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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   3215 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for April 7, 2024

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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no question too simple or too silly

This is a real shower thought, but doesn’t the fact that the USSR was rival superpower to America prove without a doubt that communism actually does work? In fact, it works really well?

Thinking about it, it makes no sense to ever retort “well did it work for the USSR?” when someone brings up the prospect of communism. It worked so well that the communist USSR rivaled America and launched the first satellite. If it didn’t work well, the USSR could never have been a competitor to America. One could even argue that America cultural capital is what really led to American dominance later on, which is independent of political system and relies on America’s unique position as cultural crossroads, but that is beside the question.

A part of answer might be that USSR early gave equal rights to high IQ Jews which partially offset the inefficiency of planned economy, then after creation of Israel most Jews eventually left and economy became less free in 1960th-s. In some things, it wasn't (unironically) real communism:

abortion banned by Stalin

education in schools after 7th year was paid

...I could even speculate that if Stalin had better health and lived longer, he'd change mind on genetics too...

So, everybody knows about Lend-Lease (and perhaps exaggerates the scale of it). But I think not enough people know about the aid that the US gave to the USSR before the war. First was the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Relief_Administration, run by Herbert Hoover, which gave an enormous amount of aid to the USSR so fight Typhus and famine. Alternative history is tricky, but it's easy to imagine how the USSR might have collapsed right away if not for that aid.

After that came a ton of international trade deals, like the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amtorg_Trading_Corporation (exporting resources, importing machinery and technology) and Henry Ford building the GAZ automotive plant: https://autos.yahoo.com/blogs/motoramic/may-31-henry-ford-cuts-deal-ussr-changes-125237773.html . So sure, it can "work" provided that it has an enormous amount of help from more advanced countries, and can get that help either from propaganda or selling natural resouces.

I think a major advantage some early communists had was revolutionary zeal. When you honestly believe you're in the founding generation of a political experiment that will usher in a bright future, you're more willing to work long hours for low pay and not try to take advantage of others to your own benefit. Once you realize that your political experiment is going to only be on par with capitalism at best, that motivation goes away. And without that motivation, your experiment starts functioning far worse than capitalism.

And without that motivation, your experiment starts functioning far worse than capitalism.

Exactly, because capitalism is unique in not only assuming humans are greedy but counting on it.

The eternal question is 'compared to WHAT?'

Feudalism 'works.'

Slavery 'works.' We had it in place for eons of human history. Rome was built on slavery, and Rome outlasted the USSR in pure duration.

And perhaps the oldest 'economic' system of all: invading the neighboring tribe, killing them, and taking their shit 'works.' It still gets some use in the current age.

But if there's a system that is completely outperformed along all the metrics that actually matter, and the alternative system survives over the long term, 'working' is not a sufficiently convincing qualifier.

Capitalism (admitting that the definition is somewhat ambiguous) solves virtually any economic 'problem' you throw at it, and it does so more effectively than any other system we've devised or evolved so far. I don't think there's ever been ANY country that collapses due to being "Too capitalistic."

So I don't hold my breath than any of the current contenders are going to replace it.

  1. Taking Communism on its own terms, historical materialism is refuted by the Soviet Union's failure even if it experienced a period of success. One of Communism's primary doctrines and promises has been the historical inevitability of the Communist form, that Capitalism's contradictions mean that it must inevitably fail, and be supplanted by Communism. This was the official belief of the Soviet Union, and remains afaik the official position of Red China. The failure of the Eastern Bloc and its reversion to Capitalism contradicts the core tenets of Communism as the right side of history. The promise of Communism was never that it could deliver a period of relatively decent development relative to expectations, it was always that it would deliver a permanent world of equality. It had such persuasive power to so many intellectuals in the 20th century because they genuinely found Marx's arguments persuasive, and believed that Communism was inevitable. The failure of the Soviet Union was strong evidence against that belief. It should be noted that the continued existence of Red China should be a riposte, but that still doesn't really fit into a simplistic view of Marx, and few on any side are very pro-China.

  2. Few people are Utilitarians, such that they'll accept any amount of abridged Human Rights for a % improvement in development. The Soviets had a bad reputation for human rights abuses. There is a point at which many of us would "most respectfully return [our] ticket" for utopia.

That being said, I largely accept that argument as regards, particularly, Castro in Cuba. Mostly because the rest of the Caribbean doesn't offer much else in the way of developmental and human rights success stories compared to Cuba, while Poland and Germany are a pretty clear demonstration that Capitalism delivered better results than Communism. If anything, economic results in the Caribbean seem to show that they should have just stayed colonized.

