Why Communism Failed

[Cheezy the Wiz]

Unfortunately, countries with a decent amount of social and economic equality have no need for communism.

It must be a truly wonderful place where you live. Unfortunately, my country does not fall into such a category as yours.

That apart, communist regimes foster their rate of corruption.

And what of the corruption of money and privilege?

I´m sorry, did I miss any ´let´s rejoin Russia´ movement in these countries?

His point was that the average Joes were no more consulted in their country's dismembership from the USSR than they were their membership. The Union was dissolved by Gorbachev, with a hand forced by other statesmen.

Actually, that's not entirely true. Several of those republics did vote for union with Sovnarkom through referendums in grassroots-organized soviets.

A broken system is broken regardless of how much is being spent on the army. At that point, you're still only asking when the system will collapse, not if.

This can be equally observed of every capitalist state in existence. The forces of class conflict will ruin your enforced inequality one way or another, just as they have ruined every country and every society in history; the question is merely when.

 

[Yeekim]

His point was that the average Joes were no more consulted in their country's dismembership from the USSR than they were their membership. The Union was dissolved by Gorbachev, with a hand forced by other statesmen.

Umm, no.

Spoiler :

On 24 August Mikhail Gorbachev created the so-called "Committee for the Operational Management of the Soviet Economy" (Комитет по оперативному управлению народным хозяйством ССС&#1056, to replace the USSR Cabinet of Ministers headed by Valentin Pavlov, a GKChP member. Russian prime minister Ivan Silayev headed this committee. On the same day the Verkhovna Rada adopted the Declaration of Independence of Ukraine and called for a referendum on support of the Declaration of Independence.

On 27 August the Supreme Soviet of Moldova declared the independence of Moldova from the Soviet Union. The Supreme Soviets of Azerbaijan and Kyrgyzstan did the same on 30 and 31 August respectively.

On 5 September the Congress of People's Deputies of the Soviet Union adopted Soviet Law No. 2392-1 "On the Authorities of the Soviet Union in the Transitional Period" under which the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union had replaced Congress of People's Deputies and was reformed. Two new legislative chambers—the Soviet of the Union (Совет Союз&#1072 and the Soviet of Republics (Совет Республи&#1082—replaced the Soviet of the Union and the Soviet of Nationalities (both elected by the USSR Congress of Peoples Deputies). The Soviet of the Union was to be formed by the popularly elected USSR people's deputies. The Soviet of Republics was to include 20 deputies from each union republic plus one deputy to represent each autonomous region of each union republic (both USSR people's deputies and republican people's deputies) delegated by the legislatures of the union republic. Russia was an exception with 52 deputies. However, the delegation of each union republic was to have only one vote in the Soviet of Republics. The laws were to be first adopted by the Soviet of the Union and then by the Soviet of Republics.

Also created was the USSR State Council (Государственный совет ССС&#1056, which included the USSR President and the presidents of union republics. The "Committee for the Operational Management of the Soviet Economy" was replaced by the USSR Inter-republican Economic Committee (Межреспубликанский экономический комитет ССС&#1056, also headed by Ivan Silayev.[30]

On 6 September the newly created Soviet State Council recognized the independence of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.[31]

On 9 September the Supreme Soviet of Tajikistan declared the independence of Tajikistan from the Soviet Union.

In September over 99% percent of voters in Armenia voted for a referendum approving the republic's commitment to independence. The immediate aftermath of that vote was the Armenian Supreme Soviet's declaration of independence, issued on 21 September.

On 27 October the Supreme Soviet of Turkmenistan declared the independence of Turkmenistan from the Soviet Union.

By November, the only Soviet Republics that had not declared independence were Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. That same month, seven republics (Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan and Tajikistan) agreed to a new union treaty that would form a confederation called the Union of Sovereign States. However this confederation never materialized.

On 1 December Ukraine held a referendum, in which more than 90% of residents supported the Act of Independence of Ukraine.

