Oh, they work, all right, like rats a-fighting – for a limited range of purposes, such as heavy capital formation. In 1924 Stalin took control of a backward, agrarian country, marginally industrialized by the onset of WWI and that little industry devastated by that war and the Russian Civil War, and – by methods which were bloody, brutal, repressive, wasteful, but effective – by 1939 had turned it into an industrial power capable of going head-to-head with Hitler’s Germany; and Germany had always been at the leading edge of the Industrial Revolution. No way could that have happened, if Russia had had a free-market system during that period.
OTOH, central economic planning, lacking the constant corrective feedback of competitive market performance, is spectacularly inept at any kind of fine-tuning. Moreover, it does not encourage innovation very well. No state planner would ever have thought of something like the Sony Walkman, or the Pet Rock, or fabric softener. (Whether that is an argument for or against Stalinism is open to debate.)
Also, if the government carrying out the planning is an unaccountable one, then in its hubris it is capable of astonishing economic blunders of which even sympathizers the whole world over can only ask, "What were you thinking?!" Such as Stalin’s collectivization of agriculture or China’s Great Leap Forward.
I am not at all certain this is true. Remember that up lenin, and maybe even Stalin, Russia was not only backwards but kept there economically by government and chaos. I will grant that the Commies ended that, but people can surprise you. Moreover, all their industry went to nothing, because they had nothing to do with it. The same thing happened under Mao: the state was able to build endless amounts of hardware, but not actually use it to any purpose. At best Stalin got lucky, but you can’t forget that even if he did, he also kileld off a big chunk of his best and rbightest doing it. You can never say what would have happened, and it’s instructive that other nations such as Germany and Japan came back from situations as dire with even more pep.
Also, the extent to which industrialization contributed to Stalin’s victory is somewhat… overstated. Sure, the Soviets managed to put some concentrations of hardware in the field and very large armies, btu they were always shoestring and on the edge of ruin, and heavily supported by foreigners when at all possible.
Not what you would call real free-market examples. Germany had the funding of the Marshall Plan, and Japan a tradition of vigorous state dirigisme going back to the Meiji Restoration.
It can’t be overstated. A non-industrialized Russia would have been a meal for the Germans to consume at their leisure: No factories, no tanks; and lend-lease could never have brought in enough. It was the first completely mechanized war in history. Hitler was overoptimistic in thinking he could take the oilfields of the Caucasus, but perfectly correct in thinking that the key to victory – not because it would give the petroleum to the Germans, but because it would deny it to the Russians and their vast war machine would have shut down for lack of fuel.
As stated on the renowned historical website TVTropes.org:
After the McCarthy era, not only did the mainstream liberal factions in the US repudiate Communism, but perhaps even more importantly the “New Left” of the 1960s wanted nothing to do with fat old men in grey suits giving them marching orders. The denouncement of Stalinism and the naked imperialism of the USSR in Czechoslovakia meant that no one in the US with an ounce of idealism supported the USSR anymore; the more radical factions glamorized third world revolutionaries like Mao, Che Guevara or Ho Chi Minh.
Leftist intellectuals still considered Marxism the key to understanding history, there was still plenty of criticism of “The Establishment”, but what opposition there was on the left was mostly either anarchist or pacifist- too opposed to regimentation to ever support the “party discipline” of classic communism. The fact that the middle and lower-middle classes of America were better off then they’d ever been in history and that the mainstream liberals were successful in pushing through reforms meant that there was no resentful proletariat to proselytize.
Back in the old bipolar world there were two global factions: us and them. The United States was the leader of us and the Soviet Union was the leader of them. There were other countries in each faction but let’s not kid ourselves, everyone knew who the two big dogs in the yard were.
Now while these other countries might overall be happy with the faction they’re in and have no desire to change sides, there was still going to be some resentment. Nobody likes being the sidekick. Which means that there was always some anti-American feelings in the western world.
And in a capitalist/communist divide how do you express resentment of the leading capitalist power? You flirt with communism. It annoys the big dog and reminds him not to take you for granted. It’s an assertion of independence.
But here in the United States itself we had no reason to resent the United States as an entity. We are us. So we never devloped a significant communist fringe.
