Interesting video on 'Kruschevite revisionism'

[JimmyJazz]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MRCBTpOBlzM

Most of this makes good sense.

However, I don't understand the part about how running the Soviet economy on the basis of profit (for individual farms) would cause farming technology to stagnate as a result of people 'cutting corners'. Isn't it a fundamental part of Marxist economic theory that capitalism causes--necessitates--a constant revolutionizing of the means of production? Competition is what drives this constant technological revolutionizing, so why did it not work that way (according to the guy in the video, it worked the opposite way) when profit was introduced as a motive in the Soviet economy? Weren't the farms competing against each other?

Maybe by "profit" he is merely referring to a surplus which the workers were allowed to pocket after producing over and beyond some required quota; in that case, I don't suppose profit would necessarily lead to competition. This would be fundamentally different from capitalism, where the goal is to always have a higher rate of profit than other firms/industries/nations and therefore to win in the competition for capitalist investment dollars. And this competition between capitalist entities for the highest rate of profit is, I'm pretty sure, what causes constant technological change under capitalism, since better technology-->higher labor productivity-->higher rate of profit.

But I don't know enough about Soviet political economy to say exactly what was the nature of this "profit" system that was introduced to Soviet agriculture under Kruschev, and whether it produced inter-farm competition for the highest rate of profit. Maybe someone can help me out on that.

The whole video series is here (http://marxistleninist.wordpress.com/2008/10/28/harpal-brar-on-khrushchevite-revisionism-and-the-collapse-of-the-soviet-union/).

[The Author]

However, I don't understand the part about how running the Soviet economy on the basis of profit (for individual farms) would cause farming technology to stagnate as a result of people 'cutting corners'. Isn't it a fundamental part of Marxist economic theory that capitalism causes--necessitates--a constant revolutionizing of the means of production? Competition is what drives this constant technological revolutionizing, so why did it not work that way (according to the guy in the video, it worked the opposite way) when profit was introduced as a motive in the Soviet economy? Weren't the farms competing against each other?

Capitalism has its revolutionizing points in technology. But as Marx said, capitalism also has its destructive points, too. When going merely on the profit motive, management cuts corners in labor needs or care, proper use of resources, and technology merely to make sure the books are in the black, not in the red. In agriculture, for instance, rather than running on crop rotation, organic farming, organic pesticides, maintaining the use of land and sharing of machinery and equipment, there was instead the heavy use of chemical fertilizers, growing only one type of crop or livestock based on it being the most profitable, loss in variety as a result, automation replacing labor, abandoning depleted soil for more "virgin land" in the wildlife preserves or charging farm workers rent to borrow machinery at Machine-Tractor Stations whereas before there was free loans of equipment. All of this led to an increase in pollution, destruction of the environment, lack of food and the need to rely on imports, and relying too much on the material incentive to work instead of the moral one as well. Plus, you had management making complaints to the administration about desiring market forces and competition and working for themselves, never mind that they were supposed to adhere to socialist principles. Their complaints were for the most part kept silenced until perestroika- except for the occasional reform from the 1950s throughout the 1980s.

[cyu]

Competition is what drives this constant technological revolutionizing

There are various ways to motivate people. Capitalist competition relies on using the threat of death as a motivator: either you outcompete everyone else, or you starve to death - even if your product is relatively useless, you have to come up with slick advertising to make people want it, or you fall into poverty.

Another way to motivate people would be to convince them (perhaps also through advertising) that working on advanced technology is enjoyable. If you had an environment based on cooperation rather than competition, then it would encourage researchers to share their results and findings with one another, rather than try to keep them secret and hope nobody else discovers them. In the latter case, competition actually hinders technological advancement.