Talk:Soviet collectivism

Maybe it's just me, but a reference to the Borg of Star Trek on a page about Soviet Collectivism just makes me gnash my teeth. orthogonal 18:57, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC)

It's not encyclopedic. But them I'm not into Star Trek. Secretlondon 18:58, Nov 20, 2003 (UTC)

The whole freaking page is a travesty (no offense, intended, but it's a muddle). What next, Napoleon Bonaparte and hobbits? orthogonal 19:00, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC)

It was quite insane to mention the borg or a just humour we do not understand. What do you think about the tragedy of the commons and mentioning Eric Raymond towards the end, in the light that RMS was categorical against the allegation from Bill Gates that "open source is Anti-American and communism". Any chances it will be taken wrongly? [added by Gdimitr]

Gdmintr: please don't top-post, and please sign your contributions on Talk pages. The way it was edited made it look as if I had added your comment. orthogonal 22:46, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Sorry about that orthogonal. There is something really wrong about this page, the idea is it would tell us about "soviet collectivism in manufacturing"; I'd expect to see things about their processes, their technology, their advances, their contribution to the art, what went wrong and why, what went right and why et.c. I mean these people they've sent the first animal, man, and woman in orbit, made the mir apparently they've done something right too, SU was not about Ladas only. Instead, there is a sterile attitude "soviets are bad", mixed with general talking about what is collectivism which somehow via association with soviets and communism (and I fell victim to this myself) leads to the conclusion that "all collectivism is bad" or that "only borgs and failed soviets" are collectives because they are communists. et.c. I mean, open source, wikipedia and the internet are collective and as far as I am concerned are not "bad", "soviet" or "borg". Should we consider heavily rewritting it? [added by Gdimitr 01:38, Nov 21]

- I support the removal of both paragraphs by HectorRodriguez. If they are restored, they will require considerable work. A neutral discussion of War Communism and Soviet economic performance and structures in the later years can be found in the Wiki articles on Soviet history. 172 00:07, 10 Feb 2004 (UTC)~

--- VV:

Please stop reinserting this rant. If well read general reader on this subject, let alone a Russian or Soviet specialist, saw this article, Wiki would be a laughingstock. If you want to know how to write an encyclopedic entry on the subject, rather than rant and ramble about it, read Paul Gregory and Robert Stuart's Russian & Soviet Economic Performance & Structure, which is the most widely read survey text on the subject. If you don't want to buy it, it's probably available at any college library, which are usually open to the public if you want to read the material inside. If you want to find information online, do search for the authors, and you'll come up with a lot of articles citing this work. I'd give you some webpages, but I'm running short of time now and have to go. 172 02:43, 11 Feb 2004 (UTC)


 * First of all, I (obviously) did not write it; I am merely one of two people seeking to restore it after it was deleted by vandal HectorRodriguez. Second of all, it is not a rant and should not be characterized as such.  If you feel the facts are off or its description of the failures of the system are inaccurate, you should fix them rather than simply nix this description, especially since you seem to be saying you know the subject.  I for now am also going to AssumeGoodFaith that you're not telling me I'm ranting and rambling.  (As a side note, there's far worse crap than this on Wikipedia.) -- VV 05:25, 11 Feb 2004 (UTC)

--- As it is, I've written enough on the stagnation of the Soviet system of administration command in the seventies and eighties. But I'm not touching that crap removed from this page. I'll assume that the user didn't know better, and I won't hold it against him/her, but it's such utter gibberish, I don't even know what the hell the topic is.

Is it focusing on, say, centralized planning and its operational dimensions (e.g., the system of incentives, property rights, information mechanisms for decision-making, the centralization of decision-making at high levels of the organizational hierarchy). All I see is a loopy polemic rambling on "Soviet collectivism." Is this an article on the economic bureaucracy? Gospan? Planning ministries (the fondoderzhateli)? State farms (the sovkhoz)? State industries (predpriiatiie)? Collective farms (kolkhoz)? Labor?

If you think that it makes sense, have fun with the rewrite. In the meantime, those paragraphs are getting removed. 172 06:15, 11 Feb 2004 (UTC)


 * First of all, this is a collaborative project, so your last declaration is out of line. Two people favor the restoration, two its deletion.  That's why we're discussing it.  Anyway, the life cycle of Wikipedia article is very often starting with poorly written and poorly organized beginnings, which are then fleshed out and improved by others.  Your policy seems to be to delete or undo anything that's not perfect, which does not work well.  You seem too concerned with what others will think of the project if they stumble upon an intermediate stage, but there's plenty of other bad articles out there, and we have a long way to go before this will be all high-quality work (possibly never).  Maybe it will encourage others to get involved?  -- VV 20:48, 11 Feb 2004 (UTC)

---

If I do enough guesswork, it almost seems as if the writers were trying to describe the Austrian critique of the administrative command economy. Already in the 1920s, well before Stalin had made the choice of the administrative command economy, Freiderich Hayek and Ludwig von Mises launced their critique with "War Communism" in mind. They argued that it would have a number of inherent weaknesses that would threaten its economic efficiency and its ability to grow.

By the 1970s, Soviet specialists using the more recent tools of information economics have gone back to some of these insights, especially the difficult information issues in a hierarchical economic system. I'm well aware of the major theoretical appraisals of Soviet economic performance, but what is this supposed to be?

Rather than grand philosophical assumptions about "collectivism," at the root of the recent critiques, you have an analysis of principal-agent relationships in the Soviet economy (e.g. the planning apparatus issuing instructions to enterprises) and why the structure cannot function well if agents engage in rent-seeking or ("corrupt") behavior.

This article, however, seems to be an idiosyncratic mix of the Austrian critique, the author's personal essay on "collectivism," sweeping anti-Marxist platitudes, and Soviet economic history rambling on despite the lack of even a discernible topic.

I already laid out problems in Soviet economic performance in previous articles. But this thing is an unsalvageable rant with no concrete overarching topic that belongs on the VFD. It's just going to turn to a forum for users to mouth off with their personal philosophies on the Soviet economy and human nature. In the mean time, those two paragraphs are the most problematic and they're staying out of the text.

BTW, I will not respond to you again on this page if you don't tell me what "Soviet collectivism" is and what topics this article can discuss. It's off base to order me around. telling me that I cannot delete this drivel if you cannot defend it. 172 08:15, 12 Feb 2004 (UTC)

--- VV:

Please define "Soviet collectivism" and lay out what topics this article needs to address before restoring those paragraphs. See my two set of postings above. For once, please respond to them. 172 11:57, 23 Feb 2004 (UTC)