5 ms·

I'm not advocating communism, but if you look at the Soviet Union as a process, it did manage to turn an agrarian society (feudal, actually) into an industriali

by forinti 16y ago

I'm not advocating communism, but if you look at the Soviet Union as a process, it did manage to turn an agrarian society (feudal, actually) into an industrialized one in 70 years. It's quite a feat, even more so if you consider the destruction they suffered in WWII.

iwr 16y ago
Compare that to the rapid developments of post-war Germany, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, then post-1990: Poland, Hungary, The Czech Republic etc. We have to look at opportunity costs, not just raw improvements.
- brazzy 16y ago
  None of those situations (which I have any knowledge about) are even remotely comparable to that of Russia at the time of revolution. Germany and Japan had been fully industrialized. Singapore basically grew by attracting capital as a tax haven. Russia in 1917 was about as developed as Germany or Japan in 1850 - or Britain in 1750. The funny thing is that this fact means the revolution totally contradicted Marxist doctrine, which predicts communism as a natural remedy to the excesses of capitalism. Russia hadn't even entered the captitalist "phase" yet - it was literally the least appropriate country in Europe to stage a communist revolution in.
  - Retric 16y ago
    IMO, the funny thing is the United states (1950 - 1980) is probably the closest example of the Marxist ideal you can find. After industrialization you had violent conflict between workers and factory owners that resulted in places like GM being gutted by their workers who kept the fruits of their labors. Arguably by the end of the cold war it was more a question of how you organize a communist country than would you create one. PS: Of course with automation and computing many of the old assumptions stopped applying but it’s hard to complain when someone only sees 75 - 100 and not 150 years into the future.
  - drats 16y ago
    While I see your point against those examples it's worth noting that Japan in the mid 19th century was a feudal society with hundreds of thousands of samurai, and by WWII they were fielding a massive navy with aircraft carriers capable of striking the USA. And the difference between the wealth of Americans at the beginning of the 20th century compared to the end is also larger in many ways. However, the difference between starving and a full belly is certainly something which people will pay more attention to rather than the difference between being well fed and then acquiring large houses, refrigeration, washing machines, one or two cars, mobile phones, radio, television, landing a couple of guys on the moon and getting them back, computers and the Internet. The scope of western capitalist development in the 20th century is simply staggering compared to any pissant planned economy, and it was done without the most horrific mass murders of the 20th century that we see under the communist regimes. Also, Lenin's modification of Marxist theory is somewhat irrelevant, the Marxist foundation was entirely wrong on a number of massive points: one more wasn't going to make a difference.
Symmetry 16y ago
Two responses to that. First, I'm not quite sure you appreciate the cost of that industrialization. The USSR achieved fast extensive growth in its early years by forcing a very high savings rate. What does that mean? They exported lots of grain to buy machinery. Where did the grain come from? The peasants. What did the peasants do after their grain was taken? They starved. The general attitude during this time (which helped the Party consolidate power) was not so much of withholding food from dissidents, but rather withholding food from anyone who couldn't make a convincing case for how they were benefiting the party or the state. So most of the progress in bring up the USSR industrial capacity per person was due to increasing industrial capacity, but a notable part of it was due to decreasing the number of people as well. Second, forced savings is a good strategy for playing catchup industrially when there are lots of obvious ways you can invest the savings (called extensive growth). Its possible to mess this up (see the Great Leap Forward) but if the beaurocrats are competent its possible. But when you've urbanized and need to start specializing more to keep growing the economy finding efficient ways to do so becomes harder (you're in intensive growth). Its here that government directed industrial policies tend to fail (or at least work more slowly than less directed solutions) due to coordination problems.
- rdtsc 16y ago
  Also let's not forget labor camps. Some big industrial projects (especially in Siberia) such as dams, the Trans-Siberian railroad, factories, power lines etc., were built with slave labor. I am not sure of the %, I imagine it is not terribly large, but it is still there. Other projects were built with student labor. University students were encouraged to provide volunteer work on such projects. They got on a train and traveled some place wherever help was needed. My father said it was quite fun. He spent a summer in Khazakstan, then another in Siberia.
  - face 16y ago
    Can you back your claims up? In particular, say, the Trans-Siberian railroad? Its construction began in 1891, two decades before the formation of the USSR [1]. While certainly prisoners were used in its construction, saying that it was "built with slave labor" is somewhat disingenuous. Perhaps you are saying that parts of it were built using prisoners, who were not paid for their services? If so, that is certainly the case. 1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Siberian_Railway#Construction http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Siberian_Railway#Construc...
JabavuAdams 16y ago
Who got the benefits and who paid the price? Impressively, Nazi Germany was able to invent and field ballistic missiles, and to launch them at a rate never seen since, all while under constant bombardment. Just don't ask where they got their factory workers.
ramanujan 16y ago
The Soviet Union was quite literally built on slave labor (http://gulaghistory.org/nps/onlineexhibit/stalin/work.php http://gulaghistory.org/nps/onlineexhibit/stalin/work.php). Arguably, the Gulag system of slavery was even more brutal than that of the American South. And like the South, they ultimately fell behind technologically and industrially to a free society. What is forgotten today is that there were men who contemporaneously made the connection between communism and slavery while advocating for it, including George Fitzhugh: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Fitzhugh http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Fitzhugh Sociology for the South, or, the Failure of Free Society (1855) was George Fitzhugh's most powerful attack on the philosophical foundations of free society. In it, he took on not only Adam Smith, the foundational thinker of capitalism, but also John Locke, Thomas Jefferson, and the entire liberal tradition. He argued that free labor and free markets enriched the strong while crushing the weak. What society needed, he wrote, was slavery, not just for blacks, but for whites as well. "Slavery," he wrote, "is a form, and the very best form, of socialism."
- face 16y ago
  This sort of propaganda bullshit is popular in the US. That's like saying the US was built on slave and prison labor. Sure, they contributed, but, at what scale?
  - ramanujan 16y ago
    Millions upon millions, entire cities built by gulag labor. http://gulaghistory.org/nps/onlineexhibit/stalin/work.php http://gulaghistory.org/nps/onlineexhibit/stalin/work.php Built between 1931 and 1933, the White Sea-Baltic Sea Canal was the first massive construction project of the Gulag. Over 100,000 prisoners dug a 141-mile canal with few tools other than simple pickaxes, shovels, and makeshift wheelbarrows in just 20 months. Initially viewed as a great success and celebrated in a volume published both in the Soviet Union and the United States, the canal turned out to be too narrow and too shallow to carry most sea vessels. Many prisoners died during construction. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/06/international/europe/06russia.html http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/06/international/europe/06rus... Vorkuta, a city built by gulag labor in the tundra 1,200 miles northeast of Moscow and 100 miles above the Arctic Circle, is slowly dying - and those who remain in many cases cannot afford to leave. A Soviet-era sign that remains atop a central building exhorts people to mine more coal, the resource that first attracted the gulag's architects in the 1930's and resulted in forced labor by two million prisoners before the camps shut down in 1950's.
hippich 16y ago
and killed millions of people and planted fear feelings in every man in these countries. I hate it. (i am from there).

