Actually, the five year plans were originally done with pencil and paper. Computers would have made a difference but high RAM computers were not to be sold to the USSR from the US years ago. Today we have the technology for Cyber-Communism but that would entail a complete system change from money to non circulating cyber labor credits.
The USSR made its own computers, and not bad ones, and what it couldn’t / didn’t want to, it stole from the USA with the help of a special industrial espionage system. That is why in the late period of the existence of the USSR, plans were calculated on a computer. Even under Khrushchev, the idea of OGAS was proposed, similar to the Internet, but only for coordinating the economy, for the simplest understanding of the principle of work. But it began to develop actively only in the Brezhnev period in a revised form through a system of industry networks (ASPR), and according to the plan, it was planned to gradually transfer the entire economy to a computer basis, and complete it by the year 2000. So the USSR took the first step into cybercommunism, but stumbled along the way.
@@ЦезарьКот-я3ч you're so educated on Soviet economics and society. Can you share some of your resources for finding this information all I get is western propaganda.
@@ЦезарьКот-я3ч Like the US does not have a special industrial espionage system. The US made it so that any so-called developing country remain under developed in order to extract the naturals resources and to exploit cheap native labor. Russia had computers later on which replaced some hand made calculations; however, they did not have the high RAM computers. The country that had them was the US and there was an embargo that prohibited any high tech sales to the USSR. The USSR spent more time on their military to keep up with the US rather than producing consumer goods. Then along came Gorbachev and Yeltsin who successfully destroyed the Soviet system with a lot of help from the West.
@@thegrumpypanda1016 For a start check out the work of Paul Cockshott. He's very prolific on YT and has published a number of books on these subjects. He also has contemporary collaborators, and explicitly cites the Soviet economists he is building on (Kantorovich, for example). To address this particular point -- Cockshott has shown in detail the amount of computing power needed to plan a modern national economy (in particular, the RAM requirements), and argues that the Soviets almost made it there before the collapse but not quite. (Even assuming that this kind of planning would have been politically possible for them in the 1980s, which it absolutely was not). From the sounds of it, Cockshott is one of the economists/engineers the OP has in mind, though I'd love to learn some new names in this field if anyone has any.
@@rsavage-r2v Indeed, by the mid-1970s, in Soviet planning, due to the significant complication of both the economy itself and the increase in the number of goods produced, the complexity of planning had greatly increased. One of the former employees in planning Oleg Mukhovich Yun in his memoirs claimed that the situation was so serious that in order for economists to make a plan for the year according to all the rules and taking into account all the needs, it took 2.5 years of calculations on paper. As a way out of this paradoxical situation, either methods of accelerated drawing up a plan without miscalculating some elements were used, which negatively affected the economy. As a result, in order to eliminate this situation in the 1970s, the active introduction of computers into ministries began and by 1985, more plans were drawn up on computers. That is why various departments, especially the Main Computing Center of Gosplan and the Central Economic and Mathematical Institute, competed very fiercely with each other for the right to receive priority when implementing methods of electronic calculation of the plan, network schedules and other optimization methods, which negatively affected the introduction of electronic technology into the economy and partially slowed down the commissioning of an Automated system of planned calculations. Also, the "market" (in fact, they were only partially so) reforms of the 1960s and the first half of the 1980s had one of their goals to reduce the burden on planning authorities, which partially succeeded, but they gave rise to other problems.
don't forget that they also invested in heavy industry early on because Stalin was convinced they needed to be fully industrialized rapidly to take on the nazis.
Stalin supported rapid industrialization in 1928. The Nazi’s didn’t take Germany until 1933 with Stalin’s Third Period policy being a factor in this unfortunate fact.
Would be nice to see you making a video about collective farms, here in Vietnam before socialist oriented market economy reforms collective farms are well known for inefficiency. Form my research it’s due to a horrible wage system, in which it’s based on how long a farmer stays on a collective farm than actual quantity of rice produced, back then we didn’t manage to produce much fertilizer as well, war with Kampuchea and China which caused a huge lack of state investment into the agriculture sector, over-bureaucratic and extreme corruption
There's a video on the channel precisely about collective farms in China. It's mostly based on research done by two scholars who find that collective agriculture ended up being successful, only to be replaced by unnecessary market reforms.
@@themarxistproject are there any proposals to collectivize farming that skip over the mistakes made in the past? That is to say, are there any models out there for future collectivization that avoid distribution failures resulting in domestic famines?
@@MrTaxiRob Domestic famines were mainly caused due to bad weather, and Communist states being denied trade with the West aside from grain. Domestic famines occured every 5 to 10 years before collectivization and ONLY ended after collectivization was complete. I would say that land in the West effectively collectivized in the West by the Banks through Debt, so what is needed is for the Wiping of ALL DEBTS and dissolving the Federal Reserve and going through land reform like Lenin and Mao did.
I've found your channel when looking for information over the cybernetic Soviet program. This is a really hidden topic and people usually don't talk about it. You did, though, and that's why I subscribed and came watch your other videos. Thank you for everything. Important channel in our fight for socialism.
There is, of course, an important omission on the calculations for growth in the Fel'dman model, the innovative incentives of consumer goods investment. The idea is that the largest share of labour invested into consumer goods, the largest incentive to replace the workers who consume them with machinery.
