Ed,
Sometimes specificity is the answer and sometimes it simply covers the
underlying processes. Military complexes are state planned organizations.
Why would state planning lack efficiency in one case but not in another? I
agree with you about state religions. All institutions have a birth,
growth, maturity and death and if well developed a renewal. No
institutions like death and renewal. That is, in my humble opinion, the
root cause of war in the West. They just need to tear up things in order
to begin again. But these approaches you are speaking of are not new to me
Ed. My father told me about the kulak (sp?) massacres along with the
murder of our people here. Stalin's 11 million in a populous world is no
comparison to the 60 million slaves brought from Africa or the destruction
of the largest cities in the then world in Central America and Peru. My
father's point was that death is death and what you say to justify it
doesn't altar that fact. The lack of toilet paper in Russia is legendary
and well documented. Also the difference between a market where food is
thrown away and where the stalls only have enough or a little less is a
different cultural attitude. The need for "plenty" or a smorgasbord in
order to be considered safe or successful could in another context be
described as a neurotic insecurity. I'm not throwing names I'm just
saying that it really does depend upon how you define your goals and build
your realities. A cultural paradise is obviously a very different image in
the mind of people living in a land of plenty (Florida), as compared to
people living in Alaska for example. To some people fat means sloth and to
others it means success. You have to judge success by the rules of the
people who were striving for it. On the other hand, when speaking of
criminal activities:
Capitalism has benefited from slavery, genocide and eugenics in its past and
it is disingenuous to pretend that the market created this current
situation. It has its own history. In fact, the lack of success in other
places with such a system might even suggest that Liberal Democracy needs
the same murderous impulse of the Victorians along with the need for
non-conformist revolutionaries to rescue it along the way. Hitler and
Stalin were new. Cultural cannibalism. They murdered their own people
but the murderous impulse that used the "other" as fuel for state pride and
competition is so old that Europeans believe that it is human rather than
just an ancient cultural artifact of the European continent. If you read
the Encyclicals you will find that the even the Catholic Church has
struggled mightily with the issue of cultural cannibalism when dealing with
the implications of Evangelism.
It is not logical to say that what is efficient in one situation is
impossible for another parallel situation. Not judging both systems by
their history, time spent and products made constitutes the typical "Free
Ridership" so beloved by Capitalists as long as they aren't the "sucker."
There may be such differing factors that the situations are not parallel but
you haven't nor have any of the people I've read thus far, done the study on
whether the processes can be separated from the cost of the Cold War to each
side. Comments here are often as inaccurate as the old Soviet propoganda.
In fact the comments by the West and on this list, about my profession in
the Soviet Union are so wrong that it resembles the Western advertisers view
of Russian Women before the collapse. Fat, ugly and dressed in uniforms.
Boy was that wrong! Anyone who has ever gone to a Russian Arts fundraiser,
tasted the cavier and noted the gorgeous "see through" dresses would never
make such comments on Russian women. With Francis Stoner Saunder'
Freedom of Information suits we now know that while Americans claimed that
Socialism could never create great art, they were busy themselves funding
art in Europe with American government funds including the great festival at
Darmstadt, the Berlin Philharmonic and the multitudinous opera companies of
Germany. The only non-State art in Germany is the Stella corporation's
Broadway theaters and they are struggling with the same productivity issues
that we have here. Such a shock for such arrogant souls who were
convinced that we were doing something wrong here. They were, of course,
taught this little lie by American academics who were creating a myth to win
the cultural cold war. It was all a lie.
( don't mean to be disrespectful but there are many books about Indians that
are wrong and we have more than our share of academics who spend a month
with us and then tell the world about who we are.)
I would also compare the taste of the Russian workers who used to live with
me in a small leisure community in Pennsylvania, to the taste of any of the
people living in the communities around our little RV heaven. They had the
same marital problems but their knowledge of food was on the gourmet level
and they discussed art like academics. They also did well in their
businesses here and they organized music schools so their children would not
have to depend upon the Western culture taught in the local schools. My
daughter's little friend was playing Mozart piano concertos in the third
grade. How very different were these grandchildren of peasants from the
children of peasants who came here from Russia and Yugoslavia to work in the
coal mines. They tried to destroy their culture while these Russians
struggle to continue to learn virtuosity and teach it to their children.
They were here for the money but they didn't like the rest of it.
Especially the Intellectual part. They considered it shallow and my next
door neighbor had the same relationship to Stalin as most Americans have to
Andrew Jackson.
The theft of Intellectual Capital that was happening before the Berlin Wall
went up was so drastic that the wall actually made sense to me at the time
even though it was despotic. I'm sure that Bill Gates would do the same if
he could. Indeed America is now constructing such walls in Korea and China
in the publishing industry. I could buy a new Grove's Musical Encyclopedia
for three bucks a volume on better paper and better bound before that new
agreement. Was it fair? No. The people who did the work should get
paid for it. Was the principle any different than Soviet Bloc schools
training people for free and then having them lured away carrying the
Soviet's Intellectual Capital to whomever hired them? No it was the same
principle but it was worse because the ex-Soviet computer folks would be
hired over Americans or Canadians in a flash if the government would agree
to give them a green card. To save face we say that they are cheaper but
the fact is they are multi-lingual in a multi-lingual world and they trained
in books bought from us that were deemed to difficult for American Schools.
And the books were written in English! (Capitalist's put the spin of
"State Ownership of Citizens" on communist governments but today they call
it "Intellectual Capital." Same thing. If the process is the same then
it is the same thing no matter what you call it.)