Another criticism of Communism, which applies with exactly equal force to Fascism, is that it is participatory, in the worst sense of the word. Despots in times past, the Tsar, the Sultan, the Son of Heaven, demanded only that their subjects “tremble and obey” – if you paid your taxes, committed no crimes and kept your mouth shut, they were usually satisfied. The 20th Century saw the advent of regimes that demanded much more. You had to clearly and actively support the regime and its ideology, make sure your kids go to the Regimist Youth Group meetings in proper uniform, show up at party rallies or “spontaneous” demonstrations, etc. I recall a quote from someone in the mid-20th Century, which I have been unable to track down but it ran roughly like this: “A citizen of a modern dictatorship is condemned to a lifetime of enthusiasm. It is a wearing sentence. Like a soldier who returns exhausted from a long march and a battle, he must still fall in and turn out smartly for parade.” Even non-totalitarian dictatorships like Saddam Hussein’s sometimes require this; I recall an NPR story about a teacher who explained to her class that they had better cheer loudly for Hussein at one of his rallies or she might be killed and their families would be in danger. In Iran it was all de rigeur in the years after the Islamic Revolution – don’t know if it still is.
Well what? The titled nobility are trivial in numbers and have been declining in wealth, power and status since 1789. They’re more a club than a class. Even in the UK.
You do have a lot more people in Europe who self-consciously identify as “working class”. If I hear an American call themselves “working class”, I automatically think they’re a poseur. Also, I think the same when someone uses the word “poseur”.
Certainly true, yet these were only a small part of the vast energy devoted by private citizens working for private gain. And let us simply say that the impact of the state is ambiguous, at best.
First off, Russian industry hardly began with the Soviets. It was no trivial power even beforehand, even crippled by the monarchy.
Secondly, the German war machine wasn’t nearly as mechanized as they liked to portray, but it was enough for our purposes. It had a lot of power, but it’s no accident that is was heavily dependant on nemies fighting in the open and lost much of its potency away from supply lines. They could never even pacify Poland despite overwhelming forces, and their invasions of Russia and the Ukraine turned into a nightmare slog which has destroyed armies much more powerful, both relatively and absolutely. Russian infrastructure was as much a vast weakness as a strength.
You may be right, but I disagree that the case is clear-cuty. This is definitely a case where history could easily have gone the other way in spots but not changed the ultimate outcome.*
*Germans suffer intensely in the short run, Russians suffer almost as badly for the long term. Poland gets the worst of both, utterly unfairly, as usual.
I should qualify that: Of course Russia could have industrialized to its 1939 level by free-market means, that’s how Germany and Britain and the U.S. did it in the 19th Century. It just would have taken longer than Stalin’s way. (Russia would not have been ready by 1939 to face Germany – but, without the Bolshevik Revolution, would Hitler have come to power anyway?)
That particular consideration – speed – is by no means irrelevant, nor should it be, to those countries Thurow is speaking of when he says, “Hence the collapse of the Soviet system should not lead us to the snap judgment that centralized socialism is no longer on the agenda of the coming century. That is indeed likely to be the case with the North, but it is not a foregone conclusion in the troubled countries of the South.”
Not sure what you’re talking about here. Granted Stalin was more concerned with turning out capital goods than consumer goods – the tools to make the tools to make the tools, the things needed to make the factories to make the factories to make the consumer goods – but, first things first. Just wiring the country for electricity made a positive difference – not only for war-capacity but to the people’s daily lives.
Also – and this is at least related to industrialization – the Communists made the Russian people mostly literate for the first time in their history. And the Chinese people. (The Japanese people were taught to read by a Meiji government by no means Communist but not laissez-faire either.) Can’t have a modern country in any form without that!
I fully agree with the principle. I disagree with you conclusiont aht it would not have happened otherwise. Aside from which, Soviet “industry” was a nightmare of useless factories which produced nothing, and what they did produce was not very good. It’s sole redeeming quality was quantity, and it failed to produce all that much of that, either. I don’t deny they had some success. I do disagree that this success was the only way to achieve it, and that it was even a very good way of going about it. it created an industrial base which as responsive to the leadership, but not for the people - including the common soldier. Sure, he eventually won, but he nearly destroyed Russia doing it, required vast quantites of supplies from abroad, and had to steal vast amounts of equipment just to keep going. I think a program which requires you tread perilously close to complete self-annihilation can be categorized as a failure.
I think you forget that Stalin and his high command were no geniuses. They were almost as bad as Hitler in wasting the produce of his creation. All they knew how to do was strip-mine the country’s people and resources. They weren’t utterly bad at it, but it’s a godawful way to run a country. It looks strong on the surface, but it was a big nation-wide Potemkin village. That’s why they crumpled when Hitler invaded, and it’;s why they had to fall back to more traditional Russian tactics to win.
In fact, I’d go even farther than Thurlow in some respects, because I do understand how totalitarian governments and the harder dictatorships use industry. Heck, I wrote a long section on North korea on that very subject.