Private appropriation is coming into ever greater conflict with the increasing socialization of production. Commodity production necessitates that money must be a commodity, so profits must be realized in terms of the use value of the money commodity (gold). Since 1825, production of non-money commodities has a tendency to outpace the production of the money commodity. This is overproduction and ultimately leads to a crisis. Overproduction can be extended through the use of credit money, but this only delays the inevitable and makes the inevitable downturn worse. It is the tendency of credit money creation during overproduction that helps conceal the underlying overproduction. However, the crisis inevitably breaks out and the underlying overproduction reveals itself in the glut of unsold commodities. As long as capitalist production is to continue, the money commodity will keep coming into conflict with the productive forces, causing overproduction and subsequent recessions and deep panics. Detaching the dollar from the money commodity does not resolve this contradiction but only intensifies it, leading to sharper panics like the one in '08 and the incoming one. You cannot escape this contradiction without ending capitalist production, with its commodity character, and replacing it with a planned economy and political power in the hands of the international proletariat. The commodity character will still be a barrier to capitalist production no matter how many times wages are cut/raised, (de)regulations are made, medicaid is stamped/expanded, or how many countries the US empire decides to invade.
With communist greetings from Russia! Great job, pretty good for western bloggers. You have here more often damned bourgeois tell horrors))). Allen's book is a very basic thing for a good dive into the topic. But it does not close all questions, and the post-Stalin period does not consider much, here special work is needed. Оur historians sometimes criticize Allen at certain points. Although it seems to me that the debate about our revolution and the USSR as a whole in Russia will never end, it is too important and controversial topic. Good luck in your future work, comrades!
Love the emphasis on concrete, material figures. Seems like it bores or confounds the typical low-grade chuds as well, for the comment section here is quite academic. Definite sub, looking forward to going through your work here!
I've uploaded my notes on it here: themarxistproject.medium.com/the-feldman-model-equations-928b36aa4b4b It contains the basics that are needed for the equations in the video. For a better overview I suggest reading Allen himself.
Comrad I wish if you did a video explains stakeholder theory and the idea of Marcues that capitalism and socialism could go in dialectic process thank you
Another question, I just read Rosa Luxemburg's Accumulation of Capital, where she famously argues that the volume two reproduction on an expanded scale leads to contradiction in a closed economy. I found her argument compelling but assume that there are good counter arguments I'm not aware of, it seems Feldman certainly didn't agree with her.
Ah yes, this is something Marx spends time on in Volume Two as well. Basically -- if I'm remembering correctly -- there will be an imbalance from unequal exchange between the departments resulting in periodic crises where supply and demand can't equalize. As to how this pertains to the Feldman model, I'm not very sure. I'd have to give it some thought and further reading. I believe that in Luxemburg's case, the imbalance is resolved through foreign markets (which is the basis of her theory of imperialism). Perhaps the imbalance in the Soviet case could be resolved via the state? e.g. planned allocation of excess goods in a productive manner.
@@themarxistproject Yeah, especially if the model is in physical output terms, Lumsemberg's problem doesn't need to arise because surplus value doesn't have to be 'realized' before it is 'capitalized'. In other words, social labor can just be reallocated from means of consumption to means of production, with -- in the short term -- less output of the first and more of the second. Love these videos, keep 'em up.
Tugan Baranovsky debunked Luxemburg's argument not long after initial publication. His works are unfortunately unavailable in English but Arghiri Emmanuel reproduces the core of the Tugan Baranovsky argument in Profit & Crises, while also adding his own insights. I strongly recommend this book as its a masterpiece in Marxist political economy.
@@paulussturm6572 He has a more recent one from a few months ago, though I forget how they compare. It refers to Socialism Betrayed but also several other books I haven't read yet. Highly recommended (as with all of his work). Paul Cockshott also has a video along the lines of "Economic Factors in the Soviet Collapse" which parallels, IIRC, a piece in the collection "Arguments for Socialism" which he contributed to.
Socialism. Socialism has never worked anywhere, and people are still “trying to figure out what went wrong”? This is how you know you are in a cult like movement. You reject the obvious truths which 99 percent of society can see. But since you believe in communism, you all just close your eyes and ears and keep saying “na na you can’t change my mind”
What paramters for depreciation, productivity and size of producer capital stock did you use for this result? Allen doesn‘t cite any numbers for his diagram either 4:48
Good question. I had to mess around with the parameters for a while. Allen does mention in a few parts of the book that he uses a productivity of 0.4 and a depreciation of 0.015. He claims these are values that are consistent for the 1928-1941 period, based on Soviet statistical accounts. For initial producer capital stock, I really had to guess because he doesn't say anywhere what he starts with. I ended up starting with 0.25, and *importantly*, I set starting consumer capital stock to 4. I think the point is perhaps to show that there is virtually no heavy industry to begin with. If you're looking to get roughly the same chart as Allen, this should work. Otherwise any initial capital stock values that are sufficiently different in size should give you the same results, albeit on a different scale.
@@themarxistproject Thanks a lot, was struggling to find out by myself. I think a 1 to 8 ratio of heavy to light industry isn‘t unreasonable since only about 10-15% of investment was going into capital accumulation in the 20s. And that capital poverty is precisely why Feldman argued for this development strategy. Great video btw
This was a great video. I've always been interested in the soviet growth model. But since I'm no economist, could you please explain me the soviet growth model in a very very didactic-teaching-to-a-kid-way? Please?
