The line going up just means GDP per capita increased, not that the system was healthy. USA’s GDP continues to go up, would you consider our current economy healthy? Post 60s, Soviet growth slowed and was mostly driven by oil, not productivity. That hides a lot of inefficiency and fragility that GDP doesn’t show. When oil prices dropped and reforms started, the economy collapsed because it had very little resilience left, not because capitalism suddenly “killed” a thriving system.
To be clear - I’m not saying that shock therapy didn’t cause harm, I’m just saying that the USSR was clearly not booming by the time it was applied.
GDP in the context of a heavily industrialized socialist economy vs a dying imperialist country where finance is dominant is entirely different. Production continued to meaningfully grow in the USSR, while what we see in the US Empire is a decay in the superprofits stolen from the global south and a hollowed out industrial base, AI bubble, etc, none of which applied to the USSR. Additionally, the economy exploded after the dissolution of the USSR, not before.
The USSR was stable. It was growing slower than before for a number of reasons, but it remains true that it didn’t collapse, it was killed. Do Publicly Owned, Planned Economies Work? by Stephen Gowens is a good essay on some of the factors at play during the dissolution of the USSR. Socialism works.
Ive been reading michael perenti’s blackshirts and reds and it seams to contradict what your saying.
It seams to say that the soviet union was rather unstable because people were not going to work when the money they earned from working wasnt worthwhile since all there basic needs were met anyway. I think its saying that the workers were not yet ready for socialism to progress this quickly and there was still a fundamental underlying greed within its society that needed to be stamped out.
The point Parenti is making was that socialism wasn’t perfect. There were flaws and issues with this to some degree. It wasn’t that there was an “underlying greed,” though. Even with the odd person not showing up to work, economic growth was still positive all the way up to the end of the USSR. Following up Blackshirts and Reds with Do Publicly Owned, Planned Economies Work? by Stephen Gowens is a good way to look at some of the actual economic statistics.
One thing also important to know is that the economy exploded after the USSR was dissolved, and their raw productive capacity largely has not been reached in these post-socialist states due to the inefficiencies of capitalism.
The line going up just means GDP per capita increased, not that the system was healthy. USA’s GDP continues to go up, would you consider our current economy healthy? Post 60s, Soviet growth slowed and was mostly driven by oil, not productivity. That hides a lot of inefficiency and fragility that GDP doesn’t show. When oil prices dropped and reforms started, the economy collapsed because it had very little resilience left, not because capitalism suddenly “killed” a thriving system.
To be clear - I’m not saying that shock therapy didn’t cause harm, I’m just saying that the USSR was clearly not booming by the time it was applied.
GDP in the context of a heavily industrialized socialist economy vs a dying imperialist country where finance is dominant is entirely different. Production continued to meaningfully grow in the USSR, while what we see in the US Empire is a decay in the superprofits stolen from the global south and a hollowed out industrial base, AI bubble, etc, none of which applied to the USSR. Additionally, the economy exploded after the dissolution of the USSR, not before.
The USSR was stable. It was growing slower than before for a number of reasons, but it remains true that it didn’t collapse, it was killed. Do Publicly Owned, Planned Economies Work? by Stephen Gowens is a good essay on some of the factors at play during the dissolution of the USSR. Socialism works.
Ive been reading michael perenti’s blackshirts and reds and it seams to contradict what your saying.
It seams to say that the soviet union was rather unstable because people were not going to work when the money they earned from working wasnt worthwhile since all there basic needs were met anyway. I think its saying that the workers were not yet ready for socialism to progress this quickly and there was still a fundamental underlying greed within its society that needed to be stamped out.
The point Parenti is making was that socialism wasn’t perfect. There were flaws and issues with this to some degree. It wasn’t that there was an “underlying greed,” though. Even with the odd person not showing up to work, economic growth was still positive all the way up to the end of the USSR. Following up Blackshirts and Reds with Do Publicly Owned, Planned Economies Work? by Stephen Gowens is a good way to look at some of the actual economic statistics.
One thing also important to know is that the economy exploded after the USSR was dissolved, and their raw productive capacity largely has not been reached in these post-socialist states due to the inefficiencies of capitalism.