babyhueypnewton posted:i dismissed ellman because in that paragraph he displayed a profound ignorance of something which I do know about with academic rigor. anyone who thinks that the growth of the east asian tigers is not "remarkable" is a fool at best, who is dismissing the entirety of developmental state theory. now, i have my problems with that school myself, but ellman is a clown.
like getfiscal says you just parse this
The Soviet growth spurts certainly compare
well with average experience in Africa, Latin America, and India from
1928 to 1989 but the Soviet growth record as a whole is no longer very "remarkable" by world standards.
as dismissing dependency theory or whatever
which is, moronic?
getfiscal posted:babyhueypnewton posted:i dismissed ellman because in that paragraph he displayed a profound ignorance of something which I do know about with academic rigor. anyone who thinks that the growth of the east asian tigers is not "remarkable" is a fool at best, who is dismissing the entirety of developmental state theory. now, i have my problems with that school myself, but ellman is a clown.
you read that incorrectly. he isn't saying that the asian tigers were unremarkable. he's saying that soviet growth was outstripped in other countries like the asian tigers, making soviet growth less remarkable.
obviously, i said that already. i then said that both were remarkable, and anyone who actually reads Allen knows that he says the same thing. it's not a competition, they are not comparable in any honest evaluation of their circumstances (which I also said). please read.
ggw posted:I can read Prussian. What's up? Need me to translate something?
seriously can you translate any of the stuff in german on the treuhand and such, there is practically no decent critical work on it in english lol
http://www.uni-hildesheim.de/index.php?id=6601&no_cache=1&sword_list=Einigung
"The Treuhand within the Context of German Unification"
jools posted:babyhueypnewton posted:i dismissed ellman because in that paragraph he displayed a profound ignorance of something which I do know about with academic rigor. anyone who thinks that the growth of the east asian tigers is not "remarkable" is a fool at best, who is dismissing the entirety of developmental state theory. now, i have my problems with that school myself, but ellman is a clown.
like getfiscal says you just parse this
The Soviet growth spurts certainly compare
well with average experience in Africa, Latin America, and India from
1928 to 1989 but the Soviet growth record as a whole is no longer very "remarkable" by world standards.
as dismissing dependency theory or whatever
which is, moronic?
lol yeah lets just dismiss africa, latin america, and india in one sentence. that's completely acceptable. i dont even know what's left assuming he's also dismissing the rest of south asia and south east asia which had similar growth rates. we cant talk about europe or the USA, because comparing a third world country to a first world country in growth is retarded (since the underdevelopment of the third world is a prerequisite of the growth of the 1st). what left? china? how dishonest he is as well to ignore all of chinese history and talk about the last 20 years, as if they are unrelated. literally the only thing left on the earth are the east asian tigers (which is his point that he doesn't want to just say because it would be laughed at), and the east asian tigers are a special (one could say...remarkable) example which is exactly what I've been saying and which ALLEN SAYS IN THE FIRST 10 PAGES OF THE BOOK
babyhueypnewton posted:jools posted:babyhueypnewton posted:i dismissed ellman because in that paragraph he displayed a profound ignorance of something which I do know about with academic rigor. anyone who thinks that the growth of the east asian tigers is not "remarkable" is a fool at best, who is dismissing the entirety of developmental state theory. now, i have my problems with that school myself, but ellman is a clown.
like getfiscal says you just parse this
The Soviet growth spurts certainly compare
well with average experience in Africa, Latin America, and India from
1928 to 1989 but the Soviet growth record as a whole is no longer very "remarkable" by world standards.
as dismissing dependency theory or whatever
which is, moronic?lol yeah lets just dismiss africa, latin america, and india in one sentence. that's completely acceptable. i dont even know what's left assuming he's also dismissing the rest of south asia and south east asia which had similar growth rates. we cant talk about europe or the USA, because comparing a third world country to a first world country in growth is retarded (since the underdevelopment of the third world is a prerequisite of the growth of the 1st). what left? china? how dishonest he is as well to ignore all of chinese history and talk about the last 20 years, as if they are unrelated. literally the only thing left on the earth are the east asian tigers (which is his point that he doesn't want to just say because it would be laughed at), and the east asian tigers are a special (one could say...remarkable) example which is exactly what I've been saying and which ALLEN SAYS IN THE
FIRST 10 PAGES OF THE BOOK
i think you need to take a walk round the block man
ggw posted:like something like this?
http://www.uni-hildesheim.de/index.php?id=6601&no_cache=1&sword_list=Einigung
"The Treuhand within the Context of German Unification"
sure, though there were some specific things i was interested in, i'll have to find them though anyway.
