perfidy

I apologize for the over-the-top characterization of your arguments, I have sacked the overzealous aides responsible for the phrasing of my remarks. Nevertheless, I felt that your statement, "The weaknesses of the Soviet bloc economies did not develop until the mid 1970s." was flatly untrue. We have a run and gun type methodology here, as you may have noted in the running battles between Mike and I. Despite the occasional drop of bile, Mike and I will sit down to a comradely beer as soon as we are in the same zip code. Your opinion (and I have enjoyed reading your comments over the last few weeks) is certainly worthy of consideration. It just happened that you were wrong. 

In your lengthy comment, which I posted below, you revise and extend your first remarks. Saying that Soviet economic situation only became exploitable in the late seventies is a different thing. In many respects, your comments make my point - which is that Reagan won the cold war, and another point, which was that the weakness of the Soviet economy existed before the late 70s. I will work around to this in a minute.

But first, some thoughts on your comments. You ask the question, do economies that can't grow fail? They don't fail of themselves, they fail when they come into direct conflict with a more capable economy. While this sounds like rank social Darwinism, we have seen this time and again. A great power which can no longer compete must fail, or become a backwater. 

Your example of Prussia is interesting. Prussia for years remained an economic backwater. In pre-industrial warfare, a small nation could become a power all out of proportion by a high degree of mobilization, and inspired leadership. Frederick the Great was a military genius, and one reason he was successful is that he was willing to commit his troops to decisive battle when most of the powers of the age were locked in a mindset of limited warfare of maneuver. In this sense, Frederick prefigured the genius of Napoleon. But the economic backwardness was a permanent brake on the ambitions of Prussia. Prussian leaders ameliorated this situation somewhat by absorbing more economically vital regions of Germany through military power. But the Junker class resolutely kept the Prussian vaterland in a state of economic backwardness. Prussia was destroyed by the unleashed monster of Revolutionary then Napoleonic France. Would a more economically powerful Prussia been able to resist? Possibly, but the only nation that successfully resisted Napoleon took a rather different path. 

England was a rising power. Though the primary focus of England was on Naval power, the real source of her strength was financial. By copying the financial system of the Netherlands and then improving it, they laid the groundwork for the industrial revolution. But the full economic benefits of the Industrial Revolution did not really take hold until after the Napoleonic wars. In all of its eighteenth century wars (except one - yay, us!), and in the Napoleonic wars, England's powerful economy allowed it to prevail. It provided the navy, it subsidized economically backward but well populated continental allies, and allowed the Royal government to borrow money at rates well below anyone else. 

You mentioned, "Spain, as a world power, could have survived had it not been for the changes in warfare. New defensive methods made waging war against cities long and costly." Who instigated those changes? The Dutch, and later the English. Maurice of Nassau completely reinvented the European army. The British adopted and improved on this. And invented the modern navy. Why did these nations take the lead in the revolution in military affairs? They had societies and economies that were open to change and innovation. The closed economy of the Spanish, kept alive on life support from New World gold and silver, had the plug pulled eventually. 

How did the tiny Netherlands hold off the Hapsburg empire that was half of Europe, for ninety years? Part of the reason was their advances in military technology. But the biggest part was finance. The Spanish broke themselves on Dutch mercantile savvy. No matter what the Spanish destroyed, the Dutch could afford to rebuild, again and again. And eventually, the Spanish ran out of American silver. The result was a Spain impoverished for centuries. 

When you speak of Eastern Europe, you say that the government implemented reforms under cover of détente. But these were not reforms, as you yourself state in the next couple sentences. What it was, was a shift of production goals, using the same totally inefficient system of central planning. There was no change in the apparatus of the communist economies, in Eastern Europe or the Soviet Union. Same five year plans, same endemic misreporting of economic data, same shortages of staple goods. I would argue that the Blue Jeans revolution was not a desire for actual levis, but rather for the freedom that the levis symbolized. That the governments of the Eastern Bloc attempted to bribe their citizens with material goods - after the political protests of 56 and 68 - tends to support this. (And if the Yugo is the prime example of a communist economy surmounting inherent structural problems, well, damn.) 