On 8 December Boris Yeltsin, Leonid Kravchuk and Stanislav Shushkevich—respective leaders of Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus (which adopted that name in August 1991)—as well as the prime ministers of the republics met in Minsk, the capital of Belarus, where they created the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) and annulled the 1922 union treaty that had established the Soviet Union. Doubts remained about legitimacy of the signing that took place on 8 December, so another signing ceremony was held in Alma-Ata on 21 December to expand the CIS to include Armenia, Azerbaijan and the five republics of Central Asia. Georgia joined in 1993, only to withdraw in 2008 after conflict between Georgia and Russia; the three Baltic states never joined.

On 24 December 1991 the Russian Federation, with the concurrence of the other republics of the Commonwealth of Independent States, informed the United Nations that it would succeed the Soviet Union in its membership in the UN and in its seat on the UN Security Council. No member state of the UN formally objected to this step. The legitimacy of this act has been questioned by some legal scholars as the Soviet Union itself was not constitutionally succeeded by the Russian Federation, but merely dissolved. Others argued that the international community had already established the precedent of recognizing the Soviet Union as the legal successor of the Russian Empire, and so recognizing the Russian Federation as the Soviet Union's successor state was valid.

On 25 December 1991, Gorbachev announced his resignation as Soviet president. The red hammer and sickle flag of the Soviet Union was lowered from the Senate building in the Kremlin and replaced with the tricolor flag of Russia. The next day, 26 December 1991, the Soviet Union officially ceased to exist.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1991_Soviet_coup_d'état_attempt

EDIT: Nah, you ninjacorrected that by yourself.

 

[Lone Wolf]

Supreme Soviets, who cares about them? Seriously.

I´m sorry, did I miss any ´let´s rejoin Russia´ movement in these countries?

Well, there're pro-Russian sympathies in Eastern Ukraine.

 

[Tahuti]

Well, there're pro-Russian sympathies in Eastern Ukraine.

Well, that's really about it. Most of the Eastern Ukrainian population is Russophone, so it is quite understable why they of all Ex-Soviet peoples outside Russia would more Pro-Russian than anyone else.

 

[Traitorfish]

As you noted in your follow up post, this doesn't really hold. Yes, the USSR had prices and currency. But that does not equal signaling. The producers and sellers of good were told what to produce, and what to sell it for. The price mechanism was not used, nor allowed to be used, to determine what products to produce, what quantities to produce, nor what price to sell for. And that means that money and prices aren't really relevant to the making of decisions.

I don't think that's true at all. Soviet- and Western- mythology may have held that planning was fully centralised and by decree, but the facts simply don't bear that out. State enterprises made constant demands upon Gosplan, Gosplan constantly revised its "five year" plans in response to these demands, consumer-goods produces competed openly, workers moved semi-freely between employment, private agriculture constituted something like 30% of the sector (and more in the Eastern Bloc states), state enterprises hoarded and traded resources- and even labour- de facto independently of Gosplan supervision. The Soviet economy was if anything marked by a chaos that most Western corporations would have found laughable, precisely because the ideal of central planning was not merely unwise, but actually unrealisable. It's ideologically convenient to point to raise Mises up as some sort of seer with all his natter about price mechanisms, but it's also completely out of joint with the recorded facts. (Unfortunately the only source I have handy for that is a rather dense book (pdf) and essays neither of which deal with this as their main focus, so, um, sorry about that. I'll see if I can dig up anything more forum-friendly.)

Alternatively, state enterprises produced advertising because they thought it was nifty despite having no economic consequences of any sort. Which I supposed wouldn't be the weirdest thing the Soviets ever did.

 

[Yeekim]

Supreme Soviets, who cares about them? Seriously.

Yeah, well...
Still, do you think they would have seceded (thereby effectively abolishing themselves), were there not significant popular pressure to do so?

 

[plarq]

Well, let's just say that USSR controlled much less resources than US, that's why they fail.

Although this is just another replica of "Failure is failure", which doesn't mean anything.

OK, let's look it that way, materialistic way, why USSR controlled less resources than US? Domestically, USSR has larger landmass and higher population than US, so the problem lies solely in productivity of both countries. US won by a wide margin. According to statistics, even at the best USSR/US production ratio, USSR reaches 50% per capita production than US, that's not enough to defeat the US.