babyhueypnewton posted:lol yeah lets just dismiss africa, latin america, and india in one sentence. that's completely acceptable. i dont even know what's left assuming he's also dismissing the rest of south asia and south east asia which had similar growth rates. we cant talk about europe or the USA, because comparing a third world country to a first world country in growth is retarded (since the underdevelopment of the third world is a prerequisite of the growth of the 1st). what left? china? how dishonest he is as well to ignore all of chinese history and talk about the last 20 years, as if they are unrelated. literally the only thing left on the earth are the east asian tigers (which is his point that he doesn't want to just say because it would be laughed at), and the east asian tigers are a special (one could say...remarkable) example which is exactly what I've been saying and which ALLEN SAYS IN THE FIRST 10 PAGES OF THE BOOK
again, you misread it. he's saying that the record over the entire soviet union's history is not remarkable compared to the record of growth in many other countries. he's not saying "the soviet union's burst of growth under early stalin isn't important". he doesn't dismiss any countries as being irrelevant. he's saying that the soviet union didn't perform a lot better than many of them over a long period of time. he's specifically saying that those other countries are relevant.
jools posted:bhpn you have a frankly theological view of communism. it's bizarre.
if you don't view Stalin as the second coming of Christ who lead the people into the garden of eden, which was ultimately sabotaged by the temptuous apple of liberalism - then you read too many books by ivory tower bourgeois intellectuals, and should instead be reading the Bible
also its p cool that there's a discussion going on in this thread, even though its a bit contentious and i hope nobody fucks along now
I get the feeling you have a fundamentally utopian view of socialism and the existence of flaws in the planned economy to you means that everything is fucked and "market socialism" (lol, like that even exists) is the only possible option. Which is absurd. Even if a planned economy necessarily breeds corruption and hoarding, even if a planned economy can never be as "efficient" as capitalism (lol @ the idea that capitalism is efficient in any way that actually matters), it would still be necessary to switch to a planned economy since no market system will be capable of saving the planet. Only an economic system that isn't based on profit will be able to make the changes that are necessary. Plus I don't want to be a technological fetishist but it's simply undeniable that we have far better instruments for a planned economy available to us now than the USSR had in the short period it actually had a planned economy, and the conditions for a planned economy are much better than in the USSR of the 1930's. I see no reason why your pessimism is warranted and I certainly see no reason to believe "market socialism" can provide a solution to the most important problems we face.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Economic_Policy
catpee posted:Getfiscal it's kinda tiresome that you hardly ever distinguish between the USSR before or after Krushchev's market reforms so you can dismiss planning entirely. Frankly, if planning is as inefficient as you claim why did every capitalist state switch to extremely efficient command economies during the war? Yes, planning the building of instruments of death is obviously much easier than planning to fulfil the many needs of the people, but the point still stands.
i explained why i don't think joseph ball's article was good. also, i don't think planning is always inefficient, i think that physical planning based on materials balances produces some serious problems which aren't worth the costs. you might disagree. good for you. also war economies were market in your definition because they included financial/profit accounting. unless you think roosevelt's america was a planned economy but khrushchev's russia was not.
catpee posted:Only an economic system that isn't based on profit will be able to make the changes that are necessary
why's that. if we can collectively decide as a society not to consume on the same scale then why can't that decision be channeled through a state within a market framework. why does capitalism have conflicts of interest but not socialism.
getfiscal posted:i will be extra clear: it seems plausible to me that we will advance towards semi-comprehensive economic planning based on materials balances and ecological sustainability over time. we're probably not there yet. that is, the evidence i've seen (which is minimal, i'm a beginner, do your own research, it's fine if you disagree) seems to me that best practices is a left-social-democratic dirigiste/developmental state that focuses on equitable growth and social spending. maybe you don't think that is possible for many countries. that's fine, i don't see any evidence that's true. i think that very extensive state control like the post-stalin soviet union and its satellites was tried in dozens of countries and had serious problems. maybe you accept those problems. that's fine. the vast majority of people in the world disagree, and when they are given the chance they tend towards social-democracy.
meaningless drivel. everything has "very serious problems", especially when you confuse different systems and different economic periods together as a blob of history known as "planning". also popularity is not a measure of correctness, and populism is the saddest ideology of all because it doesn't even have the courage of its own convictions. if you see no evidence that the Keynesian welfare states that emerged after the world war are not possible anymore (which I know is not true since we just had a thread on TFRP and Kliman, what you should say is you don't agree with the evidence. of course that really means you're not a marxist, something you don't seem willing to admit), i would love to see the mountain of evidence you must have that the overwhelming majority of the world population prefers social democracy to socialism.
babyhueypnewton posted:
BHNP feels "proud of his races accomplishments"......hahaha so all this theory guff is just a front for zionism all along?
fucking hell, too funny
getfiscal posted:i explained why i don't think joseph ball's article was good. also, i don't think planning is always inefficient, i think that physical planning based on materials balances produces some serious problems which aren't worth the costs. you might disagree. good for you. also war economies were market in your definition because they included financial/profit accounting. unless you think roosevelt's america was a planned economy but khrushchev's russia was not.
