Why was the USSR so shit at maintaining its economy ? I’m not asking for vague information about why socialism always collapses, I want to understand in detail what made it incapable of providing with basic goods despite apparent successes (e.g. the space race). And furthermore, to finally settle it, was it socialist or capitalist ? Why or why not
>>18566747Its a complicated subject but basically it came down to corruption at every level. There wasn't proper oversight and accounting of state owned goods so people were just stealing and embezzling blatantly and nobody could say anything But the soviet union didnt fall because of the lack of material goods it fell because of the leaders at the top wanted to be oligarchs I recommend you read about Victor Glushkov and his attempts to computerize the economy of the USSR, he was rejected at every turn because leaders didnt want to have the massive corruption found out
>>18566747>lose 40 million people to war >germ shits destroy everything >once this problem is dealt with you immediately have to deal with the combined power of North America and Western Europe trying to fuck you over >half the developing world also wants free gibs from you >still one of two sole superpowers in the world Gee, clearly socialism was the issue! Definitely nothing else I’d love to see how mutts would have done under similar circumstances
>>18566751It was actually a very fixable issue During Andropov’s brief leadership, he introduced anti-corruption measures and experimented with ways to increase productivity and it genuinely started showing results even in such a short term Ironically, the USSR in the 1970s/1980s needed a Stalin more than a Gorbachev. It needed forced modernized industrialization and massive purges
>>18566747>Why was the USSR so shit at maintaining its economy ?Because central planning doesn't work. When you put the state in charge of the entire economy it doesn't magically become benevolent, it just acts like a giant omnicorporation with a monopoly on everything.Trying to wrangle a bajillion farmers across a bajillion miles of farmland who all want their cut is hard. You know what's not hard? Throwing money at scientists.
>>18566755sorry homo, communism is never coming back
both central planning and Russians' lack of work discipline. the Russian state has always been technophilic and eager to embrace cutting edge military and strategic capabilities, but the people's peasant mentality isn't always up to the level of quality and high standards needed.
>>18566747Central planning is really good when you’re working towards a single goal like industrialization or launching rockets and shit but it can never provide the kind of economic growth expected by later generations who no longer remember the rural peasant life.Also people forget how fucking costly that shit was. Millions starved to death so that the USSR could industrialize in the 30s. Honestly it was almost like a totally mobilized war economy but the war was for industrialization instead of fighting an enemy.
>>18566755Golden age of the USSR was right after WW2. It wasn’t until the 70s and 80s when the totally retarded economic system finally began to show its cracks and it probably would have imploded even sooner had Russia not been a giant ass gas station for the world. Also the USSR was way more fucking aggressive in the immediate aftermath of WW2 than the west. They enforced communism on all the territory they liberated, tried to set up a socialist state in northern Iran, and supported North Korea in their invasion of the south. Meanwhile people weren’t even sure if the US was gonna stay in Europe after WW2 and honestly had the USSR not been so bellicose it’s entirely possible they may have left. In fact the thought of the US leaving back across the Atlantic was what caused them to be so aggressive in the first place, Stalin really didn’t think the US would stick around in the capacity that they ended up staying.
>>18566747To bring up some points mostly unrelated to communism the endemic culture of corruption, falsification of reports, and bribery present in the Soviet Union was something inherited from Tsarist Russia. The massive gap between the countryside and the cities was likewise something inherited from Tsarist Russia.
>>18566747Was it really that much more incompetent than what came before and after it?
>>18567096Considering they had to literally steal IBM chips from western companies, yeah.More pathetic than China even since at least China can reverse engineer some of the shit they steal.
>>18567165They didn't have to do it, they just did it. They just made the catastrophic decision to scrap the soviet program, and just copy.
>>18566880>>18566782But why does central planning fail so much ? What’s so different than a regular economy ?>>18566751So corruption then ? If that’s the case, is it really fair to call it socialist ? Because in that logic haiti would also be capitalist despite its cronny nature.>>18566755That was true for the early 50s but wasn’t a big issue afterwards
>>18567432>But why does central planning fail so much?It is just so ineffective at meeting and adapting to market demands.
