Socialist Division of Labour VS "National" Communism

[bailey_187]

So in the 1960s there was a debate about creating a socialist division of labour, with each Warsaw Pact country producing what it is best at. The Hoxhaists and Maoists condemn this as "social imperialism" through Comecon and accuse the Soviets of trying to turn Albania into a vegetable garden colony etc

Although the Socialist division of labour was never really agreed to fully (excpet Bulgaria), and the members of Comcon could either opt out of economic agreements or veto them.

But what was the alternative of the most vocal opponents (Romania and Albania)? Why did Romania need its own massive steel plant while Czechoslovakia had good steel works etc?

The only reason i can think of is nationalism. Each leader wants it own national prestige. But in the interests of the "Socialist camp", surely a division of labour between countries would be best, as it would mean increased output, rather than the autarky of Albania and Romania?

It seems to be that the anti-revisionist argument is built upon nationalist sentiment from the leaders who felt that their state was missing out on not having grandiose steel mills, factories etc., and rather, producing just as imported agricultural products.

This requires looking through it with through a nationalist lens. But if each state was to look at it through "class lenses", surely they should see that the working class where it is in power has created grandiose steel plants etc, and who cares would geographical boundaries they are in or what nationality created it (Whether or not the countries mentioned here were controlled by the working class of course is up for debate, but the point is that the leaders of these states felt, or at least pretended they did, that the working class was in power)

[Illuminati]

A division of labor could possibly mean less opportunities for workers skilled or interested in a certain trade/field whom wish to practice said profession within their native region, though I suppose it depends on how much division of industry we are talking about. Division of labor would indeed bring about increased output/efficiency as well as quality as each region specializes or focuses on a specific area of production, taking advantage of their natural resources or climate. I guess it just depends on how far you want take it. A disaster could always come along and cripple an area's production or supply of a cruicial product in turn affecting the rest of the world. :confused:

[bailey_187]

that is a good point about regions. however the same could have happend (and maybe did?) within the larger Communist states e.g. the agricultural areas of Poland (which i assume, and maybe wrong, are in the south west?) and the shipyards of the Baltic etc

[mosfeld]

Using Cuba as an example, don't you think it would've been better if Cuba would've opted for industrialization and diversification of the economy instead of turning the country into a sugar colony for the Soviet Union which, in turn, created dependence? Cuba needed tractors and petroluem from the Soviet Union to continue harvesting sugar which it would then send to the Soviet Union, creating a cycle which would continue until the collapse of the Soviet Union, which hit Cuba very hard and forced it to enter the capitalist tourist industry.

EDIT/PS: I really hope this thread doesn't derail into another "Cuba debate".

[Victory Of The People!]

Ever heard of the saying "don't put all your eggs in one basket"

What happens if you put all your steel works in Czechoslovakia and it gets invaded, then what? Or if you base all you food production in the Ukraine and there is a natural disaster?

Besides that argument you could also argue as to whether or not it would be efficient. Think about it, if all of one product is made in one area then from that location it will have to be transported a great distance, causing inneficiency. What if the railroads break down, what if there is a war, what if the rails and roads are bombed?

Lastly, the political order of today is not necessarily that of tomorrow. As we can see the USSR broke up. Albania would have been pretty mad if they had dismantled all thier industry and become a vegetable colony lol. Its a matter of trust. With someone like Stalin in power would you trust that your local interests would be looked after if you sacrificed all of your industry to be sent elsewhere?

[Illuminati]

Using Cuba as an example, don't you think it would've been better if Cuba would've opted for industrialization and diversification of the economy instead of turning the country into a sugar colony for the Soviet Union which, in turn, created dependence? Cuba needed tractors and petroluem from the Soviet Union to continue harvesting sugar which it would then send to the Soviet Union, creating a cycle which would continue until the collapse of the Soviet Union, which hit Cuba very hard and forced it to enter the capitalist tourist industry.

EDIT/PS: I really hope this thread doesn't derail into another "Cuba debate".

I for one do, and believe diversification to be a necessary safeguard until a more ideal international scene is constructed. As victory said there is a number of problems that could arise, so some level of diversification and self-sufficiency is indeed desireable.

[bailey_187]

Using Cuba as an example, don't you think it would've been better if Cuba would've opted for industrialization and diversification of the economy instead of turning the country into a sugar colony for the Soviet Union which, in turn, created dependence? Cuba needed tractors and petroluem from the Soviet Union to continue harvesting sugar which it would then send to the Soviet Union, creating a cycle which would continue until the collapse of the Soviet Union, which hit Cuba very hard and forced it to enter the capitalist tourist industry.

EDIT/PS: I really hope this thread doesn't derail into another "Cuba debate".

Its a good point, but its one from hindsight. No one would have ever drempt in the 1950s and early 60s that the USSR could one day collapse. I have never heard any of the contemporary anti-revisionists use any argument like this. I was hoping more to discuss this in the historical sense, not what should be done in the future.

