Why the Soviet Union failed - my hypothesis

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Orwell
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03 Oct 2010, 9:50 am

RedHanrahan wrote:

Secondly, The reasons for the Soviet Union collapsing are myriad and transcend mere economics. where shall we start, shall we start with the social changes of the mid 19th century, the dissolution of the serf system and it's outcomes, shall we look at the different groups within this society and their aspirations? Shall we look at a peasant based culture grappling with a revolution, a civil war and then the most rapid industrialization the world had until that point seen. Then there is the optimism of the late 20's and early 30's, the fear during Stalin's purges and the Nazi invasion.... which of these isolated points shall we leap on, isolate and construct a theory to use in placing blame?

I'm a history major focusing on Russian and especially Soviet history. I'm well aware of the various reasons for the USSR's trouble, and that not all of them were to do with economics, but the statement that a centrally controlled economy will fail is accurate.

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Thirdly, My use of the term 'technocratic' was in relation to the use of jargon a trait/device used by technocrats in their ivory towers. If you read John Ralston Saul you will find that technocrats exist in all technological/capitalist societies as well as socialist ones.

People who complain about "jargon" usually just lack the education to understand an idea. And frankly, Ruveyn didn't even use any deeply esoteric jargon. What, you don't know what an algorithm is? The fact remains, he is right on the math. Study some nonlinear dynamics, and maybe you'll understand why.

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Master_Pedant
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03 Oct 2010, 10:58 am

Orwell wrote:

RedHanrahan wrote:

As for your technocratic babble about computers and algorithms etc... blah blah blah... nonsense

Ruveyn's comments were actually the opposite of technocratic. A technocrat, in common with the socialist, would hold the utterly absurd notion that the economy can be centrally controlled in an effective manner.

If you disagree with the claims he made in that regard, I'd be happy to walk you through the math. The pre-reqs aren't too daunting; you should be able to follow as long as you've had three semesters of calculus and a first course in differential equations.

To be fair, it seemed that RedHanrahan was using the word "technocrat" more in the sense of "policy wonk" then in the sense of "person who wants to technocratically plan the economy". Ruveyn's past idealization of scientific and engineering elites over business elites (in another thread) does touch of a broadly technocratic mindset.

ruveyn
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03 Oct 2010, 11:55 am

Master_Pedant wrote:

[

To be fair, it seemed that RedHanrahan was using the word "technocrat" more in the sense of "policy wonk" then in the sense of "person who wants to technocratically plan the economy". Ruveyn's past idealization of scientific and engineering elites over business elites (in another thread) does touch of a broadly technocratic mindset.

Even though theoretical physicists and mathematicians are the best humans on the planet, I still would not let them run the economy.

ruveyn

RedHanrahan
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04 Oct 2010, 1:22 am

Awesomelyglorious wrote:

RedHanrahan wrote:

Firstly, Economics is more than mathematical equations and there are no absolutes.

Ok, but mathematical equations are incredibly relevant to economic planning. In fact, the idea of organizing all of that information, forecasting, and determining ideal production is going to be highly mathematically dependent.

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Ok, but having an economic system that cannot succeed is still going to be a death knell for any society.

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Now lastly, 'command economies do not work'? Lets look at China shall we? let's see? here we have an adaptive command economy that is performing brilliantly in pure technical terms, in fact isn't it holding the mortgage on the USA as we speak :lol:

.

peace j

That's the thing. China has relaxed the command. China was absolutely a failure as an economy for a few decades until it decentralized some decisions and allowed for some market forces to make decisions. For this reason, I would have to say that it isn't "an adaptive command economy", so much as a mixed economy.

In response to your first point, of course. I was merely trying to make the point that it is a complex issue this 'economics' and the failure of the USSR.

Your second point I entirely disagree with, you see all human activity and aspiration has the potential to succeed or fail according to the time and place in which it occurs and the abilities and real intentions of those involved. Again a complex set of factors to allow for.

The fact that Marx envisaged his social experiment as occurring within an already industrial society and specifically the United Kingdom, although Germany was more than ready and possibly more suitable culturally. The Russian peoples on the other hand were a feudal peasant society for the most part and culturally more inclined to a decentralized collective or syndicalist system as proposed by Kropotkin.

I would suggest that your US education system and media have so clouded the subject and worked from certain assumptions about history and human nature as to give you the impression there are some laws akin to physical laws that exist when this is just not the case.

And lastly on your third point, I disagree. In practice nothing happens in China without official centralised sanction. I would consider this to be effectively still a centralised command economy.

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04 Oct 2010, 1:35 am

Orwell wrote:

RedHanrahan wrote:

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Well aren't we the smug bugger and for all that education pretty ignorant of life's subtleties, again I will assume that this is due to your indoctrination.

I find this ironic as you have the cheek to embrace the image of Orwell while seeming to be fairly ignorant of any lessons or wisdom he left behind. Perhaps as an American you chose only to see the disappointed and cynical man - who knows?

I complain about the over use of unnecessary jargon as it is elitist and little more than a power game, ie 'if they don't have the language to discourse then they can't organise or argue back'. An observation Eric Blair himself made in 1984.

For your information I have studied Russian History and Culture for over 25 years and still would not claim any authority!
Something life has taught me is that the more I learn the more I realise how little I can ever know

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04 Oct 2010, 1:45 am

Master_Pedant wrote:

Orwell wrote:

RedHanrahan wrote:

As for your technocratic babble about computers and algorithms etc... blah blah blah... nonsense

Thankyou sir.

It obviously takes a compatriot of John Ralston Saul to understand my point, have you read any of his work?