I think your explanation was lame. As far as I see all you said was "well this doesn't solve everything and actually central planning under Stalin was hugely inefficient". The first part is imo no reason to dismiss planning as a whole because I don't think socialism will be perfect and without contradictions, the second part is disputed by economic historians.
getfiscal posted:why's that. if we can collectively decide as a society not to consume on the same scale then why can't that decision be channeled through a state within a market framework. why does capitalism have conflicts of interest but not socialism.
Uh because "a state within a market framework" is a capitalist state and within a capitalist framework it's profitable to destroy nature? How are you going to dismantle the oil industry in a timely fashion within a market framework. Some EU countries adhering to the kyoto protocol hardly constitutes even the beginning of the necessary response. Also I never said socialism won't have conflicts of interest. in fact that's the opposite of what i say.
getfiscal posted:that best practices is a left-social-democratic dirigiste/developmental state that focuses on equitable growth and social spending. maybe you don't think that is possible for many countries. that's fine, i don't see any evidence that's true. i think that very extensive state control like the post-stalin soviet union and its satellites was tried in dozens of countries and had serious problems. maybe you accept those problems. that's fine. the vast majority of people in the world disagree, and when they are given the chance they tend towards social-democracy.
yep p much I don't agree that social democracy or keynesianism can work and i base this on their failure and collapse all around the globe. it's kinda frustrating that I'm defending planning as a concept from very specific criticism about a period in Russia during the previous century while you don't really propose an alternative, you just claim "Left" social democracy is the answer without any evidence as to why it would be the better option. what exactly do you mean by "a left-social-democratic dirigiste/developmental state". I just don't see how you would prevent capitalism from taking over within a market system.
FWIW I agree that planning in the USSR both before and after market forms was flawed and had problems. I don't even think that even if we were to try again with new techniques and new technologies it would be without potentially serious problems. But all I see you saying is that the problems of planning in a specific time and place conducted in a specific way means that capitalism is the only option.
Edited by catpee ()
GETFISCAL: (explains that we need a hybrid of planning and market forces)
CENTRAL PLANNING: WELL IF YOU LIKE MARKETS SO MUCH, WHY DON'T YOU MARRY THEM!! *walks out, slams door*
MARKETS: Don't worry babe, we don't need her. Now go make me a sandwich.
it's like, well, yes, the Soviet Union and other socialist countries had serious structural flaws which generated their own collapse, but the thing is (as Cat Pee is pointing out) social democratic market-capitalism generates its own catastrophes, which are taking a rightfully-apocalyptic dimension. it's the old insight about how capitalism constantly creates the conditions for its own overthrow: you can decide what you want, but history moves without you.
one cannot ignore the fact that at the apex of social democratic movements in advanced countries, there was a built-in universal repressive mechanism, and that extensive popular discontent was generated as a matter of course, leading to radical confrontations, demonstrations, terrorism, and other destabilizing discursions and ruptures. this historical model is, as one can clearly see, unsustainable and impossible to bring back. just like the seeds of dissolution were in Marxism-Leninism and a central planning apparatus, so are weaponized financial crises, austerity, and the rise of a radical right planted in the heart of social democratic welfare states. in fact, it's almost symbiotic, as soon as one started dovetailing, the other followed suit. like, the fact that we're even having these sorts of conversations, we are not so isolated as you may think. it's easy to lose track of this, because it's hard to live like the world is ending, but here we are.
i think, and its interesting that jools talked about a theological current here, truly it's a matter of faith. like, there is such a great confusion and uncertainty, the safest thing to say is, well, i don't know what's going to happen, but it certainly won't be like it was. Praise the lord and pass the ammunition
catpee posted:all I see you saying is that the problems of planning in a specific time and place conducted in a specific way means that capitalism is the only option.
i'm not saying that at all. i'm saying that the evidence i've seen suggests that certain kinds of planning don't work very well by my own values. i think it'd be good if we could get planning to work. we should keep trying to experiment with various economic mechanisms. but we probably shouldn't try to experiment at the national level with the entire economy at once based on limited evidence. i think we should be skeptical about total solutions based on limited experiences. the idea that an economy is either-or is obviously false - capitalist economies involve huge amounts of planning and are very diverse.