by forinti 16y ago

iwr 16y ago

Compare that to the rapid developments of post-war Germany, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, then post-1990: Poland, Hungary, The Czech Republic etc. We have to look at opportunity costs, not just raw improvements.

brazzy 16y ago
None of those situations (which I have any knowledge about) are even remotely comparable to that of Russia at the time of revolution. Germany and Japan had been fully industrialized. Singapore basically grew by attracting capital as a tax haven. Russia in 1917 was about as developed as Germany or Japan in 1850 - or Britain in 1750. The funny thing is that this fact means the revolution totally contradicted Marxist doctrine, which predicts communism as a natural remedy to the excesses of capitalism. Russia hadn't even entered the captitalist "phase" yet - it was literally the least appropriate country in Europe to stage a communist revolution in.
- Retric 16y ago
  IMO, the funny thing is the United states (1950 - 1980) is probably the closest example of the Marxist ideal you can find. After industrialization you had violent conflict between workers and factory owners that resulted in places like GM being gutted by their workers who kept the fruits of their labors. Arguably by the end of the cold war it was more a question of how you organize a communist country than would you create one. PS: Of course with automation and computing many of the old assumptions stopped applying but it’s hard to complain when someone only sees 75 - 100 and not 150 years into the future.
- drats 16y ago
  While I see your point against those examples it's worth noting that Japan in the mid 19th century was a feudal society with hundreds of thousands of samurai, and by WWII they were fielding a massive navy with aircraft carriers capable of striking the USA. And the difference between the wealth of Americans at the beginning of the 20th century compared to the end is also larger in many ways. However, the difference between starving and a full belly is certainly something which people will pay more attention to rather than the difference between being well fed and then acquiring large houses, refrigeration, washing machines, one or two cars, mobile phones, radio, television, landing a couple of guys on the moon and getting them back, computers and the Internet. The scope of western capitalist development in the 20th century is simply staggering compared to any pissant planned economy, and it was done without the most horrific mass murders of the 20th century that we see under the communist regimes. Also, Lenin's modification of Marxist theory is somewhat irrelevant, the Marxist foundation was entirely wrong on a number of massive points: one more wasn't going to make a difference.