It was the largest country in the world with a wealth of every important resource. In addition, it used its disadvantage, a large but unproductive feudal economy, to its advantage by transitioning it to a modern, far more productive industrial economy (at the point of a gun). They also had the advantage of knowing (by virtue of the west's experience for decades) where to place resources and total authority to place those resources, for maximum productivity. My point is this: It should have been the largest economy in the world by a large margin. It wasn't and that means (in my non-economist estimation) that the Soviet system was severely flawed, which is to say, Bad.
@@user-RedStar- You seem pretty simple minded and ideologically captured. I am curious, what is your job in real life? Do you have one? Are you even old enough to be holding down a job?
When somebody compares the growth rates of tsarist Russia and the USSR, they always forget about Poland! Economies are not exponential based on time alone, but on the relation between capital stock and investment. (f.e. a differential equation representing this would be y'=ay+b, notice the absence of t) A reduction of capital stock, thus, would upset the match between an exponential function and economic growth. Having said all that, remember Poland!? Ya know, the most industrialized part of the Russian Empire, by far? I wonder why the USSR managed to keep up with the previous exponential growth...
A significant reduction in capital stock did occur during/after the revolution and the subsequent civil war. The polish region of the Russian Empire was lost during world war 1, and much of the industrialization that happened, happened roughly from the modern Western borders of Russia, to the Ukraine in the south-west, to the caucuses in the south and ended before the Ural ranges. Secondly, the growth does very much depend on time, a constant 10% increment in capital stock over a period of 10 years would yeild almost a 130% increase in the stock of capital. That is a massive increase.
@@harshithsubramaniam5924 there is a tendency in economic history of recovering economies growing rapidly up to their previous size (due to damaged capital stock requiring less labour to restore than to build it from scratch). The point is that polish industry got removed entirely from the Union. Growth is the result of investment stemming from capital stock. The natural passage of time doesn't affect its ability to fuel investment. To illustrate this, suppose a differential equation with y=y(t) being capital stock and y' being investment. Then y'=f(y), not y'=f(y,t). Investment does happen through time, but not by it. Thus it relies solely on capital stock.
Take corporate america, run it in a capitalist model with 25% of yearly profit to a stakeholder account for crucial services. A lot is being wasted that would better benefit this country as a whole. No political donations either. The country would greater benefit from no corporate sponsorship at all
Here’s what Soviets did. They took everything from my grandparents and said it’s State property now, and you labor for state, if you don’t agree you won’t have time to pack for camping. Camping In Siberia that is.
I love watching videos because between all the statistics and all of the math ignores the human element of pain and suffering everyone that wasn't an "intellectual" needed to deal with
The problem is that the economy was led by the party, and not by the class. This is basically the failure of the USSR. It never moved past the early phase, never forming a class dictatorship, instead forming a party dictatorship, which degenerated, and then collapsed.
So we are just going to look at and fawn over an abstract economic model, rather than look at the actual implementation of the Soviet economy? And we are just completely going to forget all about the massive abuses, injustices and human costs it involved? And let's also get one thing clear: Karl Marx would have gone prompt supercritical, in a blast that would have made the Tsar Bomba seem like a harmless firecracker, if someone had explained the Soviet economic and/or political system to him.
"massive abuses, injustices and human costs" you think the French Revolution was sunshine and rainbows ?. I am not a leftist let alone a Marxist but f3tishizing and prioritizing liberal delusions when talking about a profoundly dysfunctional society that faces existential challenges that are clearly outside the purview of your cocooned comprehension is m0r0nic at best and illiterate at worst and could only be done by someone born and raised in the West and/or somebody who has had a privileged upbringing.
0:11 "Self evident" One reason why we think that soviet economics were inefficient is that two soviet economists "nikolai shmelev" and "vladimir popov" said so and explained it in their book "The turning point". I don't expect much from a ideology that claims to be sciencetific yet vehemently refuses to apply the sciencetific method in much of anything.
Ahh yes. Once again arguments from "look at rich tapestry of bullshit i've made to proove my theory" and ignorace of "markets change too quickly to realise long range plans" argument
I've heard from what if alt hist that the Russian empire was modernizing and industrializing pretty rapidly before world war 1. It may not have been totally caught up with the west but it sounds like it would have industrialized under the previous regime as well.
it is sad that some agricultural techniques in soil (arable land) were off on a mistaken theory and practice. this was followed by maos aGRICULTURAL leap forward. droughts also coincided
@@shoobidyboop8634 you, likely a sheltered person from some first world country, might not see it, but capitalism literally relies on slavery for cheap materials and work. Like have you ever heard of cases like the cocoa industry? Sweatshops? The US prisonal system which literally continues slave labour to this day?