Overseas, situation is worsened for USSR. The Soviet navy was much weaker than US, limiting its support to oversea allies comparing to US, which makes oversea allies harder to support comparing to US, which makes oversea raw material/market shift away from pro-Soviet to other groups. With the oversea allies shrinkage, it's harder to compete with US.

 

[Cutlass]

From what I've gathered, the Soviet collapse was for most part political and not economic. Because of Gorbachov's reforms, the Soviet Republics themselves actually gained some real autonomy, which they used to gain even more autonomy and eventually, independence. Which created insane situations were Soviet republics were actually fighting eachother, despite being part of the USSR, with Armenia and Azerbaijan being the most obvious examples.

The thing to keep in mind is that by the time Gorby tried to reform anything the Soviet economy had been essentially stagnant for a decade or more already. The only reason Gorby was willing to try the reforms at all was because the economy was already dead in the water, and drastic measures were needed to try and revive it.

I don't think that's true at all. Soviet- and Western- mythology may have held that planning was fully centralised and by decree, but the facts simply don't bear that out. State enterprises made constant demands upon Gosplan, Gosplan constantly revised its "five year" plans in response to these demands, consumer-goods produces competed openly, workers moved semi-freely between employment, private agriculture constituted something like 30% of the sector (and more in the Eastern Bloc states), state enterprises hoarded and traded resources- and even labour- de facto independently of Gosplan supervision. The Soviet economy was if anything marked by a chaos that most Western corporations would have found laughable, precisely because the ideal of central planning was not merely unwise, but actually unrealisable. It's ideologically convenient to point to raise Mises up as some sort of seer with all his natter about price mechanisms, but it's also completely out of joint with the recorded facts. (Unfortunately the only source I have handy for that is a rather dense book (pdf) and essays neither of which deal with this as their main focus, so, um, sorry about that. I'll see if I can dig up anything more forum-friendly.)

Alternatively, state enterprises produced advertising because they thought it was nifty despite having no economic consequences of any sort. Which I supposed wouldn't be the weirdest thing the Soviets ever did.

I don't see how saying that Gosplan was subject to change and that there was some mobility really matters to what I said. Gosplan, and the end runs around Gosplan, do not add up to the same type of market fluidity that natural signaling do. At best you are saying that a very poorly functioning market had some impact where it was allowed to do so over political interference. That does not negate the contention that a major drag on the Soviet economy as a whole was central planning and a price mechanism that wasn't allowed to work freely. At best what it says is that Mises overstated one aspect of the problems of the Soviet economy and understated other aspects of it. Which of course makes sense, because Mises was an ideologue every bit as much as Lenin. When people continue to follow a failing plan because they fear being arrested if they don't, you don't come very close to the same kinds of efficiencies that markets generate. And even if punishment is rare, it is not absent, and that affects how many people operate.

 

[Antilogic]

The USSR was, economically, successful. It's standard of living by the 1980s was very good, espe4cially compared to what it had been not so many years ago. The rise was amazing. Never mind the talk about stagnation then, Japan is stagnated now for what, 20 years, and no one is yet saying that it is a failure and must collapse. The "west" was dangerously close to continuing stagnation also until it figured out that creating new jobs in services which were previously not within the commercial realm was a way to solve its unemployment problem in the 1980s. And much has been said about the USSR not having led the way in the spread of domestic computers. So what, after a few years the west has already outsourced most of its manufacturing anyway...

I've noticed that when commentators talk about any non-American economy, it is always an intrinsic fault in their economic ideology that is at fault and it is doomed to collapse. But as far as we go, it's only "perfect storms" that upset our system or cause failures.

I for one have never been particularly enamored of the lack of a corruption distance modifier

it's less useful than you'd think it is

It's the most important modifier in Siberia, comrade!

There´s this game called Sid Meier´s Railroads; in it, like in the US at some point, you compete to build railroads. Many US railroads were indeed privately owned.