As an aside I lived at The Pas with my family between the end 1966 and 1968 when I was but a wee bairn.

peace j

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04 Oct 2010, 2:41 am

RedHanrahan wrote:

Wow, poor iddy biddy yanks are offended by me, oh dear.

If by "offended" you mean it's been noted that with the attacks on America and other posters stripped out of your posts you'd be down to punctuation; than yes. I don't normally pay much attention to irrelevant people and didn't want Orwell to waste his time; if people get much less relevant (to anything) than angry Marxist kiwis it's news to me...

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04 Oct 2010, 2:44 am

BTW, why is a hypothesis even needed regarding the failure of the USSR? Maybe one would be needed if it had succeeded, but failure was pretty much preordained.

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Sand
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04 Oct 2010, 2:52 am

Dox47 wrote:

BTW, why is a hypothesis even needed regarding the failure of the USSR? Maybe one would be needed if it had succeeded, but failure was pretty much preordained.

What was all that unnecessary and very expensive business called the cold war all about?

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04 Oct 2010, 3:05 am

Sand wrote:

What was all that unnecessary and very expensive business called the cold war all about?

Beats the hell out of me, something about falling dominoes and selling a whole lot of guns... It certainly wasn't my idea.

From what I can decipher through after the fact research, a lot of Western fears came from spying on the USSR through the use of defectors and moles in their organs of state who reported back the same economic and military numbers that were going to the Politburo. It never seems to have occurred to anyone that the Russians would in essence lie to themselves concerning production numbers and performance in order to satisfy the demands of their command economy, let alone about the state of their military. It wasn't until Afghanistan and the 1980's that anyone really started to question the numbers that the Russians themselves were using; once we figured out what was going on we just spent them to death. We probably could have just ignored them all those years and the results would have been largely the same, hindsight being 20/20 and all.

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04 Oct 2010, 3:14 am

Dox47 wrote:

RedHanrahan wrote:

Wow, poor iddy biddy yanks are offended by me, oh dear.

First you assume I am 'anti-American' now you assume I am a Marxist.
While I will concede that much of American culture disgusts me and your foreign policy is equally disgusting, I know some OK Americans that make up for morons like yourself and your ignorant world view.
While I agree with many of Karl Marx's conclusions about economics I am most certainly not a 'Marxist' - so which section of your bowel you pulled that from is a mystery to me, moron.

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04 Oct 2010, 3:30 am

Dox47 wrote:

Sand wrote:

What was all that unnecessary and very expensive business called the cold war all about?

Aha! Something in the same category as the war on terror and getting cozy with all those drug crooks in Afghanistan to make it into a true democracy. I wonder when hindsight will catch on there.

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04 Oct 2010, 3:34 am

Sand wrote:

Dox47 wrote:

Sand wrote:

What was all that unnecessary and very expensive business called the cold war all about?

Aha! Something in the same category as the war on terror and getting cozy with all those drug crooks in Afghanistan to make it into a true democracy. I wonder when hindsight will catch on there.

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04 Oct 2010, 11:11 am

RedHanrahan wrote:

Well aren't we the smug bugger and for all that education pretty ignorant of life's subtleties, again I will assume that this is due to your indoctrination.

Oh, of course, anyone who disagrees with you could only do so because they are "indoctrinated" or "brainwashed." Typical claim made by every fringe idiot.

Quote:

I find this ironic as you have the cheek to embrace the image of Orwell while seeming to be fairly ignorant of any lessons or wisdom he left behind. Perhaps as an American you chose only to see the disappointed and cynical man - who knows?

Also typical among loons in here is to demand that I agree with anything they say on the basis of my calling myself "Orwell."

Quote:

I complain about the over use of unnecessary jargon as it is elitist and little more than a power game, ie 'if they don't have the language to discourse then they can't organise or argue back'. An observation Eric Blair himself made in 1984.

Seriously? "Algorithm" and "combinatorics" are beyond your vocabulary? Look, that "jargon" exists for a reason. Mathematicians have devised the most efficient and precise system of communicating ideas that has ever existed in human history. It would appear that you are the one attempting to stifle any thought that depends on complex thoughts that can't be expressed properly in monosyllabisms.

You are wrong on the math. It is as simple as that. Poincaré and Lorentz demonstrated that years ago. Nonlinear systems can't even be predicted, much less controlled, and the economy is highly nonlinear. Now, it is a separate argument whether the USSR was truly a centralized command economy. Lenin implemented market reforms, and there was a thriving black market for much of the USSR's history. At no point was everything in the USSR fully socialized. I haven't ever argued that economics were the sole cause of the USSR's collapse (just look at some of my earlier posts in this thread) but when you go so far as to reject the statement "Command economies will fail" you're just plain wrong.

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Master_Pedant
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04 Oct 2010, 11:28 am

RedHanrahan wrote:

Thankyou sir.

It obviously takes a compatriot of John Ralston Saul to understand my point, have you read any of his work?

I haven't and the forum member who references his work the most happens to be a conservative forum moderator. I don't really agree with the whole "policy technocrats are bad 'cause the analyze details" thesis. I think the great economist John Keneith Gabrieth made a rather elegant point that a new industrial economy requires educated technocrats.

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04 Oct 2010, 2:33 pm

RedHanrahan wrote:

Hey, I'm just calling them like I see them; every post of yours either attacks America or personally insults another poster and this latest is no exception. Plus, you seem to think that most if not all Americans are actively plotting to destroy or take over the world via our insipid yet irresistible culture if not our overwhelming military might, and since I'm a people pleasing sort of guy I hate to disappoint. So simmer away in your backwater country crying into whatever the hell you people drink over your failed ideology and utter lack of relevance to the world at large; I don't even need to hurl insults at the likes of you.

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