I don't think nothing works in private hands. Every organization should be run by those that work in it, this prevents one person from exploiting. Democracy makes it difficult for tyrants to exploit
What this overlooks is that the industrialization was not universal and Russia was more then happy to leave vast swaths of the USSR as a backwards resource extraction zone - which helped a lot. It's easy to modernize when you can just shoot or Gulag anyone who objects to it. And I think it's this forceful nature that did more damage then any other factor. Most companies and businesses make plans for years ahead but the Party doctrine made this plan often being inviolate word of God and when the economy or other experts in the field (which often included anyone who actually DID the job and wasn't just planning ahead from "green table") crossed the word of God - 9 times out of 10, word of God prevailed or the whole situation turned into a compromise that solved absolutely nothing. Probably best example of this ideology over facts is Lysenko whose deranged theories led to starvations that killed millions. What I'm saying is that Soviet model was bad because it was bad. Not because now often disproved or no longer relevant theories but because underlying ideology will run it into a ground. I mean, when guy who runs state agronomy doesn't believe in genes and thinks that plants of the same "class" won't compete for resources out of proletariat solidarity and he can get his positions BECAUSE of this socialist drivel, anything else is just a footnote.
Lysenko absolutely was a loon, but why not talk about the many other brilliant Soviet geneticists that contributed to agricultural yield growth in the USSR post-collectivization that’s only ever been matched by China- another thing you conspicuously forget to mention? Cmon dude, we’re communists here, that kind of McCarthyist ayn rand tier “common wisdom” doesn’t work on us. Did you not watch the video? Bc I can provide you with the figures if you’d like.
@@paulussturm6572 Yeah there were many talented scientist. A lot of them ended up excommunicated from academia or worse because of Lysenko and others like him. Which is my point - it doesn't really matter how talented and hard working people you have when the system is set up so ppl like him end up leading positions. And yeah he is an extreme case but far from the only case of idiots getting high positions just because of Party doctrine. I don't care what "plan was fulfilled at 110%" statistics you pull out of your ass because I know how it worked in practice. USSR collapsed (and there was much rejoicing here in the soviet satellites) and China only achieved something *kinda* approaching prosperity for the people (as long as you ignore most of the countryside) after tossing majority of communist economic model out of window. And yeah I was born in communist country so I know first hand any type of wisdom or sense rarely woks.
Can all in left YT please start educating everyone about both the: (1) difference between right-authoritarian vs. right-libertarian; & (2) difference between left-authoritarian vs left-libertarian? It’s long overdue. People aren’t cattle or sheep: They will understand if we educate them. Though we need to educate (& learn) about all the nuance.
Leftists already made a video about that : th-cam.com/video/9nPVkpWMH9k/w-d-xo.html&ab_channel=halimalrah (Short answer : the political compass fails to explain the real world because it is _idealistic_ . A materialist approach is the way to go)
For example: Two different left YTers, Step Back & Anark, who both recently released videos on this topic, made horribly inaccurate videos on the subject. Just atrocious: They both expressed basically no interest in logic or empirical truth. We are in a deplorable state for left YT…
@@Dageka That’s a very poor video in terms of information. I’ve watched the entire thing and there are stark logical fallacies throughout. You, him and everyone must become intellectually responsible. You have to be more analytic than that if you want the best political model that reflects true reality: The recently discovered 2-axis political model is the most logical, empirically sound & practical political model humanity has atm. You can’t refute that, this is what reason shows. Verify these truths with your own research. Good luck!
I believe its really important to carve a path and do better than them. Also, while many countries are already developed and easy to transition, others don't have that luxury, and this is valuable info
Actually, the five year plans were originally done with pencil and paper. Computers would have made a difference but high RAM computers were not to be sold to the USSR from the US years ago. Today we have the technology for Cyber-Communism but that would entail a complete system change from money to non circulating cyber labor credits.
The USSR made its own computers, and not bad ones, and what it couldn’t / didn’t want to, it stole from the USA with the help of a special industrial espionage system. That is why in the late period of the existence of the USSR, plans were calculated on a computer. Even under Khrushchev, the idea of OGAS was proposed, similar to the Internet, but only for coordinating the economy, for the simplest understanding of the principle of work. But it began to develop actively only in the Brezhnev period in a revised form through a system of industry networks (ASPR), and according to the plan, it was planned to gradually transfer the entire economy to a computer basis, and complete it by the year 2000. So the USSR took the first step into cybercommunism, but stumbled along the way.
@@ЦезарьКот-я3ч you're so educated on Soviet economics and society. Can you share some of your resources for finding this information all I get is western propaganda.
@@ЦезарьКот-я3ч Like the US does not have a special industrial espionage system. The US made it so that any so-called developing country remain under developed in order to extract the naturals resources and to exploit cheap native labor. Russia had computers later on which replaced some hand made calculations; however, they did not have the high RAM computers. The country that had them was the US and there was an embargo that prohibited any high tech sales to the USSR. The USSR spent more time on their military to keep up with the US rather than producing consumer goods. Then along came Gorbachev and Yeltsin who successfully destroyed the Soviet system with a lot of help from the West.
@@thegrumpypanda1016 For a start check out the work of Paul Cockshott. He's very prolific on YT and has published a number of books on these subjects. He also has contemporary collaborators, and explicitly cites the Soviet economists he is building on (Kantorovich, for example).
To address this particular point -- Cockshott has shown in detail the amount of computing power needed to plan a modern national economy (in particular, the RAM requirements), and argues that the Soviets almost made it there before the collapse but not quite. (Even assuming that this kind of planning would have been politically possible for them in the 1980s, which it absolutely was not).
From the sounds of it, Cockshott is one of the economists/engineers the OP has in mind, though I'd love to learn some new names in this field if anyone has any.