Privately owned yes, but financed almost completely by the government, with many government provided benefits to entice investors to cover the remaining bits.

Looking specificaly at the Transcontinental Railroad (which was probably the largest government project until the Panama canal or the New Deal programs), the government gave land away free to the railroad company if it was within one mile of the surveyed trackage. Funding was provided for tools and supplies (which lead to the Credit Mobiler scandal, where the railroad owners created a shell company to buy the tools at a higher price, get reimbursed by the government, and pocket the difference) by the government, and government established land-grant universities to develop new engineering techniques.
This is also leaving aside the nationalization of the US railways under the USRA where the government poured several billion dollars into shoring up US railways.

As was saying, it isn't a matter of the railroads being publicly versus privately owned, it was a matter of them being to a very large extent publicly financed and facilitated.

In many cases the government provided the land. Or used eminent domain to take private land. The private companies never could have afforded the needed land otherwise. And there were many other innovations in public policy that facilitated the privately owned railroads. So it is fair to say that without the government few railroads would have been built in the US.

Most of what I was going to post in response to Jeleen is already in the two above responses, but I can add a number. According to Howe's book, upwards of 40% of the financing came through the US federal government, to say nothing of state involvement, and the government often provided land (along the routes they wanted to make) for free or at the price of pennies an acre, far less than the fair market price.

a quick correction, Communism has not failed, because we haven't tried it yet. USSR was a socialist state. The regime there was not communism.

Say what? I thought it was none of the above, compared to 19th century writings on the subject.

 

[amadeus]

This can be equally observed of every capitalist state in existence. The forces of class conflict will ruin your enforced inequality one way or another, just as they have ruined every country and every society in history; the question is merely when.

The fortunate truth is that reality doesn't support this fairy-tale version of history: there's no "solidarity," all people compete against each other and the competition is just as fierce on the bottom as it is at the top.

 

[Tahuti]

The thing to keep in mind is that by the time Gorby tried to reform anything the Soviet economy had been essentially stagnant for a decade or more already. The only reason Gorby was willing to try the reforms at all was because the economy was already dead in the water, and drastic measures were needed to try and revive it.

Of course. The only problem was, that Gorby enacted exactly the wrong reforms, namely, instead of enacting market policies like China did under Deng Xiaoping, Gorby devolved the economic policies to the Soviet republics instead. The economic stagnation of the USSR itself was hardly more an existential threat to the USSR than the lost decade was to Japan.
Basically, by giving the Soviet republics autonomy, Gorbachov essentially signed the USSR's death warrant.

 

[aelf]

That still doesn´t mean the economy is planned by government.

That depends on your conception of economic planning. And your conception of it seems to differ from the rest of the world's.

 

[Traitorfish]

I don't see how saying that Gosplan was subject to change and that there was some mobility really matters to what I said. Gosplan, and the end runs around Gosplan, do not add up to the same type of market fluidity that natural signaling do. At best you are saying that a very poorly functioning market had some impact where it was allowed to do so over political interference. That does not negate the contention that a major drag on the Soviet economy as a whole was central planning and a price mechanism that wasn't allowed to work freely. At best what it says is that Mises overstated one aspect of the problems of the Soviet economy and understated other aspects of it. Which of course makes sense, because Mises was an ideologue every bit as much as Lenin. When people continue to follow a failing plan because they fear being arrested if they don't, you don't come very close to the same kinds of efficiencies that markets generate. And even if punishment is rare, it is not absent, and that affects how many people operate.

I don't disagree with the bolded in the slightest, so I think perhaps we may be miscommunicating slightly. What I'm suggesting is that there is a difference between a deformed and improperly functioning price system and the absence of a price system. There was still a circulating monetary system in the USSR as in any market, which meant that resources had to be allocated in accordance with how this money was actually spent by consumers (individuals or state agencies); so many factories need shoes, so the shoe factory is accorded resources based on its income, as are the enterprises which supply its resources, and so on and so forth, just like departments within a private corporation. Soviet state planners were unusually empowered in fiddling the numbers to suit themselves- of lifting a chunk of income from one enterprise and allocating it too another- but that doesn't suggest that they were able to make up whatever numbers they felt like. The whole thing can be understood quite easily as an exercise in High Fordism gone horribly wrong without having to imagine the sort of economic totalitarianism that the Miseans suppose.