The reason that in the west, "High levels of defence expenditure became steadily less burdensome to the US as growth increased in the 1980s," was a result of Reagan's economic policy. That the Soviet economy stagnated was a result of the political ideology of the Communists. It stagnated quicker, because the leadership made the strategic error of trying to use an inadequate tool to achieve too many goals. If they had continued to limit consumer production, the instruments of state terror could have kept the people in line - but the result would have been the same. There is no way that the Soviet economy could have kept up with the west, especially as computer technology became more and more prevalent in the west, instigating the immense productivity boom of the nineties. 

Soviet growth was not exceptional - it was unstable, in that it couldn't continue. But the pressure that Reagan put on the Soviets, both through political, military and economic means, pushed them over the edge. The Soviets were spending over 30% of GNP on defense in the late eighties, in a vain attempt to keep pace with the Americans. We were spending 5%. 

Of your four possibilities for the fall of the USSR, the first two really ignore Soviet history before Brezhnev. The fourth is wrong, I think, and for some of the same reasons. In the last years of Tsarist Russia, the economy was booming. Industrial production, investment, agricultural yields were all growing at high rates. The revolution put an end to all that. Between the revolution, the civil war, the disastrous first years under Lenin's economic plan, then the purges and famines of the thirties - these tragic blunders set the USSR back decades. So, while there is debate about how high Soviet GNP growth rates were in the fifties and sixties - given the constant misinformation that lower level officials fed to their superiors - they were on the steep part of the growth curve. 

China dodged the bullet of communist economic decline, and achieved double digit growth rates when they introduced real market reforms - again, on the steep part of the curve, when gains are easy. If the best that the Soviet Union could do was on par with the growth of the mature industrial economy of the US, that is pathetic. The problems of the Soviet Union went far beyond those of the Tsarist regime. Brezhnev never made any structural changes to the Soviet economy - just changed production goals in the five year plan. And by the time of Gorbachev, it was too late. 

While I believe that the Soviet economy was limited from the start, that is not the sole reason that the Soviet Union fell. The Soviet economy was limited because of the political ideology of the Communist rulers. In the absence of the west, an isolated communist system could have survived indefinitely. North Korea limps on, while its people starve, because the west has no driving need (yet) to directly oppose that lunatic regime. If Brezhnev had made the decision to continue to limit consumer production, and used the instruments of state terror to keep the populace in line, he might have prolonged the demise of the Soviet system. But the decision of the west to fight communism (and the fact that their political/economic system is so much more productive and flexible) is what doomed communism in general. The actions of Reagan and Thatcher in particular led to the actual downfall.There were other times when the west could have exploited significant economic weaknesses in the Soviet Union. The twenties and thirties, right after WWII, up to the mid fifties, at least in Eastern Europe. No one actually did, though. And Kennedy almost got us all killed a couple times in the sixties, when the Soviets were probably at their strongest in relation to the west. But Reagan used the freedom that is essential to both our politics and economics to defeat the Soviets. This is appropriate, and good.

I must not think bad thoughts posted a lengthy commentary to my Reagan post, I reproduce them in their entirety, so that I may respond to it. 

While I can admit that my point is debatable, calling it absurd is unreasonable and insulting. This is long. I feel I need a broad base by which to deal with the critique--that my opinion lacks merit. I am embarrassed that I must prove that my opinions is worthy of consideration. 

First, I am not complaining that there were no structural problems with the Soviet economy until the 1970s. What I am claiming is that they did not become exploitable until the communists attempted to ameliorate their economic structure. 

My point was that the need to use consumerism to placate calls for political reforms exposed limitations of the Soviet economy. Did those limitations always exist? Yes. Were they fatal? This is a highly debatable point.

Do economies that have limited capacity for growth ultimately fail? Gerschenkron would say no: they apply a combination of political pressure and force in order to maintain acceptable levels of production. This is especially true of states that have agrarian economies. Prussia, for instance, achieved substantial worldwide influence starting from a feudal economy. The feudal lords (Junkers) joined the state in a project of Central European conquest; the serfs remained a disenfranchised underclass. The undoing of Prussia was not the economy or the political system, but the ambition of the political class in international affairs. They were not inhibited by the structure of the economy. One reason why was because the Junkers learned to coexist with other economic elements in the emerging German state (the Ruhr coal and steel barons.) (See Arno Mayer, Persistence of the Old Regime.) 

