09-14-2004, 06:26 PM
"In re: "those were totalitarian nations with enormous class and wealth disparity prior to their revolutions..." does not answer why conditions worsened so drastically when socialists dictated how the economy was to be run."
It would be a hard question to answer, since it presupposes something that doesn't seem to be true. Material conditions (for the vast majority) in both Soviet Russia and Communist China improved dramatically. The cost was enormous, but nobody can fault those systems in terms of improving things like education, health care, food, shelter, etc... for the average person. Tsarist Russia wasn't exactly a happy place to live, and China had been in the Kuomintang toilet for long enough that the peasants loved the communists.
Now, I'm not saying that totalitarian absolutism is a good way to run an economy. Far from it. But these were not prosperous countries prior to communism, except for the very priveleged few, who gave the impression of prosperity through ostentatious displays of wealth (or of opression, depending on how you look at it.)
The Soviet economy took enormous leaps forward during the Stalin era. The model of development in one generation was untenable in the long run (people can't eat steel), but it transformed Russia from being a minor economic player into the second most powerful nation in the world, with technology mostly on par with the US, and in some limited cases more advanced. Quite a jump from where they started, yes? And before you talk about the costs, yes, they were enormous, and unacceptably so. But if you're imagining that socialism ruined previously prosperous economies, you're imagining wrong.
"I am also curious to how you square away the claim of "whose governments have always been despotic, whether devotedly capitalist, communist, or otherwise?" in regards to Korea; the only despots prior to the division post WW2 were the Japanese."
Well, I must say I know far less about Korean history than Russian or Chinese. But, a quick glance at the History of Korea article doesn't give me any impression they had anything but despotic governments between the dawn of time and WWII. Isolationist monarchists, it looks like. Am I missing something?
"I guess you missed that whole time during the 90's when Sweden's economy was in the tank, which was not resolved until government restrictions were lessened and the government took great measures to cap spending on social services."
Okay, so a nation that has been socialist-democratic for nearly a century suffers a recession (as if capitalist countries don't have those...) after 70 years of nearly uninterrupted prosperity (the "swedish miracle", the "third way"), and all of a sudden it's lumped in with North Korea and Stalinist Russia as "the inevitable result of implementing socialism." Could you find a more exaggerated argument to put forth? Socialism isn't infalliable. Neither is capitalism. No system succeeds maximally 100% of the time. Sweden exercised its democratic mechanism to make adjustments to their economy, resulting in a newer equilibrium.
"It also doesn't deal with the fact that the USSR (the only one of the three to both remain socialist and lose it's tyrants) continued to fail, miserably, even after Stalin's death."
Uh... well, let's see. First, Russia has been officially tyrant-free for 13 years. Now, they have a heavily censored press, enormous corruption, crippling debt, a war they can't win, and an economy that regularly teeters on the brink of collapse. Freedoms are being restricted, and their leader stays in power through displays of machismo and dirty politics. Sounds remarkably like the old Tsarist system. So, yes, they got rid of their tyrants. Maybe they'll be back, maybe they won't. But this has not been an overwhelming success.
The Soviet economy only really ground down near the end of Khruschev's term, and even then mostly because the model was unsuited to make a conversion from heavy industry to quality-of-life improvements. However, they still managed to be the first into space, to feed the people, to achieve a literacy rate higher than the US', and to compete with the mightiest nation on earth for military supremacy. They brought roads, rails and electricity to a nation of oxen carts in less than half a century. That doesn't sound like a miserable failure, in purely economic terms. Their failures were due to the human cost, which was unacceptable any way you slice it. Nobody could live under the Stalinist system; people were made into subhuman labourers. But, as Sweden (and most European nations, at one point or another) has demonstrated, that is a historical feature of Stalinism, not an essential feature of socialism generally.
Jester
It would be a hard question to answer, since it presupposes something that doesn't seem to be true. Material conditions (for the vast majority) in both Soviet Russia and Communist China improved dramatically. The cost was enormous, but nobody can fault those systems in terms of improving things like education, health care, food, shelter, etc... for the average person. Tsarist Russia wasn't exactly a happy place to live, and China had been in the Kuomintang toilet for long enough that the peasants loved the communists.
Now, I'm not saying that totalitarian absolutism is a good way to run an economy. Far from it. But these were not prosperous countries prior to communism, except for the very priveleged few, who gave the impression of prosperity through ostentatious displays of wealth (or of opression, depending on how you look at it.)
The Soviet economy took enormous leaps forward during the Stalin era. The model of development in one generation was untenable in the long run (people can't eat steel), but it transformed Russia from being a minor economic player into the second most powerful nation in the world, with technology mostly on par with the US, and in some limited cases more advanced. Quite a jump from where they started, yes? And before you talk about the costs, yes, they were enormous, and unacceptably so. But if you're imagining that socialism ruined previously prosperous economies, you're imagining wrong.
"I am also curious to how you square away the claim of "whose governments have always been despotic, whether devotedly capitalist, communist, or otherwise?" in regards to Korea; the only despots prior to the division post WW2 were the Japanese."
Well, I must say I know far less about Korean history than Russian or Chinese. But, a quick glance at the History of Korea article doesn't give me any impression they had anything but despotic governments between the dawn of time and WWII. Isolationist monarchists, it looks like. Am I missing something?
"I guess you missed that whole time during the 90's when Sweden's economy was in the tank, which was not resolved until government restrictions were lessened and the government took great measures to cap spending on social services."
Okay, so a nation that has been socialist-democratic for nearly a century suffers a recession (as if capitalist countries don't have those...) after 70 years of nearly uninterrupted prosperity (the "swedish miracle", the "third way"), and all of a sudden it's lumped in with North Korea and Stalinist Russia as "the inevitable result of implementing socialism." Could you find a more exaggerated argument to put forth? Socialism isn't infalliable. Neither is capitalism. No system succeeds maximally 100% of the time. Sweden exercised its democratic mechanism to make adjustments to their economy, resulting in a newer equilibrium.
"It also doesn't deal with the fact that the USSR (the only one of the three to both remain socialist and lose it's tyrants) continued to fail, miserably, even after Stalin's death."
Uh... well, let's see. First, Russia has been officially tyrant-free for 13 years. Now, they have a heavily censored press, enormous corruption, crippling debt, a war they can't win, and an economy that regularly teeters on the brink of collapse. Freedoms are being restricted, and their leader stays in power through displays of machismo and dirty politics. Sounds remarkably like the old Tsarist system. So, yes, they got rid of their tyrants. Maybe they'll be back, maybe they won't. But this has not been an overwhelming success.
The Soviet economy only really ground down near the end of Khruschev's term, and even then mostly because the model was unsuited to make a conversion from heavy industry to quality-of-life improvements. However, they still managed to be the first into space, to feed the people, to achieve a literacy rate higher than the US', and to compete with the mightiest nation on earth for military supremacy. They brought roads, rails and electricity to a nation of oxen carts in less than half a century. That doesn't sound like a miserable failure, in purely economic terms. Their failures were due to the human cost, which was unacceptable any way you slice it. Nobody could live under the Stalinist system; people were made into subhuman labourers. But, as Sweden (and most European nations, at one point or another) has demonstrated, that is a historical feature of Stalinism, not an essential feature of socialism generally.
Jester