The fortunate truth is that reality doesn't support this fairy-tale version of history: there's no "solidarity," all people compete against each other and the competition is just as fierce on the bottom as it is at the top.

Could you point me to any historians, sociologists or political scientists working with this Hobbesian model, or is this another case of economists knowing everybody else's business better than they know it themselves?

 

[Lone Wolf]

The fortunate truth is that reality doesn't support this fairy-tale version of history: there's no "solidarity," all people compete against each other and the competition is just as fierce on the bottom as it is at the top.

Unfortunately, dirty commies constantly attempt to make people at the bottom unite against those on top.

 

[Ajidica]

The only reason Gorby was willing to try the reforms at all was because the economy was already dead in the water, and drastic measures were needed to try and revive it.

Additionaly, Gorby was no Communist along the lines of Brezhnev, or even Kruschev. His ideology was most similar to early Scandinavian Social Democracy.

 

[Crezth]

I've noticed that when commentators talk about any non-American economy, it is always an intrinsic fault in their economic ideology that is at fault and it is doomed to collapse. But as far as we go, it's only "perfect storms" that upset our system or cause failures.

A good observation.

The fortunate truth is that reality doesn't support this fairy-tale version of history: there's no "solidarity," all people compete against each other and the competition is just as fierce on the bottom as it is at the top.

Is that why sometimes people at the bottom force out those people on the top?

 

[innonimatu]

Is this thread about Communism or about Soviet Union?

Doesn't matter. When someone starts talking about how "communism collapsed" it's always about the USSR.

You can write thousands of pages, but you can really say it all on a single line:
USSR collapsed because nobody wanted to defend it any more.

Yes, but we've been discussing why that was so, and how the situation arisen that anyone had to defend it.

Umm, no.

Spoiler :

On 24 August Mikhail Gorbachev created the so-called "Committee for the Operational Management of the Soviet Economy" (Комитет по оперативному управлению народным хозяйством ССС&#1056, to replace the USSR Cabinet of Ministers headed by Valentin Pavlov, a GKChP member. Russian prime minister Ivan Silayev headed this committee. On the same day the Verkhovna Rada adopted the Declaration of Independence of Ukraine and called for a referendum on support of the Declaration of Independence.

On 27 August the Supreme Soviet of Moldova declared the independence of Moldova from the Soviet Union. The Supreme Soviets of Azerbaijan and Kyrgyzstan did the same on 30 and 31 August respectively.

On 5 September the Congress of People's Deputies of the Soviet Union adopted Soviet Law No. 2392-1 "On the Authorities of the Soviet Union in the Transitional Period" under which the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union had replaced Congress of People's Deputies and was reformed. Two new legislative chambers—the Soviet of the Union (Совет Союз&#1072 and the Soviet of Republics (Совет Республи&#1082—replaced the Soviet of the Union and the Soviet of Nationalities (both elected by the USSR Congress of Peoples Deputies). The Soviet of the Union was to be formed by the popularly elected USSR people's deputies. The Soviet of Republics was to include 20 deputies from each union republic plus one deputy to represent each autonomous region of each union republic (both USSR people's deputies and republican people's deputies) delegated by the legislatures of the union republic. Russia was an exception with 52 deputies. However, the delegation of each union republic was to have only one vote in the Soviet of Republics. The laws were to be first adopted by the Soviet of the Union and then by the Soviet of Republics.

Also created was the USSR State Council (Государственный совет ССС&#1056, which included the USSR President and the presidents of union republics. The "Committee for the Operational Management of the Soviet Economy" was replaced by the USSR Inter-republican Economic Committee (Межреспубликанский экономический комитет ССС&#1056, also headed by Ivan Silayev.[30]

On 6 September the newly created Soviet State Council recognized the independence of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.[31]

On 9 September the Supreme Soviet of Tajikistan declared the independence of Tajikistan from the Soviet Union.