@@rsavage-r2v Indeed, by the mid-1970s, in Soviet planning, due to the significant complication of both the economy itself and the increase in the number of goods produced, the complexity of planning had greatly increased. One of the former employees in planning Oleg Mukhovich Yun in his memoirs claimed that the situation was so serious that in order for economists to make a plan for the year according to all the rules and taking into account all the needs, it took 2.5 years of calculations on paper. As a way out of this paradoxical situation, either methods of accelerated drawing up a plan without miscalculating some elements were used, which negatively affected the economy. As a result, in order to eliminate this situation in the 1970s, the active introduction of computers into ministries began and by 1985, more plans were drawn up on computers. That is why various departments, especially the Main Computing Center of Gosplan and the Central Economic and Mathematical Institute, competed very fiercely with each other for the right to receive priority when implementing methods of electronic calculation of the plan, network schedules and other optimization methods, which negatively affected the introduction of electronic technology into the economy and partially slowed down the commissioning of an Automated system of planned calculations. Also, the "market" (in fact, they were only partially so) reforms of the 1960s and the first half of the 1980s had one of their goals to reduce the burden on planning authorities, which partially succeeded, but they gave rise to other problems.
don't forget that they also invested in heavy industry early on because Stalin was convinced they needed to be fully industrialized rapidly to take on the nazis.
And that seems to have been a good investment in the end.
@@antoinebenobre2552 "seems" ???
@@hilbertschema That was falsely moderate
on poland,baltics and finland
Stalin supported rapid industrialization in 1928.
The Nazi’s didn’t take Germany until 1933 with Stalin’s Third Period policy being a factor in this unfortunate fact.
THIS, please do more of this!
I’ve only discovered your channel 20 minutes ago but I can tell I’m gonna like it.
Automatic subscribe!
Would be nice to see you making a video about collective farms, here in Vietnam before socialist oriented market economy reforms collective farms are well known for inefficiency.
Form my research it’s due to a horrible wage system, in which it’s based on how long a farmer stays on a collective farm than actual quantity of rice produced, back then we didn’t manage to produce much fertilizer as well, war with Kampuchea and China which caused a huge lack of state investment into the agriculture sector, over-bureaucratic and extreme corruption
There's a video on the channel precisely about collective farms in China. It's mostly based on research done by two scholars who find that collective agriculture ended up being successful, only to be replaced by unnecessary market reforms.
@@themarxistproject thanks Tovarish !
@@themarxistproject are there any proposals to collectivize farming that skip over the mistakes made in the past? That is to say, are there any models out there for future collectivization that avoid distribution failures resulting in domestic famines?
@@MrTaxiRob Domestic famines were mainly caused due to bad weather, and Communist states being denied trade with the West aside from grain. Domestic famines occured every 5 to 10 years before collectivization and ONLY ended after collectivization was complete. I would say that land in the West effectively collectivized in the West by the Banks through Debt, so what is needed is for the Wiping of ALL DEBTS and dissolving the Federal Reserve and going through land reform like Lenin and Mao did.
@@schooldays_niceboat you're saying there were NO famines during or after the collectivization process?
I've found your channel when looking for information over the cybernetic Soviet program. This is a really hidden topic and people usually don't talk about it. You did, though, and that's why I subscribed and came watch your other videos. Thank you for everything. Important channel in our fight for socialism.
Interesting, loved the technical details 👍
Communism is a market economy and Ford ran the soviet car industry
The critics look at the post Stalin era, which is where the Soviets failed
There is, of course, an important omission on the calculations for growth in the Fel'dman model, the innovative incentives of consumer goods investment.
The idea is that the largest share of labour invested into consumer goods, the largest incentive to replace the workers who consume them with machinery.
Private appropriation is coming into ever greater conflict with the increasing socialization of production. Commodity production necessitates that money must be a commodity, so profits must be realized in terms of the use value of the money commodity (gold). Since 1825, production of non-money commodities has a tendency to outpace the production of the money commodity. This is overproduction and ultimately leads to a crisis. Overproduction can be extended through the use of credit money, but this only delays the inevitable and makes the inevitable downturn worse. It is the tendency of credit money creation during overproduction that helps conceal the underlying overproduction. However, the crisis inevitably breaks out and the underlying overproduction reveals itself in the glut of unsold commodities. As long as capitalist production is to continue, the money commodity will keep coming into conflict with the productive forces, causing overproduction and subsequent recessions and deep panics. Detaching the dollar from the money commodity does not resolve this contradiction but only intensifies it, leading to sharper panics like the one in '08 and the incoming one. You cannot escape this contradiction without ending capitalist production, with its commodity character, and replacing it with a planned economy and political power in the hands of the international proletariat. The commodity character will still be a barrier to capitalist production no matter how many times wages are cut/raised, (de)regulations are made, medicaid is stamped/expanded, or how many countries the US empire decides to invade.
My heart soars like a hawk at these videos.
This one was excellent. Based, as the young people say.
PS I am not getting notifications!
Just clicked on the notification. Keep up the good work!
With communist greetings from Russia! Great job, pretty good for western bloggers. You have here more often damned bourgeois tell horrors))). Allen's book is a very basic thing for a good dive into the topic. But it does not close all questions, and the post-Stalin period does not consider much, here special work is needed. Оur historians sometimes criticize Allen at certain points. Although it seems to me that the debate about our revolution and the USSR as a whole in Russia will never end, it is too important and controversial topic. Good luck in your future work, comrades!
