Marxism and contemporary society.

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Alexander's Horse


Really? Okay, care to back up that blithely ignorant statement? Agriculture recovered. Right. You make your points and then I'll just post the statements and memoirs of every Soviet leader from Kruschev through to Gorbachev. This is a matter of public record.

Agriculture was a black hole for the Soviet economy - the Soviet leaders spent a lot of time on it - they said so themselves. Noone came up with an answer until Gorbachev introduced market reforms, but too late to save him.

1940

Despite the expectations, collectivization led to a catastrophic drop in farming productivity, which did not regain the NEP level until 1940.

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui

If you want my opinion long term growth is also unsustainable in the capitalist system, because there will be one last collapse.

And you wonder why we call you Marxists a religious cult? Do you pray to the Messiah Marx for the "Great Collapse"?

No but I'm sure that you pray for stability.

[Alexander's Horse]

oh brilliant - you're relying on one sentence from wikipedia for your assessment of soviet agriculture. That's hilarious

[Dracon II]

Well, at least he isn't falling back on the "Marx specifically said countries like Russia wouldn't be able to sustain a communist revolution" defense.... despite the fact that it's probably the right defense.

Capitalism is needed to develop economies to the point where communism is possible. I'm not being teleological here in that it's not necessarily an inevitability... but in my mind communism is only possible when an economy reaches a scale where it can easily produce enough for everyone and where it no longer experiences real scarcity. Of course in Capitalism there is occasionally structural scarcity... but in terms of productive potential it doesn't exist, at least in the 1st world. The problem for communists is that they didn't forsee that as capitalist nations developed in the 1st world, they were able to provide a measure of security and abundance to the majority of their populations. Sure, crises still exist, but they are not so crippling as to warrant revolution (at least for now).

I'm not saying that the problems in China and Russia were merely problems of real scarcity... maybe there was enough to feed everyone (particularly in China). But I would say they tried to restructure their economies too quickly and without the productive capacity to provide security during the transitions and in the event of a failed transition.

[Alexander's Horse]

just a taster

The collectivization of agriculture seems to have been a necessary prerequisite for the launching of the First Five-Year Plan. In 1928 80% of approximately 150 million Soviet citizens were engaged in agriculture. By the late twenties the peasant population, which was broken up into 25 million families, had greatly improved its relative position in Soviet society as a result of the Revolution and NEP. Peasants were no longer forced to surrender a large part of their surplus income to the state, as they had been during tsarist times, in order to finance the government's industrialization program; and they lived better and consumed a greater part of their own agricultural production than ever before.

In 1928 the peasants demonstrated their ability to organize effective resistance when the Soviet state tried to collect grain forcibly and at prices unfavorable to the peasants. Collectivization was calculated to eliminate effective peasant opposition to the policies of the Soviet state by reducing the number of separate units in the agricultural population from 25 million independent families to several hundred thousand collective farms.

Although state control over these collective farms was by no means complete, it was effective enough to assure the delivery to the state of compulsory quotas of agricultural products and to oblige the peasants to accept the discriminatory taxation and the low prices for agricultural products Soviet leaders considered necessary in order to finance rapid industrialization. Furthermore, after 1928, the lowering of the peasants' standard of living and the tightening of political control over the peasant community produced conditions that made life in the country less attractive than before and, therefore, helped to increase the rate of migration into towns.

Between 1929 and 1935, 16.6 million former peasants left the countryside and moved to urban centers, where they became part of the expanding labor force of Soviet industry. This was, of course, a highly desirable development from the point of view of the Communist elite which ruled in the name of the "dictatorship of the proletariat."

In the thirties collectivization proceeded rapidly but in the face of bitter and costly peasant resistance. By Jan. 1930, 21% of peasant households had been collectivized, a percentage that dramatically rose to 58% in March as a result of the intensified application of force and coercion by overzealous local party officials during the late winter of that same year.

Stalin temporarily called a halt to forcible collectivization with his famous ''Dizziness with Success'' article of March 2, 1930, but massive peasant abandonment of collectivization during the ensuing months led to renewed administrative pressure and violence against ''kulaks,'' the term then indiscriminately used to label all peasants who opposed collectivization.