In September over 99% percent of voters in Armenia voted for a referendum approving the republic's commitment to independence. The immediate aftermath of that vote was the Armenian Supreme Soviet's declaration of independence, issued on 21 September.

On 27 October the Supreme Soviet of Turkmenistan declared the independence of Turkmenistan from the Soviet Union.

By November, the only Soviet Republics that had not declared independence were Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. That same month, seven republics (Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan and Tajikistan) agreed to a new union treaty that would form a confederation called the Union of Sovereign States. However this confederation never materialized.

On 1 December Ukraine held a referendum, in which more than 90% of residents supported the Act of Independence of Ukraine.

On 8 December Boris Yeltsin, Leonid Kravchuk and Stanislav Shushkevich—respective leaders of Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus (which adopted that name in August 1991)—as well as the prime ministers of the republics met in Minsk, the capital of Belarus, where they created the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) and annulled the 1922 union treaty that had established the Soviet Union. Doubts remained about legitimacy of the signing that took place on 8 December, so another signing ceremony was held in Alma-Ata on 21 December to expand the CIS to include Armenia, Azerbaijan and the five republics of Central Asia. Georgia joined in 1993, only to withdraw in 2008 after conflict between Georgia and Russia; the three Baltic states never joined.

On 24 December 1991 the Russian Federation, with the concurrence of the other republics of the Commonwealth of Independent States, informed the United Nations that it would succeed the Soviet Union in its membership in the UN and in its seat on the UN Security Council. No member state of the UN formally objected to this step. The legitimacy of this act has been questioned by some legal scholars as the Soviet Union itself was not constitutionally succeeded by the Russian Federation, but merely dissolved. Others argued that the international community had already established the precedent of recognizing the Soviet Union as the legal successor of the Russian Empire, and so recognizing the Russian Federation as the Soviet Union's successor state was valid.

On 25 December 1991, Gorbachev announced his resignation as Soviet president. The red hammer and sickle flag of the Soviet Union was lowered from the Senate building in the Kremlin and replaced with the tricolor flag of Russia. The next day, 26 December 1991, the Soviet Union officially ceased to exist.

And what if you went back a few more months on your timeline?

I kind of hoped that hinting at things would be enough for people to figure them out and discuss them. I mean, Jeelen's ignorance I've grown used to, but you must know what I meant.

The economic stagnation of the USSR itself was hardly more an existential threat to the USSR than the lost decade was to Japan.

True. The problems were political: the war, the mismanagement of the "Glasnost". That last policy at least was in intention good, but he should know passionate people can get over even the most trivial or old and near-forgotten issues after they've been left decades without regular political debate. We in "western" democracies with regular elections are rather cynical about politics, slow to mobilize about anything: participation in politics is, if you'll excuse me the cliche comparison, like a drug that creates habituation. When given to people who haven't tried it before, it creates all manner of passionate reactions. Thus the re-ignition of stupid ethnic wars in the Caucasus which had been ended generations ago...

This creates openings for skilled demagogues to carry out coups, even to start civil wars, over perfectly idiotic "political divisions". If Gorbachev was going to try to manage an increase in political participation across the USSR, he had the obligation to make damn sure that there would not be anyone taking advantage of the usual passion of the first couple of years (that's how long these things usually last before most people grow tired and cynical) to break apart the state for personal gain. Allowing a coup to undermine his authority, then Yeltsin to steal power right under his nose... had to be one of the worst national leaders of the 20th century!

Basically, by giving the Soviet republics autonomy, Gorbachov essentially signed the USSR's death warrant.

No, that was a dangerous move but an inevitable one which did not had to end with dissolution of the USSR. The republics were not going to break away, except for the baltics, those had to be let go. He signed the USSR's death warrant by not doing anything about the August coup which anyone with half a brain in his position had to see coming. Had could have been the one in Moscow standing it off. Instead it was Yeltsin, who then went on to break away Russia as the most expedient way to consolidate his own power.

