Date: Tue, 29 Oct 1996 16:02:25 +1030
Subject: Re: M-TH: Stalin and industry


You can try to understand the societ economy as one big "firm" operating in
a global market, but it is a bit far fetched, especially as one of the
major problems of the Soviet economy was its lack of integration with the
global economy and access to new technologies.

The nearest analogy to the Soviet economy is a war-time administered
economy. This is an emergency form of a capitalist economy and cannot last.
Still, the societ economy didn't last either.

There were quasi markets in the Soviet economy. There was real alienation
of products (but at administered prices). There was profit and loss
accounting (using administered prices). But you can't say there were fully
fledged product markets, let alone service and transport markets, capital
markets, etc.

I don't think the soviet economy was any independent kind of economy. It
was a socialist experiment which was failing from the start, in which
markets played no more substantive a role (but probably also no less a
role) than under feudalism. It worked to the extent that it was able to
mimic a market economy and failed when that process became to unwieldy as a
basis for economic organization with sophisticated rapiudly changing
technologies.




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