Love the emphasis on concrete, material figures. Seems like it bores or confounds the typical low-grade chuds as well, for the comment section here is quite academic. Definite sub, looking forward to going through your work here!
Absolutely awesome video
Can you paste/share those economic equations?
Hmm yes I will figure out a way to share them tomorrow.
I've uploaded my notes on it here: themarxistproject.medium.com/the-feldman-model-equations-928b36aa4b4b
It contains the basics that are needed for the equations in the video. For a better overview I suggest reading Allen himself.
Comrad I wish if you did a video explains stakeholder theory and the idea of Marcues that capitalism and socialism could go in dialectic process thank you
Yummmy Marxy boi content
Another question, I just read Rosa Luxemburg's Accumulation of Capital, where she famously argues that the volume two reproduction on an expanded scale leads to contradiction in a closed economy. I found her argument compelling but assume that there are good counter arguments I'm not aware of, it seems Feldman certainly didn't agree with her.
Ah yes, this is something Marx spends time on in Volume Two as well. Basically -- if I'm remembering correctly -- there will be an imbalance from unequal exchange between the departments resulting in periodic crises where supply and demand can't equalize. As to how this pertains to the Feldman model, I'm not very sure. I'd have to give it some thought and further reading.
I believe that in Luxemburg's case, the imbalance is resolved through foreign markets (which is the basis of her theory of imperialism). Perhaps the imbalance in the Soviet case could be resolved via the state? e.g. planned allocation of excess goods in a productive manner.
@@themarxistproject Yeah, especially if the model is in physical output terms, Lumsemberg's problem doesn't need to arise because surplus value doesn't have to be 'realized' before it is 'capitalized'. In other words, social labor can just be reallocated from means of consumption to means of production, with -- in the short term -- less output of the first and more of the second. Love these videos, keep 'em up.
Tugan Baranovsky debunked Luxemburg's argument not long after initial publication. His works are unfortunately unavailable in English but Arghiri Emmanuel reproduces the core of the Tugan Baranovsky argument in Profit & Crises, while also adding his own insights. I strongly recommend this book as its a masterpiece in Marxist political economy.
@@wolverineclaws108 Thank you! This is very helpful. (Henryk Grossmann referred to Tugan Baranovsky in his book, which I also recently read.)
I would love to know what went wrong with the USSR
Search for "socialism betrayed audiobook".
@@rsavage-r2v thank you Com
Hakim had an excellent video on it, but it got purged by YT.
@@paulussturm6572 He has a more recent one from a few months ago, though I forget how they compare. It refers to Socialism Betrayed but also several other books I haven't read yet. Highly recommended (as with all of his work).
Paul Cockshott also has a video along the lines of "Economic Factors in the Soviet Collapse" which parallels, IIRC, a piece in the collection "Arguments for Socialism" which he contributed to.
Socialism. Socialism has never worked anywhere, and people are still “trying to figure out what went wrong”? This is how you know you are in a cult like movement. You reject the obvious truths which 99 percent of society can see. But since you believe in communism, you all just close your eyes and ears and keep saying “na na you can’t change my mind”
What paramters for depreciation, productivity and size of producer capital stock did you use for this result? Allen doesn‘t cite any numbers for his diagram either 4:48
Good question. I had to mess around with the parameters for a while. Allen does mention in a few parts of the book that he uses a productivity of 0.4 and a depreciation of 0.015. He claims these are values that are consistent for the 1928-1941 period, based on Soviet statistical accounts. For initial producer capital stock, I really had to guess because he doesn't say anywhere what he starts with. I ended up starting with 0.25, and *importantly*, I set starting consumer capital stock to 4. I think the point is perhaps to show that there is virtually no heavy industry to begin with. If you're looking to get roughly the same chart as Allen, this should work. Otherwise any initial capital stock values that are sufficiently different in size should give you the same results, albeit on a different scale.
@@themarxistproject Thanks a lot, was struggling to find out by myself. I think a 1 to 8 ratio of heavy to light industry isn‘t unreasonable since only about 10-15% of investment was going into capital accumulation in the 20s. And that capital poverty is precisely why Feldman argued for this development strategy. Great video btw
@Crumb Yeah that was my thinking as well, regarding the ratio.
Thank you! Glad to see some thorough engagement with the material!
Do you have any good papers on Primitive Accumulation in the USSR?
Personally I favor the Canute model. It's much more reflective of the realities of a centrally planned economy.
What is this "Canute model"?
Is this model in value terms or a two commodity model in physical terms (like a real simple Sraffian model)?
Good question. My assumption is that we are talking about physical stocks.
Excellent video. Thank you so much for an introduction to this theorist.
We marxis from Indonesian 🙏
This was a great video. I've always been interested in the soviet growth model. But since I'm no economist, could you please explain me the soviet growth model in a very very didactic-teaching-to-a-kid-way? Please?
Soviet economy was not bad.
Second biggest world economy simply cannot be bad.
It was the largest country in the world with a wealth of every important resource. In addition, it used its disadvantage, a large but unproductive feudal economy, to its advantage by transitioning it to a modern, far more productive industrial economy (at the point of a gun). They also had the advantage of knowing (by virtue of the west's experience for decades) where to place resources and total authority to place those resources, for maximum productivity.
