/sarcasm
When you write comments like the above it reads like you are unfamiliar with history, with original sources.
My view: all power distribution systems are more or less the same- the people who care about power fight for it, where the in-groups of the winners do quite well, and the people who don't don't and tend to suffer. This is true in the US, in Russia now, in China, you name it.
There are many metrics by which average working people in the US suffer, the US jails dominated by black men who have done nothing wrong are abhorrent and shameful, etc etc etc, but like with many things this is an exercise in least bad.
Many, many systems- including ANY explicitly centralized power structure- are going in the end to be more bad.
The US is remarkably decentralized, and that is its blessing and saving grace, the suffering of those who are not in aside.
In the end, central planning does not survive any good intentions of its originators. Power consolidation becomes the ends of any next generation. And then you think it is bad being alive as an out group in the US? At least they are alive.
Tales of expats explicitly lean toward the negative, creating a sort of survivor's bias, amplifying the negative presentation despite the fact that there were many more people who had positive experiences.
This happens with Cuban expats as well, despite the millions of people that are supportive of the Cuban government; the perspective of those who "escaped" gets amplified into the mainstream Western discourse.
For further justification, see the high rates of Soviet nostalgia that currently exist in Russia, as well as the majority who lived under the Soviet system saying that life was better back then.
They were at least 30 years younger. Healthier, stronger and better looking.
But if you have a chance, can you ask them if they remember how many hours per day they were spending in line to buy food?
There's a great 80ies rock song by Nautilus (I can't find a translation good enough to post) that really captures the essence of living under late socialist central planning, both in economic and political sense... for the former, it's not that it's chaotic or particularly malicious, it's that it's so laughably, pointless-ly mismanaged and pitiful. My family comes from probably top 5% of Soviet population by QoL (from Moscow and with some very minor connections due to someone in the family being a high ranking and respected engineer at Moscow subway), not at all anti-Soviet, and yet I can totally attest to that both from family stories and personal experience (e.g. the flats inherited from socialist times, the indirect evidence like books that I used to read as a kid that my family "obtained" 5-10 years in advance because you couldn't just go and buy good books, or habits that my parents and grandparents still have like not ever throwing away anything, even if it's broken and useless "in case you need it for something" [implying you cannot just go and buy something], using the healthcare system inherited from the Soviet times, etc.). It's really kinda hard to convey... there was a blog post here about "how it feels to be poor" in the US, and the guy was complaining about his tiny 900sqft apartment... I literally laughed out loud.
Don't know much about Cuba, but there's no reason to believe it's any better. My favorite story about Cuba is a Canadian guy telling me he really likes Cuba, it's a great country, he visits all the time and it's really nice how any girl would sleep with you for a pack of cigarettes or a dinner ;)
The "support" for the regimes is mostly a combination of propaganda, not knowing any better, and lack of opportunity to actually change anything turning people towards so called "inner emigration" into cynical/self-serving indifference, going thru the motions to either ignore or even abuse the system.
Indeed most average people were quite happy with the regimes. The dissidents, people trying to flee etc. were usually academics. (I'm from Eastern Germany, so this is anecdata, but at least the first-hand kind).
I suppose this is also true for China: The young people there have seen huge intergenerational prosperity advances for three or sometimes four generations.
This mixes up topics, though: central planning is largely orthogonal to political freedom. As a mirror, there were a bunch of authoritarian free market situations, e.g. in South America, but also Italy, Spain and Germany during their dictatorships.
> The US is remarkably decentralized,
Are you sure about that? My impression is that large parts of the economy are actually controlled by (quasi-)monopolies or oligopolies.
> In the end, central planning does not survive any good intentions of its originators.
Most European countries have a federal budget to GDP ratio of over 50%, suggesting that central planning actually does deliver in many segments of the economy, notably those where working market dynamics are very hard to achieve (esp. education, healthcare, pensions, social services, often also energy and water infrastructure).
"Educating [the] population" and "building basic infrastructure" is something we're doing a pretty shoddy job of in the U.S., so the attempt to minimize the significance is pretty disingenuous.
What's your criteria for a nation to "actually prosper?" Hyperdriven, rampant, and mind-numbing consumerism? More millionaires? At the expense of the laborers of which colonized nation?
So things a not centrally planned economy like the US is failing miserably at? You made a case against your point of view without even realizing it.
1. Wouldn't high growth be easy starting from near zero? Almost always growth slows down when you become fully developed.
2. What is Russia's growth now?
3. You leave out one of the reasons for the collapse of USSR: the failing economy.
> But the opposite -- giving complete lead to the anarchy of production -- has proven to be disastrous for average working people.
Average working people are much better in the US than in USSR or Russia almost by any objective measure.
You leave out North Korea, Venezuela etc. All centrally planned.
You've clearly never been to Venezuela.
In fact, economic trends were going better during Russian Imperial regime. The 'feudal mudpit' was in a extreme growth phase. In fact part of the reason for WW1 was the German plans were looking at Russia and seeing how soon they would be overtaken. But I guess they just didn't know that it was a 'feudal mudpit'.
