This history of socialism shows, with perfect clarity, that a fully planned economy is plainly inferior to a socialist market economy. This is not to say that fully planned economies are bad, they absolutely do have their strengths. But economies that are partially planned, directed rather than dictated, have all of the same strengths, while being infinitely more flexible. The socialism of then may have raised millions out of poverty, but it was the socialism of now century that raised them into luxury, luxury greater than anything the capitalist world has ever been able to provide.
Western "Marxists" are fucking obsessed with the idea of command economies. Half of them say that AES states are not actually socialist; this is wrong. The other half says that AES states have only temporarily adopted markets, and will return to the Golden Path as soon as possible; this is also wrong, and much more egregiously so, be because it requires ignorance of and/or cognitive dissonance towards the official statements and actions made by these nations.
Western "Marxist" arguments in favor of command economies are, likewise generally rooted in ignorance, not understanding that the lifestyles they have/aspire to would be unfeasible within a purely planned system. Those that are not rooted in ignorance are instead rooted in aceticism, in poverty worship, in an intellectual cancer that must be rooted out by whatever means necessary.
Sure, we may, at some point, obviate markets. But it would require a fundamental change in the means of production that, by my calculations, is far, far away from where we are now.
In any case, you would do yourself well to stop worshipping the corpses of Stalin and Mao and join the rest of us in the 21st century.
50 posts and 14 image replies omitted.>>2804361The communist movement was the strongest when USSR was restricting market organization and as soon as they started increasing the role of markets capitalist started winning. Incredible that some leftists can look at this and then conclude that markets are good.
Crazy to see so called communists completely dropping the ball on the newfound and increasing viability of planning with modern logistics, CGE/IO models, linear programming, etc. Markets as a clearing mechanism for end goods are useful; labor markets, factor markets, financial markets etc are immensely destructive
>>2804367Socialization is just equal distribution of control, that can be achieved without the government.
>>2833749>Incredible that some leftists can look at this and then conclude that markets are good.many leftists are anti-communist so its not incredible at all
>>2833749>>2835361I think before we judge the ability of too free a market to impede in the communist revolution, we should judge the Soviet state for committing multiple mass killings.
>>2835391>Oh no, leftist are point out markets are shit!>Better bring up some off topic controversy…Ok porky since you bring up the topic what about the millions of people America and their military dictatorship friends killed all over the world? If markets were really efficient then capitalists wouldn't have needed to murder so many people to prop them up.
>>2835416Humans are just another expendable resource among all others in nature, haven’t you read theory?
>>2835416It was never to prop up markets, it was to prevent local peoples from controlling their resources and having the ability to actually reap the benefits from selling such goods on a market. The issue with markets is monopolistic control, but that’s the same issue with command economies.
<Ass
>>2835444>It was never to prop up marketsExcept all the times the military was used to impose markets on people who didn't want them.
> it was to prevent local peoples from controlling their resources How local is local enough? Do you mean an individual, a family or 10 families? A corporation, county, a country, a continent? Whenever it doesn't work market obsessives end up changing exactly how local they were talking about when it's convenient.
>The issue with markets is monopolistic controlLiner programming alone has destroyed the so called "economic calculation problem." Even the Inca were able to eliminate markets by keeping track of resources with knots and string.
>>2835459>How local is local enough? Do you mean an individual, a family or 10 families? A corporation, county, a country, a continent? Localities arise naturally along any cultural/administrative grounds in place. Some can be more just or effective than others in their representation, and there are a lot that must be rewritten, but the point is that it should be democratically decided by the people in the immediate area. Family structures vary too greatly, but everyone has to live somewhere in urban or rural or even nomadic environments. Preferably they will be governed and employed by locals (if not themselves) whose position they have a say over.
>Even the Inca were able to eliminate markets by keeping track of resources with knots and string.I don’t know enough about the Incan economy, I would love to hear about some successful experiments with central planning, it seems the pre colonial third world is the only place to find such innovations. However I do think the religious traditionalism of the era would’ve played a strong role as well, and I think with digital interconnectivity where it’s at, the best way to distribute resources is with a currency, allowing each person to pick and choose goods and services they want at their discretion.
>>2835476>Localities arise naturally along any cultural/administrative grounds in place.Localities aren't "natural" at all and every single culture is a result of forced integration from city-states, kingdoms, nations and empires that has been happening for thousands of years.
>point is that it should be democratically decided by the people in the immediate area.>distribute resources is with a currency, allowing each person to pick and choose goods and services they want at their discretionThose are two different goals. Local democratic control of resources by a group is different from markets based on individuals using money to make purchases.
>I would love to hear about some successful experiments with central planning,Every single Fortune 500 corporation is an example of a centralized economic unit and they also coordinate with each other. Problem is they coordinate in order to rip off everyone and take profits instead of fulfilling needs.