Spain, for a counterpoint, became a world power through the discover of the New World. The precious metals that it received financed military expansion on both land and sea. What Spain did not do was invest in production--the Spanish economy remained fixed in feudal agricultural modes and had little chance of expansion. However, its undoing was not immediate. Spain, as a world power, could have survived had it not been for the changes in warfare. New defensive methods made waging war against cities long and costly. From the late sixteenth to the mid-seventeenth centuries Spain waged war in highly urban areas: for almost eighty years in the Northern Netherlands, and for thirty years in the German Rhineland. Furthermore, Spain committed itself to maintaining dominance in the Mediterranean (as a defense to the expansion of Islam.) In the Spanish case the circumstances that were encountered led to its demise (a slow death while it could barely keep control of its empire.) New World gold flowed through Spain, barely touched by the Spanish themselves, and passed on to foreign merchants and bankers who produced armaments for the crown. (See Parker, The Army of Flanders and the Spanish Road.) 

The demise of Spain corresponded to the ascent of the Netherlands (or more properly, the United Provinces.) The Dutch perfected merchant capitalism. They introduced financial innovations and greatly expanded the scope of banking (Amsterdam Bank, Wisselbank.) They introduced the concept of private ownership of public services (a popular cry was that anyone could buy stocks in the Dutch East India Company.) Most economic historians would agree that Amsterdam was the "center of the world" until 1690. The economy had no limitations. Why did it decline? The Netherlands failed to industrialize because the economy had been so well perfected--no one willed such change. There were no financial impediments to industrialization. Even after Britain soared ahead on the innovations of Arkwright, the Dutch made no attempt to emulate British factories. (See The First Modern Economy, van der Vries.) 

Do communist economies ultimately fail? China is a glaring example of how they might not (of course, the jury is still out.) What has impressed some economists and brought chagrin to the doomsayers is that the Chinese government has proven to be very adaptable to Western intrusion, adopting "limited market reforms" where other communist nations have failed. Some fear that China will marry capitalism to authoritarianism (a point which I would dispute, but that is nonetheless allowable.) 

China might be sui generis. How about other communist economies? The collapse of Yugoslavia is almost impossible to explain by reference to economics. There exists a near consensus that national identity played the dominant role in the collapse of Tito''s state. I haven''t the qualifications to debate this point. I would only point out that Yugoslavia succeeded better than other communist states at producing for the world market, overcoming some of its economic shortcomings. 

Eastern European states present the most glaring example of state collapse of the Soviet type. But there appears to be consensus on this issue. Following the 1968 revolutions the hardline communists, after purging their ranks, focused on placating the populace by providing them with consumer goods. It was under the conditions of detente that these governments attempted economic reforms. This worked for a while. However, making consumer goods accessible meant keeping purchasing costs low at the expense of the state. In essence, the state financed consumption. This is a bad sign for any economy: one wants to sell a lot at home to keep production costs low and make back money through exports. The other side of the equation did not work well either: the goods that they produced generally flowed only within the CMEA through exchanges of goods rather than monetary transactions. By the late 1980s the states could not finance consumption or increases production of consumer goods. Consumer issues drove political protests. The trope of the "Blue Jeans" revolution is so pervasive as to be stifling. (See Rothschild, Kaser, Ash ... hell, anyone who is serious about Central and Eastern European studies.) The big exception to this story might be East Germany, which had always been highly endowed with consumer goods (in order to invite comparisons with West Germany; this has probably fueled as much of the current animosity toward Germans as has WWII.) Nationalism (desire to reunite with other Germans) did more to lead to the collapse of Honecker''s government. 

What about the USSR? Was its demise genetic? After a review of the literature, there appear to be four prevailing opinions. First, Brezhnev undertook economic reforms that led to stagnation in the 1980s that brought the downfall because the Soviet system was incapable of making the necessary political reforms (closest to my opinion.) Second, related to the first, that the stagnation became problematic because of how Gorbachev handled it. Third, that the communist regime had only limited potential from the start (closest to your opinion.) The fourth is surprising. I was not aware of it until I reviewed the lit. It basically says that the problems of the USSR were inherited from the previous governments. The collapse of the Soviet Union should, in this context, be seen as the demise of an Asiatic Russian empire that failed in its European ambitions. (This last view is new to me, but it is somewhat attractive.) There are other views that put the collapse more clearly in the politics rather than economics. 

