The Soviet Union.. Holy Shit

[rousseau]

With Russia in the news I've taken an interest in it's history over the past little while, and more recently have honed in on the Soviet Union. I've been reading through a straight-forward history of it and.. holy shit, what a fucking mess.

The politics of it read like a bunch of enthusiastic people who got high, thought they knew what they were doing, then fucked up really, really badly, and once they fucked up they just kept fucking up further.

Also Stalin.. holy shit.

One lesson that comes to mind from the read is that if you try to dramatically change a society too quickly, it usually goes poorly.

Another lesson is that it's often political leaders who are most eager to make change, but at the same time don't understand (or care) about the consequences of what they're doing.

 

[DrZoidberg]

With Russia in the news I've taken an interest in it's history over the past little while, and more recently have honed in on the Soviet Union. I've been reading through a straight-forward history of it and.. holy shit, what a fucking mess.

The politics of it read like a bunch of enthusiastic people who got high, thought they knew what they were doing, then fucked up really, really badly, and once they fucked up they just kept fucking up further.

Also Stalin.. holy shit.

One lesson that comes to mind from the read is that if you try to dramatically change a society too quickly, it usually goes poorly.

Another lesson is that it's often political leaders who are most eager to make change, but at the same time don't understand (or care) about the consequences of what they're doing.

I think the main lesson is that leadership skills needed to win wars is not necessarily the same leadership skills needed to lead a country in peacetime. USSR, China and Vietnam are three communist countries who all suffered through this.

 

[Sarpedon]

The reds weren't actually very good at winning wars. Its just that the whites were worse. The entire revolution was a litany of blunders and incompetence, with Trotsky being mildly better than his opposition.

 

[DrZoidberg]

The reds weren't actually very good at winning wars. Its just that the whites were worse. The entire revolution was a litany of blunders and incompetence, with Trotsky being mildly better than his opposition.

They won didn't they? What more proof of their skills do you need? Von Klausevitz wrote about this. A good general adapts depending on the situation. Different wars require different tactics. And Russia is a very different terrain. It's huge size and lack of seas means that communication is pretty borked. So was it really incompetence, or just the reality of operating in Russia?

I'm not saying Trotsky was a good general. I'm just saying that it's easy being an armchair general after the fact.

 

[Sarpedon]

And the Reds were decidedly poor at adapting to the circumstances. Basically the Reds and the Whites both just sort of assumed the peasants would support them. When the fighting left the cities and went to the countryside, both were surprised that the peasants didn't fall into line. The Red's strategy of looting and police terror was marginally more successful than the White's strategy of looting and random flogging, so the Reds carried the day. The red government apparatus, made up of upjumped party functionaries was marginally more effective than the White's government of leftover noblemen. There was absolutely nothing qualifying as a brilliant strategic move that happened in the war. The most effective military unit involved was a bunch of random Czechs who had gotten stuck in the country after WW1 and decided to fight their way out.

 

[BH]

I read an article by a Polish economist years ago and can't remember his name. His thesis was that the communist countries did produce lots of goods to be sold to the population. The problem was one of two things. These countries were in the Socialist phase of Communism, or so they claimed, so had some capitalist leftovers like wage differentation. To make the highly skilled people more willing to work they still got higher wages. However, to satisfy and placate the people in what we would consider more humble positions here in the states and make things more egalitarian, the government artificially lowered the prices of goods to where just about anybody could afford anything if they could get to it in the shop. So, you have what was produced flying out the door with the people lucky enough to get there first hogging it all. When everybody pretty much can afford everything then you result in nothing being on the shelves concerning many in demand goods. And a lot of folks would go in and buy stuff up and then sell it on their own for tons of money or other goods to those who did not get there first and did not want to wait in a line
.
The best comparison would be an estate sale where you had furniture and dishes for sale at dirt cheap prices because the heir wants to get rid of it all and not have to fool with anything afterwards. The furniture and china and fancy stuff goes quick whereas things like books and old clothes and pictures stay around. And there is the occasional one guy or woman who shows up first and buys all of it up in bulk to sell at a higher price at his resale shop. That's kinda what it was like in the USSR.

Over here in the US, the reason we have so much stuff on the shelves isn't because we are so great at production alone, it is because prices are higher than they were per average income compared to Eastern bloc countries and most people can't just go in and theoretically be able to afford everything with everyone else able to do so too. We also have higher rents and house payments that limit our consumption abilities. Here the typical rent is what? A fifth to a third of your monthly income barring public housing? Over there it was what? Five percent of your monthly wage in the USSR?

