Re: Western notions

[Clifford Poirot <cpoirot@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Barkely,

I seem to recall reading a paper recently by somebody about investment
cycles in CPE's :-)
We could make the argument from stylized facts  that CPE's had hit a stage
where further growth required institutional and technological innovation
that could not be carried out under the aegis of the primary institutions of
CPE's.

So it might have been possible to try and keep the lid on through a
coalition of hard liners cracking the whip. The result might have been a
general conflagration in Central and Eastern Europe and even a generalized
Civil War in the Soviet Union. So in a sense, it may not have been
sustainable, and attempts to do so, would have been immensely destabilizing.
It does not take a lot of imagination to play out a scenario where the nukes
wind up flying...

I liken it to the American South: Everyone in the South had enough to eat.
In purely neo-Ricardian terms, the South probably produced a "surplus" even
in the decades leading up the Civil War. However, its ability to expand was
sharply limited, and the overall average product would eventually have
fallen. It does not take a lot of imagination to play out scenario where the
South winds up with a slave revolt and a bloody race war. Perhaps such a
scenario would have led to a stable, democratic black republic (unlikely if
we consider what happened in Haiti),full scale genocide against the black
population, or reprisal against the white population and descent into a
Haitian pattern of politics. The other alternative: the South survives and
mutates into feudalism, and winds up like much of Latin America destined to
be a colonial enclave for cheap cotton for England.

So when we say the Soviet Union was viable, I would have to first ask what
we mean by viable?

-----Original Message-----
From: J. Barkley Rosser, Jr. [mailto:rosserjb@xxxxxxx]
Sent: Monday, April 23, 2001 6:18 PM
To: Mason Clark
Cc: Post Keynesian Thought
Subject: Re: Western notions


Mason,
    In what way was it "nonviable"?  Growth in the
Soviet bloc had stagnated for some time, but
it had not clearly declined.  Nobody was starving.
Most people were employed and had housing
and most of the basic necessities.  One can
complain that the quality of their shoes and their
blue jeans were not as good as they would become
under capitalism, for those who would be able to
afford such things.  But the system most certainly
functioned, if not all that well.
     It was the desire to remain competitive technologically
with the world's leading economic and military power that
drove the initial reform movement.  Remember, that when
that movement started the USSR was estimated to have
the world's second largest aggregate GDP, although we
now know that this was an overestimate.  But, again,
things operated and worked more or less.  People
spent a bunch of time in lines, but most people were
well above the world median in material living standards.
      So, I take nothing back.  It functioned, and if it had
not collapsed for political reasons, it still could be
functioning, albeit probably more stagnated and further
behind than it was in the mid-1980s.
Barkley Rosser
----- Original Message -----
From: "Mason Clark" <masonc@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <pkt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Monday, April 23, 2001 2:56 PM
Subject: Re: Western notions


> I've been bemused by the clamor on pkt lately and took
> the occasion to e-mail Henry Liu, but I was astonished
> to read the following expression of belief in the viability of the
> Soviet system by an otherwise respectable economist.  Tell
> me I am misunderstanding Barkley.  That the reform has not
> thus far been succesful (thanks to some economists) is beside
> the point.
>
>         Mason C
>
> >William,
> >     The collapse of the Soviet Union was far
> >from inevitable.  Russians are quite correct to
> >pin the blame (or the praise, as in the eyes of
> >many in the non-Russian former republics) on
> >Mikhail Gorbachev
>
> ----snip---
>
> >  I would maintain that there
> >would still be a Soviet Union today.
> >Barkley Rosser
>
>