 

[Cutlass]

Of course. The only problem was, that Gorby enacted exactly the wrong reforms, namely, instead of enacting market policies like China did under Deng Xiaoping, Gorby devolved the economic policies to the Soviet republics instead. The economic stagnation of the USSR itself was hardly more an existential threat to the USSR than the lost decade was to Japan.
Basically, by giving the Soviet republics autonomy, Gorbachov essentially signed the USSR's death warrant.

The Soviet situation wasn't really much like Japan's Lost Decade. It was far, far, worse. The thing is that with Japan they kept one of the world's highest living standards, and in fact they kept growth. What they lost is the high growth of the previous generation. Japan did not stagnate for a decade, they just slowed. A lot. But it was still growth and improvement.

Contrast that with the Soviet Union: Growth was over and done and there was no prospect of bringing it back without major changes. And had been for a decade or more. At the same time they were facing greatly rising costs for many things. If they intended to keep up with the West and US, then they simply needed more growth. And not just more growth, but drastic improvements.

The USSR in 1980 was a nation with the greatest agricultural potential of any nation in the world, and could not feed itself.

And all other aspects of the economy were moving in the wrong direction as well. There just wasn't anything at all that was promising at the time.

I don't disagree with the bolded in the slightest, so I think perhaps we may be miscommunicating slightly. What I'm suggesting is that there is a difference between a deformed and improperly functioning price system and the absence of a price system. There was still a circulating monetary system in the USSR as in any market, which meant that resources had to be allocated in accordance with how this money was actually spent by consumers (individuals or state agencies); so many factories need shoes, so the shoe factory is accorded resources based on its income, as are the enterprises which supply its resources, and so on and so forth, just like departments within a private corporation. Soviet state planners were unusually empowered in fiddling the numbers to suit themselves- of lifting a chunk of income from one enterprise and allocating it too another- but that doesn't suggest that they were able to make up whatever numbers they felt like. The whole thing can be understood quite easily as an exercise in High Fordism gone horribly wrong without having to imagine the sort of economic totalitarianism that the Miseans suppose.

I think you are badly overestimating how much the fact that the USSR had money means that they also had functioning markets. The two are neither synonymous, nor does either require the other.

Remember that money has no meaning other than the keeping track of things.

If there are shortages of some goods year after year, and the price isn't rising and the producers not making more, then the signaling mechanism has failed. And if there are goods that go unsold because no one wants them, then the signaling has failed. Despite the fact that there was some signaling, some monetary, some not, does not mean that there are actual functioning markets. And all the other aspects of the Soviet economy. There is very little that you can point to in what was going on in the USSR that resembled markets, except the black markets. And you can see that even more in what happened just after communism (what they called communism at the time, let's not go down that road again just now )collapsed. Almost immediately after state planning was gone, empty store shelves were filled. That right there tells you that the state was failing at making a reasonable facsimile of working markets.

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

Umm, no.

Spoiler :

On 24 August Mikhail Gorbachev created the so-called "Committee for the Operational Management of the Soviet Economy" (Комитет по оперативному управлению народным хозяйством ССС&#1056, to replace the USSR Cabinet of Ministers headed by Valentin Pavlov, a GKChP member. Russian prime minister Ivan Silayev headed this committee. On the same day the Verkhovna Rada adopted the Declaration of Independence of Ukraine and called for a referendum on support of the Declaration of Independence.

On 27 August the Supreme Soviet of Moldova declared the independence of Moldova from the Soviet Union. The Supreme Soviets of Azerbaijan and Kyrgyzstan did the same on 30 and 31 August respectively.