I have read that there was a short period before the war and after the war before Stalin died that he and the economic planners did manage to raise prices high enough compared to the average wage you did manage to have the shelves stay rather full, it cut down the lines, and people may not have been able to get what they wanted (considering that period of time) all at one time if they could get their hands on it, but over a reasonable amount of time could with savings.

I have a soft spot in my heart for the commies. Allah bless them, they tried. And even though it all turned into tragedy (mostly) I think that in the long term it was good that they tried. They did accomplish some good things believe it or not. Also, whether you approve of their ideas or not they had a profound effect on the US and other nations primarily Western Europe in how we deal with social issues. I would say that the rise of a lot of our rights and freedoms over the last 150 years has to do with a lot of the works of the communists either by them directly or by their opponents trying to take the wind out of their bag. There is a reason why historians and economists study Marx, Dietzgen, Bebel, Kautsky, Lenin even though the systems claiming them as their founders have fallen.

 

[Sarpedon]

If nothing else, they taught us what doesn't work.

 

[DrZoidberg]

I have a soft spot in my heart for the commies. Allah bless them, they tried. And even though it all turned into tragedy (mostly) I think that in the long term it was good that they tried. They did accomplish some good things believe it or not. Also, whether you approve of their ideas or not they had a profound effect on the US and other nations primarily Western Europe in how we deal with social issues. I would say that the rise of a lot of our rights and freedoms over the last 150 years has to do with a lot of the works of the communists either by them directly or by their opponents trying to take the wind out of their bag. There is a reason why historians and economists study Marx, Dietzgen, Bebel, Kautsky, Lenin even though the systems claiming them as their founders have fallen.

And we mustn't underestimate the value of failed experiments. That's how we grow and learn to not make the same mistakes again. Before the USSR there was no way of knowing for sure that it wouldn't work. Now we know.

 

[LordKiran]

I have a soft spot in my heart for the commies. Allah bless them, they tried. And even though it all turned into tragedy (mostly) I think that in the long term it was good that they tried. They did accomplish some good things believe it or not. Also, whether you approve of their ideas or not they had a profound effect on the US and other nations primarily Western Europe in how we deal with social issues. I would say that the rise of a lot of our rights and freedoms over the last 150 years has to do with a lot of the works of the communists either by them directly or by their opponents trying to take the wind out of their bag. There is a reason why historians and economists study Marx, Dietzgen, Bebel, Kautsky, Lenin even though the systems claiming them as their founders have fallen.

And we mustn't underestimate the value of failed experiments. That's how we grow and learn to not make the same mistakes again. Before the USSR there was no way of knowing for sure that it wouldn't work. Now we know.

I mean really there's no reason it can't work, just because someone else failed. There's no reason to assume that the fault was conceptual rather than in execution.

 

[DrZoidberg]

And we mustn't underestimate the value of failed experiments. That's how we grow and learn to not make the same mistakes again. Before the USSR there was no way of knowing for sure that it wouldn't work. Now we know.

I mean really there's no reason it can't work, just because someone else failed. There's no reason to assume that the fault was conceptual rather than in execution.

How do you mean? How isn't that an endless regress?

 

[rousseau]

I don't suspect that the ideals of socialism are by default wrong, but what the USSR proved is that certain means to achieve that ideal don't work.

In all likelihood, we're now moving toward an increasingly social/commune state, but this is going to be achieved via a natural evolution out of unbridled capitalism, rather than a quick restructuring of society.

 

[Sarpedon]

The failure left us a pretty good idea of what went wrong. For example: setting goods of products. Its already been pointed out how this leads to unintended consequences. I'd like to emphasize this with the fact that the USSR produced in excess of 4 million different products, and the group of people who were responsible for setting prices simply couldn't adjust the prices in any sort of directed and responsive way, simply because there were so many. So to say this is a problem of execution rather than conception is a bit of a stretch. The beaurocracy of the USSR was massive, and even then it wasn't enough to manage the economy with the level of attention that the theory required. Again, you can't claim this is execution: the sheer bulk of the problem made efficient execution impossible.

Now, the trillion dollar question is that have things changed, with the information revolution, and possible management AI around the corner, to make what was impossible in the pre-information era possible now? Could a machine manage the economy, and would people be willing to let it try?

 

[DrZoidberg]

Now, the trillion dollar question is that have things changed, with the information revolution, and possible management AI around the corner, to make what was impossible in the pre-information era possible now? Could a machine manage the economy, and would people be willing to let it try?

