Historical Materialism

["Charles Brown" <CharlesB@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

 Historical Materialism
by Davies, Daniel
05 February 2002 07:07 UTC


Stalin was "in" until 1953? . The Soviet economic growth after the extraordinary devastation of WWII had to be very fast for it to close the gap on the U.S. (even after 1939-45). In other words, wasn't there enormous economic growth of the SU in the period that Stalin debated cybernetics ?.

Where is it that cybernetics has had great success in economics ? I thought the main gain of cybernetics is in artificial intelligence and computers, i.e. technology, not economics.

I guess I would say that it would be mistaken to say that cybernetics couldn't help planning, but it would also be a mistake to term Soviet planning history a disaster.

Charles


^^^^^^^

but the period 1917 -- 1939 was not one during which the cybernetics/Stalin
debate occurred.  There was no genuine science of economic cybernetics in
this period; much of the mathematical toolkit had not been developed.

dd

-----Original Message-----
From: Charles Brown [mailto:CharlesB@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: 04 February 2002 20:57
To: pen-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>Subject: [PEN-L:22341] Historical Materialism


 Historical Materialism
by Davies, Daniel
04 February 2002 15:30 UTC




dd: (Stalin was of the
opinion that cybernetics was intrinsically bourgeois and beleived that plans
should be made on the basis of purely political-economy considerations, with
predictably disastrous consequences),

^^^^^^

CB: I know that it is dogma on these lists that Stalin could do no right,
but what exactly is your evidence that the economic history of the Soviet
Union in Stalin's time was not an extraordinary historic achievement ? I
believe Russia was about 1/13 the size of the U.S. economically before the
1917 Revolution. Post WWII , despite the extraordinary destruction of the
Nazi invasion, the USSR reached ½ the U.S. GDP/GNP. That means it grew
faster than the U.S. in the Stalin period.