= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
Lumifer comments on Stupid Questions September 2015 - Less Wrong Discussion
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (174)
At which point I no longer understand what do you mean by "cooperation".
Huh? That, um, never happened except for once in the 1920s. I have no idea what are you talking about.
I don't think that was as routine as you seem to think. If your farmers collective grows wheat, who do you sell it to? It's not like there were any millers to whom one could come with a sack of grain...
"Not defecting." I imagine defection is a clearer distinction in your mind?
It happened multiple times. The 1920 were the initial collectivization period, which led to a famine. The mid 1930's had the first semi-capitalistic change, allowing privately-held sections of farmland. The Soviet government largely ignored the fact that most effort was concentrated on the privately-held sections initially, but gradually cracked down, causing harvests to decline again. In the 1950's, some of the privately-held sections were collectivized in a renewed collectivization effort (which also combined many of the farms), and immediately harvests started falling, so the Soviet government switched from "national" ownership of the farmers' products to a system in which the government paid the farmers for the harvests. Harvests went up again. The government, however, gradually reduced payments, which again, caused harvests to plummet. In the late 60's the privately held sections of farmland were expanded, and harvests increased again. In the 70's, a new system which was supposed to guarantee farmers a higher share of the profits for their work was instituted.
Yeah, this happened constantly. Every new Party Leader wanted to make communism work, and would roll out a new communistic farming approach. This approach would fail, and they'd put some kind of capitalism back in place, and farming output would increase again.
What makes you think there weren't? The black market in the Soviet States was all-encompassing. The millers you came to were millers for the state, even, who didn't mind getting a little bit of money on the side. Corruption, in the Soviet, was not merely a way of life, it was often necessary to survive.
That implies the Prisoner's Dilemma context. I don't see how large and complex socioeconomic systems (e.g. capitalism) are -- or can be reduced to -- a Prisoner's Dilemma.
Nope. The 1920's were a kinda-retreat from communism because Russia was uncertain it could survive -- see NEP. The forced collectivization came afterwards, at the very end of 1920s.
I don't see any retreat from the collectivization in the mid-30s. In fact, mid-1930s is the time of the Stalin's regime going into the full-paranoia mode and tightening the screws.
Links, please. There was "re-collectivization" on the territories temporarily lost to the Germans, but I don't think that's what we are talking about.
Again, links, please.
And more links, please :-)
There are enough Russians on LW, what are their memories and opinions on "privately held sections of farmland" and being able to find a miller to mill your sack of grain..?
That's not inconsistent with implementing a semi-capitalistic approach, it fact one theory I've herd is that the point of "tightening the screws" was to arrest any party official, how was indiscreet enough to point out that the new policy wasn't exactly communist.
I don't know much about farm policy, my family lived in a big city. But the general "barter black market" certainly existed.
It is because the freedom-control axis is very important to capitalism.
Kinda, but it has nothing to do with capitalism. One of the traditional explanations for the purges of the 1930s was the necessity to get rid of "old bolsheviks" who were too idealistic and insufficiently obedient to fit into Stalin's Russia. That wasn't because Stalin was becoming a capitalist, that was because Stalin was becoming a dictator.
http://www.infoplease.com/encyclopedia/science/collective-farm-in-soviet-union.html is the most comprehensive of the sources I used to refresh my memory of my studies of Russian History; it doesn't discuss the size of harvests or the tendency of new Party Leaders to repeat the same mistakes of their predecessors, nor the widespread black markets that underpinned the Soviet economy. I will try to find the five or six textbooks I studied from, however.
The link doesn't support your claims. There was no "renewed collectivization effort" in the 1950s, what happened was that small kolkhozes were merged into big ones. And the increase in "private plots" is the increase of the size of personal gardens, basically -- don't think they can be properly called "privately held sections of farmland". People certainly used them to grow and partially sell produce, but everyone had to have a day job anyway. These private plots, as far as I know, always existed and post-WW2 only expanded. I don't think they were ever rolled back -- there was no back-and-forth waves.
Is is true that the USSR gradually relaxed its grip on the peasants compared to mid-1930s, but, again, it was a continuous trend, there was no back-and-forth. Once the peasants got internal passports, they were not taken back. Once they started to be paid in money for the harvest, that continued and did not roll back, etc.
No. It doesn't. Because, as mentioned, my primary source is study on the material using textbooks, which I am going to have to locate to reference for you, including some firsthand accounts of the era. I used the link, among others, as a refresher to remind me of the exact time periods things happened.
Given your previous assertion that it didn't happen at all, I think you're generally taking a position much stronger than your evidence supports, which is to say, you're treating all of my claims as false until proven true. Consider updating on the possibility that I do have some idea what I'm talking about, in addition to updating on the specific points.
Google "size of private kolkhoz plot", however, for a variety of sources. Yes, there was -considerable- back-and-forth. And yes, once they started paying money, they continued - but the amount of money -did- vary, and it frequently didn't cover the cost of production.
Quote, please. I think you're misreading me.
Actually, the relevant possibility is that you know more than me, "some idea" is from the same ballpark as "know enough to get yourself in trouble" :-P
"I don't see any retreat from the collectivization in the mid-30s. In fact, mid-1930s is the time of the Stalin's regime going into the full-paranoia mode and tightening the screws."
The ambiguous wording doesn't erase the fact that this is your rejection of the assertion you later accepted.
I avoid any internal framing of my knowledge as being in competition with somebody else's, because then I might feel the need to try to "win", which is pretty much the only way to lose.
Huh? There is no ambiguity.
I am saying (emphasis mine): ""I don't see any retreat from the collectivization in the mid-30s". Note: "in". What you are implying I said is that I don't see any retreat from the collectivization after the mid-30s. These are different sentences with different meaning.
It's not a competition, but if you want to claim some authority ("I do have some idea what I'm talking about"), it would help to not bounce between claims that are wrong ("The mid 1930's had the first semi-capitalistic change") and claims that are not even wrong ("the USSR would briefly swap over to a semi-capitalist system for a few years").