# Why were collective farms so bad at being farms? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [December 5, 2023, 2:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-were-collective-farms-so-bad-at-being-farms/994136 "2023-12-05T14:22:30Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![Sitnam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/6a8cbe/32.png) [@Sitnam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sitnam)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2023, 3:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-were-collective-farms-so-bad-at-being-farms/994136/101 "2023-12-07T15:14:04Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > > [@Sitnam](#): > > > > Farmers think collectively by instinct. Their enemies are the vagaries of weather, market and disease which they can do little to overcome but with neighbor cooperation they will survive and live on to perhaps help that family in return. > > I grew up on a Mennonite farm. There were Mennonites on collective farms in the area, but they were orthodox and about as alien to us as Hutterites were. All the Monnonites I knew had private farms and made their own choices. > > HOWEVER… Farmers do tend to live in communities that help each other. When the farm across the road had the roof of its barn collapse, The nearby farmers pitched in to help fix it. We couldn’t afford a combine, but we had a tractor. People with combines would come and help pull in the crops, then we would do the same for them. > > But this is where Dunbar’s number comes in. These communities work because free riders can’t survive in them. Everyone knows everyone else, and word of bad behavior travels fast. If a farmer tends to never show up to help anyone else, guess what happens when he needs help? Nothing. > > Human behaviour is all about incentives. In small collectives, peer pressure and the threat of expulsion is all you need. The kid who behaves badly won’t be allowe to date any daughters, the family that behaves badly will be shunned or kicked out, etc. There are powerful incentives to keep you in line. > > Once a group gets large enough for anonymity to be a protector of bad behavior, you need laws, police, bureaucracy, and all the rest. Counting on people to behave just because they are ‘good’ people is a fool’s game. People always respond to the incentive system set up around them. > > The reason markets work is because they rely on this aspect of humans, rather than to deny it and pretend that everyone just wants the best for the collective. If the desire for personal advancement is a strong motivator, then a system of voluntary trade which requires people to do good for others to do good for themselves is a good way to go. > > Or put another way, capitalism is not a system, it’s what you get when you don’t try to engineer a formal economic system. Small, voluntary collectives maintain that dynamic, as do the ones where everyone’s main goal is aligned (religious collectives). But for everyone else, we need a system that provides incentives to do the right thing, and for large groups, laws and police to stop antisocial behavior. I see what you’re saying, However. All of this seems to sidestep the fact that each one of these Communist Collective Farms had a finite group of people that were known by everyone in the community. In fact the people on that farm most likely all lived in the same apartment overseen by a busy body grandma with some actual politburo authority. That small micro community certainly knew who the slackers were and dealt with them accordingly. And they still failed spectacularly. But I agree with you that Society as a whole could be describe accurately as ‘faceless’…for whatever that matters to any farm any where. ---
**Author:** ![thorny\_locust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thorny_locust/32/431_2.png) [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2023, 4:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-were-collective-farms-so-bad-at-being-farms/994136/102 "2023-12-07T16:59:04Z")
> [@Sitnam](#): > > That small micro community certainly knew who the slackers were and dealt with them accordingly. And they still failed spectacularly. I think that had to do with incorrect theories about how to farm being imposed on them from higher up; and/or with the group being made up of people who didn’t know how to farm. Again, the problem wasn’t the collectivization in itself. The problem was that the people who did know how to farm in those specific locations weren’t allowed to be the people who got listened to. That’s been discussed a good bit in this thread already. ---
**Author:** ![asterion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/4da419/32.png) [@asterion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/asterion)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2023, 6:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-were-collective-farms-so-bad-at-being-farms/994136/103 "2023-12-08T18:28:26Z")
> [@TokyoBayer](#): > > I don’t know that much about this, but apparently wet rice farming takes considerable community involvement such as for building and maintaining canals and terraces. New Mexico, especially the northern part of the state where Spanish settlement is the oldest, has a complex set of water usage laws with the acequias. Well, the Western US does in general, but this is the same thing in small scale. How do you manage a finite resource in the desert, even at the elevations of places like Santa Fe and Las Vegas and Taos? With a community controlled and managed acequia system, which is now considered a legitimate political subdivision by the state. The farmers and families that still use them still have to work together to manage and maintain the systems. > **[‘They’ll be erased’: New Mexico races to save its ancient irrigation canals](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/apr/12/new-mexico-races-to-save-acequia)** > > New Mexico’s ancient water systems nurtured its rural farmlands through climate change. But after last year’s wildfires, there’s little time left to save them ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2023, 7:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-were-collective-farms-so-bad-at-being-farms/994136/104 "2023-12-08T19:00:12Z")