>>18566747It was state capitalist, but that's just what socialism really is. No one has ever tried to get rid of commodity production because it's just not feasable. Commies believe it is, but when these states fail to abolish commodity production, they just cope by saying they'll get to it in 2500 or something like that, because of the "material conditions".Their economy went to shit because of central planning, like the other anon already said.
>>18566747If the USSR was so shit, how did it become one of two world powers? Capitalist-cucks always fail to explain that one...
>>18567448i guess that makes all societies since the dawn of civilization "state-capitalism" so maybe we can do away with all the other isms and conclude the details dont really matter
Central planning doesn't work because the state is shit at deciding consumer preferences.
>>18567432>But why does central planning fail so much ? Under Capitalism, the owners of a business or a shareholders of a corporation have a direct stake in its continued success. Failure to deliver efficient production means you personally are fucked.Under a Soviet-style centrally planned economy, this incentive structure is much more abstract. Sure, you as a career party man would probably like your country to succeed since you live there and everything, but it's not the same thing.
>>18566755Nobody forced them to give unlimited gibs to the third world.
>>18567459Not a single state today fits the definition of "socialist", they all have commodity production and are therefore capitalist. Sinophiles are just coping hard because it's the only "socialist" success story they can point and say "see? it works better than capitalism!" when it's just capitalism, but ran by the state and with marxist aesthetics.
>>18567482they needed to do this to get access to their ressources. the same applies to the US btw.
The Soviet economy was a war economy it was 100% designed to support the MIC. Any consumer goods that came about were an afterthough/accident.
>>18567504The definition of socialism is that the government or the people own the means of production. But we can define a hybrid form of socialism where the government owns a substantial part of the means of production and also retains absolute legal right to control any privately-owned means of production as it sees fit. This is how China largely works or wartime Nazi germany worked.
>>18567552>The definition of socialism is that the government or the people own the means of production.>the governmentI'm not going to waste my time arguing with you, but this is just how communists have justified the fact that their countries are nothing like what they promised to be. Through this definition, absolutist states mercantilist states would be socialist, the king represents the people! Hilarious.
>>18567559What is the indictment here exactly: country X does not conform with theory Y?Because the original indictment was "societies that function -this way- will inevitably self destruct". That however was always a pathetic lie, so I can see why a change of subject might be in order.
>>18566747Among many reasons, the restrictions on travel were imbecilic.
>>18567614China had an internal passport system similar to USSR but they got rid of it in the 80s.
>>18566747It wasnt pretty good at it actually, but they got fucked badly by the computer electronics revolution which obviously was a whole new way of manufacturing and where all of europe and most of the US got royally fucked in the ass by Japan at about the same time, so excelling here wasnt cakewalk
>>18567627*was pretty good at it actually
>>18566755Yeah except they killed or gulag'd everyone with money or knowledge about how to run things. Put a retard in charge of agriculture that told the farmers to sow seeds onto ice. Not to mention, aligning themselves with Nazi Germany prior to said war.Got tons of materiel and money from FDR free of charge btw.>>18567476That and they couldn't even determine how to price things. They had to look at what Western Europe was charging for stuff to approximate what it should cost.
>>18566758>It needed forced modernized industrialization and massive purgesPlease bro, just let me purge 10,000 more counter-revolutionaries and the revolution will finally succeed.
>>18566747>be stalin>kill everyone who could possibly be a threat to your rule>suddenly everyone sucks at their job
>>18567641>get first into space>send the US into collective panic>reach living standard parity with the west with a country that was famous for being a bunch of piss-poor serfs
I deny central planning cannot work. It obviously DID work. The Soviet Union economically, was actually very stable and had rapid growth under it's phase under strict GOSPLAN and when GOSPLAN was loosened and more decentralized, it still had pretty much non-stop growth.Unironically the problem with Soviet planning was the time period. They didn't have computers and stuff like agricultural science even in the West was absolute shit tier until the 1960s (hence dust bowl, cane toads and other retarded shit).You could absolutely run an economy today, and give people a pretty good quality of life, and even do things probably better (housing and industry for example) using central planning, especially with computers and networking.One of the funniest things is the modern economy on earth, is largely planned, in advance. Food is grown to very specific orders placed months in advance and plans well in advance, same with energy networks, global distribution networks are all planned well in advance, even farming now, is being more and more centralised and I would not be surprised in the next 20 years most advanced economy farming is 100% automated from central hubs. >>18566747Soviet political system was absolutely borked. It rewarded ass kissing and nepotism and punished talent. This was fine under Stalin and he could just get rid of non-performers easily with purges, but post-Stalin the entire system came grinding under the weight of corrupt nomenklatura.Mao was smart enough to do the Cultural Revolution to make the CPC a far more dynamic and self-testing party that was far more responsive to citizen demands and concerns. Yuri Andropov started to institute more of this shit, hence he started mass executing corrupt officials like China does.