My point is this: It should have been the largest economy in the world by a large margin. It wasn't and that means (in my non-economist estimation) that the Soviet system was severely flawed, which is to say, Bad.
@@mikeharris4979 what gun? USSR was the most friendly country on earth
@@user-RedStar I assume /s
@@mikeharris4979 "I am not economist but I wanna tell ya bout economy".
Better shut up
@@user-RedStar- You seem pretty simple minded and ideologically captured. I am curious, what is your job in real life? Do you have one? Are you even old enough to be holding down a job?
gotta comment to show my support!!
When somebody compares the growth rates of tsarist Russia and the USSR, they always forget about Poland! Economies are not exponential based on time alone, but on the relation between capital stock and investment.
(f.e. a differential equation representing this would be y'=ay+b, notice the absence of t)
A reduction of capital stock, thus, would upset the match between an exponential function and economic growth.
Having said all that, remember Poland!? Ya know, the most industrialized part of the Russian Empire, by far? I wonder why the USSR managed to keep up with the previous exponential growth...
why build what you can steal?- Stalin, probably
A significant reduction in capital stock did occur during/after the revolution and the subsequent civil war. The polish region of the Russian Empire was lost during world war 1, and much of the industrialization that happened, happened roughly from the modern Western borders of Russia, to the Ukraine in the south-west, to the caucuses in the south and ended before the Ural ranges. Secondly, the growth does very much depend on time, a constant 10% increment in capital stock over a period of 10 years would yeild almost a 130% increase in the stock of capital. That is a massive increase.
@@harshithsubramaniam5924 there is a tendency in economic history of recovering economies growing rapidly up to their previous size (due to damaged capital stock requiring less labour to restore than to build it from scratch). The point is that polish industry got removed entirely from the Union.
Growth is the result of investment stemming from capital stock. The natural passage of time doesn't affect its ability to fuel investment.
To illustrate this, suppose a differential equation with y=y(t) being capital stock and y' being investment. Then y'=f(y), not y'=f(y,t).
Investment does happen through time, but not by it. Thus it relies solely on capital stock.
Alas you didn't mention Preo Brazhensky in the notable Soviet economists.
so it was fundamentally an economy based on the accumulation of capital
Please pin this comment
@@maxr.k.pravus9518 we call it developed
Rober Allen is wrong on his take on decline of Soviet economy.
This is great and thanks so much for this video easy subscribe make more please great job!
Take corporate america, run it in a capitalist model with 25% of yearly profit to a stakeholder account for crucial services.
A lot is being wasted that would better benefit this country as a whole.
No political donations either.
The country would greater benefit from no corporate sponsorship at all
Nice
Nice
Here’s what Soviets did. They took everything from my grandparents and said it’s State property now, and you labor for state, if you don’t agree you won’t have time to pack for camping. Camping In Siberia that is.
I love watching videos because between all the statistics and all of the math ignores the human element of pain and suffering everyone that wasn't an "intellectual" needed to deal with
@@bananafoneable Yea because theres no human suffering or inefficiencies in capitalism whatsoever
The problem is that the economy was led by the party, and not by the class. This is basically the failure of the USSR. It never moved past the early phase, never forming a class dictatorship, instead forming a party dictatorship, which degenerated, and then collapsed.
Now do CHINA!!!
Only russian word wolrd cant live is vodka, little water
So we are just going to look at and fawn over an abstract economic model, rather than look at the actual implementation of the Soviet economy? And we are just completely going to forget all about the massive abuses, injustices and human costs it involved?
And let's also get one thing clear: Karl Marx would have gone prompt supercritical, in a blast that would have made the Tsar Bomba seem like a harmless firecracker, if someone had explained the Soviet economic and/or political system to him.
"massive abuses, injustices and human costs" you think the French Revolution was sunshine and rainbows ?. I am not a leftist let alone a Marxist but f3tishizing and prioritizing liberal delusions when talking about a profoundly dysfunctional society that faces existential challenges that are clearly outside the purview of your cocooned comprehension is m0r0nic at best and illiterate at worst and could only be done by someone born and raised in the West and/or somebody who has had a privileged upbringing.
The human cost of raising living standards and moving a country from feudalism to space exploration?
😮
♥️☭
0:11 "Self evident"
One reason why we think that soviet economics were inefficient is that two soviet economists "nikolai shmelev" and "vladimir popov" said so and explained it in their book "The turning point".
I don't expect much from a ideology that claims to be sciencetific yet vehemently refuses to apply the sciencetific method in much of anything.
This guy isn't going to read any true criticism.
Planned economy was best.
cool
Ahh yes. Once again arguments from "look at rich tapestry of bullshit i've made to proove my theory" and ignorace of "markets change too quickly to realise long range plans" argument
Cope wagie
I've heard from what if alt hist that the Russian empire was modernizing and industrializing pretty rapidly before world war 1. It may not have been totally caught up with the west but it sounds like it would have industrialized under the previous regime as well.
You seriously watch Whatifalthist, like you think that what he is telling is even remotely Intelligent or true?
@@hidesbehindpseudonym1920tsarist Russia lost the war 1914-1917. This is an answer if it really developed well. No what if
Commenting for Al gore’s rhythm
it is sad that some agricultural techniques in soil (arable land) were off on a mistaken theory and practice. this was followed by maos aGRICULTURAL leap forward. droughts also coincided
Laughs in ECP
Pretty sure that was debunked years ago
coincided with failure of arable land treatment. exhausting and failure of crops. one must remember
In conclusion, the lesson learned was, slavery doesn't work as well as they had hoped.