>>2834771>>2833749can we get a breakdown on the relative level of development of the ussr at the time of the changes compared to china and which sectors of the economy were subject to market anarchy and which were directed by state planning? and are we talking about deng or xi? lenin or gorbachev? only one of these has evidence of collapse. what does it mean for the capitalists to win? by what metric, on what time scale?
>>2835487Actually the fortune 500 companies are in the most fervent & irreconcilable competition with one another, generally speaking; Significant expansion means cannibalizing each other.
While singular bilateral deals can happen, there is no generalized merger or coalition.
The problem with capitalism is that it is insufficiently centralized (or unitary, which is a less ambiguous & imprecise term than centralized)
>>2836560Safronov recently came out with a huge book on the topic of the USSR's economy & the changes to its organizational structure over time.
>>2805722Only good post in this shit thread
Ignoring also that the DPRK is debunking this, after clamping down on markets which produce nothing around 2020 they are now doing pretty well, so well in fact that now even the cope york times have reported on this. Even "experts" are crying about how north korean people doing better is actually bad um ok? Also im pretty sure the USSR didnt plan literally everything or every commodity they produced, the goods that lacked in the ussr were also the same goods they really didnt plan, the planning resources were mostly used towards heavy industry, not consumer goods (although some things they did produce are known for their reliability, like in the GDR). Anyway, it all boils down to how much of the surplus value you reinvest back into a given society and towards infrastructure etc… markets themselves dont do jackshit
>>2838776If I recall, this was direct result of the kosygin reform prioritizing profitability & sales volume indicators;
Construction cost also increased because of delays in completion due to enterprises using their increased retained earnings to fund their kwn expansion & buying from decentralized warehouses at fixed prices (With gossnab only handling about 100k or so different goods compared to like 10 million different kinds produced)
>>2833749sometimes you have to commit to things fully for them to work, while a half-way house just gets you killed. indulge my metaphor:
if you walk down the middle of the road, between two lanes, you've got a good chance of being hit by a car. all it takes is someone to be a little bit out of their lane and you're going down.
if you move just a few steps to the left or to the right, your chance of being hit by a car will spike dramatically because you're now walking directly in one of the lanes of traffic.
if you move all the way, however, your risk of being hit declines again because now you're not on the road at all.
in the case of the USSR in its later years, you could expand the metaphor to absurdity, Gorbachev deciding to
lie down in the middle of one of the lanes with his eyes shut. Deng and
especially Jiang Zemin, on the other hand, were skilled Frogger players.
>>2835248labor markets aren't that bad in principle but they get fucked by neoliberals falling into an obvious public-choice theory trap: lots of firms will lobby for tax cuts (they wall want more money), few will lobby for deregulation (the firms that would exist in a competitive market can't pay you before they exist, but those who exist in a regulated market can pay you to leave them alone…), and powerful interests will oppose increased welfare in-general (money for poors? why not tax cuts for me?) but accept increased in-work welfare. (i get the labor, you pay? good deal.)
the result is that "flexicurity" and "protect people, not jobs" wind up being memes despite being a pretty good theoretical solution to the problem that a functioning market will destroy lots of jobs and create lots of new jobs, while people want stability in their income and daily routine.
>>2838210It depends on product and market. Much of the time there is some dominant business that effectually centralizes most of the market with some smaller competitors waiting in the wings. For example Microsoft Office is about 70% of productivity software market and also about 70% of the OS market. So even if technically there is competition between software companies, capitalist markets effectively centralized key processes to increase compatibility between companies and increase productivity.
>>2804361why are "liberal" Liberals so fucking smug?
socialism is when you produce things privately so you can exchange them for equivalents on the market
>>2804361Command economy=State capitalism=fascism=capitalism in decay
They didn't lose they just revived capitalism and outgrew it's usefulness to rehabilitate the economy.
>>2840465Yank cuck wants to throw stones
>>2804361<This history of socialism shows, with perfect clarity, that a fully planned economy is plainly inferior to a socialist market economy. This is not to say that fully planned economies are bad, they absolutely do have their strengths. But economies that are partially planned, directed rather than dictated, have all of the same strengths, while being infinitely more flexible. The socialism of then may have raised millions out of poverty, but it was the socialism of now century that raised them into luxury, luxury greater than anything the capitalist world has ever been able to provide. Western "Marxists" are fucking obsessed with the idea of command economies. Half of them say that AES states are not actually socialist; this is wrong. The other half says that AES states have only temporarily adopted markets, and will return to the Golden Path as soon as possible; this is also wrong, and much more egregiously so, be because it requires ignorance of and/or cognitive dissonance towards the official statements and actions made by these nations. Western "Marxist" arguments in favor of command economies are, likewise generally rooted in ignorance, not understanding that the lifestyles they have/aspire to would be unfeasible within a purely planned system. Those that are not rooted in ignorance are instead rooted in aceticism, in poverty worship, in an intellectual cancer that must be rooted out by whatever means necessary. Sure, we may, at some point, obviate markets. But it would require a fundamental change in the means of production that, by my calculations, is far, far away from where we are now. In any case, you would do yourself well to stop worshipping the corpses of Stalin and Mao and join the rest of us in the 21st century.OP regardless of China its not really true that planned economies are worse and in any case computers are advanced enough now to have a fully planned economy was more efficient and better than the USSR ever did, and doing a market economy in 202X let alone after is opportunism. The fundamental change you sought was already completed arguably in the 80s/90s its just that the USSR already got taken over by revisionists and lost interest in planned economies and communism in general by then
deng won because he was not gorbachev
deng lost because he was not stalin
>>2838776man I really wish Safranov would have his book translated to English
also what's being said here probably only applies to the ministries, not goods whose production was planned centrally by GOSPLAN
>>2870493What did Stalin win? The country he fought for collapsed.
