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There's a lot of interesting ping-ponging back and forth in some of these technocratic / data-driven visions. Some parts of Soviet central planning were initial
by mjn 13y ago
There's a lot of interesting ping-ponging back and forth in some of these technocratic / data-driven visions. Some parts of Soviet central planning were initially lifted almost directly from Western success stories of massively integrated industrial conglomerates, which had a data-driven central-planning ideology. Some of the late 19th-century / early 20th century American industrialists explicitly thought that the era of markets was over, because the messy, imperfect information transmission of the medieval bazaar would be finally replaced with scientific and statistical optimization of production, management, supply chains, etc., and the more centralized, the more scientific and efficient this process could be. This was a major argument against anti-trust legislation, that by breaking up the large trusts, America was only going to be sending itself backwards into an era of decentralized, uncoordinated, inefficient industrial production.
The Soviets pretty much agreed with the large trust owners on all these points, disagreeing only on some minor details, like ownership. There was even a vision among a certain kind of early 20th century communist (nowadays called "orthodox Marxists", somewhat derisively) that capitalism was a necessary phase whose virtue lay in developing and centralizing industrial production. The communist could just wait until the capitalists have succeeded in unifying the entire industrial sector into one large conglomerate, and then the only thing left to do for a communist revolution is knock off this one remaining capitalist, who at this point owns a giant company controlling all industrial production. Then you install the party at the top of this company, and voila, a socialist, central-planned, scientific industrial sector!
Then from the 1930s American management started looking at Soviet management techniques to see if they could borrow anything back in the other direction. There were even some Soviet experiments in what today we would call "gamification", which were very interesting to Western observers, and copied in various ways [1]. One way of reconciling things was to consider a model of companies being Soviet-style internally but capitalist externally: use hierarchies, internal non-monetary rewards, central optimization, etc., up to the boundaries of the company (which would ideally be very expansive boundaries), then compete past that. And I suppose now we're at the point where using data to optimize society, another old Soviet idea, is seeming intriguing to the West...
[1] http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2115483 http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2115483
- mempko 13y agoExcellent and insightful reply. Most people don't realize how much soviet planners admired American industry. Stalin admired Ford for example. Lenin said communism is socialism with electricity. Stalin's planners literally copied Gary Indiana to push the Russian Steal industry and hired many American engineers such as grandpa Koch to develop the oil industry.
- reinmen 13y agoThe correct quote is "Communism is Soviet power plus the electrification of the whole country." See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GOELRO_plan http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GOELRO_plan
- rdtsc 13y ago> One way of reconciling things was to consider a model of companies being Soviet-style internally but capitalist externally: use hierarchies, internal non-monetary rewards, central optimization, etc., I've always pointed this out in relation to large companies. They are not much different than a dictatorship or a single party totalitarian system. It comes full on with indoctrination into company culture, team building events. Especially small towns where big factories used to pretty much own the towns, provide trash collection services, etc. If the company fired you, you had to pack up and leave. With countries, if you break rules they send you to a labor camp (prison in US). You criticize the company on Twitter you get punished. In theory one could say well if you don't like the company you just move. In current economy not many have the option of giving their company the finger and saying "fuck you" and I switching jobs. People are desperate are willing to put up with extra hours without overtime, abuse and just to have a job.
- bane 13y ago> Especially small towns where big factories used to pretty much own the towns Don't forget the practice of providing pay in company scrip that could only be spent in company provided stores. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_scrip https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_scrip In countries with very wide reaching conglomerates, like Japan and South Korea, I can almost predict a cyberpunk like future where you become a citizen of a company and cradle to grave live out your life in that company. Eat feed grown on company farms (farmed with company equipment), live in a company apartment, drive company cars, wear company clothes, watch entertainment on company TVs etc. Samsung is an example of a company that I think has almost that kind of reach. And to put it into perspective, Samsung has revenue about the same as the GDP of Finland, Israel or Chile. And exceeds countries like Egypt, Pakistan, the Philippines, and Vietnam.