Why Communism Failed

[amadeus]

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?

Economists, but they're not wrong. Take as an example small craft unions: whose interests are they looking out for? "The workers?" No way! They want to squeeze out every penny they can for their members. Who do the farmers lobby on behalf of, the consumer for lower prices? Nope! It's always for a subsidy or price support.

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

It's not that they don't want a top, though, it's that they want to be the new top.

Competition is only fierce because people are told that it is right.

Competition is fierce because I am interested in pursuing my interests, not the interests of people who have no interest in my well-being.

If they don't get theirs, then someone else will, because capitalist morality is "those who can take, do."

"Take?" Take from who? If I build an oil rig and drill for oil that I sell to delighted consumers, what have I taken? Without me, there would be no rig and no oil to sell. I've taken nothing; I've only reaped the rewards of my labor and taking risks.

You think freedom is the right to accumulate as much as you can get away with; it's not.

That's a strawman argument; I thnk no such thing. Freedom is total ownership of the self, and that includes his labor and his property.

 

[Tee Kay]

It does sometimes seem that the only difference between the capitalist and the communist is the former thinks the rich works harder than the poor and the latter thinks the poor works harder than the rich. They both use the same language of "freedom" and "human rights".

Competition is only fierce because people are told that it is right.

Competition is fierce because I am interested in pursuing my interests, not the interests of people who have no interest in my well-being.

I don't see why these two statements should be mutually exclusive.

 

[amadeus]

I don't see why these two statements should be mutually exclusive.

People are told to act in their own self-interest? By whom?

 

[aelf]

Elimination of private ownership and redistribution of the wealth, outside of ridiculous idealistic land you cant expect many people, especially the exceptionally well off, to just toss out their businesses and hand them over to anyone else. Some force has to oversee that and that force will have exceptional power. Ive never understood why communists seem to think greed will just disappear because capitalism does. People are still people, and they want as much as they can get.

If the system can no longer be sustained then it will be torn down. Whether people are greedy or not is beside the point.

It does sometimes seem that the only difference between the capitalist and the communist is the former thinks the rich works harder than the poor and the latter thinks the poor works harder than the rich. They both use the same language of "freedom" and "human rights".

Most of the claims here are untrue or inaccurate.

 

[Tee Kay]

People are told to act in their own self-interest? By whom?

When someone is how ever informed, rightly or not, that other people have no interest in their well-being, the conclusion one reaches is that one should act in their own self-interest.

Most of the claims here are untrue or inaccurate.

I don't "claim" anything. I just observe.

 

[Tahuti]

It does sometimes seem that the only difference between the capitalist and the communist is the former thinks the rich works harder than the poor and the latter thinks the poor works harder than the rich. They both use the same language of "freedom" and "human rights".

Capitalism doesn't imply the rich work harder than the poor, but rather, that the rich render a service that is more in demand than the services rendered by the poor; who is working harder is here completely irrelevant.

 

[BasketCase]

Work smarter, not harder.

Not joking, either. The brain is a human being's true source of power. We should be using our strongest muscle.

 

[Lone Wolf]

It does sometimes seem that the only difference between the capitalist and the communist is the former thinks the rich works harder than the poor and the latter thinks the poor works harder than the rich. They both use the same language of "freedom" and "human rights".

"Freedom" and "human rights" are bourgeois liberal concepts which the bourgeoisie uses to oppress the proletariat. Any proper Communist needs to despise them, else he's nothing but a revisionist traitor.

 

[Traitorfish]

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.

I disagree. Money isn't just an elaborate system of tokens, it possesses a uniquely circulatory character. If there is a system of circulating money, then it necessarily follows that there is a market for it to circulate in. The USSR possessed just such a system, albeit one that the state attempted to obscure by artificially "submerging" money when it came into the hands of the state, to give the impression that it was simply allocated at one end and redeemed at the other. The internal plans of the state economies were still primarily based on financial calculations- the much touted "material balance planning" was basically a farce using internal forms of credit and shadow pricing.

Now, it's true that this doesn't amount to a "functioning market" (whatever we mean by that, exactly), but I didn't claim that it did. Merely that a market existed.

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.

That does not in itself suggest the absence of a market. It's nothing that can't be explained as a monopolistic megacorporation with state backing (that just happens to be incompetent and bad at prioritising), while your model demands an all-powerful autocratic-totalitarian state of the kind that the USSR ever so patently was not. Given that the similarly (if less pronouncedly) challenged Western Keynesian systems were brought to their knees during the 1970s, at same time as the Soviet and Eastern Bloc economies began to come apart , it seems entirely unnecessary to construct some narrative that attributes there woes not to the general failure of hard interventionism in this period, but to some totally distinct set of mechanisms that just happened to emerge at the same time and in the same broad fashion.