[bailey_187]

Ever heard of the saying "don't put all your eggs in one basket"

What happens if you put all your steel works in Czechoslovakia and it gets invaded, then what? Or if you base all you food production in the Ukraine and there is a natural disaster?


This is a good point, but by the same token, if each economy is aiming for self-sufficiency (to an extent), and they are hit with a natural disaster, the same applies.



Besides that argument you could also argue as to whether or not it would be efficient. Think about it, if all of one product is made in one area then from that location it will have to be transported a great distance, causing inneficiency. What if the railroads break down, what if there is a war, what if the rails and roads are bombed?

Well with modern forms of transport (of the time), no i dont think this argument applies.



Lastly, the political order of today is not necessarily that of tomorrow. As we can see the USSR broke up. Albania would have been pretty mad if they had dismantled all thier industry and become a vegetable colony lol. Its a matter of trust. With someone like Stalin in power would you trust that your local interests would be looked after if you sacrificed all of your industry to be sent elsewhere?

Well Albania had no industry to speak of. AFAIk Krushchev didnt advocate dismantling the small industry Albania had, nor for completely preventing industrialisation, but that Albania's top priority should be agricultural production.

[mosfeld]

Its a good point, but its one from hindsight. No one would have ever drempt in the 1950s and early 60s that the USSR could one day collapse. I have never heard any of the contemporary anti-revisionists use any argument like this. I was hoping more to discuss this in the historical sense, not what should be done in the future. Sure, but what I wrote still had a historical character, i.e. Cuban dependence on the Soviet Union was a very real thing and was, afaik, "socialist division of labor" in practice.

[Gorilla]

Resistance on the part of Albania etc. was partly the result of harebrained nationalist/autarkic ideas but also legitimate complaints that the arrangements proposed were good for Russia and terrible for them.

[ComradeOm]

Well with modern forms of transport (of the time), no i dont think this argument appliesIt very much does. Particularly over the distances that we're talking. Why should, to take your example, iron ore be transported from the Urals to Czechoslovakia? Each km that the iron and coal have to travel adds a cost to these material inputs and increases the cost of steel. They also incur broader costs through adding to the rail network's load and the like. You can't ignore the availability of resources (including manpower, cost of electricity, etc) when deciding where to build a facility. Economies of scale should obviously be encouraged but there does come a point where the savings of scale are outweighed by other costs


Well Albania had no industry to speak of. AFAIk Krushchev didnt advocate dismantling the small industry Albania had, nor for completely preventing industrialisation, but that Albania's top priority should be agricultural production.Which is a perfect example of why this should be discouraged. When considering British devastation of Indian or Portuguese industry then we rightfully talk in terms of imperialism and trade dependency loops. The scenario that you propose is no different. It is impossible to overstate just how important industrialisation is to a country's well-being. Even today the globe is starkly between those nations that industrialised and those that didn't. You are effectively proposing that one nation sacrifice these immense benefits by remaining a semi-dependent subsidiary of a larger nation

Which leads us nicely to 'nationalism'. It is hardly 'nationalist', in the negative sense of the term, for a government to prioritise the well-being of the citizens to whom it is responsible. Which wasn't technically the case in the Warsaw Pact but ignore that for now. It should be unsurprising that, say, the Hungarian government has a particular interest in providing for the Hungarians. It wants jobs, a good pool of educated workers and a stable economy. Why should it be happy to be the 'cement capital' of the Eastern Bloc when those Germans are reaping the greater rewards from having an advanced car industry? Why should it accept that its terms of trade are inferior to others producing more expensive equipment? What if there is a slump in the cement industry and a huge chunk of the economy suddenly disappears? These are not irrelevant or 'nationalist' concerns

Plus of course a basic concern historically was that COMECON was simply not a meeting of equals. Any specialisation of industry would be overseen by Russians and arranged so as to benefit Russians. As such it was a vehicle of pushing Moscow's interests at the expense of its Warsaw Pact 'allies'. Its hardly surprising that the latter were wary of such proposals

[Ismail]

In The Khrushchevites (written in 1976) Enver Hoxha recalled (http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hoxha/works/1976/khruschevites/12.htm) Khrushchev's visit to Albania in 1959:

He criticized the work to drain the Tërbuf swamp. In Vlora he ‘summoned the main Soviet oil expert in our country and he, no doubt “well prepared” by the Soviet Embassy in Tirana, delivered a report in our presence which was extremely pessimistic, saying that Albania had no oil. However, a group of Albanian oil experts also came there and refuted what the Soviets said with many facts and arguments. They spoke in detail about the history of the oil industry in our country, about the great interest of the foreign imperialist companies in Albanian oil in the past and about the great and encouraging results which had been achieved in the 15 years of the people’s power. Mehmet, for his part, spoke in detail about the great prospects for oil extraction in Albania and also mentioned to Khrushchev the recent discoveries in this field.

