following up on Marv's point about the way Soviet workers were "inducedf" to increase productivity ---- all planned goals were set in QUANTITIES not "values" as under capitalism.
THis, unfortunately, led to irrationalities --- for example, if the nail quota was in NUMBERS of nails, they were made with very little weight and therefore prone to not being strong enough --- if the quotas were set in WEIGHT, the nails would only be large size which decreased the flexibility when nails became inputs -- or think of the taxi driver in Moscow who had a quota of hours ---- asd the end of the period approached, his version of "storming" was to turn on the meter and drive around making believe he were collecting fares ---- then put in HIS OWN money to cover the extra so he could OVERFULFILL his quota --- With 20-20 hindsight, it was clear that planning by quantity produced significant irrationalities --- (I still believe that worker-controlled enterprises and democratically arrived at goals might have been able to overcome these irrationalities but the Central Panning system created in 1928 was totally incapable of that --- it worked fine when they were producing steel or mining coal and that (thankfully) left them with enough industrial capacity to defeat Hitler --- but when they tried to become a consumer society (Khruschev's dream of "winning" the "peaceful competition with capitalism" (the title of his book!) proved impossible) On Thu, Mar 7, 2024 at 6:45 PM Marv Gandall <[email protected]> wrote: > . Whether these offset the "labour disciplinary measures" introduced in > the 30's to forcefully raise labour productivity in the interest of rapid > industrialization is another matter. As was the predominantly piecework > pay system aimed at speed-up which we roundly condemn here. I doubt most > Soviet workers were as committed as Stakhanov to mining coal well above > their quota in the interests of building the socialist economy. > _._,_._,_ > ------------------------------ > > -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#29325): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/29325 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/104795089/21656 -=-=- 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. #4 Do not exceed five posts a day. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/8674936/21656/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