The current guru of economic history, Niall Ferguson, would place the collapse in about the same era as I would:

"From 1950 until around 1974, the Soviet Union enjoyed real GNP growth rates compared to those of the US; indeed in the late 1950s and late 1960s they might even have been higher. But from the mid-1970s Soviet growth lagged behind. High levels of defence expenditure became steadily less burdensome to the US as growth increased in the 1980s. But the Soviet defence burden rose inexorably because the arms race accelerated while the planned economy stagnated. ... The advantage lay with the side capable of paying for armaments without stifling civilian consumption and living standards in the long run." (The Cash Nexus)

Ferguson clearly places consumerism into the mix. The USSR did experience extraordinary growth up until 1970. Brezhnev and other state planner realized that this growth was unstable. Reform of production was becoming critical. However, these reforms could not take place simply through normal economic planning.(G Schroeder) They required greater involvement by workers, either through economic incentives or through political power. The latter was clearly impossible:

"A lesson from ... the Brezhnev years was that tinkering with the command economy would make little fundamental change in economic performance. Some degree of marketization was required. But the more radical the economic reforms that one envisaged, the more likely it seemed that political reform would need to proceed them. The general secretary is not the tsar. If he trods on his colleagues'' toes without reducing his dependence on them, he could be removed from the Politburo." (Lieven)

Walter Laquer points out that poverty was pervasive in the Soviet Union. However, the people who lived in shacks and picked wild berries were not the ones to revolt. The ones who did were those of the "middle class" (professionals), the ones for whom "there was enough bread, and virtually everyone had a television" during the 70s and 80s. 

The Brezhnev years are difficult to come to terms with. He set out reforms that some would credit with setting the stage for Perestroika. Others, while acknowledging this fact, also point to the muddling of the reforms--that they led to stagnation. (S Cohen) 

Consumerism was the only carrot that the communists held out to Soviet citizens. Financing consumption placed greater demands on the economy, further negating the effectiveness of investments in production. The need to engage in production for consumers greatly taxed the Soviet system, displacing pressure from the political arena into the economic. Laquer, however, points to an unwillingness on the part of the political classes to engage political reform rather than on the inability of the communist economy to adapt; the decisions to postpone political reforms intensified economic problems. It is in this context that Reagan''s policies must be seen.

Equality of outcome does not mean that everyone gets the same deal. A cornerstone of Socialist thought is each according to his need. Steve the technical writer has a family to provide for, Mike the adjunct prof, though he would like one very much, does not. Regardless, Mike the adjunct prof, without a family, does not need as much as Steve. 

Granted, Mike the adjunct prof could have chosen a more lucrative career path, but the world would be a better place if people were able to apply their best talents and skills in a way that helps society. It's not the way things are, but it's a goal that can be achieved. Educating people helps society. No one wants a society full of ignorant people. All I ask is a living wage. 
 

I'm opposed to gun ownership in general. Two years ago, my city had the highest homicide rate in the United States, and the vast majority of those homicides were committed with firearms. Last Saturday at 4:30 in the afternoon, there was a shooting right in front of my building. Literally half a foot from the front door of my building. I hear shots fired in my neighborhood at least once a week, sometimes more. I'm getting a little tired of diving onto the floor, and that doesn't help me if the first shot fired is the one that comes through my window. 

The counter-argument might be that homicides won't disappear if guns are removed, and will still be accessible if they are banned. I say give it a try. Everything else hasn't worked. I'm getting tired of living on my floor, and I'm getting tired of turning on the local broadcast news to see that another little girl was shot with an automatic weapon while playing in front of her home. 

Of course, banning firearms would still be a band-aid. People here in the inner city don't have equality of opportunity even. Many of them are stuck without an education and without jobs, certainly decent jobs that they can make enough to live on. Hence they turn to crime and gangs. Even with banned firearms, people will still engage in criminal behavior unless society adjusts and makes an effort to accomodate them with work and education. One of the things I like about my city college is that any number of my students are getting higher education where they might otherwise not, and a chance to make a better way for themselves. The problem is that only the tip of the iceberg even makes it into a city college classroom.