I’m jumping in late to the thread and I’ll admit I haven’t read all hundred posts. But I’ll offer the theory with Soviet collectives goes back to who ran the communist party. The Bolsheviks who controlled the communist movement in Russia originated in the cities and its base was the urban proletariat - factory workers. Russian rural peasants tended to lean towards the Social Democrats. When the Bolsheviks took control of Russia and worked on reforming the economy, they went with what they knew. This worked okay with the industrial factory-based sector of the economy, where they had a pool of experience. But they encountered problems in the agricultural sector of the economy, where they tried to run farms like factories. Farms and factories do not work on the same system. (On a personal note, I’ve worked in both.) In a factory, you can determine what the product is, figure out the process for manufacturing that product, break the manufacturing process down into a number of steps, set up an assembly line, assign workers to the various steps that need to be done, and check the products as they are finished. You essentially know what every worker was supposed to be doing and you can check the end product to see if it was done. If you discover, for example, that part #2056 is missing, you can go back to the individual who was supposed to be installing part #2056 and arrest him for being a counter-revolutionary wrecker. This process doesn’t work on a farm. The operations of making a farm work have to be more flexible. You can’t work off a pre-determined list of what tasks needs to be done today. You have to take the changing conditions of the plants, the animals, the weather, etc into account in order to know what jobs are today’s priority, what jobs should wait a week because they’re not ready to be done yet, and what jobs can be put off until you have some spare time to do them. You can’t do everything on a pre-determined schedule. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2023, 8:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-were-collective-farms-so-bad-at-being-farms/994136/105 "2023-12-08T20:40:05Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > This worked okay with the industrial factory-based sector of the economy, where they had a pool of experience. I’d say that when you have to resort to shooting factory workers to get the others to work for you, your industrial policy might not be all that. Old Russian Joke: “In Russia the government pretends to pay us, and so we pretend to work.” ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2023, 8:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-were-collective-farms-so-bad-at-being-farms/994136/106 "2023-12-08T20:54:38Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > I’d say that when you have to resort to shooting factory workers to get the others to work for you, your industrial policy might not be all that. Only if you’re measuring success by the metric of worker satisfaction. If you’re measuring success by the quantity of product output, shooting a few individual workers might be seen as an acceptable price to achieve the goal. We know which standard people like Lenin and Stalin chose. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2023, 9:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-were-collective-farms-so-bad-at-being-farms/994136/107 "2023-12-08T21:21:19Z")
That is a perfectly valid point. ---
**Author:** ![Odesio](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/odesio/32/20003_2.png) [@Odesio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Odesio)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2023, 1:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-were-collective-farms-so-bad-at-being-farms/994136/108 "2023-12-09T01:55:16Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > Only if you’re measuring success by the metric of worker satisfaction. If you’re measuring success by the quantity of product output, shooting a few individual workers might be seen as an acceptable price to achieve the goal. We know which standard people like Lenin and Stalin chose. This isn’t something we’ve covered in any of the human resources seminars and courses I’ve attended over the last few years. I’m going to bring it up to my vice president during our next one-on-one meeting and see what he things about implementing the Lenin/Stalin Method at our company. Thanks for the good idea. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2023, 3:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-were-collective-farms-so-bad-at-being-farms/994136/109 "2023-12-09T03:28:29Z")
Just tell him you want to reorganize the company to align it with communist practices. I’m sure he’ll be open to the suggestion. ---
**Author:** ![nearwildheaven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/90db22/32.png) [@nearwildheaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nearwildheaven)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2023, 4:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-were-collective-farms-so-bad-at-being-farms/994136/110 "2023-12-09T04:50:25Z")
Okay, I’d heard of Lysenko but knew little about him. Let’s just say he was the Ben Carson of botanists! “You can grow bananas in Siberia if you just acclimate them” - yeah, doesn’t work that way, then or now. ---