Economists, but they're not wrong. Take as an example small craft unions: whose interests are they looking out for? "The workers?" No way! They want to squeeze out every penny they can for their members. Who do the farmers lobby on behalf of, the consumer for lower prices? Nope! It's always for a subsidy or price support.

I don't follow. How does the fact that people pursue self-interest, and that this can lead to conflict which does not follow class lines (which I'm not sure is being denied by anyone? ) imply that everyone is always in competition with everyone else. Unless perhaps I'm overstating the level of conflict which you imagine as being present?

(And thanks for being honest about the boundless wisdom of economists, I guess. Who needs interdisciplinarianism, eh? )

It does sometimes seem that the only difference between the capitalist and the communist is the former thinks the rich works harder than the poor and the latter thinks the poor works harder than the rich. They both use the same language of "freedom" and "human rights".

I've never heard a proponent of capitalism argue that the effort expended by the rich and poor are proportional to their income. That's patently impossible. What they argue is that this doesn't matter, which is something altogether different. They may also happen to claim that the rich work harder and this somehow makes them morally superior, but that's because the sort of people who usually make these arguments are deeply involved in petty populist moralising, not because its a claim that plays any particular role in formulating their politics.

 

[Agent327]

"Freedom" and "human rights" are bourgeois liberal concepts which the bourgeoisie uses to oppress the proletariat. Any proper Communist needs to despise them, else he's nothing but a revisionist traitor.

Democracy is the road to socialism.

Karl Marx

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

Interesting conjecture - not very accurate though...

The U.S. needs to spend a staggering $2 trillion to rebuild infrastructure, including roads, bridges, water lines, sewage treatment plants and dams reaching the end of their planned life cycles, according to a recent study by the Urban Land Institute. In the face of budget deficits and financial shortfalls, however, infrastructure policy has become a backburner issue.

(Charts here: http://www.businessinsider.com/infr...nding-to-be-spent-over-the-next-seven-years-1)

And I wonder how much government planning went into the current economic crisis... It´s all very well to claim that governments ´plan´ the economy when all is going well; but when the economy isn´t going well, it turns out that all this government planning doesn´t amount to all that much.

As said, there´s government planning ... and then there´s the economy.

 

[Cutlass]

I disagree. Money isn't just an elaborate system of tokens, it possesses a uniquely circulatory character. If there is a system of circulating money, then it necessarily follows that there is a market for it to circulate in. The USSR possessed just such a system, albeit one that the state attempted to obscure by artificially "submerging" money when it came into the hands of the state, to give the impression that it was simply allocated at one end and redeemed at the other. The internal plans of the state economies were still primarily based on financial calculations- the much touted "material balance planning" was basically a farce using internal forms of credit and shadow pricing.

Now, it's true that this doesn't amount to a "functioning market" (whatever we mean by that, exactly), but I didn't claim that it did. Merely that a market existed.

I don't think you're right. Money is an accounting system. The Soviets used that because they lacked an alternative accounting system. If there overall system had some of the trappings of a market system, it was because they lacked the practical ability to transition to a purer "communism" that could have eliminated those.

But that does not imply that they actually had a market economy.

That does not in itself suggest the absence of a market. It's nothing that can't be explained as a monopolistic megacorporation with state backing (that just happens to be incompetent and bad at prioritising), while your model demands an all-powerful autocratic-totalitarian state of the kind that the USSR ever so patently was not. Given that the similarly (if less pronouncedly) challenged Western Keynesian systems were brought to their knees during the 1970s, at same time as the Soviet and Eastern Bloc economies began to come apart , it seems entirely unnecessary to construct some narrative that attributes there woes not to the general failure of hard interventionism in this period, but to some totally distinct set of mechanisms that just happened to emerge at the same time and in the same broad fashion.

A monopolized market in a "capitalist" country would cease being a functioning market economy as well. "Free markets", or Smith's "Invisible Hand", to give it a different name, requires that it is the aggregate of the uncoerced transactions that give everyone the information upon which decisions are based. The USSR went even far further and a monopoly in a capitalist economy would to prevent that from happening. Managers were issued quotas, and could be arrested, even killed, if those quotas were not met. This is not reconcilable with any version of market based decision making.

Democracy is the road to socialism.

Karl Marx

He was wrong. Democracy is the road to conservatism. Conservatism is the road to socialism.

 

[Traitorfish]

I don't think you're right. Money is an accounting system. The Soviets used that because they lacked an alternative accounting system. If there overall system had some of the trappings of a market system, it was because they lacked the practical ability to transition to a purer "communism" that could have eliminated those.