And of course Russia was never feudal in the first place so I suggest a history book.
> feudal mudpit
I see you are repeating the same old Soviet Propaganda nonsense. Funny how the Soviets literally financed the first 10 years of their rule with systematically exploiting the wealth produced by that 'feudal mudpit' when they sold of much of the wealth of church and the whole cultural heritage of the country.
Imperial Russia built a massively large and massively successful weapons industry before and during WW1. In fact Russia did amazingly well and by 1917 was able to seriously equip the largest army in Europe with competitive weapons and keep them in the field.
Its a total misconception that Russia was not a first rate economy power. The literally fought Germany, Austria and the Ottoman with almost no supplies from outside. Unlike Soviets, they didn't have massive amounts of British and later US supplies flowing in. Russia already WAS a global super power. Many people even back then realized that most likely the world would be heading into a situation where Russia and the US were the two major powers, both in Britain and Germany.
These very factories is what helped the Reds win the Civil war and is the bases for the next 10-20 of growth back to old level. From there massive peasant exploitation that literally killed 20-30 million people allowed them to buy massive amounts of tools and machines from the West. Often buying Western plants and 1 to 1 rebuilding them in the Soviet union.
Additional measure they used where making a deal with the Germans, where Germany was secretly using Soviet land as training ground for the army and building factory for weapons that were not allowed by the West. A great way to extract industrial goods and plans from Germany for payment and also systematically stealing every single German economics secret. This operation is actually far larger then we knew until recently and was going on from 1922. That policy didn't work out so great for them.
GDP fails to measure the most important factors of life (freedom, happiness, equality). It also fails to capture environmental concerns: industrial growth is like cancer growth... impressive but not desired.
> Russia transformed from a backwoods feudal mudpit into a global superpower.
Russia was already a global superpower before 1917. Their imperialism spread so far and wide their political police (Okrana) cooperated regularly with the political police in France (Sûreté de l'État) to hunt down the anarchists.
Also, how is creating more global superpowers a good thing? If your end goal is to do away with capitalism and imperialism, how is creating a new Empire (or whatever brand of "republic" you call it) helping in any way?
> Some aspects of China's economy today are still centrally planned
Yes, they're producing tons of stuff (why? do we need all of that shit?). Yet they have some of the most grueling pollution problems on our planet, and still have plenty of poverty. How is that a role model? To be fair, i'm not saying western neo-colonial republics are any better: we are facing the very same issues here in France.
> giving complete lead to the anarchy of production -- has proven to be disastrous for average working people
Unregulated business has proven to be disastrous, but that can hardly be called an anarchy, as there is still strong powers (capital) dictating what should be produced and how resources should be allocated.
Anarchy of production and distribution sounds great. What's wrong with self-organized workers cooperatives producing what we need, and sharing according to anyone's needs?
Although to achieve this system, they literally had a civil war that killed 20 million people — more than Russia lost in the entire WW1 — destroyed thei GDP, and after all was said and done Lenin instituted the “NEP” which brought back private property and allowed Russia’s GDP to bounce back. In his own words — they weren’t ready for full socialism back then.
This may have quietly continued if Stalin hadn’t taken over and started collectivizing everything again and making five year plans, and shooting all the newly minted high ranking officials. Stalin with all his central planning couldn’t see Nazi Germany coming a mile away, arming the rhineland, taking over countries. Instead he struck a deal to divide Europe. Then sat for three days in shock as the Germans and Vlasov army blitzkrieged Russia.
Stalin was probably the worst leader Russia ever had. Most people killed. Least preparation for WW2 or fucks given, or just total incompetence.
Any future implementation will need to trade with the non planned world (as trade is the best deterrent from being attacked by other democracies) and it needs to be democratic both in the workplace and in governance of the state.
What would they do in case they were in a ditatorship?
I'm of the opinion that democracy in governance is something akin to a farce. Without money, it falls apart.
Disinvest, leave the country, general strikes, social resistance, protests.
Second, even supposing we take the fraudulently high GDP figures at face value: it wasn't worth the cost. The economy was made for man, not man for the economy. To achieve these years of "high GDP growth", they built a system of state terror and industrialized slave labor. Yes, slave labor, there is no better term for it. Millions of people were kidnapped (under the farcical pretense of lawful arrest) and sent to work in slave labor camps in remote corners of Siberia. Their unpaid work in mines, logging camps, farms, and factories undergirded the entire Stalinist economy. A significant fraction of these unfortunates simply died of overwork or starvation or disease, if they weren't deliberately shot. Millions of Ukrainian peasants starved as their grain was confiscated. Millions of Chechens and Kazakhs and Jews and Koreans and sundry other ethnic groups were scooped out of their homelands and scattered to the other end of the continent if they were lucky, or into mass graves if they were unlucky.
It was a completely rotten system, indefensible in every way except for the consolation prize that it managed to defeat another totalitarian system that was slightly more evil (but only after allying with it and launching a joint war of aggression against the helpless country between them).
But I'm sure we'll hear more from the Durantys of the world about how it never happened and it was a long time ago and it wasn't real socialism and they all deserved it anyway.