Khrushchev's Reforms

[Comrade1]

Is it true he let some land be privatized and some business be privatized?? And why was the minimum wage considered revisionist??

[bailey_187]

I have never read anything about privatising land, and im sure if he did it would have been pointed out by the anti-revisionists by now.

He did however ease central control over the economy, allowing decision making at managment level of factories etc

[Comrade1]

ahh now there is some revisionism, production needs to be planned by state planners, not factory managers...

[bailey_187]

state planners are good at planning production of large scale 'capital' goods such as steel, railways, machinary. Not so good as planning the production of how much shoes need to be made for the Soviet people though.

Not that decentralised planning like that isnt withouth great problems. i dont know the solution really, but it clearly isnt with sticking the methods of the Stalin era.

[Comrade1]

Well letting factories themselfs decide what should be produced is not good either, and I personially dont see the problem with letting planners decide how much of what should be produced....;)

[eric922]

What is wrong with letting factories decide what tot make for themselves? Isn't the point of socialism to give control of the means of production to the workers? It seems to me if we replace the capitalists with a bureaucracy, it doesn't really achieve our goals.

[Red_Struggle]

He gave more autonomy to the collective farms instead of encouraging them to become state farms in the future. In other words, money-commodity relations went backwards instead of progressing.

Also, these sites should give you some insight on revisionist (state capitalist) economics:

http://www.revolutionarydemocracy.org/archive/albeconint.htm
http://www.mltranslations.org/Ireland/ico.htm
http://www.marx2mao.com/Other/RCSU75.html
http://www.oneparty.co.uk/html/book/ussrindex.html

Normally, I would cite a few articles from these sources, but I'm very sleepy at the moment.:sleep:

[Comrade1]

What is wrong with letting factories decide what tot make for themselves? Isn't the point of socialism to give control of the means of production to the workers? It seems to me if we replace the capitalists with a bureaucracy, it doesn't really achieve our goals.
They cant plan for millions....we need planners to plan production and what to produce to fit the needs of the masses

[eric922]

They cant plan for millions....we need planners to plan production and what to produce to fit the needs of the masses They can't plan for millions, true, but they could plan for the needs of their local communities. If every city or town had a center of production that was community/worker ran, it would be able to respond to the needs of that community fairly well I'd think.

[Die Neue Zeit]

I have never read anything about privatising land, and im sure if he did it would have been pointed out by the anti-revisionists by now.


He gave more autonomy to the collective farms instead of encouraging them to become state farms in the future. In other words, money-commodity relations went backwards instead of progressing.

Au contraire, he tried to centralize agriculture by consolidating many kolkhozy into more productive sovkhozy. For this, he should be congratulated against Stalin's agricultural inconsistency.

[Robocommie]

The kolkhozy truly were bad ideas. Imo.

[Comrade1]

Au contraire, he tried to centralize agriculture by consolidating many kolkhozy into more productive sovkhozy. For this, he should be congratulated against Stalin's agricultural inconsistency.
Well if Khrushchev did the I think it was smart. But saying Stalins agriculture was inconsistent is a very debatable statement. Statisticly he improved it and the famine was strongly exaggerated IMO. He did the best he could with preparing for war and a growing population. But there is no denying his agriculture policies were a success in Russia.

[Comrade1]

They can't plan for millions, true, but they could plan for the needs of their local communities. If every city or town had a center of production that was community/worker ran, it would be able to respond to the needs of that community fairly well I'd think.
Oh I agree, I messed up the previous post. In my opinion we should have a central planning committe to plan for millions, more a less prices and what should be produced and then the smaller comittes shall plan quotas to fill for their population.

[Robocommie]

The problem with quotas and central planning, to me, has always been like the problem with a lot of cell phone plans. You've got to figure out ahead of time how many minutes you're going to need, because it'd suck to run out, but you don't want to pay for minutes you won't need. After all, 300 extra gallons of milk can't "rollover" to next month.