But that does not imply that they actually had a market economy.

Again, I disagree that money is just an accounting system. That may be true if money is imagined as nothing more than a system of tokens, which the state dispenses at one end and are redeemed at the other, but that isn't how it works in practice. Rather, it circulates, which is to mean it persists as money even as it makes its way through the state. That constitutes a qualitative shift, allowing it to develop a logic beyond that of the entity which issues it, which would not be true of a token-system. This was also true of the Soviet Union (even if, as I said, the state made some effort to obscure this). This circulation necessarily implies a market as such, however distorted, or there would be no means by which the money could actually circulate.

Furthermore, I'd point out that, the Soviet Union didn't exist in an economic vacuum: it actively traded with other countries, primarily with its allies but also with the West, which means participation in the global markets. That makes the conception of the Soviet economy as a fully planned and thus fundamentally non-market economy basically untenable. At most, you can adopt a "single factory" model of the Soviet economy, in which its internal workings were planned but its international trade conducted on the market, but that's something quite fundamentally different. (It's essentially an extreme version of the hyper-monopolistic model I suggested previously.)

A monopolized market in a "capitalist" country would cease being a functioning market economy as well. "Free markets", or Smith's "Invisible Hand", to give it a different name, requires that it is the aggregate of the uncoerced transactions that give everyone the information upon which decisions are based. The USSR went even far further and a monopoly in a capitalist economy would to prevent that from happening. Managers were issued quotas, and could be arrested, even killed, if those quotas were not met. This is not reconcilable with any version of market based decision making.

You're shifting the goalposts. I said that the Soviet Union was a market economy, not that it was either a "free" or a "functioning" market economy; it was patently neither. I'm not interested in how close the Soviet Economy sat to abstract ideals of freedom or efficiency, but in its concrete character, and in that sense, "central planning", taken literally, was a political fiction.

He was wrong. Democracy is the road to conservatism. Conservatism is the road to socialism.

Could you elaborate?

 

[Cutlass]

Again, I disagree that money is just an accounting system. That may be true if money is imagined as nothing more than a system of tokens, which the state dispenses at one end and are redeemed at the other, but that isn't how it works in practice. Rather, it circulates, which is to mean it persists as money even as it makes its way through the state. That constitutes a qualitative shift, allowing it to develop a logic beyond that of the entity which issues it, which would not be true of a token-system. This was also true of the Soviet Union (even if, as I said, the state made some effort to obscure this). This circulation necessarily implies a market as such, however distorted, or there would be no means by which the money could actually circulate.

But money is just a token. That's how we get away with fiat money. It doesn't mean anything in and of itself. And it isn't relevant that it circulates. All that means is that that there is more than only a bidirectional exchange of it.

You're shifting the goalposts. I said that the Soviet Union was a market economy, not that it was either a "free" or a "functioning" market economy; it was patently neither. I'm not interested in how close the Soviet Economy sat to abstract ideals of freedom or efficiency, but in its concrete character, and in that sense, "central planning", taken literally, was a political fiction.

But that is not markets. The choices of buyers and sellers wasn't really anything that mattered much to planners. You had some of the form of markets, but almost none of the actual substance of how a market works.

Could you elaborate?

I think of it as an endless game of Rock, Paper, Scissors. People, left to their own devices, have a tendency towards conservatism. However conservative policies make everyone worse off in the long run. So that gives rise to a demand for socialism. However liberalism can have the benefits of a capitalist economy and a social safety net, so the majority of all people are materially better off than under either of the others. So you go round and round in circles. democracy does not lead to socialism because people don't want socialism. Not in the long run. Only when conservatism has made conditions so bad that it becomes intolerable does socialism gain traction.

 

[Traitorfish]

But money is just a token. That's how we get away with fiat money. It doesn't mean anything in and of itself. And it isn't relevant that it circulates. All that means is that that there is more than only a bidirectional exchange of it.

If it was "just a token", then the Soviet state wouldn't have needed to conduct its internal calculations on a financial basis. It would have development a comprehensive version of material balance planning and reserved the use of money for wages and consumer-spending, which it quite certainly did not do.

But that is not markets. The choices of buyers and sellers wasn't really anything that mattered much to planners. You had some of the form of markets, but almost none of the actual substance of how a market works.

How so? It was a system of distribution based upon the exchange of commodities for money. That is a market. That it was a market that experienced heavy government intervention doesn't change that. The chaos of the bazaar doesn't represent any essential form of the market, it just represent a specific formation within those general terms.

