[Marxism] RE: USSR, Democracy and the Environment

["Calvin Broadbent" <calvinbroadbent@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Louis and Melvin,
Thanks for your posts- much appreciated. Do you think, as some Trotskyists
seem to have it, that given that (or 'if') the USSR was in competition with
the capitalist West, and trying to 'outproduce' it and outperform the West
economically, that the 'law of value', the determination of production
according to the laws of exchange value, was still in operation? Was the
USSR primarily producing for the purposes of exchange for (state) profit? If
so, was this 'intensive' drive by the State to accumulate profit responsible
to some degree for the degradation of the environment? I certainly look
forward to reading Melvin's (hopefully) upcoming posts on the economic
character of the Soviet Union and his views on Mark Jones' writings.
Thanks again.



> Message: 8
> Date: Sat, 15 May 2004 10:44:27 -0400
> From: Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>
> Subject: Re: [Marxism] RE: USSR, Democracy, and the Environment
> To: Activists and scholars in Marxist tradition
>         <marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Message-ID: <40A62CCB.4080806@xxxxxxxxx>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
>
> Calvin Broadbent wrote:
>
> > Dear all,
> > I would really appreciate it if anyone could respond to me concerning
> > a problem I am thinking over. The question I am considering is 'was
> > the environmental degradation in the USSR (like chernobyl, sulphur
> > pollution, air pollution, environmentally costly  mining, etc.) the
> > result of undemocratic politics'? Was environmental devastation a
> > result of the dictates of the Soviet planned (or I think better)
> > command economy? I have been reading over Mark Jones' excellent
> > writings, some of which seem to suggest that the 'law of value' was
> > still fully in operation in the USSR, and that it was impossible thus,
> > without greater socialist democracy at any rate, to properly control
> > the rate of exploitation of natural resources.
>
> The Soviet people had an alternative in the development approach
> represented by Peter Palchinsky, a civil engineer who joined the
> Communist Party shortly after the 1917 revolution. Palchinsky was
> enthusiastic about planning. He believed that the Soviet Union opened up
> possibilities for the planning of industry that were impossible under
> Tsarism. He thought that engineers could play a major role in the growth
> of socialism.

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