Was Communism *Ever* a Viable Alternative Economic System?

[MG1962]

It's sloping armor and both those models preceded the design of the T-34. Wasn't that the agreed upon goal posts?

Sure you want to call that sloping armor, then do so. You just might find it difficult for anyone else in the world to agree with you

Sloping armor, btw, dates to the US Civil War.

And?

Yes, the reason for longer barrels is for use against other armor.

Keep going, you will get there. But first you might explain why the Panza IV didn't start with a long barrel 76mm gun

So? They didn't invent the suspension.

They were the only people to get it to work on a battle tank. Effectively they improved an invention by 100% in one leap

It was designed for the open plains of eastern Europe and Asia, and specifically as an anti-armor weapon. German, French, and British tanks were designed for the tight roads and lightly constructed bridges of westwrn Europe, and were infantry support vehicles. Form following function is design 101.

Ahh okay so Blitzkrieg was umm what, an accident?

The T-34 was a very good tank, but not particularly innovative.

Sure you stick that story, cause all them smart alec military historians are not as clever as you

 

[MG1962]

Just one of many technologies developed under capitalist systems and copied by non-capitralist sytems.

So the soviets use the technology 5 years before any capitalist country...but that doesn't count.......for some reason

 

[Ziggurat]

LOL yeah China was a modern Arcadia before communist government gained control

China was fairly feudal before the communists took control. So what's your point? Are you trying to claim that capitalism sucks just as much as communism? Because pre-commie China isn't going to make the case.

 

[MG1962]

China was fairly feudal before the communists took control. So what's your point? Are you trying to claim that capitalism sucks just as much as communism? Because pre-commie China isn't going to make the case.

LOL. I really don't know where to start 4 Rebellions, 2 civil wars, and a foreign invasion, plus four provinces who broke away and formed a warlord government.

And you sum that up as fairly feudal.......I'd sum it up as nightmarish

 

[Ziggurat]

LOL. I really don't know where to start 4 Rebellions, 2 civil wars, and a foreign invasion, plus four provinces who broke away and formed a warlord government.

And you sum that up as fairly feudal.......I'd sum it up as nightmarish

Go ahead. But what's your point? That China was saved by communism? I think you'll find that they were part of those wars which made it nightmarish, but this thread is about economics, not politics. The two are related, but not synonymous.

 

[WildCat]

Sure you want to call that sloping armor, then do so. You just might find it difficult for anyone else in the world to agree with you

Those tanks had sloping armor by any definition. Who disagrees?

And?

Sloping armor was not a Soviet invention.

Keep going, you will get there. But first you might explain why the Panza IV didn't start with a long barrel 76mm gun

I already said why, it was designed as an infantry support tank.

They were the only people to get it to work on a battle tank. Effectively they improved an invention by 100% in one leap

What are you talking about? It was used on battle tanks prior to the T-34, and I know of no issues related to weight that needed Soviet engineers to solve. It was used on the British Comet tank, which was heavier than the T-34.

Ahh okay so Blitzkrieg was umm what, an accident?

Does not follow from what I said.

Sure you stick that story, cause all them smart alec military historians are not as clever as you

I don't believe you've cited a single military historian in this thread.

 

[WildCat]

So the soviets use the technology 5 years before any capitalist country...but that doesn't count.......for some reason

You have yet to show that they did. What Soviet com satellite was in use in 1957?

 

[Virus]

LOL. I really don't know where to start 4 Rebellions, 2 civil wars, and a foreign invasion, plus four provinces who broke away and formed a warlord government.

And you sum that up as fairly feudal.......I'd sum it up as nightmarish

The Great Leap Forward was probably the single greatest man-made catastrophe in human history.

 

[Virus]

They were quite innovative in their creepy techniques of mass-propaganda. They had the art of the Big Lie down to a science. You've got to give them that.

And using armed insurgencies to create chaos and destabilize governments. They pretty much wrote the terrorist playbook on that.

 

[angrysoba]

Not had time to read through the whole thread but I was wondering if the book, Red Plenty, has come up yet.

I read this recently and it brought home the main problems of a centralized economy that was designed to provide for everyone.

What seems to be lost among many supporters/apologists for Communism is that the Soviet Union was supposed to provide everything and all in a vast abundance for all people. No one was supposed to go without but rather the proletarian spirit was supposed to be demonstrably stronger than capitalist/free-market economies.

The book, Red Plenty, is very insightful into the minds of those who really did think that the economy could be run on the rational application of a few simple principles and the maximally efficient allocation of resources, but it all goes terribly wrong when such things as human fallibility, laziness, no desire to work harder for no extra profit, sabotage to avoid having to meet ridiculously high quotas, the sudden inability of a particular factory operating to meet the needs of other components of the command economy, the black market, the weather, and many other things that are insufficiently accounted for by the planners, take effect.

Because of the failure of the Soviet Union to produce in abundance a weird kind of cargo-cultish attachment to its less laudable effects seems to have taken hold on some apologists' minds. If the Soviet Union couldn't produce what it hoped it could then deficiency, want and poverty became noble virtues when compared to wasteful, decadent Western affluence. Affluence became a dirty word simply because Communism couldn't produce it even though the very point of a Communist utopia was that it could produce it for all.

 

[MG1962]

Go ahead. But what's your point? That China was saved by communism? I think you'll find that they were part of those wars which made it nightmarish, but this thread is about economics, not politics. The two are related, but not synonymous.

My point is to rebut your claim things were better in China before the Communist came to power. I'd strongly recommend doing some reading about Chaing Kai shek during that period. The last thing anyone in power during that period wanted was either a democratic or capitalist system in place

 

[Ziggurat]

My point is to rebut your claim things were better in China before the Communist came to power.