**Author:** ![griffin1977](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/977dab/32.png) [@griffin1977](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/griffin1977)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2023, 5:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-were-collective-farms-so-bad-at-being-farms/994136/111 "2023-12-09T17:06:33Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > when you have to resort to shooting factory workers to get the others to work for you, your industrial policy might not be all that. > > Old Russian Joke: “In Russia the government pretends to pay us, and so we pretend to work.” That’s kind of the point of the OP the communist industrial sector was brutal and inefficient but it worked despite all the pretending to work, as in, it just about produced enough manufactured goods and raw materials for a modern state (certainly more than the pre-revolutionary regimes) The agricultural sector spectacularly failed to do even that. Agricultural output was less from the collectivized systems than from the pre-revolutionary regimes (which were pretty dysfunctional or wouldn’t have trigger the communist revolutions that ended them) Pointing out that the communist governments prioritized feeding the urban industrial centers and exports over feeding the rural population, isn’t an explanation as the non-communist agricultural systems also had big (in fact much larger) urban centers to feed and exported far more than the communist countries. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2023, 9:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-were-collective-farms-so-bad-at-being-farms/994136/112 "2023-12-09T21:09:49Z")
> [@Kropotkin](#): > > Part of the price of US capitalism includes slavery and the genocide of Indigenous people. That was about 140 years ago. And the North was the industrialized area. And Slavery by no means was limited to the USA, many other nations depended on slavery more than the USA such as Brazil. > **[Infographic: The Countries Most Active in the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade](https://www.statista.com/chart/22057/countries-most-active-trans-atlantic-slave-trade/)** > > This chart shows the countries most active in the trans-Atlantic slave trade. [\*According to the database project Slavevoyages.com,](https://www.slavevoyages.org/american/database#tables)almost 11 million Africans were enslaved during the trans-Atlantic slave trade between 1514 and 1866. While only 300,000 arrived in the U.S. directly, more came to the present-day U.S. via the intra-American slave trade. [It is estimated that 4.5 million enslaved Africans arrived in the Caribbean while another 3.2 million disembarked in present-day Brazil.](https://www.statista.com/chart/19068/trans-atlantic-slave-trade-by-country-region/)In total, 20 million Africans were forced to leave their continent during the times of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, the trans-Saharan, the red sea and the Indian slave trade.\* _The most active European nation in the trans-Atlantic slave trade was Portugal, which used the forced labor of Africans in their Latin American colonies in present-day Brazil. Almost 3.9 million enslaved Africans were forced to embark on Portuguese ships. Present-day Brazil received around 3.2 of them, making it the country in the Americas where most enslaved people arrived during the period. British ships also carried upwards of 3 million Africans forcefully removed from the continent, mostly to the Caribbean, the United States and the Guyanas. French ships carried 1.3 million enslaved Africans._ The USA was 6th in the transatlantic slave trade. Nor were the Americas the only place slavery existed- > **[Slavery in Europe during the Atlantic Slave Trade](https://oxfordre.com/africanhistory/display/10.1093/acrefore/9780190277734.001.0001/acrefore-9780190277734-e-971)** > > "Slavery in Europe during the Atlantic Slave Trade" published on by Oxford University Press. _Slavery was a widespread phenomenon in Europe during the Atlantic slave trade of the 1500s to the 1800s, particularly around port cities and in their hinterlands. The slaves held around the Mediterranean and more widely around Europe included both “Atlantic” slaves and slaves of other geographical origins, primarily the Ottoman Empire, Indian Ocean colonies, and sub-Saharan Africa. Others came from the Black Sea and Eastern Europe. Sub-Saharan Africans arrived in Europe via the Barbary Regency ports and Egypt._ and Asia [https://www.iias.asia/the-newsletter/article/human-trafficking-asia-1900-preliminary-census](https://www.iias.asia/the-newsletter/article/human-trafficking-asia-1900-preliminary-census) _The same can be said about human trafficking in Asia. While research over the last half century has established that some 12,521,000 men, women, and children were exported from sub-Saharan Africa to the Americas between 1500 and 1866, [4](https://www.iias.asia/the-newsletter/article/human-trafficking-asia-1900-preliminary-census#4d613) it is becoming increasingly apparent that transnational/pan-regional slave trading elsewhere in the globe was also massive. The trans-Saharan and western Indian Ocean trades exported an estimated 10.9-11.6 million Africans toward the Mediterranean basin, the Middle East, South Asia, and Southeast Asia between 650 and 1900. [5](https://www.iias.asia/the-newsletter/article/human-trafficking-asia-1900-preliminary-census#b2e59) Perhaps one million enslaved Europeans from as far north as Britain, Ireland, and Iceland reached North Africa’s Barbary Coast between 1500 and 1800, while 800,000-900,000 or more North Africans landed in Italy, Portugal, and Spain between 1450 and 