I don't think Cuba is doing that well, even if they're doing better than some of the Caribbean nations. Maybe they're evidence that authoritarianism can be better than democracy, when the voters inevitably elect populists who just turn the country into authoritarianism with a veneer of democracy anyway. I don't think Cuba is evidence that centrally planned economies are better than free markets.

https://www.discoursemagazine.com/p/in-cuba-the-terminal-stage-of-communism

No, Cuba isn't an argument that centrally planned economies are better than free markets. It is a reasonable argument that Communist totalitarianism is better than the right-wing, kleptocratic authoritarianism present in other small Caribbean statelets. And certainly better than whatever it is that they have in Haiti! There's a certain context dependence: I wouldn't bring up Cuba to argue that the USA should go Communist, but it's reasonable to argue that Cuba (taking into account the embargo) is way better than other countries which were similarly situated circa 1960, even where those countries have been the subject of repeated rounds of IMF Capitalist interventions and FDI. Cuba's murder rate, for example, is less than half that of the DR, and 1/10 that of Jamaica and 1/5 of much wealthier Mexico!

My overall opinion on third world development remains that the 1st world countries need to collectively agree to legalize conquest between third world nations, abolish any international recognition of existing borders, and give it 30 years to sort itself out.

My overall opinion on third world development remains that the 1st world countries need to collectively agree to legalize conquest between third world nations, abolish any international recognition of existing borders, and give it 30 years to sort itself out.

Umm, I know the theory of this is that economic growth-> more powerful third world countries which conquer their neighbors and impose a superior system. But in practice I think population sizes enable human wave attacks and borrowing that lead to mass immiseration through war. Like Russia is probably going to impose its system on Ukraine soon enough.

are you going to say that that poor backward Russia conquers rich Ukraine due to number superiority?

I think Russia conquers Ukraine and entrenches the kleptocratic mafia state system which would have gradually gotten better under polish influence.

The best example would be the Congo or Somalia, where we've seen decades of perpetual and miserable disorder.

In a world where the UN did not enforce arbitrary border set on an arbitrary date, Congo and Somalia's better-run neighbors like Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda would have a motivation to conquer, integrate, and administrate regions of those countries. Right now, only altruism can motivate anyone to help organize one of these failed states. We've outlawed any sense of enlightened self-interest.

...but Ethiopia is lost Eritrea and has problems with Tigray. Still better than Somali, thought... wait... why the international community accepts secession of Eritrea and South Sudan but does not accept secession of Somaliland?

We've outlawed any sense of enlightened self-interest.

Similarly, study of genetics of humans is backward because slavery is illegal, nobody can't design 200 IQ obedient slaves and profit from it.

My overall opinion on third world development remains that the 1st world countries need to collectively agree to legalize conquest between third world nations, abolish any international recognition of existing borders, and give it 30 years to sort itself out.

I'd agree something needs to be worked out regarding the 3rd world that probably wouldn't be politically correct, but I doubt that would work pretty well. Even if you're willing to callously sacrifice potentially billions of lives over those 30 years in order to get a better future over the up coming centuries, and you don't think there's any risk of those wars spilling over into the first world or using nukes, I don't think it'd actually result in disfunction ending. I think you'd get a lot of the dominant conquering countries not completely wiping out the populations of their conquered territories, whether out of pity, apathy, or to use the populations as poorly compensated labour. And those sorts of minority populations would just be another perpetual source of human misery.

I don't really know what would be the best solution to 3rd world disfunction, but fortunately I think genetic editing + AI will solve most problems in the long term.

and you don't think there's any risk of those wars spilling over into the first world or using nukes

If 1st world nations somehow agree to legalizing conquest in Africa, they can work out so they don't get nukes as well.

I'd be more worried about the conflict dragging in Pakistan/India/China who are borderline undeveloped themselves and already have nukes

The funny thing is that Marx was massively against Lenin and the Vanguard Party idea. Marx was adamant that you had to go all the way through to the end of capitalism before you entered the socialist phase and on into communism. You couldn't skip from a semi-feudal economy to socialism, that's not how it worked. Russia had the weakest basis for proletarian revolution, Marx wrote off anything happening in Russia. Germany or the UK were supposed to be where the revolution happens because they were the advanced capitalist economies.

China is closer to proper Marxism than the USSR ever was since they are advancing through the capitalist phase. Now I don't actually believe that the state will wither away and I don't believe in Marxism either. However, what the fall of the USSR shows is that Marxism-Leninism failed, not Marxism. Marxism has unironically never been tried.

Thinking about it, it makes no sense to ever retort “well did it work for the USSR?” when someone brings up the prospect of communism.

Generally people are advocating for communism for the quality of life it promises, this still seems like an appropriate retort regardless of how the country fared in great power competition.