On 5 September the Congress of People's Deputies of the Soviet Union adopted Soviet Law No. 2392-1 "On the Authorities of the Soviet Union in the Transitional Period" under which the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union had replaced Congress of People's Deputies and was reformed. Two new legislative chambers—the Soviet of the Union (Совет Союз&#1072 and the Soviet of Republics (Совет Республи&#1082—replaced the Soviet of the Union and the Soviet of Nationalities (both elected by the USSR Congress of Peoples Deputies). The Soviet of the Union was to be formed by the popularly elected USSR people's deputies. The Soviet of Republics was to include 20 deputies from each union republic plus one deputy to represent each autonomous region of each union republic (both USSR people's deputies and republican people's deputies) delegated by the legislatures of the union republic. Russia was an exception with 52 deputies. However, the delegation of each union republic was to have only one vote in the Soviet of Republics. The laws were to be first adopted by the Soviet of the Union and then by the Soviet of Republics.

Also created was the USSR State Council (Государственный совет ССС&#1056, which included the USSR President and the presidents of union republics. The "Committee for the Operational Management of the Soviet Economy" was replaced by the USSR Inter-republican Economic Committee (Межреспубликанский экономический комитет ССС&#1056, also headed by Ivan Silayev.[30]

On 6 September the newly created Soviet State Council recognized the independence of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.[31]

On 9 September the Supreme Soviet of Tajikistan declared the independence of Tajikistan from the Soviet Union.

In September over 99% percent of voters in Armenia voted for a referendum approving the republic's commitment to independence. The immediate aftermath of that vote was the Armenian Supreme Soviet's declaration of independence, issued on 21 September.

On 27 October the Supreme Soviet of Turkmenistan declared the independence of Turkmenistan from the Soviet Union.

By November, the only Soviet Republics that had not declared independence were Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. That same month, seven republics (Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan and Tajikistan) agreed to a new union treaty that would form a confederation called the Union of Sovereign States. However this confederation never materialized.

On 1 December Ukraine held a referendum, in which more than 90% of residents supported the Act of Independence of Ukraine.

On 8 December Boris Yeltsin, Leonid Kravchuk and Stanislav Shushkevich—respective leaders of Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus (which adopted that name in August 1991)—as well as the prime ministers of the republics met in Minsk, the capital of Belarus, where they created the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) and annulled the 1922 union treaty that had established the Soviet Union. Doubts remained about legitimacy of the signing that took place on 8 December, so another signing ceremony was held in Alma-Ata on 21 December to expand the CIS to include Armenia, Azerbaijan and the five republics of Central Asia. Georgia joined in 1993, only to withdraw in 2008 after conflict between Georgia and Russia; the three Baltic states never joined.

On 24 December 1991 the Russian Federation, with the concurrence of the other republics of the Commonwealth of Independent States, informed the United Nations that it would succeed the Soviet Union in its membership in the UN and in its seat on the UN Security Council. No member state of the UN formally objected to this step. The legitimacy of this act has been questioned by some legal scholars as the Soviet Union itself was not constitutionally succeeded by the Russian Federation, but merely dissolved. Others argued that the international community had already established the precedent of recognizing the Soviet Union as the legal successor of the Russian Empire, and so recognizing the Russian Federation as the Soviet Union's successor state was valid.

On 25 December 1991, Gorbachev announced his resignation as Soviet president. The red hammer and sickle flag of the Soviet Union was lowered from the Senate building in the Kremlin and replaced with the tricolor flag of Russia. The next day, 26 December 1991, the Soviet Union officially ceased to exist.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1991_Soviet_coup_d'état_attempt

EDIT: Nah, you ninjacorrected that by yourself.

No I didn't. My ninja-edit reference was to their joining Sovnarkom, not to their leaving the USSR. In my post I said there was no referendum on independence in any SSR, so your correction is correct.

The fortunate truth is that reality doesn't support this fairy-tale version of history: there's no "solidarity," all people compete against each other and the competition is just as fierce on the bottom as it is at the top.

Competition is only fierce because people are told that it is right. If they don't get theirs, then someone else will, because capitalist morality is "those who can take, do." You think freedom is the right to accumulate as much as you can get away with; it's not. Freedom for the pike is death for the minnows. Freedom is precious, so precious that it must be rationed, not laid out for the greedy early-birds to grab.

 

[Tee Kay]

In my post I said there was no referendum on independence in any SSR

There was this.