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The Soviet Union...
Former Member
Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
...was not state "capitalist".
Capitalism:
1. The means of production were not privately owned. A command economy state being "capitalist" contradicts this part of the definition of capitalism.
2a. Objectives were not the accumulation of profit for reinvestment.
2b. Investment was impossible under the Soviet economic system.
2c. A huge proportion of industrial processes consumed far more input than they produced output.
3. Goods were distributed by the state without a pricing mechanism, a pricing mechanism being key to the private distribution of goods.
4. What was to be produced was decided by the state not market signals hence private investment was non existant.
5. There was no legal free market.
Conclusion: The Soviet Union was not state capitalist. Nothing was state capitalist, infact the phrase contradicts itself.
Discuss.
Capitalism:
An economic system in which the means of production and distribution are privately or corporately owned and development is proportionate to the accumulation and reinvestment of profits gained in a free market.
1. The means of production were not privately owned. A command economy state being "capitalist" contradicts this part of the definition of capitalism.
2a. Objectives were not the accumulation of profit for reinvestment.
2b. Investment was impossible under the Soviet economic system.
2c. A huge proportion of industrial processes consumed far more input than they produced output.
3. Goods were distributed by the state without a pricing mechanism, a pricing mechanism being key to the private distribution of goods.
4. What was to be produced was decided by the state not market signals hence private investment was non existant.
5. There was no legal free market.
Conclusion: The Soviet Union was not state capitalist. Nothing was state capitalist, infact the phrase contradicts itself.
Discuss.
0
Comments
You ignore the term state capitalist, by ignoring the word "state" there... the state intended to make the profit. The state invested. The state chose prices... the state WAS the market.
See... State Capitalist... it's a self explanatory. What would otherwise be private, is now state. When you look at it like that... it makes sense.
No it didn't.
No it didn't.
Which were always kept articially low, hence breadlines, lack of lardas etc. If this was so how did they make thier profit to reinvest? Why would they need to invest when it was a command economy?
The state acted as a monopoly on all markets. Money, it's accumulation and it's use as capital was still used, just by only one group.
1. The means of production were not privately owned. A command economy state being "capitalist" contradicts this part of the definition of capitalism.
They were privately owned, just by only one set of people. You are ascribing mysterious powers to those in the "state" when they are just men and women.
Yes it was, for the corporation known as "the party".
Yes it was, just only for one group of people.
No, they didn't. They were relatively inefficient compared to other economic models, this is not to say they didn't work at all. Crap cars are still cars.
Oh and it's a basic law of the universe that you can't ever have less than what you started with.
Party favours are a pricing mechainsm. Money is that which is most frequently used to transfer goods. In the case of communist russia, arse kissing became a form of money.
True, but not actually relevent to the question of state capitalism.
Law can only stop the free market from occuring.
I'm done. Next!
Ive heard of soviet union but dont know what your talkin about tbh.
lol sorry
basically communists and other left whingers see the soviet experiment as somehow "not communism" but "state capitalism". Capitalism being totally evil to them and not the reason they are sat with full bellies by a PC in a well heated house.
As capitalism is the only system that is in place in the world and is also the only system that can be in place in the world they are on a sticky wicket. It's only through violence that capitalism can be slowed or perverted.
On the other hand capitalists don't like the idea of capitalism being used in the soviet way.
that's how I see it anyway.
Yes it did. And it did make plenty of profit. Partly off selling weaponry to other countries, whom other countries such as America refused to export to - or charged large prices for shit. And still do - e.g: F-22 Raptor, or JSF.
Yes it did. Stalin invested hugley into the economy, making, possibly, the most radip progress ever - although at a terrible cost. Either way, it was an impressive achievment, with huge investment.
As above. And they need to invest as progress needs to be made - or you end up in a situation like the Tsars did, with a large but hopelessly backward county which can't even defend itself with huge numbers as it is that backwards. The Soviet Union invest huge amounts of money, which it made from exports and suchlike. Larda? It's Lada, btw. :rolleyes: The USSR made plenty of exporting products, Military stuff, and Resources. Mainly invested after Stalin, into making better Military stuff - Stalin put huge investment into the Economy - that was how he managed to survive WW2 - his agricultural policy failed though - the Peasants had only just got their own land, and as such, were naturally reluctant to give it up, refusing to work. And, who can blame them? The peasants in Russia have, and still do, get a shit deal.
