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It is anti-soviet propaganda. And a very bad take on it. Not only there isn't a single cited sourced (is everything "trust me bro", like "factories were built badly and in the wrong way", from where do you sourced that statement?).
Both articles fail to realise the liberalisation of the economy that happened in the post Stalin era that made USSR go to the state that current countries have today.
Is bullishit, but they are your professors, so you probably will have to study this, even tho those articles are an insult to science itself, if I ever made an article like that for my uni degree I would get inmediatly failed.
>It is anti-soviet propaganda. And a very bad take on it. Not only there isn't a single cited sourced (is everything "trust me bro"
This is what the papers say:
"The great dam on the Dnieper River, the enormous steel mill at Magnitogorsk, the White Sea Canal, the construction of industrial cities in
the frigid far north, and the Baikal-Amur Mainline are all examples of the
Soviet Industrialization
. irrational, wasteful Soviet industrialization program that has bequeathed
present-day Russia an industry that cannot begin to compete with the
industries of other advanced countries"
I feel there is a sliver of genuine criticism in the papers, however, that objective is way overshadowed by their inherent bias against the USSR.
this first essay by Graham is fairly easy to criticize, as within the scope of the criticism it relies very, very heavily on the dissenting opinions of one person (Palchinsky), and spends a lot of time making vague accusations of political repression without any citations (the reader is assumed to already know the USSR was pure evil, etc.). the conclusion is that in 2013, the date of publication, it is because of these projects "from" the 1930's were doomed to "non-competitiveness" by bad planning and ideological compromise, and definitely (absolutely!) not because of the wholesale destruction of the russian economy (in particular) in the immediate post-soviet era.
almost every one of the examples used is not a particularly great example at demonstrating the ineptitude that's being claimed. just looking up these projects on wikipedia, the two arguably best examples are the white sea canal to the baltic, which was rushed and finished ahead of time and under capacity, and the baikal-amur mainline railway, which was planned as early as the 19th century and has construction still continuing today. the canal was a strategic asset in the war to come, and largely fulfilled its purpose. it's inadequate capacity was later addressed with other bigger canals, and really only fell into disuse after the collapse of the soviet union. the BAM was always a wild, incredibly difficult megaproject, but it's hard to see what parts of that are due specifically to bolshevism and not just, you know, being a megaproject. the BAM still became a real railway, and while it too fell into disuse with the collapse of the post-soviet russian economy, it is being worked on and expanded again today. definitely it is a big "field of dreams" kind of project that has had over a century of planners seduced by the idea of its potential.
outside of directly critiquing the scholarship, the argument itself is very easy to criticize as it's making a comparative measure (presumably against the US) which has many tens of thousands of boondoggle projects and pork barrelling and political patronage in awarding government project contracts; the scale of ludicrously wasted resources and pointless projects is far greater in scope in the USA than, at least, the examples made here. however, to even attempt to point this out you will be accused of "whataboutism", a favorite reactionary defense against the full picture of a comparative measure of socialism's effectiveness.
I think you hit it right on the bullseye, the author selectively contrasted a few examples, knowingly abandoning the large-scale juxtaposition required between the Union's and the US's Economies to come to a definite, objective conclusion.
A market economy surely has its advantages, and a centrally planned economy surely has its disadvantages, but to debate it theoretically giving anecdotal examples at every turn hampers the objective nature of academic peer reviewed work.
you're right that they're being highly ideological in their motivations and methods to come to the right level of absolute condemnatory conclusions about the soviet economy. this is not accidental, and has been essential in the maintenance of the contemporary majority opinion on socialism and centralization in the USA.
in reality, real reality, the economies of the soviet union and the united states were/are organized somewhat similarly. an incredible amount of the US's domestic production is "centrally planned" from the position that gov't procurement contracts are tendered to the tune of trillions-ish per year; those contracts and research grants ensuring that the domestic economy is producing the right kind of drugs, weapons, food, fuel, machinery, etc. that the gov't knows it wants to have. the gov't maintains "strategic" reserves of things like gold, oil, fuel, vaccines, for both price regulation and the declared national interest. for those contracts to be satisfied, it drives the production of inputs that the higher level outputs require. the production of those inputs often necessitating invasion or instigating a coup in a non-cooperative country.