Apologies to Judson. You're okay.

No posts for awhile.

People in my neighborhood are armed. To the teeth. That's why shootings happen so often, including in front of the door to my building. Relaxing gun restrictions will increase the number of armed gangbangers. There are already a lot of them. People are shooting each other every day in this and other cities. 

So the solution is to arm everybody? That's rich. American society is already one of the most violent in the world. This is easily one of the worst neighborhoods on the planet. The goal should be to make society less violent, not more. I'm not convinced, regardless of any studies or books published (frankly, as an academic, I can say from experience that books and studies are often, though not always, full of shit), that arming everyone is the solution. When people have guns, they use them. 

As you allude, I am familiar with violence. I have been both its victim and its perpetrator. When I was two years old someone held a shotgun in my face and might have killed me had I not been rescued. Thus, it is because I am familiar with violence that I dislike it. In my post-adolescent years, I have considered it an absolute last resort. Would I defend myself again if necessary and able? Absolutely. But 4 or 5 attackers is more than most mortals can handle, or 3, and even 2, unless you get off a good suckerpunch on the first one. I don't want to live in a world where I have the option to blow people's heads off if I feel threatened. Quite honestly, I think if someone is really serious about hurting another human being, might as well embrace the atavistic, savage, merciless, vicious beast that the human animal really is beneath the surface. If a person really wants to kill someone else and isn't bad enough to kill someone bare-handed, they're not bad. They're a punk. People who use guns to shoot other people are small men trying to make themselves feel big. 

I never wait for the police, or even bother to call 911 when I hear shots. The police don't do anything. The current situation is that every day I live in this crime infested sewer of a neighborhood, I'm rolling the dice. That's life. I won't arm myself with a gun to make myself feel safe, or big. Quite frankly, I don't think that people are safe even with guns. That just leads to exchanging shots in an attempt to kill the opponent before they kill you. In a lot of cases around here, I think people who fire, instead of anticipating that the othe person has a gun and avoiding them, just try to get off the first shot. There was a guy here who was walking down the street with a friend of his. In passing two other people on the sidewalk, he bumped shoulders with the other guy, who turned and shot the first guy to death. If the first guy had a gun on him, he still would have been shot. If the first guy had a gun and fired after bumping shoulders with the other, he would have been guilty, just that their positions were reversed. But what happened is that someone was shot to death by a total stranger for no reason. If the victims of John Lee Malvo and John Muhammad had been armed, would they have been able to defend themselves? They never saw it coming. I am shocked and saddened by the amount of random violence in this world. More guns means more violence, not less. 

I don't pretend to have the answers. I have ideas. I think that reducing poverty and unemployment will also reduce crime significantly. I also think that putting guns in people's hands gives them the means to kill people that they wouldn't otherwise have. I don't have the power to take your gun. I am not actively doing anything to take your gun. But I think if I ever made you mad enough to do me physical harm, you'd do me the courtesy of a straight fight where the odds are even instead of shooting me. The assholes in my neighborhood probably won't, but I'll just have to take my chances. 

Everybody has to die of something. If I get shot, which is a fairly strong possibility given the large numbers of people who get shot in this city, then, so be it. I'll have to either live in agony, bleeding on the sidewalk, or die with that decision. As you pointed out, I have no family. No one relies on me. The world will not be significantly different without me in it. That's my choice. It's a short life in a hard world, where life turns on a dime, and having a gun won't change that.

Via a whole slew of links I followed comes this 2001 CNN article about the isolation and mistrust of government in the hills of North Carolina.

Historians say that if western North Carolinians have chips on their shoulders, they have a right. "People in that area have been cheated out of everything, starting with the Indians and continuing with the white settlers," said Jane Brown, an instructor in history and anthropology at Western Carolina University in Cullowhee.

Read on: it's a good point. Let's also not forget that the region has a long history of armed rebellion against various authorities such as the Regulators of the late 18th century rebelling against the English Crown, and a great many hill folk opposing the Civil War and the Confederacy. It's a region that has long chosen its own path.