“Fine, fine,” repeated Khrushchev, “but yours is a heavy oil and contains sulphur. Have you calculated things properly? You will process it, but a litre of benzine will cost you more than a kilogram of caviar. You must look closely at the commercial aspect. It has not been decreed that you must have everything yourselves. What are your friends for?!”

In Saranda he advised us to plant only oranges and lemons for which the Soviet Union had great need.

“We shall supply you with wheat. The mice in our country eat as much wheat as you need,” he said, repeating what he had said in Moscow in 1957. He also gave us a lot of “advice”.

“Don’t waste your land and marvellous climate on maize and wheat. They bring you no income. The bay-tree grows here. But do you know what it is? Bay is gold. Plant thousands of hectares of bay because we shall buy it from you.”

He went on with peanuts, tea and citrus fruit.

“These are what you should plant,” he said. “In this way Albania will become a flourishing garden!”

In other words he wanted Albania to be turned into a fruit-growing colony which would serve the revisionist Soviet Union, just as the banana republics in Latin America serve the United States of America.

[...]

“Look, how marvellous this is!” I heard them whisper. “An ideal base for our submarines could be built here. These old things should be dug up and thrown into the sea (they were referring to the archaeological finds at Butrint). We can tunnel through this mountain to the other side,” and he pointed to Ksamil. “We shall have the most ideal and most secure base in the Mediterranean. From here we can paralyze and attack everything.”

They were to repeat the same thing in Vlora a day or two later. We had come out on the veranda of the villa at Uji i Ftohtë.

“Marvellous, marvellous!” Khrushchev cried and turned to Malinovsky. I thought he was referring to the truly breath-taking landscape of our Riviera. But their mind was working in another direction “What a secure bay at the foot of these mountains!” they said. “With a powerful fleet, from here we can have the whole of the Mediterranean, from Bosporus to Gibraltar, in our hands! We can control everyone.”The Vlora naval base dispute later led to a heated argument between Hoxha, Mehmet Shehu and Hysni Kapo on one side and Khrushchev and Mikoyan on the other about its status, since the Soviets were claiming that the naval base belonged to them. The argument can be viewed here: http://books.google.com/books?id=7mgRckgFXoUC&pg=PA190&lpg=PA190&dq=%22Report+of+the+Meeting+of+the+Albanian+Labor+ Party%22&source=bl&ots=FDJ8ydIKcG&sig=yv2QLrfhT7KqzGi6E9SAMbwLCcw&hl=en&ei=bLimTaHUJcWV0QGi6sH6CA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBcQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=%22Report%20of%20the%20Meeting%20of%20the%20Alba nian%20Labor%20Party%22&f=false

Also although Albania did have little industry in 1959, industrial development went pretty well in the 1960's and 70's.

[Red_Struggle]

Using Cuba as an example, don't you think it would've been better if Cuba would've opted for industrialization and diversification of the economy instead of turning the country into a sugar colony for the Soviet Union which, in turn, created dependence?

Correct. And that is also why Che Guevara wanted industrialization and diversification, while Fidel wanted mainly to rely on the export of sugar cane.
http://ml-review.ca/aml/CommunistLeague/Compass101-Cuba92.htm

[caramelpence]

It's worth pointing out that the idea of a "division of labour" amongst the socialist countries was not solely economic and nor was it put forward as a proposal solely under Khrushchev. When Stalin and Mao met in Moscow to sign the Sino-Soviet Treaty of Friendship in 1950, Stalin proposed that the PRC become the replacement for the Far Eastern Bureau of the Comintern (which had of course been abolished back in 1943) so that there would be a political or strategic division of labour between China and the USSR based on which country would handle revolutionary struggles in their respective parts of the world. This was around the same time that Stalin was trying to sign a separate trade agreement with the Northeast People's Government under Gao Gang.

[Red_Struggle]

When Stalin and Mao met in Moscow to sign the Sino-Soviet Treaty of Friendship in 1950, Stalin proposed that the PRC become the replacement for the Far Eastern Bureau of the Comintern (which had of course been abolished back in 1943) so that there would be a political or strategic division of labour between China and the USSR based on which country would handle revolutionary struggles in their respective parts of the world.

Yes, but like you pointed out, this was more political and based on regional revolution than economic divison of labor.

[Robespierre Richard]

Using Cuba as an example, don't you think it would've been better if Cuba would've opted for industrialization and diversification of the economy instead of turning the country into a sugar colony for the Soviet Union which, in turn, created dependence? Cuba needed tractors and petroluem from the Soviet Union to continue harvesting sugar which it would then send to the Soviet Union, creating a cycle which would continue until the collapse of the Soviet Union, which hit Cuba very hard and forced it to enter the capitalist tourist industry.

EDIT/PS: I really hope this thread doesn't derail into another "Cuba debate".

To add, it was actually inefficient because the USSR had to abandon it's own sugar beet industry to subsidize Cuba. It was more a tool of political control than anything, which in the 80s with exports of machinery to India and African states that were not part of COMECON became just an emulation of post-industrial neoliberalism.