Re: capitalism, market, redistribution (fwd)

ed wrote:

>I don't think so.  In a recent posting I proposed that the Soviet Union
>was
>not a communist society, but one which could be described as extreme
>capitalism.

>ed, there is a conceptual problem with your definition of "extreme
capitalism". if soviet union was extremely capitalist, who was
"moderately capitalist" then?"

What I meant was that the Soviet Union had a very long way to go to catch to
developed capitalist nations.  What the nations of western Europe had done
since the beginning of the industrial revolution, a span of some two hundred
years, the Soviet Union, a poorly organized and largely agrarian country,
wanted to do in a matter of decades.  This required a very high and strongly
enforced savings rate and a very high rate of investment, much of it
directed to heavy industry which could be used to build further industry --
coal mines, large scale hydro electric projects, steel mills, transportation
infrastructure, etc.  Much was accomplished and an impressive industrial
base was indeed built up, but much was also wasted.  Other countries had
gone through an industrialization process much more slowly.  However,
because industrial development is never a smooth process and tends to
proceed in lurches, there would have been times in which it impacted on
society much more severely than at others.

Perhaps "extreme" is a poor choice of words, but I meant it in terms of very
high rates of savings and investment and therefore very low rates of growth
for consumers goods.

>>From the end of the New Economic Policy in  the late 1920s
>until the failed reforms of the 1980s, the principal objective of the
>Soviet
>State was to industrialize;

>what you are saying is not unique to Soviet Union. every country in the
world aimed to industrialize at some point in history. Look at the New
Deal policy in the United States, look at the British factory acts when
Marx was writing, look at Colbert's economic policies in France during
the early stages of capitalism!! all aimed to industrialize but for
different purposes. industrilization can be an instrument of economic
growth; it does not charecterize "extereme capitalism", "less
capitalism","moderate capitalism" , "socialism" or whatever."

I would argue that a prolonged period of industrialization permits a
superior quality of life to a protracted one.  There were tremendous
dislocations in the industrialization of western Europe, but there were also
periods of respite and accommodation during which the working class was able
to organize itself and make substantial political gains.  This never quite
happened in the Soviet Union.  It was all forced too rapidly to permit
political change to permeate up from the bottom.  Dissent was not
tolerated -- it could not be if the industrialization process was to
succeed.  Even unionization took place from the top.

Various reasons are given for why the Soviet Union behaved this way.  One
reason is that it felt very vulnerable in trying to establish a communist
state in a hostile capitalist world.  But I think there are deeper reasons
that arise out of pre-Soviet Russian history.  That history developed a
pervasive psychology of being under threat, a psychology which is
understandable when one considers that Russia had been invaded many
imes  -- by the Mongols from the east, by the Turks from the south, by the
Swedes and Poles from the west, and so forth.  And of course, during the
1930s it recognized the very real threat that Nazi Germany posed.

You mention the "New Deal", which I think was quite different.  What
happened there was that an industrialized economy, the US, had collapsed
into depression.  The New Deal was essentially a Keynesian solution -- spend
public money even if you have to print it, get people employed, get things
moving.  Keynes' General Theory was first published in 1936, a time which
coincides closely with the New Deal.  His ideas were already current and
having a large impact on policy.

Ed