What does a TRUMP presidency look like?

[Oexmelin]

I feel that's back to the point made earlier on Languish (by Jacob?) about how comparisons now quickly become: are you saying Good Thing A is in fact the same as Bad Thing B? 

No. I am saying that, for thinkers of the rupture of political modernity, extremes of totalitarianism aren't, in fact, lingering remnants of barbarity from an earlier age, but unlocked by the same impulses and concerns that underpin the liberal modern tradition, above all, the capacity of disorderly humans to collectively transform their future and transcend the place ascribed by nature and providence.

The people who reflect on these issues are precisely people who want to make sure that the totalitarian menace is understood properly and does not become "unthinkable" because it is ascribed to backward others.

[Josquius]

I'd say by 1991 the Soviets were about 10 years behind the West, if the computing technology was anything to go by as a comparison.

In terms of computing technology yeah.

I do wonder though to a casual visitor would this be obvious? We walk through a Soviet office do we really notice their computers are worse? We'd see they're alien sure but that'd be the same in a Japanese office of the time too. Moreso perhaps.
Considering a visitor would likely see a really good example of an office rather than a representative one too....

Also the question of somewhere being x years ahead or behind is a tough one. The Soviets were stuck in the 30s seems obviously silly. But how would we define things if you did have say city people with smart phones and peasants in the countryside farming with manual hand tools (i.e. North Korea).
Technology doesn't work like in a video game.
For another analogy there's the dark ages- technologically more sophisticated than the Romans but in other ways also more primitive, hence the moniker.

[mongers]

I feel that's back to the point made earlier on Languish (by Jacob?) about how comparisons now quickly become: are you saying Good Thing A is in fact the same as Bad Thing B? 

No. I am saying that, for thinkers of the rupture of political modernity, extremes of totalitarianism aren't, in fact, lingering remnants of barbarity from an earlier age, but unlocked by the same impulses and concerns that underpin the liberal modern tradition, above all, the capacity of disorderly humans to collectively transform their future and transcend the place ascribed by nature and providence.

The people who reflect on these issues are precisely people who want to make sure that the totalitarian menace is understood properly and does not become "unthinkable" because it is ascribed to backward others.

Thank you for that Oexy; it's likely the best thought I'll read now or likely all weekend.

[OttoVonBismarck]

The Soviet Union in 1991 had computers, mechanized agriculture, a large industrial sector, a modern military, nuclear weapons, jet fighters, jet commercial airplanes, automobiles, roads, electricity, access to the internet, high rates of access to medical care etc.

There's really nothing in the historical record to suggest 1991 Soviet Union was the same as a 1930s Western society and certainly not a 1930s Russian society.

I find the mention of a "post office" confusing. In America in 1991 post offices were little different than they had been 100 years prior--brick buildings that you went into and mailed things in, or bought stamps in. The postal system's "back end" was probably significantly modernized by then, but the end user experience back in the early 90s was pretty analog. I'm not sure what you consider a normal modern for 1991 post office, but frankly your whole line of thinking where you are making weird comments about some anecdotal experience of yours 30 years ago seems pretty dumb and low information to me.

I don't know how old you are or whether you have any experience with seeing what the Soviet Union and Soviet Block societies were like.  Your attack on Brain is unwarranted and makes you look pretty dumb and low information to me.

Take for example cars, yes it is true the Soviets had cars.  Shitty inferior small cars that broke down all the time.  But you are factually correct they did have cars.  Nothing which compared to the cars the Finns were driving.  And I think that is part of Brain's point.  I was not in Helsinki in 1991, but I was there, for the first time, in June 1989.  What I saw was a standard of living, consumer goods and freedom of citizenry very similar to Vancouver, Stockholm and Seattle.

It was very different just across the border in the Soviet Union. 

Yeah, a second anecdote by someone not paying close attention isn't going to change my opinion, no. Brain is making claims that the Soviet Union in the 1990s was akin to a "1930s" society. For one, I doubt Brain even knows what life was like in the 1930s, he doesn't seem like he has put much thought into this, and you don't either given your response.

Outside of the United States most countries were still fairly low adoption of personal automobiles in the 1930s, many countries hadn't even gotten universal phone service up and running. There were no jet planes of any kind--certainly not in mass production. There were no personal computers. Plastics were basically absent from the consumer market in the 1930s.