>>2838776Besides the marxist terminology, whats the difference between this and most liberal economist analysis of the soviet union.
>>2833749judging by the non-responses to this, anon delivered the truth nuke that any "leftist" needs to hear
>>2889593ussr under stalin and post-stalin were not the same, everyone, from non-communist to communist, agrees on that matter. blaming stalin for the breakup (after literal "destalinization") is like blaming lenin for the ukrainian war and sadly, i have seen more and more anons making both of these arguments. the lack of reading shows
>>2889602in what sense is
>>2840359 a non response?
to it i would add:
- the old cliche that correlation is not causation. the communist movement was strongest before australia had color TV, after all. would you submit it's possible that all that's needed to bring it back is to knock down a few broadcasting towers?
- that, although it is possible the USSR would have survived had it retained a less market oriented economy, it is unlikely it would have thrived. it is quite possible to imagine a world where the USSR exists today, but no richer than half a century or more ago. this is, however, a position which is very vulnerable to both external shocks (incapable of marshalling the resources to resist invasion or subversion by much richer opponents) or internal ones (the population realising just how much richer everyone else is, particularly the middle and upper strata - which, incidentally, letting them find this out is one of the many things that fucked over Gorbachev.)
we have examples of a country that refused to do market reforms and doubled down on stalinism
Enver hoxha albania still stagnated
>>2804435>"The abolition of private property is therefore by no means identical with communism and communism has seen other socialist theories, such as those of Fourier and Proudhon, rising up in opposition to it, not fortuitously but necessarily, because it is only a particular, one-sided realization of the principle of socialism."Marx, Letter To Ruge
>>2889628Is north macedonia supposed to be able to reach the productiveness of current day china ? Obviously not, not even in multiple decades
>>2889640what has to do with a socialist market economy?
>>2889684also read it again, marx clearly isnt against the abolition of private property
>>2889667sophistry playing off the inherent ambiguity of the term "Planning", a floating signifier which can cover everything from "centrally planning literally everything" to gosplan to 1970s french/japanese indicative planning to amazon to my
planning not to get a worthwhile response to this point.
what are you even doing with that second image?
VW and Toyota are both big companies that operate according to something other than sheer randomness, therefore we'll just ignore that they're competitors without much control over one another? >>2889681No, but I still expect better results than it's long economic stagnation. Which lead to the economic collapse that happened shortly after hoxhas death.
Like if it sustained itself than I could respect it. But it wasn't even able to do that.
>>2889696>ambiguityWe already live under a "planned" (and yes
fully planned) economy. Firms like BlackRock employ more people than the Gosplan ever did. Small businesses plan, multinationals plan production, consumers plan expenditures.
Planning is not has never been unique to any mode of production.
>>2889730you are equivocating between systems where each firm (or holding company, or whatever) plans for itself (and even then, often in a fairly hands off manner: make me money, appoint an irish gaelic speaker to the board, or i'll sell my shares and someone else can decide) and systems where every firm in the country is set an arbitrary target like "increase the number of ton-kilometres moved by rail by 10% from the previous year"
since there is no serious mode of production not reliant on some form of planning (does a hunter gatherer not plan to hunt and gather on a given day?) it conveys absolutely no information to require one rigidly specify:
"centralised, indicative, or cybernetic" planning every single time.
>>2804361It just works. How the economy is organized doesn't even matter that much outside of other factors (even far-rights agree there was a book on it Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy by Joseph Scumpeter) . Most big companies are top down. Economic calculation problem etc all bullshit that can be debunked (look at Chinese prices compared to neighbours like Japan) and planning with modern tech is more efficient.
Tito's Yugoslavia was probably the shittiest long term "socialist" economy.
TRUKE on the second they aren't and can't advance into socialism like this
Maybe some truth on the 3rd as they tend to focus on immediate needs. I think there's a middle path w all the experiences from planned economies. We could cut down on the slop and focus on higher quality cultural products (not high brow)
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