1800. [6](https://www.iias.asia/the-newsletter/article/human-trafficking-asia-1900-preliminary-census#2459f) Europeans also trafficked large numbers of slaves beyond the Atlantic. British, Danish, Dutch, French, and Portuguese traders exported a minimum of 450,000-565,000 Africans, Indians, and Southeast Asians to European establishments within the Indian Ocean basin between 1500 and 1850, while the Manila galleons carried tens of thousands of Asian slaves to Central and South America during the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. [7](https://www.iias.asia/the-newsletter/article/human-trafficking-asia-1900-preliminary-census#fd29b)_ _Missing from this picture is a comprehensive sense of the volume of human trafficking in Asia._ > [@Dr.Strangelove](#): > > _Actually_ executing vaccine deniers would be almost as dangerous as executing vaccine supporters But some of the worst could be held criminally responsible for example _criminally negligent manslaughter._ trump, Fox news and conservative news radions may have been responsible for anywhere from 1/3 to 1/2 of American covid deaths. > [@thorny\_locust](#): > > Actual communism, on a large scale, hasn’t actually ever been tried. It’s always been taken over effectively immediately by authoritarian elitist governments. Which is- _actual communism._ > [@Lumpy](#): > > I’m unsure then exactly what you would envision “actual communism” to be in the modern world. As pointed out upthread, communal work and division of the resulting bounty can’t really function beyond a Dunbar’s number of people Exactly. And various small communes often had a single charismatic leader… and the communs often fell apart after his death. > [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > No, Communism HAS been tried, many times. It’s just that it rapidly devolves into an authoritarian nightmare, because it has to. > > Trying and failing is not hte same as not trying. Communism hasn’t been a SUCCESS anywhere, that’s true. Because it is anti-human, unscientific, and sucks very badly and results in the misery of millions every time it is tried. I concur. ---
**Author:** ![griffin1977](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/977dab/32.png) [@griffin1977](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/griffin1977)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2023, 9:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-were-collective-farms-so-bad-at-being-farms/994136/113 "2023-12-09T21:16:32Z")
> [@Kropotkin](#): > > racism continues, so not “several centuries later.” My point was, and I think we agree, “collectivization” was one form of making the transition to an industrial economy and other paths were pretty awful too. So this is basically saying chattel enslavement of millions and the mass death of millions by enforced collectivization are basically good things, as they were an unfortunate but ultimately worthwhile steps in the transition to a modern industrial society. Which is BS. They were nothing of the sort, they were standalone atrocities that were the result of decisions of the ruling class at the time.l ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2023, 9:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-were-collective-farms-so-bad-at-being-farms/994136/114 "2023-12-09T21:28:19Z")
The other problem wirth the claim is that other countries in the world that weren’t Communist industrialized faster and better, and without killing millions of people. China’s economy stagnated under Communism. Then they liberated and allowed markets to work, and China’s industrial capacity exploded along with their standard of living. Now authoritarianism is being imposed again, and the results aren’t looking good. When Chavez took over Venezuela, the national income was about $9500. Since then, Latin America’s standard of living has gone up, dramatically. For example, the average income in its neighbor Guyana is about $70,000. In Venezuela? It’s still around $9500. It’s the only country in the region which has not seen an improvement in the income of the people over the past 20 years. Of course, Maduro’s answer to that is to simply take Guyana, which he is planning to do. Pure imperialistic conquest of a weaker country to take their natural resources. Comunist countries often become threats to their neighbors as their leaders seek to placate the people after the results of their awful policies rile thenm up. ---
**Author:** ![griffin1977](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/977dab/32.png) [@griffin1977](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/griffin1977)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2023, 9:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-were-collective-farms-so-bad-at-being-farms/994136/115 "2023-12-09T21:37:50Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > The other problem wirth the claim is that other countries in the world that weren’t Communist industrialized faster and better, and without killing millions of people Except I’m not claiming communist industry was a success relative to non-communist contemporary nations. Only that it was a success relative to communist agriculture. Communist industry was brutal and inefficient (especially relative to contemporary non-communist countries which were less brutal and more efficient) but far far more effective than communist collectivized agriculture. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2023, 9:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-were-collective-farms-so-bad-at-being-farms/994136/116 "2023-12-09T21:38:45Z")
> [@Kropotkin](#): > > while the “legacy” of racism continues, Of course- but world wide. Thinking that the USA is alone in its racism and Xenophobia is deluded. Brexit was fueled by Xenophobia. All over Europe Right wing populists are riding a wave of bigotry and xenophobia. The USA barely places tenth- Worst Countries for Racial Equality: > **[Most Racist Countries 2025](https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/most-racist-countries)** > > Comprehensive overview of the most racist countries worldwide, giving insights into societal attitudes, discriminatory practices, and incidents of racism across different nations for one of the hardest things to measure - Rasizam. with the Middle east gathering for places. And in #### Most Racist Countries in the World (WaPo and BT results combined)\*: The USA doesnt even place. Dont get me wrong- the number of trump voters has clearly shown the USA has some major issues there.But we are not #1 nor exceptional. ---