While the surgical principles had been known for hundreds of years, the "making the person not die" part of organ transplantation was not done for the first time until the 1950s. The first commercially viable batches of penicillin didn't hit the markets until 1945.

The USSR had all of these things.

If you're reading my posts as ever saying "the Soviet Union was just as nice and developed as the West", well, I never said that--so you're stupid if that is what you think I am saying. What I am saying is the Soviet Union, China, and several other Communist regimes did realize a level of development growth that had never been seen in those societies before. I was further saying the claim that in the 1990s the Soviet Union was "on par with a Western country from the 1930s" is frankly stupid--and is so manifestly and obviously incorrect, that the person saying it clearly has no idea what sort of technological and societal changes emerged between the 1930s and 1990s.

And going back to my original point--which was mostly that Westerners, particularly Americans, are far too quick to blame all the bad things about the Soviet Union on Communism. I think the bad things about the Soviet Union were primarily due to Russian culture than anything to do with Karl Marx. I have never seen any evidence that the Russians as a people are fit for self-rule, or capable of having a government that isn't a monstrous autocracy. Nor are they capable of imagining a world in which already having the greatest amount of land of any country twice over, they are entitled to most of the lands surrounding them too. This is a toxic, bad culture. Karl Marx doesn't explain why Russia is an autocratic shit hole, not when it was an autocratic shit hole hundreds of years before Marx was ever born.

[OttoVonBismarck]

I'd say by 1991 the Soviets were about 10 years behind the West, if the computing technology was anything to go by as a comparison.

Yeah, if someone said that I would not take issue with it. The claim that the USSR was akin to the 1930s in the West though, is just not sustainable. I don't care what "anecdotes" people have about touring shitty countries, if you think these countries were the same as the 1930s you don't know what the 1930s were like because you never took the time to read about it--and no one here is old enough to have lived the 1930s.

I would also further argue, as someone who also visited former Warsaw Pact countries in the early 90s, that "lower quality" isn't the same thing as "60 years out of date."

A big difference in quality of life I observed in former Communist countries is in the housing, but the Communist housing wasn't technologically "out of date", in fact it was newer housing stock than, for example, most of the UK has.

Large apartment blocks in Moscow for example still had communal apartments (where multiple families had to share kitchens and bathrooms), and the residents didn't even have control over the temperature--that was controlled by a centralized system. That isn't necessarily "x years" behind the times, that just "isn't Western." The West largely built residences (outside of public housing) to what the market wanted, and the free market has never much wanted that kind of residence.

Similar to the retail space in Soviet era Communism, their retail stores weren't necessarily x years behind the West, they were just literally a concept that never existed in the West, and gave a lack of selection and variety that simply don't happen in societies in which local shops are ran in a free market by entrepreneurs.

Cars are a similar thing. The U.S. actually had really shitty consumer cars, the lowest end Ford / GM vehicles in the 80s for example were usually small, lacking in almost all creature comforts, and cheap pieces of shit. The big difference is a free market means there is a multi-layered car market, with many consumers willing and able to buy and pay for more advanced, nicer features. In a Communist country while they did have some luxury cars (often reserved for VIPs, naturally), this sort of market influence just wasn't there.

But like, building a 1985 Buick Century was not technologically beyond the abilities of the Soviet Union, it was just not part of the "plan" and would require a fundamentally different view of the purpose of making cars.

[crazy canuck]

The Soviet Union in 1991 had computers, mechanized agriculture, a large industrial sector, a modern military, nuclear weapons, jet fighters, jet commercial airplanes, automobiles, roads, electricity, access to the internet, high rates of access to medical care etc.

There's really nothing in the historical record to suggest 1991 Soviet Union was the same as a 1930s Western society and certainly not a 1930s Russian society.

I find the mention of a "post office" confusing. In America in 1991 post offices were little different than they had been 100 years prior--brick buildings that you went into and mailed things in, or bought stamps in. The postal system's "back end" was probably significantly modernized by then, but the end user experience back in the early 90s was pretty analog. I'm not sure what you consider a normal modern for 1991 post office, but frankly your whole line of thinking where you are making weird comments about some anecdotal experience of yours 30 years ago seems pretty dumb and low information to me.