>>18567649>reach living standard parity with the west"no"
>>18567693It's not an easy exercise to gauge it since the go-to measure we have for living standard is GDP, and GDP is wholly inappropriate for USSR and they did not track or report that way.Rent was less than 5% of the average budget. That obviously drags "GDP" down, but how shall we measure it in "living standard"
>>18567693Not an argument
>>18567432>But why does central planning fail so much ? What’s so different than a regular economy?Simple:>Five years plan 1 states you need x ammount of grain and y ammount of shoes for the next 5 years>During the five years umpredictable events now makes you suddenly need less shoes but more grain than you previously predicted>But the entire economy run around precise planned productio goals and so you cannot stop and pivot in the middle or else the entire system collapses>You ends the five years with a lot of useless shoes and people starvingRepeat this problem with multiple five years plans across decades and the issues at the core level of your economy keep stacking more and more
>>18567649>reach living standard parity with the westStopped reading there.
>>18567681>Mao was smart enough to do the Cultural Revolution to make the CPC a far more dynamic and self-testing party that was far more responsive to citizen demands and concerns.Can you expand on this a bit it sounds interesting
>>18566747The economy of the USSR almost-constantly increased during the Cold War, only flagging during the prolonged war with Afghanistan. The rate of growth however was generally lower than what the US had experienced despite its booms and busts and is a good illustration of how development in command and free market economies tends to occur. Command economies like the USSR grow constantly though don't see the same peaks as free market economies do. Though the USSR was largely self-dependant, having OPEC slash the price of oil to make the USSR's main export uncompetitive killed one of its means of obtaining money from foreign markets. Corruption as stated many times on this thread was a huge problem and still is in most post-Soviet states. The government implemented 5-year plans which could be sabotaged by foreign intelligence. Factory production was made to primarily suite domestic consumption and was constantly in short supply for raw materials. As mentioned before oil was really the only way for the USSR to get foreign capital. Also a far greater proportion of the government's spending was on military equipment to compete with the US, whose larger economy could absorb the cost of maintaining an equally strong military.Though not entirely useful statistics, in 1989 the U.S. military budget was comparable to 5.6% of its GDP whereas for the USSR this has been estimated to be between 15-20%.I'm no expert so take all of this with a pinch of salt, this is just stuff from the flame wars of 09'. Was the USSR socialist or capitalist? It was more socialist than current-day China at any rate due to its constant adoption of the command economy, the CCP under Deng did well to transition to a mixed economy and cut out effectively all the toxic parts of communism which was clearly stifling progress in that country. USSR liberalised a little under Kruschev. Post-Soviet Russia went for shock therapy, which was a recommendation designed to deliberately ruin economies.
>>18567165The USSR was also starting to make domestic chips in the 80s, just like China today. The program just died in the 90s, like everything else.
>>18567740So did a majority of people in the USSR have indoor plumbing?
communism was unimaginably shitty and completely anti-human. only functionally insane person would defend this "system"
>>18567926>The government implemented 5-year plans which could be sabotaged by foreign intelligencestopped reading there, tankie
>>18566782what do you mean by belevolent?
>>18567740>standard of living is measured entirely in how much rent coststhat's fucking retarded
>>18567926Funny how Tankies never mention the complete destruction of the environment by the Soviets
>>18567649>get first into space>reach living standard parity with the westimagine believing commie lies
>>18567649I would honestly rather be a poorfag in the west than an oligarch in some SR shit hole. I probably have a better quality of life than the latter at this point.
>>18566755Mutts literally fought a more catastrophic war proportionally and shortly thereafter became the first superpower.USSR lost 15% of its people as casualties.The American South from the civil war lost over 33%.Yet they recovered and industry mogged the USSR and HDI mogged the USSR.
