historical threat of famine ended in the US around 1800 and was an early dividend of free market agriculture.
- rev_bird 9y ago
  I'm not sure I see the connection. The United States lucked into natural resources more plentiful than lots of other places in the world, that's true, but is it meaningful that a country be able to "feed itself"? Obviously it's a valuable thing to have, strategically, but I don't see how "they had lots of imports" is necessarily an indictment of an entire economic system. Nobody makes fun of Ireland for importing $5 billion+ in foodstuffs every year, it's just one of the things they're short of.
  - WalterBright 9y ago
    The Ukraine fed europe until its agriculture was collectivized. Famine resulted. Collectivization of agriculture has been tried again and again, and famine always results. You might want to read up on Lenin's New Economic Policy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Economic_Policy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Economic_Policy
    - rev_bird 9y ago
      Will do, thanks for the recommendations.
- sooheon 9y ago
  Stratfor's famous analysis of the geopolitics of the US[1] makes clear that this was due to the phenomenal and unprecedented geographical conditions the US enjoyed, not merely "a dividend of free market agriculture". > The most distinctive and important feature of North America is the river network in the middle third of the continent... > The network consists of six distinct river systems: the Missouri, Arkansas, Red, Ohio, Tennessee and, of course, the Mississippi. The unified nature of this system greatly enhances the region's usefulness and potential economic and political power. First, shipping goods via water is an order of magnitude cheaper than shipping them via land. The specific ratio varies greatly based on technological era and local topography, but in the petroleum age in the United States, the cost of transport via water is roughly 10 to 30 times cheaper than overland. This simple fact makes countries with robust maritime transport options extremely capital-rich when compared to countries limited to land-only options. This factor is the primary reason why the major economic powers of the past half-millennia have been Japan, Germany, France, the United Kingdom and the United States. > Second, the watershed of the Greater Mississippi Basin largely overlays North America's arable lands. Normally, agricultural areas as large as the American Midwest are underutilized as the cost of shipping their output to more densely populated regions cuts deeply into the economics of agriculture. The Eurasian steppe is an excellent example. Even in modern times Russian and Kazakh crops occasionally rot before they can reach market. Massive artificial transport networks must be constructed and maintained in order for the land to reach its full potential. Not so in the case of the Greater Mississippi Basin. The vast bulk of the prime agricultural lands are within 200 kilometers of a stretch of navigable river. Road and rail are still used for collection, but nearly omnipresent river ports allow for the entirety of the basin's farmers to easily and cheaply ship their products to markets not just in North America but all over the world. > Third, the river network's unity greatly eases the issue of political integration. All of the peoples of the basin are part of the same economic system, ensuring constant contact and common interests. Regional proclivities obviously still arise, but this is not Northern Europe, where a variety of separate river systems have given rise to multiple national identities. > It is worth briefly explaining why Stratfor fixates on navigable rivers as opposed to coastlines. First, navigable rivers by definition service twice the land area of a coastline (rivers have two banks, coasts only one). Second, rivers are not subject to tidal forces, greatly easing the construction and maintenance of supporting infrastructure. Third, storm surges often accompany oceanic storms, which force the evacuation of oceanic ports. None of this eliminates the usefulness of coastal ports, but in terms of the capacity to generate capital, coastal regions are a poor second compared to lands with navigable rivers. Rather than risk copy pasting the entire thing, I'd simply urge you to read it, it's highly interesting if you want to go beyond ideological thinking (free market vs. soviets). [1]: https://worldview.stratfor.com/article/geopolitics-united-states-part-1-inevitable-empire https://worldview.stratfor.com/article/geopolitics-united-st...
SamReidHughes 9y ago
This is because their technology came pre-invented elsewhere. You grow faster when you start with 1920's technology instead of 1800's.

But was not sustainable.

Was that before or after it murdered millions of Russians through poverty and gulags? And was that before or after American industrialists and corporations built up most of the Russian-USSR industrial foundations pre-Stalin? Because post that, the USSR was barely able to feed itself for four decades.