Symmetry 16y ago

Two responses to that. First, I'm not quite sure you appreciate the cost of that industrialization. The USSR achieved fast extensive growth in its early years by forcing a very high savings rate. What does that mean? They exported lots of grain to buy machinery. Where did the grain come from? The peasants. What did the peasants do after their grain was taken? They starved. The general attitude during this time (which helped the Party consolidate power) was not so much of withholding food from dissidents, but rather withholding food from anyone who couldn't make a convincing case for how they were benefiting the party or the state. So most of the progress in bring up the USSR industrial capacity per person was due to increasing industrial capacity, but a notable part of it was due to decreasing the number of people as well. Second, forced savings is a good strategy for playing catchup industrially when there are lots of obvious ways you can invest the savings (called extensive growth). Its possible to mess this up (see the Great Leap Forward) but if the beaurocrats are competent its possible. But when you've urbanized and need to start specializing more to keep growing the economy finding efficient ways to do so becomes harder (you're in intensive growth). Its here that government directed industrial policies tend to fail (or at least work more slowly than less directed solutions) due to coordination problems.

rdtsc 16y ago
Also let's not forget labor camps. Some big industrial projects (especially in Siberia) such as dams, the Trans-Siberian railroad, factories, power lines etc., were built with slave labor. I am not sure of the %, I imagine it is not terribly large, but it is still there. Other projects were built with student labor. University students were encouraged to provide volunteer work on such projects. They got on a train and traveled some place wherever help was needed. My father said it was quite fun. He spent a summer in Khazakstan, then another in Siberia.
- face 16y ago
  Can you back your claims up? In particular, say, the Trans-Siberian railroad? Its construction began in 1891, two decades before the formation of the USSR [1]. While certainly prisoners were used in its construction, saying that it was "built with slave labor" is somewhat disingenuous. Perhaps you are saying that parts of it were built using prisoners, who were not paid for their services? If so, that is certainly the case. 1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Siberian_Railway#Construction http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Siberian_Railway#Construc...

JabavuAdams 16y ago

Who got the benefits and who paid the price? Impressively, Nazi Germany was able to invent and field ballistic missiles, and to launch them at a rate never seen since, all while under constant bombardment. Just don't ask where they got their factory workers.

ramanujan 16y ago

The Soviet Union was quite literally built on slave labor (http://gulaghistory.org/nps/onlineexhibit/stalin/work.php http://gulaghistory.org/nps/onlineexhibit/stalin/work.php). Arguably, the Gulag system of slavery was even more brutal than that of the American South. And like the South, they ultimately fell behind technologically and industrially to a free society. What is forgotten today is that there were men who contemporaneously made the connection between communism and slavery while advocating for it, including George Fitzhugh: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Fitzhugh http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Fitzhugh Sociology for the South, or, the Failure of Free Society (1855) was George Fitzhugh's most powerful attack on the philosophical foundations of free society. In it, he took on not only Adam Smith, the foundational thinker of capitalism, but also John Locke, Thomas Jefferson, and the entire liberal tradition. He argued that free labor and free markets enriched the strong while crushing the weak. What society needed, he wrote, was slavery, not just for blacks, but for whites as well. "Slavery," he wrote, "is a form, and the very best form, of socialism."

face 16y ago
This sort of propaganda bullshit is popular in the US. That's like saying the US was built on slave and prison labor. Sure, they contributed, but, at what scale?
- ramanujan 16y ago
  Millions upon millions, entire cities built by gulag labor. http://gulaghistory.org/nps/onlineexhibit/stalin/work.php http://gulaghistory.org/nps/onlineexhibit/stalin/work.php Built between 1931 and 1933, the White Sea-Baltic Sea Canal was the first massive construction project of the Gulag. Over 100,000 prisoners dug a 141-mile canal with few tools other than simple pickaxes, shovels, and makeshift wheelbarrows in just 20 months. Initially viewed as a great success and celebrated in a volume published both in the Soviet Union and the United States, the canal turned out to be too narrow and too shallow to carry most sea vessels. Many prisoners died during construction. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/06/international/europe/06russia.html http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/06/international/europe/06rus... Vorkuta, a city built by gulag labor in the tundra 1,200 miles northeast of Moscow and 100 miles above the Arctic Circle, is slowly dying - and those who remain in many cases cannot afford to leave. A Soviet-era sign that remains atop a central building exhorts people to mine more coal, the resource that first attracted the gulag's architects in the 1930's and resulted in forced labor by two million prisoners before the camps shut down in 1950's.

hippich 16y ago

and killed millions of people and planted fear feelings in every man in these countries. I hate it. (i am from there).