Collectivization

[enigma2517]

When I approach people with leftist dicussion, I get rebuttled on a number of things. One of the most brought out points is, isn't collectivization harmful to people? Then they go on to say something about Lenin/Stalin and the famines that occured in the USSR. Other than pitching the whole deformed workers state argument, what are some positive examples of collectivization I can bring up. I've heard that on a case to case examination it has actually been more successful tha not.

Examples that come to mind currently would be:

1. Spanish (anarchist collectives increased productivity 4-fold, or maybe even higher)

2. Comparing Hungary and neighboring France. The first has 93 million acres of agriable land, while the second has 275(?) million, yet the first highly outproduces the second.

3. Cuba: Not great but if they all competed with each other as opposed to sharing the meager food they have they would be in deep shit.

4. Russia: While agriculture was neglected, they poured a shitload of available capital into heavy industry. Not to mention they still had the worlds second best performing economy for quite a few decades.

Anything else you guys can add or elaborate on?

[Cal]

Khruschev had his 'virgin lands' scheme which encouraged the turning of the Steppes (Kazakhstan) into vast prairies however because the soil had never supported crops before it quickly eroded after a few harvests.

Collectivization is generally met with disdain as farmers however small their holding are land owners and business men so it will always meet with struggle which I believe will set the scene for a poor yield for this type of enterprise to be succesful it has to be with imposed from below and not above.

[Pawn Power]

The Native American tribes before the comming of Europeans were supposedly "collective" and were highly successfu.

[Cal]

I would iimagine that to be very true and not to take anything away from that group but they did not have a vast population to feed. So i do not think comparisons can be drawn

[PRC-UTE]

The Native American tribes before the comming of Europeans were supposedly "collective" and were highly successfu.

Have you heard of the south west nation, the Navajo? They're the most successful people to farm that type of land, deserts, in the entire world. They're very good at raising corn. The majority have kept their traditional agricultural practices, language, customs etc. And you're right, they're not cappies or fuedelists.

[Xvall]

Native Americans, and a lot of other tribal societies. Compare Cuba to Haiti.

[__ca va?]

When I approach people with leftist dicussion, I get rebuttled on a number of things. One of the most brought out points is, isn't collectivization harmful to people? Then they go on to say something about Lenin/Stalin and the famines that occured in the USSR. Other than pitching the whole deformed workers state argument, what are some positive examples of collectivization I can bring up. I've heard that on a case to case examination it has actually been more successful tha not.


The big Ukrainian famine was artificially generated by Stalin, so it had nothing to do with collectives.


2. Comparing Hungary and neighboring France. The first has 93 million acres of agriable land, while the second has 275(?) million, yet the first highly outproduces the second.

In the 60's and 70's Hungary's production rate was one of the highests in the world, but it had never outproduced France overall, only if we count per capita. And the Hungarian system wasn't exactly collectivistic, the economy was directed by the state.


4. Russia: While agriculture was neglected, they poured a shitload of available capital into heavy industry. Not to mention they still had the worlds second best performing economy for quite a few decades.

If that was true the SU would still exist. Its collapse had been caused by various economic reasons. In fact the SU's production had never reached the US's.

But I like the examples with the native Americans :)

[ComradeChris]

The Minoans in Ancient Crete had a pretty successful collectivized system. They gathered and redistributed everything (as shown on the Linear A script accounts). They were destroyed by foreign influence (believed to be the Myceneans). But until then there were several "palaces" used to collectivization (four that I know of).

[PRC-UTE]

The Minoans in Ancient Crete had a pretty successful collectivized system. They gathered and redistributed everything (as shown on the Linear A script accounts). They were destroyed by foreign influence (believed to be the Myceneans). But until then there were several "palaces" used to collectivization (four that I know of).

That's really interesting; didn't know that.

I know that the Celts were also collectivized and they once covered most of western and central Europe. Celtic civilization was in many ways the basis of western civilization, though this isn't often recognised by scholars. They were a very successful group for a time, and according to Ceasar were more productive in their cultivation of agriculture, and due to their collective economics, were relatively free of poverty.

[Andrei Kuznetsov]

The collectivization of China during the Great Leap Forward was a huge mass movement launched by Mao, in which the PEOPLE were depended on to transform the way things were. It was a big step forward in economic development--especially in the countryside where peasants were mobilized to really develop agriculture and small, local industry. It challenged enslaving tradition and thinking. It ran into some difficulties and there was a bad drought that hurt it badly, but overall it was a very liberating and helpful experience for the Chinese people.