If it didn’t work well, the USSR could never have been a competitor to America

Wouldn't present day Russia be a competitor to America if it controlled the same territory as the USSR + satellite states?

When most people say 'work' they mean something like 'provide good living standards for the median person'. Marxists tend not to brag about how communist countries have the biggest armies, although having a huge army is certainly possible when the state (nominally) controls the entire economy and the leadership doesn't have to pay too much attention to the needs and wants of the populace.

Like sure, the USSR worked in the sense that Russia colonised all its neighbours, spent huge amounts on its military, suppressed opposition and built walls to keep its citizens in. It failed at providing good living standards, innovating technologically, creating economic equality (arguably its cardinal goal) or creating a society that wasn't rife with corruption.

Yeah, the USSR almost kept up with the US militarily at the cost of the well-being of its citizens, while the US more than kept up with the USSR militarily while at the same time enjoying unprecedented growth and prosperity for its citizens.

As far as I can tell, the ‘communism doesn’t work’ narrative we learned in schools is bunk, but the Soviet Union consistently struggled to manage the planning of its economy because it was married to idiotic Marxist ideas like the labor theory of value, and that they were able to keep up with the west for a while by prioritizing military spending.

"Communism" in the sense of "enslave rural populations to produce grain at gunpoint, and then use that wealth to centrally plan heavy industrial development" does indeed work. For a while at least.

The oft mocked cliché, "real communism has never been tried," is in a literal sense true. The USSR that defeated Nazi Germany and rivaled America had different wage levels for different jobs, and even higher wages for more productive employees with the same jobs.

Of course, the reason "real communism has never been tried," is that as soon as you have contact with ground-level economic reality, the idea of communism becomes absurd.

The history of wage stratification in the USSR is pretty interesting. It trended upwards but AFAIK also waxed and waned. That said, it was also probably the most equal major society, the top 10% had perhaps a 25% share of total income by 1991 according to most economists who study the USSR.

The neighborhoods for party elites in Moscow or East Berlin (or Warsaw or Prague etc) were like middle class American suburbs at best.

Interesting. Do you think that was intentional? As in, actually caused by some policy of the early communists. Or was there simply not enough of a pie to grab?

Makes me wonder—say we get to post-scarcity, but never unlimited resources. I would expect some number of people to continue striving (hoarding?) for philosophical (signaling?) reasons. But this suggests that such imbalance might be…curtailed.

There was an episode where someone went to Stalin and said something like 'this situation is absurd, there are coal miners being paid more than Politburo members like you and I' and Stalin said something like 'that's as it should be - there are vacancies in the coal mines but there's a long line of people who want to join the Politburo!'

Official vs unofficial wealth is also important to consider, as you can see from the above exchange.

Party elites had huge non-salary advantages like better apartments, dachas, access to rare imported goods, caviar, cars, and for the top of the elite there were drivers, domestic staff and so on. Still, their standard of life (while vastly better than the average USSR citizen) wasn’t close to as good as the average third world elite is today (or even at the time), even though this was the second most powerful nation on Earth.

The Wikipedia for the Waldsiedlung has pictures of the gated compound that the GDR elite lived in and it’s not that great. Even including the amenities, pool, tennis courts and decent restaurant, the average West German doctor or attorney lived a materially comparable or better life than the literal Politburo of East Germany.

The USSR was flawed enough that after enough generational turnover for the revolutionary passion to wear off, the elites decided capitalism was better. I do think people overstate the extent to which communism doesn't work, that the arguments made about how bad communism and central planning and authoritarianism are prove way too much. But it's nice to have a wide variety of consumer goods, decentralized technology development, little state-backed political repression, few shortages, and for it to be very hard to expropriate a significant portion of the population or to cause a famine negligently or not. Cultural capital didn't produce the Randalls grocery store Yeltsin visited, it didn't produce America's global lead in technology, etc. "Communism doesn't work" is a reasonable way to say that.

I do think people overstate the extent to which communism doesn't work

Definitely not. Communism is just totally bankrupt as an economic ideology. The only reason why the USSR lasted as long as it did was because they let limited capitalistic ideas seep through pretty quickly. If you want to see the closest thing to Communism as written, read up about War Communism. Everyone hated it.

I agree that the ideology was bankrupt, but the fact remains that it was a rival superpower and did last quite a while. It could've collapsed within three years, and it didn't!

Also the US and West German governments kept subsidizing them through cheap loans and food aid whenever the USSR ran into issues.

E.G.

https://www.nytimes.com/1974/05/22/archives/180million-loan-to-soviet-union-is-made-by-u-s-biggest-credit-yet.html

https://www.nytimes.com/1983/12/03/business/east-germany-seeking-371-million-bonn-loan.html

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