Buckethead-- when are you ever on your meds?? Haw!

On visceral distrust of the government: when's the last time you were stopped by the cops and didn't wonder for a minute if you were going to be harassed this time? Happens to me every single time, even though I've only been harassed once. It was a bogus traffic stop for what we used to call "country line dancing" when the cop thought my hippie hair looked suspicious.

[Moreover] The history of tax rebellions in British America and the USA is a long and fascinating one that I need to read more about. Anyone know a good text on this subject? I've read most of the major histories of frontier rebels in the US, but not all tax rebellions were frontier rebellions, and vice versa, and the frontier stuff doesn't cover any of the great revenuer/moonshiner battles of the 19th and 20th centuries.

[Moreover, once over] I love NASCAR racing. Love it. Don't watch it as much as I should, but love it. Did you know stock car racing in the South got its start because the best moonshine smugglers liked to find out who was the fastest driver among them? In a way, tax rebels and rumrunners are indirectly responsible for one of the most popular and lucrative spectator sports of our time. Nifty! History at work! And it's loud, too!

I've always hated that name. It has a whiff of fascism. Lileks has some thoughts on the topic of Rudolph - noting that now he's Eric Robert Rudolph, so he must be guilty. Lot's of other good stuff in there, including the filthiest joke ever broadcast. 

In my more paranoid moments, I share that visceral distrust of government. When I'm on my meds, that feeling makes me conservative - if you distrust the government, you want less of it. One thing that has continually puzzled me about the left is their fascination with government conspiracy theories, side-by-side with an unwavering faith that if we gave the government all the power, things would magically transform into the socialist utopia.

And speaking of distrust of government, that is why the anti-federalists insisted on the inclusion of the second amendment. The federalists didn't demurr, because they distrusted government too, just not quite as much. The armed rebellion of the founding fathers would not have been possible had not large members of the populace had guns. They understood that ownership of guns bred the kind of moral capacity that they wanted in citizens - the self reliant yeoman farmer concept. If you are responsible for your own defense, and that of your family, you are not a dependent of the government. Your are not a subject, you are a free citizen. It breeds independence as a mindset. 

Perhaps in Eric Rudolph, it bred a little too much independence. But there's always going to be wackos. Out of a quarter plus billion people, we have generated a few home grown terrorists over the last couple decades. Out of vastly smaller population, the Palestinians generate several a month. If fundamentalism has something to do with terrorism, we don't really have it here. 

[btw: Mike, do you personally not want to own guns, or do you believe that I should not own a gun?]

Mike, I could let it go at an agree to disagree, but I won't. Consider this thought experiment. Equality of outcome has been magically decreed. One guy, we'll call him Mike, is a hard working teacher at a city college somewhere in the midwest. His income is relatively low, even though he has five advanced degrees in anthropology, history, paleontology, particle physics and basket weaving. He has spent a great deal of effort to gain this knowledge, because all he has ever wanted to do is teach. Another guy, we'll call him Steve, is a technical writer in our nation's capital. Though he has not earned a degree, since he got married and realized he needed a career, has worked very hard to develop one that will provide a decent income for his family. He has no particular attachment to technical writing, though he doesn't mind it. His interests lie outside his career - money has been the primary driver for career. His income is now substantially above the national average.

These two people have made different choices, because, well, they had the freedom to do so. Now the magical income leveler is voted in, and now everyone has the same income, same medical care, same everything. Mike's income jumps dramatically. Steve's is cut in half. 

Is it fair because it balances out? Because one person benefitted and one did not? While Mike did not personally come to suburban northern Virginia, and put a gun to Steve's head to get the extra money, his agent the government did. Mike could have chosen a different career path. A man of his clear ability and intelligence could have devoted himself to a career track that resulted in money. He did not. That is not a reason to steal money from someone who did. Do not take this to mean that I believe their should be no government administered social safety net, for those who run into truly bad times. But freedom means you make your bed, and then you sleep in it.

Mike, I was just illustrating that if class were the dominant pattern in our society, it would overwhelm other arrangements. Voting patterns are one way of seeing what a group of people feel are their interests.