**Author:** ![Chingon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chingon/32/17645_2.png) [@Chingon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chingon)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2023, 9:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-were-collective-farms-so-bad-at-being-farms/994136/117 "2023-12-09T21:40:25Z")
Didn’t you argue that the US was so racist you personally couldn’t support the nomination of non white candidates? ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2023, 9:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-were-collective-farms-so-bad-at-being-farms/994136/118 "2023-12-09T21:44:45Z")
No. In fact I supported Obama, donated to his campaign, and I support Harris as Bidens successor. I did say that if the GOP did manage to nominate a woman, particularly a woman of color, that it would be likely that many diehard bigots would stay home and not vote for her. That’s not the USA, that is the MAGA branch of the GOP. So you post is false, and inflammatory to boot. ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2023, 10:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-were-collective-farms-so-bad-at-being-farms/994136/119 "2023-12-09T22:58:35Z")
> [@griffin1977](#): > > That’s kind of the point of the OP the communist industrial sector was brutal and inefficient but it worked despite all the pretending to work, as in, it just about produced enough manufactured goods and raw materials for a modern state (certainly more than the pre-revolutionary regimes) Only when measured by numerical output; the quality of the products was shit. It was literally the shoddiest crap the workers could get away with, with the minimum investment of time and effort. It was “Cut Every Corner” from The Simpsons: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fy50nUYyTKM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fy50nUYyTKM) When told to increase production or be branded a “counter-revolutionary saboteur”, they would literally ship the products of the reject bins. ---
**Author:** ![Dissonance](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/85f322/32.png) [@Dissonance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dissonance)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2023, 12:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-were-collective-farms-so-bad-at-being-farms/994136/120 "2023-12-10T00:16:38Z")
> [@Lumpy](#): > > > [@griffin1977](#): > > > > That’s kind of the point of the OP the communist industrial sector was brutal and inefficient but it worked despite all the pretending to work, as in, it just about produced enough manufactured goods and raw materials for a modern state (certainly more than the pre-revolutionary regimes) > > Only when measured by numerical output; the quality of the products was shit. It was literally the shoddiest crap the workers could get away with, with the minimum investment of time and effort. Not always. Mao’s [Great Leap Forward](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Leap_Forward#Industrialization) and the attempt to have everyone produce steel to industrialize China was a disaster, leading to mass famine and useless industrial products as the steel was of such low quality. On the other hand, Stalin’s industrialization of the [Soviet Union during the 1930s](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrialization_in_the_Soviet_Union) was an outstanding success in turning what was a backwards agrarian economy into an industrial powerhouse _as long as the cost in bodies was considered to be an acceptable cost_, which to Stalin it certainly was. As I said upthread, the USSR outproduced the US in military hardware every single year of the Cold War, and just prior to the outbreak of WWII the USSR not only had more tanks (at ~20,000) than any other nation, but they also had more tanks than every other nation in the world combined. In WWI Tsarist Russia was sending its riflemen into battle without enough rifles to go around for everyone because its economy was such as basket case, particularly the industrial sector. In WWII the USSR outproduced everyone in every category of land combat equipment, from small arms to artillery. Before anyone cites the absurd scene in [Enemy at the Gates](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enemy_at_the_Gates) of Soviet riflemen being sent forward with one gun per two men, it’s utter Hollywood nonsense. _Enemy at the Gates_ is a work of fiction, not a documentary. Vasily Zaitsev never fought a sniper duel with the head of the German sniper school at Stalingrad. Erwin König is a fictional character. Contrary to his portrayal in the movie, Vasily Zaitsev was an ardent communist. His autobiography, [_Notes of a Sniper_](https://archive.org/details/notesofsnipervas0000zait/page/n7/mode/2up) makes that abundently clear. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-were-collective-farms-so-bad-at-being-farms/994136.md?page=5) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-were-collective-farms-so-bad-at-being-farms/994136.md?page=7)