******************** POSTING RULES & NOTES ******************** #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. *****************************************************************
> > On 7/29/17 5:54 PM, Louis Proyect via Marxism wrote: > > I cite Moshe Lewin: > > https://louisproyect.org/2009/09/14/joseph-stalin-nostalgia/ > > Stalin´s rule was marked mostly by a lack of planning. Despite the > announcement of 5-year plans, the economy had more in common with > bureaucratic fiat than scientific planning. All this is discussed in > chapter 5 entitled "The Disappearance of Planning in the Plan" in Moshe > Lewin´s "Russia USSR Russia". > The material cited by Proyect is quite useful. At the same time, it is should be understood that Soviet state-capitalism had *both* planning and anarchy of production. Clearly the state apparatus sent vast resources into industry through a decision, not the spontaneous operation of market forces, while the way the enterprises operated, and the precise allocation of various resources, displayed the vast anarchy of production in the Soviet economy. The unrealistic or even absurd nature of various features of the plan, discussed in the material cited by Proyect, was part of this anarchy of production. The anarchy of Soviet production was noted by all serious economic commentators, but they differ on its significance. I discussed the Stalinist anarchy of production, and how it existed alongside planning, and why it existed alongside planning, in the following article, which was based on material from a number of different careful studies of the Soviet economy: "The anarchy of production beneath the veneer of Soviet revisionist planning", March 1, 1997, by Joseph Green http://www.communistvoice.org/12cSovAnarchy.html Earlier in this thread, Walter Daum posted a chapter from his book on statified capitalism. I think that his book comes the closest of any major Trotskyist work to a correct assessment of the Stalinist economy. For example, unlike Tony Cliff, Daum pays attention to the *internal* sources of anarchy (which he calls decentralization) in the Soviet economy, rather than simply blaming the anarchy on the connection of the Soviet Union to the surrounding capitalist world economy. But at the same Daum's attempt to put everything into a Trotskyist framework and defend Trotsky's statements about the Soviet economy involved him in a number of crying contradictions; it sometimes seems that Daum strongly asserts things only for the sake of denying them later in his book. In this sense, Daum not only discusses the life and death of Stalinism, but gives an illustration of the life and death of Trotskyist theorizing. See my review of Daum's book: "On Walter Daum's 'The Life and Death of Stalinism': Competition among Soviet enterprises and ministries, and the collapse of the Soviet Union" by Joseph Green, Dec. 1998 http://www.communistvoice.org/19cDaum.html The basic features of state-capitalism appeared not just in the Soviet economy, but in other state-capitalist economies as the well.This includes the Cuban economy. Mark Williams of the Detroit Workers' Voice has written a series of articles on different time periods of the Castroist economy. This includes: Cuba in the 1960s: Bureaucrats head to 'communism' without the workers" by Mark Williams, April 1998 http://www.communistvoice.org/17cCuba60s.html and "Did Castro steer Cuba towards socialism in the late 1980s?" by Mark Williams, December 1996 http://www.communistvoice.org/11cCuba1980s.html For more on Cuba, see http://www.communistvoice.org/00Cuba.html. ----------------------------------- Joseph Green m...@communistvoice.org ------------------------------------ _________________________________________________________ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