I don't know how old you are or whether you have any experience with seeing what the Soviet Union and Soviet Block societies were like.  Your attack on Brain is unwarranted and makes you look pretty dumb and low information to me.

Take for example cars, yes it is true the Soviets had cars.  Shitty inferior small cars that broke down all the time.  But you are factually correct they did have cars.  Nothing which compared to the cars the Finns were driving.  And I think that is part of Brain's point.  I was not in Helsinki in 1991, but I was there, for the first time, in June 1989.  What I saw was a standard of living, consumer goods and freedom of citizenry very similar to Vancouver, Stockholm and Seattle.

It was very different just across the border in the Soviet Union. 

Yeah, a second anecdote by someone not paying close attention isn't going to change my opinion, no. Brain is making claims that the Soviet Union in the 1990s was akin to a "1930s" society. For one, I doubt Brain even knows what life was like in the 1930s, he doesn't seem like he has put much thought into this, and you don't either given your response.

Outside of the United States most countries were still fairly low adoption of personal automobiles in the 1930s, many countries hadn't even gotten universal phone service up and running. There were no jet planes of any kind--certainly not in mass production. There were no personal computers. Plastics were basically absent from the consumer market in the 1930s.

While the surgical principles had been known for hundreds of years, the "making the person not die" part of organ transplantation was not done for the first time until the 1950s. The first commercially viable batches of penicillin didn't hit the markets until 1945.

The USSR had all of these things.

If you're reading my posts as ever saying "the Soviet Union was just as nice and developed as the West", well, I never said that--so you're stupid if that is what you think I am saying. What I am saying is the Soviet Union, China, and several other Communist regimes did realize a level of development growth that had never been seen in those societies before. I was further saying the claim that in the 1990s the Soviet Union was "on par with a Western country from the 1930s" is frankly stupid--and is so manifestly and obviously incorrect, that the person saying it clearly has no idea what sort of technological and societal changes emerged between the 1930s and 1990s.

And going back to my original point--which was mostly that Westerners, particularly Americans, are far too quick to blame all the bad things about the Soviet Union on Communism. I think the bad things about the Soviet Union were primarily due to Russian culture than anything to do with Karl Marx. I have never seen any evidence that the Russians as a people are fit for self-rule, or capable of having a government that isn't a monstrous autocracy. Nor are they capable of imagining a world in which already having the greatest amount of land of any country twice over, they are entitled to most of the lands surrounding them too. This is a toxic, bad culture. Karl Marx doesn't explain why Russia is an autocratic shit hole, not when it was an autocratic shit hole hundreds of years before Marx was ever born.

Your theory is like a religion, it must be taken on faith and one needs to ignore all the evidence to the contrary.

By the late 1800's Russia was undergoing dramatic changes.  They were industrializing and instituting land reforms.   In the 1900s before WW1 their economy was growing rapidly.

Marx did not explain the Bolsheviks because the Bolsheviks deviated from Marx's prediction of what would usher in a communist state.  Marc theorized that a capitalist state would be needed first.  Lenin wanted to skip that bit.

[The Brain]

The nature of Communism makes it more attractive in societies that have little or no tradition of democracy or liberty.

[DGuller]

USSR phone system was ... typical USSR.  Our neighbors in apartment next door had to ask to come in and use our phone when they really needed one, because they didn't have one.  My grandmother also had people come in and use her phone.  Getting a phone set up took many years of waiting, although I don't know what the technical reason was.  My grandmother worked her whole life at the switching station, so that's why all of us were set up.  It was one of many culture shocks when in the US, it took less than a day to get a phone number and a phone line, and that was back in the dark days of NYNEX.

We lived in Lviv, a city of 800,000, not exactly a village with outhouses.  Now, if we talk about life in Soviet villages, maybe 1830 would be the better starting point.

[OttoVonBismarck]

Your theory is like a religion, it must be taken on faith and one needs to ignore all the evidence to the contrary.

I haven't actually seen any evidence to the contrary. I have already quoted actual historical statistics showing how far behind the West Russia was in 1913. I have also already said "we don't know what a non-Communist Russia" looks like in the 20th century. No one does, though. We can't know what did not happen and cannot happen because the past has already occurred.