Here is a good summary of what happened:

The Great Leap Forward

China was ready for a Great Leap Forward.

The basic level of government in rural China is the county or township. The co-operatives of a whole county joined together to create something new, an economic and political unit through which tens of thousands of people built a common life. These People's Communes were a giant step in moving toward the elimination of the gap between the peasants and government, since now they would increasingly administer everything themselves. While work teams based on several families were still the basic unit, the confines of the clan and the village were breached as these teams became a part of a far broader organization. Irrigation, flood control, roads and so on could be planned on a large scale, with the knowledge and participation of the peasants playing the driving role in determining what should be done and how.

Mao's policy put the emphasis on the rural areas to gradually narrow the gap between the city and countryside and between workers and peasants. The move to People's Communes made it possible to make a large dent in this gap by building hospitals, schools and new industries in rural areas, rather than just expanding the existing facilities in the cities, even though that might seem "cheaper" in narrow economic terms.

The development of industry in the countryside would not have been possible without the People's Communes. Women and men were encouraged to take the initiative to organize, start up new factories and find new ways of meeting the needs of the people. The Party led this process and the government lent support in accordance with the country's overall economic plans, but everything hinged on the people's own efforts and initiative.

The Great Leap Forward solved many problems and achieved great things. But it ran into difficulties. There were three years of extremely severe drought. The Soviet Union sought to sabotage China's economy in retaliation for China's criticisms of the capitalist road the USSR had taken under Khrushchev. There was also opposition to the Leap from within the Chinese Communist Party. The Chinese capitalist roaders used these difficulties as an argument for why China, too, should change course.

Revolution, they said, had become a distraction from the laboring people's real job, to work. The people were not supposed to concern themselves with questions of state or how their workplaces were organized and run, and whether or not their labor was serving to gradually liberate all the abilities of all the people and what direction society as a whole was taking.

-taken from http://rwor.org/a/v22/1080-89/1083/china_anniversary.htm

[FARAcmsr]

the Great Leap Forward was probobly the most ambitious and successful collectivization program. the goal was to make each village self-sufficient and sustainable through factories.

i heard it dropped in productivity for these 3 reasons:

1) lack of government investment into education and factory contruction

2) a long drought that killed crops and in some cases, workers

3) inability for the peasants to operate factories properly


i just wanna know if there are anyother reasons

[Discarded Wobbly Pop]

Originally posted by [email protected] 20 2004, 04:19 AM

The Native American tribes before the comming of Europeans were supposedly "collective" and were highly successfu.

Have you heard of the south west nation, the Navajo? They're the most successful people to farm that type of land, deserts, in the entire world. They're very good at raising corn. The majority have kept their traditional agricultural practices, language, customs etc. And you're right, they're not cappies or fuedelists.
I am rather ignorant about the navajo.

However to call all native American tribes "collective" is in some cases, like calling vikings and huns "collective"

[PRC-UTE]

You don't have to take my word for it, Discarded, the Navajo haven't lost their civilization compeltely and you can still observer some of their nation's practices (although some traditions, like the dolls they make, are private from foreigners).

Anyway, they're nothing like the huns or vikings who had no civilization and lived off pillaging. The Navajo cultivate corn in the desert.

[Andrei Kuznetsov]

There are several things about the GLF: first, it was a great act of courage. The Soviet revisionists under Khrushchev, who had been aiding China for many years, suddenly delivered "an offer you can't refuse." They had control over key areas of the economy. Their experts controled the blueprints for key industrial projects. And they bascially controled the Northeast of China -- Manchuria (the industrial region) was under control of strong pro-Soviet elements. The Soviet stopped all aid to the Chinese, and the Soviets thought "you will have to bow to us sooner or later."

The Greap Forward was a big "fuck you" to phony-communists, and telling them "fuck you" was a big deal -- with real costs. They totally fucked China by pulling out all their blueprints, experts, projects, loans, etc. They mobilized powerful networks of supporters with China to overthrow Mao.
Mao knew that a concerted, independent, radical industrial offensive was highly necessary- a way that could make them self-reliant and could get China's economy back on its feet. They had to assert: we can do this, we can develop our own expertise. "We can figure out how to do it," said the Chinese masses- and they did.

