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~~jwb~~ · 11-01-2020, 09:30 AM

I don't think you endorsed Mao or Stalin outright, I think you sometimes gave some of their policies more credit than they deserve such as the 5 year plan and the great leap forward.

It's a common talking point for Communists to cite the rapid industrialization under the 5 year plan as some sort of massive economic success story that shows the efficacy of a controlled economy. Richard Wolff does this imo. We've argued about it in the past.

It's a disingenuous talking point imo because the way the 5 year plan essentially worked was to confiscate food stocks and export them to pay for the industrial machines necessary for industrialization.

This does work, yes, but it works by starving millions of peasants in a short period of time because instead of that good going to feed the populace it's going to exports.

The great leap forward was modeled after this and killed even more people with even less tangible results in terms of industrialization. So it was even more of a disaster.

You can say people starve under capitalism too or that famines have happened in tsarist Russia, which is true, but that's whataboutism.

The deaths in the holodomor are classed as a genocide because the rate and scale of the famine was massive compared to typical famines and was completely artificially induced by Stalins policies. And the fact that things have also been bad under capitalism or the tsar is not a good excuse for mass murder.

I think the best argument you can make for the 5 year plan is that without that rapid industrialization Russia might not have been able to take on the Nazis and the Nazis might've won the war. But that is a rationalization using hindsight, since the Nazis weren't even in power during the 5 year plan and when they rose to power Stalin signed a deal with them and mutually annexed and invaded Poland.

Obviously the deal wasn't going to last forever but Stalin was actually in shock when Hitler decided to invade Russia. He was banking on the fact that Hitler wouldn't start a 2 front war.

Either way, no such argument can be made for the great leap forward. The extent to which Chinese communism has been a failure is the extent to which they modeled themselves on the USSR. The extent to which they are now economically successful is the extent to which they started distancing themselves from the Soviet model and embracing international trade.

11-01-2020, 09:30 AM	#1032 (permalink)
~~jwb~~ Account Disabled Join Date: Jul 2019 Posts: 4,403	I don't think you endorsed Mao or Stalin outright, I think you sometimes gave some of their policies more credit than they deserve such as the 5 year plan and the great leap forward. It's a common talking point for Communists to cite the rapid industrialization under the 5 year plan as some sort of massive economic success story that shows the efficacy of a controlled economy. Richard Wolff does this imo. We've argued about it in the past. It's a disingenuous talking point imo because the way the 5 year plan essentially worked was to confiscate food stocks and export them to pay for the industrial machines necessary for industrialization. This does work, yes, but it works by starving millions of peasants in a short period of time because instead of that good going to feed the populace it's going to exports. The great leap forward was modeled after this and killed even more people with even less tangible results in terms of industrialization. So it was even more of a disaster. You can say people starve under capitalism too or that famines have happened in tsarist Russia, which is true, but that's whataboutism. The deaths in the holodomor are classed as a genocide because the rate and scale of the famine was massive compared to typical famines and was completely artificially induced by Stalins policies. And the fact that things have also been bad under capitalism or the tsar is not a good excuse for mass murder. I think the best argument you can make for the 5 year plan is that without that rapid industrialization Russia might not have been able to take on the Nazis and the Nazis might've won the war. But that is a rationalization using hindsight, since the Nazis weren't even in power during the 5 year plan and when they rose to power Stalin signed a deal with them and mutually annexed and invaded Poland. Obviously the deal wasn't going to last forever but Stalin was actually in shock when Hitler decided to invade Russia. He was banking on the fact that Hitler wouldn't start a 2 front war. Either way, no such argument can be made for the great leap forward. The extent to which Chinese communism has been a failure is the extent to which they modeled themselves on the USSR. The extent to which they are now economically successful is the extent to which they started distancing themselves from the Soviet model and embracing international trade.