the soviet model was certainly different, where the command economy was for industrial inputs produced by centrally planned concerns, purportedly for some 10 000 specific products. then beyond that, factories and production facilities for industrial outputs were not centrally planned but organized in a decentralized way by worker committees; some had price controls and quotas, some didn't, some wage labor had regular wages and some had market rates. it was an interesting and mixed bag. ultimately, the central difference was that (ostensibly) all the capital was the explicit property of the state, and that worker control over those resources and means was exerted through soviets and worker committees at the workplace. it's a little funny in my mind because homes were personal property rather than what we have today, where domestic real estate is absolutely capital.
so the US centrally plans for specific inputs and outputs while delegating implementation for all of it, the USSR would centrally plan for specific inputs and delegate planning of most outputs to the producers. i'm not an expert at all and still learning, but a long time ago had a russian coworker who was an economist (like a buyer/logistics role) in the soviet union just before the collapse. he was the one who pointed out to me how similar the structures of each economy were.
bunch of bullshit lol. theyre showing their bias by chalking it down to there being no market. if you think the ussr had a horrible economy, how come it became second in the world in 30 years *without* the colonial / imperialist subsidies afforded to the u.k., the u.s., france, etc.
r/Socialism is a space for socialists to discuss current events in our world from our anti-capitalist perspective(s), and a certain knowledge of socialism is expected from participants. This is not a space for non-socialists. Please be mindful of [our rules](https://reddit.com/r/socialism/about/rules) before participating, which include: - **No Bigotry**, including racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism... - **No Reactionaries**, including all kind of right-wingers. - **No Liberalism**, including social democracy, lesser evilism. - **No Sectarianism**, there is plenty of room for discussion, but not for baseless attacks. Please help us keep the subreddit helpful by reporting content that break r/Socialism's rules. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/socialism) if you have any questions or concerns.*
It is anti-soviet propaganda. And a very bad take on it. Not only there isn't a single cited sourced (is everything "trust me bro", like "factories were built badly and in the wrong way", from where do you sourced that statement?). Both articles fail to realise the liberalisation of the economy that happened in the post Stalin era that made USSR go to the state that current countries have today. Is bullishit, but they are your professors, so you probably will have to study this, even tho those articles are an insult to science itself, if I ever made an article like that for my uni degree I would get inmediatly failed.
>It is anti-soviet propaganda. And a very bad take on it. Not only there isn't a single cited sourced (is everything "trust me bro" This is what the papers say: "The great dam on the Dnieper River, the enormous steel mill at Magnitogorsk, the White Sea Canal, the construction of industrial cities in the frigid far north, and the Baikal-Amur Mainline are all examples of the Soviet Industrialization . irrational, wasteful Soviet industrialization program that has bequeathed present-day Russia an industry that cannot begin to compete with the industries of other advanced countries" I feel there is a sliver of genuine criticism in the papers, however, that objective is way overshadowed by their inherent bias against the USSR.
Soviets are bad becuz I don't like them! And I don't like em cuz they're bad!!!😡
That is essentially the crux of this argument, but I can't use these words in class lol
I'd say every time someone (student, teacher) tries to trash the USSR, bring up some highly effective things that were done, and cite your sources!