STATE Capitalist.
See? Yes?
A seperate point. Because of the severe iliquidity of commuist currency they needed foreign currency. Anyway, i'm talking about the state internally not externally.
He did not accumulate profit from a free market and reinvest it.
one trillion apologies. I'm afraid i don't have the time to obsess over the country and pick up little things like this.
That is just not the point - it was money from the economy, made from an extrenal source, yes. But the product, was amde internally and the money used, internally. As such, it directly related to the internal economy.
The arms market is quite free, the country chose to buy Soviet arms and not any other ones.
It's hardly a small point, its the end of the world! Hell, its written on every single Lada! Well, the ones it hasn't fallen off, anyway.
See the error in your assertions? Yes i do!
The money was not profit from a domestic free market. Foreign currency was also not used internally. Communist states needed foreign currency to obtain things that couldnt be made themselves. They couldn't use thier own currency because it was almost useless.
Nope.
Yes it was. Most of the money the USSR made and used itself was from abroad.
Well one doesn't take Pounds on Holiday to the USA, do you? That'd be daft. In this principle, you are saying that any currency except the dollar is useless - because nearly all international trade is in, the dollar.
Hang on, i thought you said they made profit from thier populace? Money they used to reinvest in more capital.....
It seems you are as contradictory as the term "State Capitalist" itself.
No. Capitalist currencies are highly liquid...
Anyway to sum so far
Distribution of goods were "once private but are now state"
Production of goods were "once private but are now state"
They do not turn a profit to spend on capital for a financial gain...
And last but not at all least...there was no free market.
The USSR needed foreign profit... just as any country does.
Yes. So do see, how now, the State has become the capitalist instead of a private man? All profit made goes to the state.
Let us compare in the Military terms. Lockheed Martin are making the JSF (Which it had to ask Yakolev, the Russian Company, for help with, and use their Yak-141 as the basis for) for the US Army today. It won against Boeing. They are a private company. As such, the US Government pays them for the planes, and they cost more than the production cost for the profit, so as they can stay "in business", or rather, rich. But also, they will likley sell them abroad. To Israel first, no doubt.
Now, in Soviet Russia, MiG was comissioned to make a Long-Range interceptor, which was the MiG-25. MiG was state owned. They made them for the Soviet Airforce at a zero-profit basis. All costs evened themselves out. The profit that was made selling them abroad, went straight into state coffers rather than to MiG. If a new plane were needed, the state would give MiG money to make it. All profit, that with Boeing, goes to the guys up top, with MiG in the Soviet times, went to - the State.
So, the chap running Boeing is a Capitalist.
The State ran MiG. So, the State assumes the role of the Capitalist.
"what was once private is now state" says it.
By your logic, NS Germany wasn't National Socialist because it didn't fit the definition of socialist.
'State capitalism' and 'capitalism' are not lexically co-terminist because they have a word in common as you're suggesting.
That's why it was state capitalist, not free market capitalist. The commodity form of labour, circulation of capital and accumulation of surplus value via M-C-M' still held, with the state acting as one capitalist. Therefore it was state capitalist.
***waits for lefties to start trying to shout me down***
It was a huge failure! that is undeniable and any lefty who says, if America wasnt Capitialist and "forcing" the world to be capitalist, the USSR might have succeeded is an idiot. But it was still a capitalist state, hence the debate above. America even sold the Grain to feed the starving citizens of the USSR in secret during the height of the Cold War.
It's how the real world works. All you can do is subvert certain natural laws for your own benefit.
The closer you become to letting the market and mutual voluntary relations sort everything out, the happier and freer the bulk of humanity becomes.
Any intervention just fucks it up, no matter how well intentioned.
That'll be because you don't understand what the terms "capitalist" and "communist" fundamentally mean.
Loads of people here actually think life was a lot better back then and in a lot of areas, I tend to agree. I also completely agree with the large amount of people who believe Stalin to be the best leader that this country has ever had.
Viva Stalin!
The answer is 30 million people dead but Stalin did acheive something quite phenomenal in terms of social and scientific progress. Plus under him, everyone was given a house and the reason it all fell apart, apart from Gorbachev, was that no-one after Stalin was a natural leader.