After mistakenly erasing the entire reply I wrote yesterday, I tried
again. This time, I pushed the wrong button and sent it before I
finished! Okay, try again. Once more into the breach, dear friends.
Charles Brown: >>>... is it your position that there was very little
work done in the now-defunct Soviet Union?<<<
me: >> I said that the amount of effort per worker-hour was low,
compared to in the so-called "West."<<
CB: > Inferring indirectly, I'm not so sure that this was true
throughout the whole history.<
As I said before, I wasn't talking about the USSR "throughout the
whole history." I was talking about the post-Stalin period, when
institutional arrangements had stabilized (for awhile).
CB:> I say inferring indirectly, because we know a lot of use-values
were produced in a very short time from , oh, 1919 to 1939. By a lot,
I mean compared with the labor productivity of the advanced capitalist
countries in the classical period of the rise of capitalism. So,
there may have be more intense work by some SU workers in that period,
more intense than workers under capitalism at some points. I believe
our whole discussion here is comparison of work under capitalism and
that under the SU.<
As I said before, during the Stalin period, the negative impact of
true full employment on work effort (when it occurred) was dealt with
using terror (on and off). Earlier, workers' identification with the
goals of the revolution encouraged hard work for many.
CB:> I am open to a sort of opposite notion , that you may not agree
with, that the slower work pace was evidence that the workers _did_
have significant power in the work situation, in that people
supervising themselves are not going to be as hard on themselves as
capitalist supervisors would be.<
This is right. Just because the official labor unions were generally
under the government's thumb does not mean that workers did not have
some say & a lot of control over their work-effort. People can't be
turned into robots. The Good Solider Schweik springs to mind: you can
order people around, but they always have a lot of options about how
to follow orders. (And sometimes official unions can be used against
the state, as under Franco in Spain toward the end of his reign.)
The problem is that the effort to restrict work was, as I understand
it, generally in the economistic direction. The USSR didn't see
workers "working hard to produce high-quality goods" (balanced by
respect for the human need for free time) in the name of what's good
for society, including the workers themselves. Instead, it was a more
of a matter of workers taking advantage of the labor shortages, etc.,
to defy the bosses by goofing off (or by sneaking off to wait in line
for commodities that were in short supply).
It should be stressed that the problems in the micro-level production
process were compounded with the inadequate planning system, which
created an incentive for factory managers to emphasize quantity of
production over quality, while hoarding labor and other inputs into
production. They never got the planning system right. Nor did the
plans reflect popular will, except in the vague sense that people like
Khrushchev understood that the Soviet people were calling for more
production of consumer goods and that he should heed that message or
the USSR would suffer from Hungary-style (1956) revolts.
CB: > So, contradictory thoughts, faster pace, harder work than
workers under capitalism when they were industrializing and recovering
from WWII. Slower pace as they we move into the 60's , 70's.<
I don't understand.
...
CB had asked: >>> If so, little work was done, how come so many
use-values were produced ?<<<
I answered: >> Repeating what I said: even if effort per worker-hour
is low, it can be compensated for (raising the amount of use-values
produced) by raising the number of hours actually worked by each
worker. Or by bringing in lots of workers from the countryside.
>> Repeating what I said: in general, the _quality_ of Soviet
use-values was low. They produced shoddy goods.<<
CB, now: > Machines are use-values too. Subways and buses are
use-values. Not all Soviet use-values were shoddy. I'm not quite sure
that this well known claim is as thoroughly true as most are in the
habit of thinking.<
I'm sure that _some_ Soviet-era goods weren't shoddy. I pointed to a
clear exception (in the eyes of many), military goods.
CB: > I'm one of those anti-consumerists, who feels a bit
uncomfortable with so many gadgets and giszmos. Of course, even more
so with global warming and the oil problem. The level of production of
socalled consumer goods in the SU may be closer to what the world
standard will have to be.<
It's true that we could do without a lot of gizmos. In fact, we
_should_ do without them, as you say. But it seems a bad idea to
restrict the production of consumer goods by engaging in
_inefficiency_ in production (what economists call "X inefficiency").
The resources wasted as part of inefficiency could be used instead to
clean up environmental messes, etc.
Though the over-emphasis of orthonomics on efficiency issues (and the
knee-jerk tendency to equate profitability with efficiency) is very
off-putting, I agree with them that inefficiency is a bad thing.
CB: > Also, compared with most countries beyond the most advanced
capitalist countries, their goods were good quality, i.e relative to
most production in the world.<
That's true, but the old SU's spokespeople bragged about how educated
their people were. That brag was true, compared to the "most
countries" to which Charles refers. But that makes it shocking how
much of their means of production just couldn't cut the mustard
compared to international competition, how many of their consumer
products were inadequate compared to "Western" goods.
me: >> The fundamental reason is due to class antagonism: there was
not enough harmony between workers and their state-appointed
supervisors and managers to motivate workers to produce high-quality
products. This meant that the reserve army of the unemployed was
sorely missed -- that is, if your only goal is to produce
high-quality use-values.<<
-
CB: > "high quality" is a relative term. The goods were high quality
compared to most places and most of history. They worked in many and
most ways. Maybe the goods were good enough for people.<
yeah, people lower their expectations.
> They didn't have exploding Pintos ? asbestos all over the place did they<
yeah, Ford (the folks who brought us the Pinto) deliberately took
risks with consumer lives. That kind of thing is much too common, but
it's a different kind of thing, a problem arising directly from orders
passed down from above. The post-Stalin Soviet era's production was
more like the case of US auto workers welding beer cans into the cars.
But it seems to have been more systematic. Even a simple product like
a pressure-cooker (a pre-Microwave oven, for you young 'uns) couldn't
be trusted.
The problem with asbestos was that almost no-one knew about its
horrible side-effects when it was put into walls, etc. The real
problem was due to the extreme resistance to fixing the problem (and
I'd bet the cover-up of the negative side before the asbestos was
installed).
> There is a lot of problematic quality in goods here. Also, there isn't quite
> a clearcut correlation between better quality of life and socalled higher
> quality good ,in my opinion, living in the locus of production of "higher"
> quality goods. All these consumer goods, whatever quality are not all they
> are cranked up to be, a mon avis. I'd take job security , free health care,
> free college, free rent etc. over lots of consumer > goods, myself<
As I mentioned, job security, free health care, etc. were major pluses
of the old USSR. Whether or not these benefits were overwhelmed by the
costs is a matter of opinion. The Soviet people should have been given
the chance state their opinions on that question.
Why can't we combine the pluses of the old USSR with some of the
pluses of the US or (even better) of Western Europe? why do we have to
make the Cold War choice, i.e., _either_ USSR _or_ US? why can't we at
least think of a third alternative?
> > I'm not sure the stereotype of low quality there, high quality here is
> > as clearcut true as we have been brainwashed to believe.
yeah, I'm totally brainwashed. I think TV's "Survivor" is great art.
Howard Stern is a genius. as is Tyra Banks. The I-Pod is the road to
enlightenment. The US war to conquer Iraq will bring world peace.
--
Jim Devine / "The radios blare muzak and newzak, diseases are cured
every day / the worst disease is to be unwanted, to be used up, and
cast away." -- Peter Case ("Poor Old Tom").