Aren't we already? The American housing crash of 2008 was due to most trading was done by computers. It led to unintended consequences that nobody had the mathematical skills to predict. And fundamentally, nothing has changed. This is going to happen again.

The fundamental problem is that the economy isn't a science. And it needs to be if we're to use computers to run it. Economy is an attempt to quantify what is essentially mass psychology. While valuable, a science it ain't.

 

[Sarpedon]

Trading by computers is not what I am suggesting. Though of course you could have some kind of swarm based system whereby trading computers de-facto control prices by buying and selling, it is not what I am asking about: A government computer that controls prices. Say every product has a barcode. You scan the barcode and you get the price from the main computer, and it can change them more or less at will as needs be. Is it possible? Would anyone allow such a thing? Would it be desirable?

Your point that it isn't a science is true, to a point. If a large enough human factor were removed from the equation, say, price volatility due to non-quantifiable demand fluctuations, could it become a science?

Or take it even farther. What if, every week, a box arrives at your home with your food, toiletry, and clothing needs, based on your expressed preferences, availability, work and behavior patterns, etc? You get in addition a small amount of spending money based on your work for wants above and beyond needs. One might be able to simplify the economy by simply removing a part of it from commercial transactions.

 

[LordKiran]

I mean really there's no reason it can't work, just because someone else failed. There's no reason to assume that the fault was conceptual rather than in execution.

How do you mean? How isn't that an endless regress?

It's just a statement of fact. There's not any real reason communism can't work any better or worse than any other social/economic system, it's just a matter of how you implement it. Common themes in the failure of any system usually comes down to a lack of accountability for those in control or recourse for those bereaved.

 

[Random Person]

Has there ever been a communist country that wasn't anything other than a mess?

 

[LordKiran]

Has there ever been a communist country that wasn't anything other than a mess?

Has there ever been a communist country period? Countries which claimed to be communist just did so as pretexts to prop up the new ruling elite. North Korea is perhaps the best example of this.

 

[BH]

I have a soft spot in my heart for the commies. Allah bless them, they tried. And even though it all turned into tragedy (mostly) I think that in the long term it was good that they tried. They did accomplish some good things believe it or not. Also, whether you approve of their ideas or not they had a profound effect on the US and other nations primarily Western Europe in how we deal with social issues. I would say that the rise of a lot of our rights and freedoms over the last 150 years has to do with a lot of the works of the communists either by them directly or by their opponents trying to take the wind out of their bag. There is a reason why historians and economists study Marx, Dietzgen, Bebel, Kautsky, Lenin even though the systems claiming them as their founders have fallen.

And we mustn't underestimate the value of failed experiments. That's how we grow and learn to not make the same mistakes again. Before the USSR there was no way of knowing for sure that it wouldn't work. Now we know.

That is correct. Believe it or not my hometown of Corsicana, TX had one or two Socialist mayors between the 1890's and 1920's. We are talking backwater country hick Corsicana. In my opinion back then there was not as great a gulf between the skilled people and unskilled people, with a lot of people skilled actually still being pretty much self taught. I can see where Marx et al thought the workers could one day take over and actually run things.

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

Trading by computers is not what I am suggesting. Though of course you could have some kind of swarm based system whereby trading computers de-facto control prices by buying and selling, it is not what I am asking about: A government computer that controls prices. Say every product has a barcode. You scan the barcode and you get the price from the main computer, and it can change them more or less at will as needs be. Is it possible? Would anyone allow such a thing? Would it be desirable?

Your point that it isn't a science is true, to a point. If a large enough human factor were removed from the equation, say, price volatility due to non-quantifiable demand fluctuations, could it become a science?

Or take it even farther. What if, every week, a box arrives at your home with your food, toiletry, and clothing needs, based on your expressed preferences, availability, work and behavior patterns, etc? You get in addition a small amount of spending money based on your work for wants above and beyond needs. One might be able to simplify the economy by simply removing a part of it from commercial transactions.

Ration tickets. Such as used in the US and Britain during WW2.

 

[DrZoidberg]

How do you mean? How isn't that an endless regress?

It's just a statement of fact. There's not any real reason communism can't work any better or worse than any other social/economic system, it's just a matter of how you implement it. Common themes in the failure of any system usually comes down to a lack of accountability for those in control or recourse for those bereaved.

I actually think that the future of communism will be bright. When the robotics revolution gets into full swing, the AI singularity and all that most people will be out of a job and unemployable. That's not even that far off. I think communism will come back into fashion then. I'm not sure it's necessarily a good thing. But I do think it will happen.