>>18566747A combination of factors. The 70's oil crises absolutely decimated their economic growth to the point at which it never recovered. Their approach to computerization was the wrong one. Corruption infested every layer, from the top where your leadership over an industry was a direct source of your power (and thus disinvestment from your industry was a threat) down to the lowest levels where people would just steal things from work. Centrally planned economies also tend to fall for the meme where you should just chronically overinvest in heavy industry until the end of time.
>>18566747Taking a different angle, but I think part of it was really political. Russia was a jealous, imperialistic, outsider boyar state of heartless ex-vikings, and the social structure and concentration of power by the boyars meant the ruling class grew especially estranged from the reality of the country over hundreds of years. This meant the country didn't evolve/reform naturally over time (say, like Sweden did) to cope with external conditions, it was not structurally sound. There was late abolition of serfdom by Tsars, and a very large population + size meant it should've become a superpower (and it did) just due to its size economically and politically, but the revolution did two very weird things.First is that it broke Russia from Europe. It's not really remembered but the Bolsheviks dreamed of lording over the industrial core of the world (Lenin wanted to move the capital to Berlin as soon as possible), it was the strategy, and it failed when the Red Army was driven back from Poland in 1920. Basically they got greedy and "went for it," but it didn't work. (They got Eastern Europe later, but not all of Germany, and it was devastated with millions dead, the people there not particularly jazzed about it.) Second thing is that the totalitarian regime was just an endless murder fest starting from 1917 on, a lot of good competent people just got splatted, then WWII entirely fucked the demography of the country, without it the population would be 2x larger from population growth and without the millions dead.Anyways their weird ontological desire to be recognized as important led them to try to lord over Asia and Africa as a cope while shipping weapons to all kinds of crazy non-Europeans, which they treated as some great achievement instead of a giant money pit. There was just a huge amount of military spending and subidies to the imperial territories and satellites, also mostly not good for the natives. Also a lot of the politicians were weirdos.
>>18566755Commietmutts were doomed to fail, murder the previous leaders, starve the population, run out of other people's resources and money.
>>18567649>get first into spaceAmerican resources and German scientists sure are good huh.
>>18566747>And furthermore, to finally settle it, was it socialist or capitalist ? Why or why notSocialist but that was also kind of a meme. Thing is, central planning never really existed like people imagine where everything is planned from the center. What existed in practice is that planners would declare how much growth they wanted and the management of enterprises would plan how much to produce to satisfy the requirements (and often lying about how much they were producing as a result). You had the politburo discussing what volumes of stuff they needed to export, what strategic stuff they needed (like fuel, energy, food, weapons) but that was mostly it. There are others who claim the Soviet Union did remarkably little actual planning for a supposed planned economy. Like there's the famous "brutalist" housing, but in practice this came quite late (70s/80s) and they were envisioned as a temporary thing with a very short life and placed more haphazardly than people assume, like to house workers for a factory (that was also never completed) and then the country collapsed and the funds to service them went away.Most communists also think "central planning" is just getting to do arbitrary stuff without any laws or oversight.Or consider homelessness. Like you'll hear people say the USSR "solved" homelessness, but that had less to do with housing (there were perennial housing shortages), the thing that solved homelessness in the USSR was that unemployement was illegal and the state controlled where people lived / worked *shoves you in a barracks*
factories would have a quota to produce X number of shoes although this was pretty vague and mostly up to the factory's discretion. the manager could decide to make 10,000 high heels and be able to claim he met the quota, of course then the shoe store in Moscow had nothing but high heels at the expense of any other kind of footwear since there was no market force at work.
>>18568534the Russian state since the rise of Muscovy always prioritized its security and survival over the needs of the masses. the idea of the state having some limits on its power was not developed as it did in Europe. other medieval Russian states such as Novgorod had more liberal political traditions and were closer to Europe in spirit but Muscovy formed the nucleus of the unified Russia and it was an autocracy where the tsar had no limits on his power.
>>18566747You need Ludwig von Mises's 1920 "Impossibility of Economic Calculation under Socialism".The guy predicted that socialism must fail and, unlike Marx's prediction about collapse of capitalism, he was proven right.The economic problem of socialism was well recognized by the Soviet rulers and they had made serious attempt to solve it (Oskar Lange was an important contributor) but you can't solve the impossibility.
