The Cold War: Clash of Economies

[Kidlicious]

Re: The Cold War: Clash of Economies

Originally posted by The Andy-Man
How many of you think that the Cold War would have been much much worse had the USSR been a free market capitalist Society on par with the USA???

I take it that the other nations agree to trade with only one of the super powers. Maybe the effect on the economy would be the same then. But you wouldn't have revolutions. I don't think it would be as bad in that regard.

[The Vagabond]

If the USSR had been capitalistic, it would have probably collapsed much earlier. I don't see what could have possibly held all the republics together in one superstate under capitalism. However such an earlier collapse would not have been accompanied by a total economic collapse as we had in the early 1990s.

Originally posted by notyoueither
Perhaps the proper question would be how bad would a Cold War-like conflict between 2 industrialised, free market based, world powers be?

That's a good question. Another question is the following. Suppose we have two equal free-market superpowers. Is a cold-war-like confrontation between them inevitable? It seems to me that 50 years ago the answer would have definitely been "yes". I don't know whether anything has changed nowadays: human nature remains a constant despite all the progress.

[Ned]

Originally posted by The Vagabond
If the USSR had been capitalistic, it would have probably collapsed much earlier. I don't see what could have possibly held all the republics together in one superstate under capitalism.

Think British Commonwealth.

[chequita guevara]

Think WWI. Germany and England had a Cold War running for many years before the outbreak of hostilities.

[Imran Siddiqui]

That's not really true. Around 1905ish, England was trying to conduct a peace accord with Germany which would have made both countries allies. That fell through, however... and the rest is history.

[chequita guevara]

That was their attempt at detante.

[Agathon]

You know, the traditional view that the Soviet Union collapsed because of economic competition is not universal. Some people blame Gorbachev's poor attempt at reforms.

[Fake Boris]

Originally posted by Ned


Maybe. However, wasn't Hitler more of a reaction to the bad peace treaty than a reaction to communism?

Yes, but without the threat of communism Hitler (and Mussolini and Franco and Horthy) would not have received the crucial endorsement of the conservative right.

[Ned]

OB, when was it that the Nazi's truly junked socialism? Otherwise they never would have received the support of the business community?

[DaShi]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
Again, if history is any guide, war would be more likely, since the vast majority of all wars and armed conflicts betwen nations in the 20th Century were initiated by capitalist countries. The U.S. itself engaged in seven times the number of foreign military actions that the USSR did. So we could assume, that as a capitalist country, Russia would be more aggressive. War would probably break out in 1947 over Berlin.

Why do brown horses eat more grass than white horses?

[Tingkai]

There was a book written, I can't recall the name, where the author argued that a large-scale war would not occur given decades of relative peace and the connections created by global trade. No country could economically afford to attack another country because of the reliance on obtaining vital resources through trade. The book was written in 1910.

[The Andy-Man]

Originally posted by Tingkai
There was a book written, I can't recall the name, where the author argued that a large-scale war would not occur given decades of relative peace and the connections created by global trade. No country could economically afford to attack another country because of the reliance on obtaining vital resources through trade. The book was written in 1910.

he was actually correct, the problem with pre-war europe was that everyone (exluding Britain) erected tariffs, thus pushing people into camps (France-Russia, Germany-Austria), and not allowing the interdependancy to develop.


As for the WW1 analogy, it is probably the best for the situation, though war was (imo) by no means an inevitability, hstilities were.

[Spiffor]

The interdependancy of Europe was extremely high pre-WW1, and such a level of interdependency was first restored well after WW2.

But the nationalistic hatred and the belief that the war would be a swift victory was stronger than trade.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Ned
OB, when was it that the Nazi's truly junked socialism? Otherwise they never would have received the support of the business community?

The nazis never supported socialism, though, in their early period, they had an anti-capitalist stance. Specifically their slogan was something along the lines of, neither capitalism nor communism. A wing of the nazi party did take the anti-capitalist platform seriously, the SA, aka the brownshirts or stormtroopers. They were crushed soon after the Nazis came to power.

Before the Nazis came to power, certain sectors of the business community supported the Nazis, heavy manufacturing, chemicals, GE (Germany's GE, not the US GE), finance, etc. These were the industries that dominated the German economy, and they used the Nazis to attack Socialist and Communist rallies, break up union meetings, etc. For their work, they were well paid. A thousand cars were put at the Nazis disposal and they were given the use of a plane so that their speakers could circulate around Germany more easily. And this was in the late 1920s, well before the Nazis looked lke they were going to come to power.

The Nazis knew who fed them, and they were deferential to the ruling capitalists up until near the end of the war. There was a quite a bit of graft and corruption. The minister of this or that could resonably expect his brother to get a job at XYZ industries if he asked, but the companies expected fat government contracts, guaranteed markets, compliant unions, and wage controls.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by The Andy-Man
As for the WW1 analogy, it is probably the best for the situation, though war was (imo) by no means an inevitability, hstilities were.

WWI was predicted for decades before it happened, by the socialists. When it was going to happen, they didn't know, but it was an article of "faith" that there would be a general conflagration between the great powers of Europe. They'd even made plans for a continental general strike to stop any such war before it started. Sadly, however, the German and French sections of the Second International betrayd their parties, voting for war credits when war came and refusing to carry out the general strikes. Thus the international socialist movement collapsed and the Europe was given four horrible years of massacre.