I would suggest that you start not by comparing them to what we do well but
to how they succeeded given where they started. North Americans don't do
well in many areas where the Soviets did. Were they better at anything
more than anyone else in the world? In my experience one simple fact
screams in every moment I deal with them. Their workers are better trained
in a multitude of subjects. They often seem more rigid than we but more
information often makes dialogue difficult and even impossible between
people on different levels of understanding. Was this a part of their
pre-communist past or was it developed in the 70 plus years the system
existed? How did their advancement in the seventy years of their
evolution compare to similar situations in other systems? You can't
compare the life of a person who begins with nothing to someone whose
parents are affluent or even middle class but information and education can
often carry a person into the present in one generation. Economic issues
are different. Intellectual Capital is only equal to fiscal capital in
humdrum non-culturally oriented professions or in large systems like
corporations, churches or schools. For the private Entrepreneur, there is
simply no substitute for money in developing the future. Or as my Elder
said about my father when I was complaining. "You will be damned lucky to
come as far as he compared to where you started." Also, I've read your
notes. Foreign travel always tells me more about myself then about the
people I'm observing. But that is just me.
I would never want to live under Communism but if I had a choice I wouldn't
have chosen to live under any of the Western Systems that I know at present
either. I'm just a free market entrepreneur who has been in the Army,
taught in schools, K-University and Conservatory, developed religious
programs and consulted to corporations. I have no illusions about any of
these things. On occasion I have been asked to devise programs for schools
and have even been recommended for the Presidency of a major conservatory at
one point. So I seriously analysed their program and suggested changes
that would make it more efficient for the students, more comprehensive and
better for the staff. That was the end of that. They basically said who
was I to buck four hundred years of tradition. My answer was that I
wasn't and that they didn't know the tradition themselves. So much for
that. I had done the work and had made my research serve practical needs.
That is a big difference. To learn Carmen's history in order to perform it
rather than to rhapsodize. I would live there, they would talk about
living there.
For me the simple answer is Truth and Beauty. You have to tell the truth
based upon the definitions of those you are examining and negotiate a
structure for communication with your own audience and you have to be a
virtuoso at it. But the beginning is NOT to be taken in by either side
and to most of all be observant. Otherwise you are a company kind of guy.
Best to you and yours.
REH
----- Original Message -----
From: "Ed Weick" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Brad McCormick, Ed.D." <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; "Magic Circ Op Rep Ens"
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Cc: "futurework" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Saturday, May 05, 2001 10:22 AM
Subject: Re: Musings on the FTAA
> > Magic Circ Op Rep Ens wrote:
> > [snip]
> > > I think the only reason that the Soviet Empire collapsed was that they
> got
> > > spent under the table.
>
> Brad wrote:
> >
> > This seems to me to be one key aspect of Anglo-American anti-Communism
> that
> > was so cleverly implemented (or was it truly an unwitting effect of
> > the agent-less agency of The Invisible Hand, thus showing, yet again,
> > that, as Hegel wrote: The history of the world is the world history
> > of Reason???) -- this capitalist strategy was so cleverly implemented
> > that nobody seemed to notice it at the time, neither the Soviets
> > and their apologists, nor the "revisionists" here in The West (e.g.,
> > D.F. Fleming). Or maybe the Soviets *did* realize it, but they also
> > realized that there would be no useful point served by saying they did?
> >
>
> I don't think it quite happened this way. My understanding is that the
> military-industrial sector of the Soviet economy, including the space
> program, was relatively efficient even if compared with the advanced
> economies of the west. It was the rest of the economy which wasn't
working,
> and which would likely have ground down even if there had not been a cold
> war. The absence of a market based price mechanism meant that the terms
of
> exchange for almost all goods and services had to be determined by a huge
> central planning bureaucracy. The bigger and more complex the economy
> became, the bigger and more complex this bureaucracy had to be. I believe
> that much of the very rapid growth of Moscow from, say, about 1920 to
1980,
> could be accounted for by the growth of this bureaucracy. Moreover,
except
> in the military and aerospace sectors, there was little concept of, or
> incentive toward, innovation and efficiency. If a tractor or oil drilling
> rig broke down because of old age, the bureaucracy simply replaced it with
> another one of identical design, though only after a considerable delay
> while all of the transactions within the various planning bureaus were
> completed.
>
> The emphasis on heavy industry was another factor. Generations of people
> had to put up with scarce and shoddy goods, including housing, simply
> because so few resources were being put into building up the consumer
> sector. People were forever being told to wait, things would be better
> tomorrow, but they eventually got tired of it. Agriculture, operating as
> huge state farms, was notoriously inefficient, meaning that even
foodstuffs
> were scarce. When I was in Moscow a few years ago, very little of the
> clothing available in the huge GUM department store was Russian made.
> Almost all of the T-shirts or sweatshirts had New York Yankee or LA
Dodgers
> logos on them. I looked in vain for a T-shirt with MOCKBA on it for my
> daughter.
>
> The root cause of the Soviet collapse was ideology, the belief that a
fully
> planned, non-market economy could meet the needs of a complex and growing
> society. The Soviet Union was simply too complicated, too forced and
> ultimately unworkable. The collapse might have come much sooner if the
> Soviet Union had not had its eastern European satellites to prop it up.
>
> For those of you who might be concerned about the "data" I have in support
> of the foregoing, I have quite a number of books on the Soviet Union on my
> shelves, and I have read them. I also undertook an intensive one month
> study tour in Russia in 1995 at a university level institution. Notes
from
> that tour can be found at: http://members.eisa.com/~ec086636/moscow.htm
>
> Ed Weick
>
>