I think of it as an endless game of Rock, Paper, Scissors. People, left to their own devices, have a tendency towards conservatism. However conservative policies make everyone worse off in the long run. So that gives rise to a demand for socialism. However liberalism can have the benefits of a capitalist economy and a social safety net, so the majority of all people are materially better off than under either of the others. So you go round and round in circles. democracy does not lead to socialism because people don't want socialism. Not in the long run. Only when conservatism has made conditions so bad that it becomes intolerable does socialism gain traction.

Are there any particular historical examples of these developments? The idea of a grand causal relationship between economic condition and ideological orientation strikes me as overly deterministic, but I might be misinterpreting.

 

[Leoreth]

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.

There was of course an economic reality to the collapse. Standards of living and purchasing power rapidly declined for the post-USSR citizens. I don't think you can blame all of that on the chaotic circumstances after the collapse. Unfortunately you don't hear much about this.

Most explanations I hear either say that the Soviet economy was already rotten to the core and its administration was only good at "managing the deficiency" to keep everything going or they claim that its economy system was sound in principle, and only the sudden disappearance of the regulating political system caused its collapse.

 

[Dachs]

If you look at the size of the extent of territory of both states, I´m surprised you´re surprised.

Not aggregate, but per-km². Nice try.

 

[aelf]

I don't "claim" anything. I just observe.

That's a cop out. You're making claims based on what you observe (or what you think you observe) and they are mostly wrong.

Interesting conjecture - not very accurate though...

The U.S. needs to spend a staggering $2 trillion to rebuild infrastructure, including roads, bridges, water lines, sewage treatment plants and dams reaching the end of their planned life cycles, according to a recent study by the Urban Land Institute. In the face of budget deficits and financial shortfalls, however, infrastructure policy has become a backburner issue.

(Charts here: http://www.businessinsider.com/infr...nding-to-be-spent-over-the-next-seven-years-1)

And I wonder how much government planning went into the current economic crisis... It´s all very well to claim that governments ´plan´ the economy when all is going well; but when the economy isn´t going well, it turns out that all this government planning doesn´t amount to all that much.

As said, there´s government planning ... and then there´s the economy.

Cool story, bro, but it has almost nothing to do with whatever point you're trying to make. Economic planning is not the same running the economy or whatever you think it is - not in most people's terminology. Whether or not the US government is doing enough to fix the economy doesn't really have any bearing on the meaning of the economic planning either.

 

[Mechanicalsalvation]

I red once that basic flaw of communism is that it wants to put the leadership in hands of ignorant masses rather then illumined individuals and thats where all the problems starts.
I think in the future we are likely to have some kind of communism all over as it can probably offer some solutions better than other systems even when it comes to actual survival of human race. But it will have to be adjusted sufficiently and it will require changes of human consciousness as well...

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

Economists, but they're not wrong. Take as an example small craft unions: whose interests are they looking out for? "The workers?" No way! They want to squeeze out every penny they can for their members. Who do the farmers lobby on behalf of, the consumer for lower prices? Nope! It's always for a subsidy or price support.

Sure. So why do you trust the rich to run the country, or a business?

It's not that they don't want a top, though, it's that they want to be the new top.

Yes, because that's what "success" is measured in. Everyone wants freedom from want, and that can only be achieved by "playing the game" and finding security on top of the pile.

But if people learned that such freedom can be found for everyone by working together instead of against each other, then...

Competition is fierce because I am interested in pursuing my interests, not the interests of people who have no interest in my well-being.

Competition is fierce because if you don't grab what you can, someone else will get it instead. That's not a good human society, that's the law of the jungle. We're so much better than naked instincts, we have brains. Let's use them and eschew such base motives.

"Take?" Take from who? If I build an oil rig and drill for oil that I sell to delighted consumers, what have I taken? Without me, there would be no rig and no oil to sell. I've taken nothing; I've only reaped the rewards of my labor and taking risks.

Property you possess is, by definition, property that no one else may possess. Thus, the more property one person has, the less another has.

That's a strawman argument; I thnk no such thing. Freedom is total ownership of the self, and that includes his labor and his property.

So what of people who have no property? I guess they get no freedom as well.

 

[Agent327]

Not aggregate, but per-km². Nice try.

Nice try indeed: the US has far more ´empty territory´ with no need for railroads or anything than the Kaiser´s empire.

Cool story, bro, but it has almost nothing to do with whatever point you're trying to make. Economic planning is not the same running the economy or whatever you think it is - not in most people's terminology. Whether or not the US government is doing enough to fix the economy doesn't really have any bearing on the meaning of the economic planning either.

Note the ´almost nothing´in there... But let me get this straight: infrastructure has no bearing on economic planning? What country do you live in?

Property you possess is, by definition, property that no one else may possess. Thus, the more property one person has, the less another has.

That does not follow. And property cannot be traded?