For example: China had not coal or petroleum. And they were told by the phony-communists and capitalists: this is death for a modern economy.
But in the Great Leap, they uncovered unknown resources of coal and petroleum by mobilizing the masses on a huge scale to find it. They developed a radical critique of Soviet economics. Mao said: lets discover ways to decentralize industry; let's find ways to proletarianize the peasantry. Let's spread technical knowledge, and working class experience to the peasantry. In other words, Chairman Mao Tse-Tung was following through with the powerful words of The Communist Manifesto: "Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of the distinction between town and country, by a more equable distribution of the population over the country." And so they began to do this, with the workers and masses in command.

With the Great Leap Forward beginning, they built small operations in the countryside -- to serve agriculture. Small shops that could make blades for plows, for example. Small machiner shops that could repair pumps also came about; and of course they began to develop local steel. They needed a lot, and did have the resources or expertise for large modern blast furnaces. Some called Mao "insane" for developing these new techniques, but how did they expect the Chinese to develop steel? Pray for it to drop out of the sky?

A lot of people point out that the steel foundries caused problems, and then they say that this led to the GLF "failing". Yes, there were some problems. Namely:
A) The quality was low and they were only able to produce pig iron instead of steel, but that had some uses.
B) They underestimated how difficult the steel and iron would be to transport.
C) Much of it was useless, but keep in mind that this was an experiment and was done by people who were learning- it was a process of trial and error.

So did the furnaces lead to bad crops? No. China's agriculture went by human-pulled and animal-pulled plows. And these furnaces did devleop usable plows. There was no mechanized agriculture yet (except in a few advanced areas) -- the whole point was/is to develop agriculture and industry. The furnaces did not "destroy" mechanized agriculture; the process laid the basis for Chinese peasants to be able to deal with machinery and technical things. They developed collective forms (at the Peoples Commune levels) to develop the furnaces -- and those forms were later used to set up machinery repair places etc. The Great Leap Forward did not destroy mechanization or destroy crops- on the contrary, it helped advance both!

During the Great Leap Forward, there was a huge, parallel devleopment in agriculture: the Peoples Communes. The Chinese people developed a collective form that was basically at the county level. That meant that the peasants could pool resources on a much larger scale -- develop canals and machineshops and side industries. All of this was impossible at the small-collective or family farm level; only during the Great Leap Forward did this begin to happen on a massive scale. Afterwards, they had a basis for commune machine shops, to send kids for technical traiing etc.

So the Great Leap Forward was a very risky move, and it was deeply hurt by attacks by the Soviet revisionists (as mentioned before), natural drought, and mistakes on the Chinese part (mentioned above). There was a famine, indeed, but it was not as horrific as the bourgeoisie make it out to be. Look at it this way: before the 1949, China was basically semi-permanently facing wave after wave of famine. After 1949 there was basically an end to famine. Rhe famine of 1959 was the great exception, in a period where hunger was abolished (for the first time in Chinese history!!) The population doubled under Mao and life expectancy grew by decades.

The socialist revolution made it possible to deal with famine in new ways. There was rationing and food sharing. Areas that had good harvests sent food to areas with bad harvests. The burden and impact of the bad harvests was softened, by all the new elements of socialism. It was new and breathtaking, and saved many lives. The Great Leap Forward had its shortcomings, yes, but the way they handled those shorcomings showed the strength and superiority of socialism over capitalism.

[Karl Marx's Camel]

The big Ukrainian famine was artificially generated by Stalin, so it had nothing to do with collectives.


That propaganda created by nazis and fascists.



"The conquest of the Ukraine and other areas of the Soviet Union would necessitate war against the Soviet Union, and this war had to be prepared well in advance. To this end the Nazi propaganda ministry, headed by Goebbels, began a campaign around a supposed genocide committed by the Bolsheviks in the Ukraine, a dreadful period of catastrophic famine deliberately provoked by Stalin in order to force the peasantry to accept socialist policy. The purpose of the Nazi campaign was to prepare world public opinion for the ‘liberation’ of the Ukraine by German troops. Despite huge efforts and in spite of the fact that some of the German propaganda texts were published in the English press, the Nazi campaign around the supposed ‘genocide’ in the Ukraine was not very successful at the world level. It was clear that Hitler and Goebbels needed help in spreading their libellous rumours about the Soviet Union. That help they found in the USA."



I suggest you read Lies concerning the history of the Soviet Union (http://www.geocities.com/redcomrades/lies.html)




Andrei Mazenov, that was one of the most insightful posts I've read in a long time.