In mid-1931 53% of the peasants once again lived on collective farms. After this the same combination of persuasion and coercion that had been applied earlier steadily raised the percentage of peasants on collective farms until it reached 94% in 1938. In many cases military units were called on to subdue unruly peasants, and decrees for the protection of socialist property sanctioned the shooting of thousands of peasants for stealing such trifles from kolkhozes as rope or sheaves of straw or for the ''hoarding of small coin.'' Hundreds of thousands of other peasant households were deported to Siberia or other remote areas of the Soviet Union.

When the peasants retaliated by destroying crops and killing their animals, the Soviet state confiscated foodstuffs the peasants needed to feed themselves. A particularly serious crisis developed in the Ukraine and northern Caucasus during the famine winter of 1932-1933, when apparently millions of peasants starved to death. The exact human toll resulting from collectivization is not known, but estimates run as high as 5 to 10 million. A recent study by Robert Conquest suggests the real figure is closer to 20 million.

The collective farms established during the thirties were divided into two basic types: sovkhozes and kolkhozes. From the very beginning the Soviet authorities attached special importance to the state-financed sovkhozes (state farms) and intended them so serve as models for the overwhelming majority of peasants in the kolkhozes. Sovkhoz performance, however, fell short of official expectations, though their efficiency has improved and their relative number and importance has grown since the mid-fifties. On the kolkhoz, in contrast to the sovkhoz, the land is socialized but parts of it are allocated to individual kolkhoznik households for private use.

Until recently kolkhoz members were obliged to work for their collective farm a minimum number of days a year, which generally varied between 100 and 150 days (60 to 100 prior to 1954) . In the 1960's kolkhoz members were assured partial payment of their salary in advance of the harvest. Previously they received only a share of the kolkhoz's income (based on a complicated calculation of workdays) after the harvest and after all compulsory deliveries and payments to the state had been met.

State control over the kolkhozes has been exercised indirectly, not directly as has been the case for sovkhozes and factories. Kolkhoz members, in theory at least, elect their own chairmen and manage their own internal affairs' The kolkhozes' freedom of action, however, has always been very limited because the majority of kolhoz chairmen are Communists (94% in 1959) and because there is no way for the kolhozes to avoid meeting production and delivery quotas prescribed by the Soviet state.

Furthermore, until 1958 state operated Machine Tractor Stations (MTS) supplied most of the agricultural machinery used by the kolhozes and served as a major medium through which the state disseminated propaganda among the peasants and controlled their activities. After the Machine Tractor Stations were disbanded in 1958, various agencies of the Ministry of Agriculture took over many of the control functions formerly exercised by the MTS.

In terms of agricultural productivity, the results of collectivization have not been spectacular. During the First Five-Year Plan cattle herds declined almost 50% and the gross farm output approximately 10%. By 1940 the per capita production of fruit crops, meat, and eggs still did not attain the level of 1928, while it was as late as 1957 before the number of cattle was restored to the pre-collectivization level.

It was especially after 1953, when Khrushchev publicity acknowledged that Soviet agriculture had failed to meet the food needs of a growing population, that Soviet economic planners began to concern themselves seriously with the problem of how to expand agricultural production. They paid particular attention to the expansion of wheat production. Because of the increase in the use of mechanical horsepower and in the total area sown (especially in Kazakhstan), wheat production rose from approximately 30 million tons in 1950 to highs of 67.6 (1958), 100 (1966), and 80 (1967) million tons during the decade 1958-1967.

The disastrous drought and crop failure of 1963, however, grimly reminded Soviet leadership that the overzealous extension of the area under cultivation in the ''virgin lands'' of Kazakhstan cannot be continued indefinitely without risking the transformation of this area into a vast dust bowl' In regard to other agricultural products, rising productivity and output have resulted chiefly from concessions made by the government to the peasants. Prices paid for the procurement of agricultural products have been raised, restrictions on the use of private plots liberalized, taxes reduced' and pensions and cash payments in advance of the harvest authorized for the agricultural population.

Such measures have given the kolkhozniki new incentives to supply Russian towns with the vegetables, fruit, meat, butter. and eggs needed to feed the working population. The productivity of Russian agriculture, however, remains on a low level in comparison with that of many other countries and requires an agricultural labor force six times larger than that of the United States to produce a smaller total agricultural output. Furthermore, much of this output comes from private plots, which in 1964 accounted for 3% of the area under cultivation but produced more than 40% of the milk and meat output, 60% of the potato crop, and 73% of the egg production.

http://mars.acnet.wnec.edu/~grempel/courses/stalin/lectures/EconDev.html

and it never got better - by Gorbachev's time, the shops were empty, there were food queues and food riots.