But you did so by referring to political catastrophes (some of them caused by the communists), not economics.

 

[MG1962]

The book, Red Plenty, is very insightful into the minds of those who really did think that the economy could be run on the rational application of a few simple principles and the maximally efficient allocation of resources, but it all goes terribly wrong when such things as human fallibility, laziness, no desire to work harder for no extra profit, sabotage to avoid having to meet ridiculously high quotas, the sudden inability of a particular factory operating to meet the needs of other components of the command economy, the black market, the weather, and many other things that are insufficiently accounted for by the planners, take effect.

Who wrote the book?

Also does it discuss logistics at any great length. In the early 80's I was a very junior member of a transport/logistics task force that investigated Soviet transport management. So junior sadly I didn't get to go on the three month fact finding tour

What they found was an overwhelming problem with transport. They found whole trains of produce wasted because the cargo had rotted before it had gotten to distribution points. They even went as far as to suggest the Soviet Union was actually producing enough food for people to have a reasonable lifestyle, but most of the food never reached the people who needed it, creating seemingly endless rationing crisis

 

[MG1962]

But you did so by referring to political catastrophes (some of them caused by the communists), not economics.

The communists definitely didn't start the first civil war. The second one, I cant with any certainty who blocked the negotiations sponsored by the US.

 

[MG1962]

What are you talking about? It was used on battle tanks prior to the T-34, and I know of no issues related to weight that needed Soviet engineers to solve. It was used on the British Comet tank, which was heavier than the T-34.

Wait, a few posts ago, you claimed there were no battle tanks, they were designed to be infantry support tanks. Make up your mind, which answer is correct?

 

[McHrozni]

But how about this. Show me some sources that say I am wrong. So far all you have presented as evidence is your opinion. The Germans clearly liked what they saw - they built the Panther, which except for a softer seat and swastika was a T34

With a significantly better suspension and engine, vastly superior gun, better armor, and vastly superior gun sights, to name a few.

There is a reason why German tanks destroyed, on average, 3 Russian tanks for each Soviet tank - and that's a general average, including obsolete or obsolescent Pzkw III and IVs. It goes up to 10 with Panthers and Tigers.

T-34 was innovative in that it combined mobility, armor and a large gun - it was an MBT in an era when most armies still had different tanks for different roles. It wasn't anything special from the technological perspective.

McHrozni

 

[gumboot]

If you believe capitalism "impoverished" people then you must believe that rural peasantry were richer before capitalism and gave it up to work in factories for no reason.

They were, actually, and they didn't so much as "give it up" as "get forced off the land". After the Crisis of the 14th Century the peasantry gained a lot of power because of a desperate labour shortage. Landlords responded by abandoning the feudal system all together, kicking peasants off their land, and turning it to pasture, which was far less labour intensive.

The now unemployed and homeless peasants flooded into cities where they took whatever jobs they could get.

 

[gumboot]

They were quite innovative in their creepy techniques of mass-propaganda. They had the art of the Big Lie down to a science. You've got to give them that.

And using armed insurgencies to create chaos and destabilize governments. They pretty much wrote the terrorist playbook on that.

Soviet innovation in cinema language is undeniable. Soviet Montage is probably the single most significant innovation in the history of cinema.

 

[angrysoba]

Who wrote the book?

Also does it discuss logistics at any great length. In the early 80's I was a very junior member of a transport/logistics task force that investigated Soviet transport management. So junior sadly I didn't get to go on the three month fact finding tour

What they found was an overwhelming problem with transport. They found whole trains of produce wasted because the cargo had rotted before it had gotten to distribution points. They even went as far as to suggest the Soviet Union was actually producing enough food for people to have a reasonable lifestyle, but most of the food never reached the people who needed it, creating seemingly endless rationing crisis

The book was written by an author called Francis Spufford who does indeed delve into the logistics of the Soviet Union. One of the important points that comes through is how they decided to measure productivity. It couldn't be done through profits so they hit on various other measurements such as how many thousands of tonnes could be shipped how many thousands of kilometres. But, of course, this leads to certain types of absurdities such as believing it to be more productive shipping cabbages from Vladivostok to Moscow at the same time as shipping cabbages from Moscow to Vladivostok. No wonder they went rotten. (This particular example doesn't appear in the book as far as I remember but there may indeed be some references to foodstuffs being spoiled.)

Another problem Spufford identifies is that factory bosses had no real incentive to try to produce more as to do so would mostly be creating a rod for their own back. They'll just get newer, higher quotas the longer they are able to meet them, so they deliberately sent estimates to GOSPLAN that underestimated their production capability. The GOSPLAN bureacrat would look at the estimates, assume they were fudged and revise them upwards so it created a system in which everyone had to lie just in order to have jobs which weren't unreasonably demanding.

The book is actually written like a novel in which various characters are seen wrestling with the tasks ahead of them. Some of them are genuinely idealistic and determined to put their brilliant minds to the task of creating a Communist utopia. They are also genuinely shocked to discover that so many people in the system are not interested in working towards the same goal.

I really enjoyed it and although Spufford might not be an expert on Soviet economics, the style of writing - blending fact and fiction humanizes and dramatized what might otherwise be a bit of a dull subject:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Red-Plenty-Francis-Spufford/dp/0571225233

 

[WildCat]

Wait, a few posts ago, you claimed there were no battle tanks, they were designed to be infantry support tanks. Make up your mind, which answer is correct?

I have no idea how you are defining "battle tank".

But I showed that Christie suspensions were used on heavier tanks than the T-34.