this first essay by Graham is fairly easy to criticize, as within the scope of the criticism it relies very, very heavily on the dissenting opinions of one person (Palchinsky), and spends a lot of time making vague accusations of political repression without any citations (the reader is assumed to already know the USSR was pure evil, etc.). the conclusion is that in 2013, the date of publication, it is because of these projects "from" the 1930's were doomed to "non-competitiveness" by bad planning and ideological compromise, and definitely (absolutely!) not because of the wholesale destruction of the russian economy (in particular) in the immediate post-soviet era. almost every one of the examples used is not a particularly great example at demonstrating the ineptitude that's being claimed. just looking up these projects on wikipedia, the two arguably best examples are the white sea canal to the baltic, which was rushed and finished ahead of time and under capacity, and the baikal-amur mainline railway, which was planned as early as the 19th century and has construction still continuing today. the canal was a strategic asset in the war to come, and largely fulfilled its purpose. it's inadequate capacity was later addressed with other bigger canals, and really only fell into disuse after the collapse of the soviet union. the BAM was always a wild, incredibly difficult megaproject, but it's hard to see what parts of that are due specifically to bolshevism and not just, you know, being a megaproject. the BAM still became a real railway, and while it too fell into disuse with the collapse of the post-soviet russian economy, it is being worked on and expanded again today. definitely it is a big "field of dreams" kind of project that has had over a century of planners seduced by the idea of its potential. outside of directly critiquing the scholarship, the argument itself is very easy to criticize as it's making a comparative measure (presumably against the US) which has many tens of thousands of boondoggle projects and pork barrelling and political patronage in awarding government project contracts; the scale of ludicrously wasted resources and pointless projects is far greater in scope in the USA than, at least, the examples made here. however, to even attempt to point this out you will be accused of "whataboutism", a favorite reactionary defense against the full picture of a comparative measure of socialism's effectiveness.
I think you hit it right on the bullseye, the author selectively contrasted a few examples, knowingly abandoning the large-scale juxtaposition required between the Union's and the US's Economies to come to a definite, objective conclusion. A market economy surely has its advantages, and a centrally planned economy surely has its disadvantages, but to debate it theoretically giving anecdotal examples at every turn hampers the objective nature of academic peer reviewed work.
you're right that they're being highly ideological in their motivations and methods to come to the right level of absolute condemnatory conclusions about the soviet economy. this is not accidental, and has been essential in the maintenance of the contemporary majority opinion on socialism and centralization in the USA. in reality, real reality, the economies of the soviet union and the united states were/are organized somewhat similarly. an incredible amount of the US's domestic production is "centrally planned" from the position that gov't procurement contracts are tendered to the tune of trillions-ish per year; those contracts and research grants ensuring that the domestic economy is producing the right kind of drugs, weapons, food, fuel, machinery, etc. that the gov't knows it wants to have. the gov't maintains "strategic" reserves of things like gold, oil, fuel, vaccines, for both price regulation and the declared national interest. for those contracts to be satisfied, it drives the production of inputs that the higher level outputs require. the production of those inputs often necessitating invasion or instigating a coup in a non-cooperative country. the soviet model was certainly different, where the command economy was for industrial inputs produced by centrally planned concerns, purportedly for some 10 000 specific products. then beyond that, factories and production facilities for industrial outputs were not centrally planned but organized in a decentralized way by worker committees; some had price controls and quotas, some didn't, some wage labor had regular wages and some had market rates. it was an interesting and mixed bag. ultimately, the central difference was that (ostensibly) all the capital was the explicit property of the state, and that worker control over those resources and means was exerted through soviets and worker committees at the workplace. it's a little funny in my mind because homes were personal property rather than what we have today, where domestic real estate is absolutely capital. so the US centrally plans for specific inputs and outputs while delegating implementation for all of it, the USSR would centrally plan for specific inputs and delegate planning of most outputs to the producers. i'm not an expert at all and still learning, but a long time ago had a russian coworker who was an economist (like a buyer/logistics role) in the soviet union just before the collapse. he was the one who pointed out to me how similar the structures of each economy were.
bunch of bullshit lol. theyre showing their bias by chalking it down to there being no market. if you think the ussr had a horrible economy, how come it became second in the world in 30 years *without* the colonial / imperialist subsidies afforded to the u.k., the u.s., france, etc.