They probably would have been better off sticking with Lenin's NEP.

[Dracon II]

threads that go bump in the night

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Alexander's Horse
oh brilliant - you're relying on one sentence from wikipedia for your assessment of soviet agriculture. That's hilarious

Very efficient actually. No need to over post.

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Dracon II
Well, at least he isn't falling back on the "Marx specifically said countries like Russia wouldn't be able to sustain a communist revolution" defense.... despite the fact that it's probably the right defense.

I don't think Marx said that. He just didn't predict that they would have. I think an undeveloped country can sustain a revolution if it isn't under constant threat from a technologically superior nation with all the resources of the world at it's disposal.

I don't know why the USSR had an oil crisis. Maybe they were dumb asses, or maybe they were just struggling to survive against the US. But I don't think it's right to say that they couldn't have done anyting about it because they didn't have free markets. They could have kept the price of oil higher and they could have developed technologies to reduce consumption in the long run.

[Sikander]

Originally posted by Dracon II

It's grown from the dawn of history until today, so the answer is maybe

Why don't you tell us what a capitalist economy is... given that you seem to already have a definition of one... a very broad and problematic one too it seems...

A market economy. They've developed independently all over the world and seem to be a natural consequence of human activity. "Capitalism" as described by most communists seems to be a creation of communism rather than an actual competing ideology.

[Dracon II]

Originally posted by Kidicious


I don't think Marx said that. He just didn't predict that they would have. I think an undeveloped country can sustain a revolution if it isn't under constant threat from a technologically superior nation with all the resources of the world at it's disposal.

Didn't Marx say that the bourgeoisie had to develop sufficiently enough to revolutionize the mode of production in an economy and complete the transition from pre-capitalist society to capitalist society before a revolution was possible, or indeed desirable?
I know that Engels said that the USA and England, having the most developed economy and capitalist modes of production, would be the first nations to have revolutions.... but in fact it was actually Russia and China, who were both only making transitional phases. This is known to you of course... but I'm just restating it, because I think it had bad implications for the revolutions in those countries. I'm not so sure about making peasants a revolutionary class. Sure, they would be quite happy to overthrow their landlords... but their their mode of production is underneath their feet... they aren't alienated from it like the proletariat. Thus they are likely to be quite revolutionary as a class against landlords and rentiers, but they are more likely to draw the line at personal ownership of their property than help push the revolution further. This is why Marx insisted that the proletariat must be the revolutionary class.

I don't know why the USSR had an oil crisis. Maybe they were dumb asses, or maybe they were just struggling to survive against the US. But I don't think it's right to say that they couldn't have done anyting about it because they didn't have free markets. They could have kept the price of oil higher and they could have developed technologies to reduce consumption in the long run.

Oil extraction peaked, didn't it? The same thing happened in the US in the 70's. Fortunately for them they were wealthy enough to replace domestic oil production with imports. I think, however, that the Soviets had difficulty in replacing their domestic production.

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Dracon II
Didn't Marx say that the bourgeoisie had to develop sufficiently enough to revolutionize the mode of production in an economy and complete the transition from pre-capitalist society to capitalist society before a revolution was possible, or indeed desirable?
I know that Engels said that the USA and England, having the most developed economy and capitalist modes of production, would be the first nations to have revolutions.... but in fact it was actually Russia and China, who were both only making transitional phases. This is known to you of course... but I'm just restating it, because I think it had bad implications for the revolutions in those countries. I'm not so sure about making peasants a revolutionary class. Sure, they would be quite happy to overthrow their landlords... but their their mode of production is underneath their feet... they aren't alienated from it like the proletariat. Thus they are likely to be quite revolutionary as a class against landlords and rentiers, but they are more likely to draw the line at personal ownership of their property than help push the revolution further. This is why Marx insisted that the proletariat must be the revolutionary class.

The way that Marx predicted revolution is how you say, but I don't think that he said that peasants couldn't revolt and form a communist society, or that a communist society couldn't make innovative improvements and deal with scarcity. I could be wrong, but if I am I'd like to know when he made that claim.

Oil extraction peaked, didn't it? The same thing happened in the US in the 70's. Fortunately for them they were wealthy enough to replace domestic oil production with imports. I think, however, that the Soviets had difficulty in replacing their domestic production.

Yeah. That's why they had the crisis. The crisis was worse in the Soviet Union than the oil crisises were in the West, and they didn't have enough dollars to buy oil.