Slavery worked and is still working wonderfully for capitalism, it seems.
@@TheBigWall3284 Nope, slavery is antithetical to capitalism. Thanks for the nonsensical argument, though.
@@shoobidyboop8634 what????? Do you even know what you are even talking about? Capitalism built itself in the backs of slaves. IT STILL DOES.
@@shoobidyboop8634 you, likely a sheltered person from some first world country, might not see it, but capitalism literally relies on slavery for cheap materials and work. Like have you ever heard of cases like the cocoa industry? Sweatshops? The US prisonal system which literally continues slave labour to this day?
@@TheBigWall3284 You literally do not know what capitalism is. You tilt at windmills, comrade.
that dought affected india and the rest of southern asia.
there are things which cannot work as well in private hands, and others that do
I don't think nothing works in private hands. Every organization should be run by those that work in it, this prevents one person from exploiting. Democracy makes it difficult for tyrants to exploit
given the context of this video I assume you are comparing private ownership to state ownership
What this overlooks is that the industrialization was not universal and Russia was more then happy to leave vast swaths of the USSR as a backwards resource extraction zone - which helped a lot. It's easy to modernize when you can just shoot or Gulag anyone who objects to it. And I think it's this forceful nature that did more damage then any other factor.
Most companies and businesses make plans for years ahead but the Party doctrine made this plan often being inviolate word of God and when the economy or other experts in the field (which often included anyone who actually DID the job and wasn't just planning ahead from "green table") crossed the word of God - 9 times out of 10, word of God prevailed or the whole situation turned into a compromise that solved absolutely nothing. Probably best example of this ideology over facts is Lysenko whose deranged theories led to starvations that killed millions.
What I'm saying is that Soviet model was bad because it was bad. Not because now often disproved or no longer relevant theories but because underlying ideology will run it into a ground. I mean, when guy who runs state agronomy doesn't believe in genes and thinks that plants of the same "class" won't compete for resources out of proletariat solidarity and he can get his positions BECAUSE of this socialist drivel, anything else is just a footnote.
Lysenko absolutely was a loon, but why not talk about the many other brilliant Soviet geneticists that contributed to agricultural yield growth in the USSR post-collectivization that’s only ever been matched by China- another thing you conspicuously forget to mention? Cmon dude, we’re communists here, that kind of McCarthyist ayn rand tier “common wisdom” doesn’t work on us. Did you not watch the video? Bc I can provide you with the figures if you’d like.
@@paulussturm6572
Yeah there were many talented scientist. A lot of them ended up excommunicated from academia or worse because of Lysenko and others like him. Which is my point - it doesn't really matter how talented and hard working people you have when the system is set up so ppl like him end up leading positions. And yeah he is an extreme case but far from the only case of idiots getting high positions just because of Party doctrine.
I don't care what "plan was fulfilled at 110%" statistics you pull out of your ass because I know how it worked in practice.
USSR collapsed (and there was much rejoicing here in the soviet satellites) and China only achieved something *kinda* approaching prosperity for the people (as long as you ignore most of the countryside) after tossing majority of communist economic model out of window.
And yeah I was born in communist country so I know first hand any type of wisdom or sense rarely woks.
Striging liberal buzzwords into a word salad does not a compelling argument make
Can all in left YT please start educating everyone about both the: (1) difference between right-authoritarian vs. right-libertarian; & (2) difference between left-authoritarian vs left-libertarian? It’s long overdue. People aren’t cattle or sheep: They will understand if we educate them.
Though we need to educate (& learn) about all the nuance.
Leftists already made a video about that :
th-cam.com/video/9nPVkpWMH9k/w-d-xo.html&ab_channel=halimalrah
(Short answer : the political compass fails to explain the real world because it is _idealistic_ . A materialist approach is the way to go)
For example:
Two different left YTers, Step Back & Anark, who both recently released videos on this topic, made horribly inaccurate videos on the subject. Just atrocious: They both expressed basically no interest in logic or empirical truth. We are in a deplorable state for left YT…
There was already a good video done on that by halim alrah th-cam.com/video/9nPVkpWMH9k/w-d-xo.html
@@Dageka That’s a very poor video in terms of information. I’ve watched the entire thing and there are stark logical fallacies throughout. You, him and everyone must become intellectually responsible.
You have to be more analytic than that if you want the best political model that reflects true reality:
The recently discovered 2-axis political model is the most logical, empirically sound & practical political model humanity has atm. You can’t refute that, this is what reason shows.
Verify these truths with your own research. Good luck!
the political compass is unscientific nonsense
health because it affects the whole, especially in globalisation of today public health
I don’t think we need to know that much about the Soviet Economy given the fact that it doesn’t exist anymore 🤔
Learning history is still important so we can learn from our mistakes
We don't need to learn history because it already happened
I believe its really important to carve a path and do better than them. Also, while many countries are already developed and easy to transition, others don't have that luxury, and this is valuable info
You left out the Holodomor as a source of wealth extraction for Stalin’s developmental ambitions.
What did the Soviet Famine have to do with resource extraction?
You left out your brain before typing this drivel
Ah! Feldmann! Another jew!!! What a surprise!