WalterBright 9y ago
Do you mean during WW2 when US industry massively helped the USSR? That was under Stalin.
rev_bird 9y ago
The murder thing gets brought up a lot, and it seems nonsensical to me for two reasons: First off, Russian communism gets blamed for millions of deaths, while American capitalism has never killed anyone. How many thousands of Americans die every year from lack of medical care? How many workers had their lives shortened (or ended) by unsafe working conditions? How many of those workers were children? How many millions will die of famine caused by runaway climate change that capitalists had no incentive to address? I'm not demanding answers, I just wanted to point out that if we're keeping score, we should consider both sides. The other part that I can never square up in my head, particularly as it relates to the Holodomor and gulags and whatnot, is that those things don't seem particularly related to communism itself -- the starvation of the Ukrainians is a travesty, but one that was enabled by an authoritarian government, not a communist one. Unimaginably terrible things happened in the USSR, but was that because of communism, or because of the communist rulers?
- pfisch 9y ago
  Historically most attempts to engineer society through force of law have had disastrous side effects, and have led to some of the most deadly atrocities in history. Communism is all about engineering society. The Great Leap forward is probably the most intense example of this. The Five Year Plans of the USSR are another. The one child policy, prohibition, the war on drugs. All of these policies go against human nature and while they are all at least somewhat effective at achieving their aims, they all have had massive terrible side effects. We are just not very good at predicting the outcomes when we try to engineer society and we should be very careful about its application, and probably we should attempt to not do it when possible. The natural state of man is capitalism, it predates recorded history.
  - EGreg 9y ago
    The problem is that the natural state leads to a lot of death as well. Monogamy is not a natural state either by the way. Because after a war, there were far more women than men. Technology has caused unprecedented peace among man. It is technology, far more than capitalism, that has enabled plenty and endef slavery and feudalism. You think people couldn't own things before the 1800s? People owned tons of things. The ideology of free-market capitalism says that every era of human history that was miserable was that way because they didn't have free-market capitalism. But free-market capitalism as you conceive of it only became possible after a certain technological prosperity had been achieved. And it still doesn't exist today. The USA is more socialist than some other less prosperous countries. Look for example at Africa. There were never any large empires there and as a result the tribes engaged in endless fighting against one another. As a result the technological (and military) capabilities of the peoples fell behind and they were easily conquered by Europeans later. This would have happened whether they had capitalism or socialism, the political units (of unified language or religion, no fighting between inside the polity etc.) were just too small for any meaningful growth to take place and knowledge to be disseminated. If the natural state of man is capitalism and it predates recorded history, then it sure takes a long time to achieve anything. All the populaton explosion has happened in the last 200 years.
- vixen99 9y ago

WalterBright 9y ago

US industrial agriculture kept the USSR afloat in the 70s as it was unable to feed itself. Kansas was dubbed "the breadbasket of the Soviet Union". The historical threat of famine ended in the US around 1800 and was an early dividend of free market agriculture.

rev_bird 9y ago
I'm not sure I see the connection. The United States lucked into natural resources more plentiful than lots of other places in the world, that's true, but is it meaningful that a country be able to "feed itself"? Obviously it's a valuable thing to have, strategically, but I don't see how "they had lots of imports" is necessarily an indictment of an entire economic system. Nobody makes fun of Ireland for importing $5 billion+ in foodstuffs every year, it's just one of the things they're short of.
- WalterBright 9y ago
  The Ukraine fed europe until its agriculture was collectivized. Famine resulted. Collectivization of agriculture has been tried again and again, and famine always results. You might want to read up on Lenin's New Economic Policy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Economic_Policy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Economic_Policy
  - rev_bird 9y ago
    Will do, thanks for the recommendations.
sooheon 9y ago
Stratfor's famous analysis of the geopolitics of the US[1] makes clear that this was due to the phenomenal and unprecedented geographical conditions the US enjoyed, not merely "a dividend of free market agriculture". > The most distinctive and important feature of North America is the river network in the middle third of the continent... > The network consists of six distinct river systems: the Missouri, Arkansas, Red, Ohio, Tennessee and, of course, the Mississippi. The unified nature of this system greatly enhances the region's usefulness and potential economic and political power. First, shipping goods via water is an order of magnitude cheaper than shipping them via land. The specific ratio varies greatly based on technological era and local topography, but in the petroleum age in the United States, the cost of transport via water is roughly 10 to 30 times cheaper than overland. This simple fact makes countries with robust maritime transport options extremely capital-rich when compared to countries limited to land-only options. This factor is the primary reason why the major economic powers of the past half-millennia have been Japan, Germany, France, the United Kingdom and the United States. > Second, the watershed of the Greater Mississippi Basin largely overlays North America's arable lands. Normally, agricultural areas as large as the American Midwest are underutilized as the cost of shipping their output to more densely populated regions cuts deeply into the economics of agriculture. The Eurasian steppe is an excellent example. Even in modern times Russian and Kazakh crops occasionally rot before they can reach market. Massive artificial transport networks must be constructed and maintained in order for the land to reach its full potential. Not so in the case of the Greater Mississippi Basin. The vast bulk of the prime agricultural lands are within 200 kilometers of a stretch of navigable river. Road and rail are still used for collection, but nearly omnipresent river ports allow for the entirety of the basin's farmers to easily and cheaply ship their products to markets not just in North America but all over the world. > Third, the river network's unity greatly eases the issue of political integration. All of the peoples of the basin are part of the same economic system, ensuring constant contact and common interests. Regional proclivities obviously still arise, but this is not Northern Europe, where a variety of separate river systems have given rise to multiple national identities. > It is worth briefly explaining why Stratfor fixates on navigable rivers as opposed to coastlines. First, navigable rivers by definition service twice the land area of a coastline (rivers have two banks, coasts only one). Second, rivers are not subject to tidal forces, greatly easing the construction and maintenance of supporting infrastructure. Third, storm surges often accompany oceanic storms, which force the evacuation of oceanic ports. None of this eliminates the usefulness of coastal ports, but in terms of the capacity to generate capital, coastal regions are a poor second compared to lands with navigable rivers. Rather than risk copy pasting the entire thing, I'd simply urge you to read it, it's highly interesting if you want to go beyond ideological thinking (free market vs. soviets). [1]: https://worldview.stratfor.com/article/geopolitics-united-states-part-1-inevitable-empire https://worldview.stratfor.com/article/geopolitics-united-st...

SamReidHughes 9y ago

This is because their technology came pre-invented elsewhere. You grow faster when you start with 1920's technology instead of 1800's.