People's demands for things wildly fluctuate and I would think it'd be extremely difficult to forecast explosions in demand for products. Shortages and spoilage seems inevitable to me in a system that relies solely on central planning.

[Die Neue Zeit]

^^^ Computers, barcodes, electronic purchase orders, etc. can co a very long way towards alleviating that problem.


Well if Khrushchev did the I think it was smart. But saying Stalins agriculture was inconsistent is a very debatable statement. Statisticly he improved it and the famine was strongly exaggerated IMO. He did the best he could with preparing for war and a growing population. But there is no denying his agriculture policies were a success in Russia.

Not at all. There were three or four collectivization policies right in front of him:

Association for Joint Cultivation of Land
Agricultural Artel
Agricultural Commune

The kolkhozy fell under the second policy. I'm not sure about the sovkhozy, though. Choosing the former over the latter put all "business risk" (not to mention high taxation) on the peasantry.

[Robocommie]

The kolkhozy fell under the second policy. I'm not sure about the sovkhozy, though. Choosing the former over the latter put all "business risk" (not to mention high taxation) on the peasantry.

It basically kept them serfs, too, albeit with the state as the tenant-in-chief, rather than some boyar aristocrat.

In any case, what you said about computers and barcodes is interesting, but particularly electronic purchase orders. I'm put in mind of the relatively recent trend of "print on demand" book publishers. Very small companies are now able to support many more titles by using this method which itself has only recently been made available by digital printing.

[Sperm-Doll Setsuna]

They can't plan for millions, true, but they could plan for the needs of their local communities. If every city or town had a center of production that was community/worker ran, it would be able to respond to the needs of that community fairly well I'd think.

Not necessarily, and certainly not as was done by these Khrushchev reforms (mind you, most of them were rolled back pretty quickly because of the disorder they caused). It essentially entailed regional planning authorities being given some independence, but the flow of information between Gosplan, the regional planning commissions, and the lower instances (production enterprises and so on) was even more problematic than with the more centralised plan (which was still pretty vague insofar as details are concerned and required a lot of ad-hoc solutions and constant modifications).

[Red_Struggle]

Au contraire, he tried to centralize agriculture by consolidating many kolkhozy into more productive sovkhozy. For this, he should be congratulated against Stalin's agricultural inconsistency.

Is there a source for that? I've heard of the virgin lands project, but that's about it.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Khrushchev, The Years in Power by Roy Medvedev:

http://www.google.ca/search?q=sovkhozy+khrushchev+consolidation&btnG=Search&hl=en&client=safari&rls=en&tbs=bkv%3Ap&tbm=bks&sa=2

Khrushchev and the Communist World by Robert Miller:

http://books.google.ca/books?id=uvANAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA119&dq=sovkhozy+khrushchev&hl=en&ei=4LSzTeeFM4zUiALFwqmwBg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3&ved=0CDkQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=sovkhozy%20khrushchev&f=false

Agrarian Policies in Communist Europe: An Introduction by Karl Wadekin:

http://books.google.ca/books?id=_raT7Fst6zkC&pg=PA50&dq=sovkhozy+khrushchev&hl=en&ei=4LSzTeeFM4zUiALFwqmwBg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=9&ved=0CFkQ6AEwCA#v=onepage&q&f=false

A Short History of Soviet Socialism by Mark Sandle:

http://books.google.ca/books?id=BBTNdyAbfckC&pg=PA304&dq=sovkhozy+khrushchev&hl=en&ei=mrWzTf_YH-3XiAKo1PyvBg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=10&ved=0CFgQ6AEwCTgU#v=onepage&q=sovkhozy%20khrushchev&f=false

[These links are for the relevant pages already.]

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

Well letting factories themselfs decide what should be produced is not good either, and I personially dont see the problem with letting planners decide how much of what should be produced....;)

It's called democracy.

A democracy producing 10,000 widgets per year is infinitely more desirable, in the long term, than a centrally controlled bureaucracy producing 12,000. Just saying, comrade.;)