What I do know is that Tsarist Russia firmly came down by WWI against democratic reforms, so I am highly skeptical of any belief that the long established practice of Russian autocracy was on its way out.

Germany, which under the Kaiser did have free elections (if ones that were weighted towards the upper class), and would probably be seen as a "partially free" society did briefly give birth to genuine democracy under the Weimar government. But we know how Weimar ended. I am skeptical even if a more democratic minded group had won the Russian Revolution, that we wouldn't end up with a similar scenario--some ghoulish autocrat takes over within 5-15 years and you end up with a state that probably isn't all that different from the USSR.

Had the Tsar somehow been preserved, which is such a deviation from history because the Tsar had few soldiers really willing to fight for him at the end, I find it unlikely he would have been a modernizing / liberalizing force.

But, we just don't know--what I do know is the USSR didn't bring autocracy to Russia, that is historical fact, not "religious faith." Russia brought autocracy to Russia long before the Soviets.

[OttoVonBismarck]

Due to how seniority works in the Senate, it isn't crazy illogical after a certain point, in a game theory respect, to just keep voting for an incumbent.

Some really old Senators from the past like Robert Byrd and Strom Thurmond were getting significant cross-party votes at the end, and rarely faced serious challengers. This is because both were so long tenured they had the best committee positions (appropriations is the big one) and could funnel pork to a degree that a newly minted Senator just could never do.

The fact that both men were clearly in mental decline (Strom moreso) by the end was largely seen as irrelevant--you just need a staffer to make sure they're voting for the right pork.

The hyper-partisanship of today means there are probably a lot less cross part voters who will vote simply for seniority though, both parties now realize how important control is for things like Supreme Court confirmations (something that shockingly only the GOP seemed to care about until 2020.)

[crazy canuck]

The nature of Communism makes it more attractive in societies that have little or no tradition of democracy or liberty.

I think that is correct and entirely contrary to what Marx thought.

[crazy canuck]

Your theory is like a religion, it must be taken on faith and one needs to ignore all the evidence to the contrary.

I haven't actually seen any evidence to the contrary. I have already quoted actual historical statistics showing how far behind the West Russia was in 1913. I have also already said "we don't know what a non-Communist Russia" looks like in the 20th century. No one does, though. We can't know what did not happen and cannot happen because the past has already occurred.

What I do know is that Tsarist Russia firmly came down by WWI against democratic reforms, so I am highly skeptical of any belief that the long established practice of Russian autocracy was on its way out.

Germany, which under the Kaiser did have free elections (if ones that were weighted towards the upper class), and would probably be seen as a "partially free" society did briefly give birth to genuine democracy under the Weimar government. But we know how Weimar ended. I am skeptical even if a more democratic minded group had won the Russian Revolution, that we wouldn't end up with a similar scenario--some ghoulish autocrat takes over within 5-15 years and you end up with a state that probably isn't all that different from the USSR.

Had the Tsar somehow been preserved, which is such a deviation from history because the Tsar had few soldiers really willing to fight for him at the end, I find it unlikely he would have been a modernizing / liberalizing force.

But, we just don't know--what I do know is the USSR didn't bring autocracy to Russia, that is historical fact, not "religious faith." Russia brought autocracy to Russia long before the Soviets.

Once again you need to ignore the reforms that began around 1885.

It's not surprising that Russia had not yet caught up to other industrialized countries by the start of the war.  But they were developing rapidly.

You need to think a little deeper than depending on racial stereotypes to see all this though.

[The Minsky Moment]

I think the economics definitely has priority - but I think there are still other strands. In the Stalinist era the horrendous policies against nomads forcing them to settle - there was a class analysis but also to make them a part of the squeezable countryside rather than allowing them to slip through the nets of the state as nomads have for centuries. It's also reflected in the collective farms, communal apartments, education which I think are all I think part of Soviet modernisation - as is the general mastery and domination of nature to increase extraction which supports investment into heavy industry.

It's a world away from the Tsarist world of huge estates (with Stolypin trying to get smallholders - as another type of modernising project, as I think there's overlap between him and the Soviets), islands of heavy industry, nomads on the fringes and other forms of traditional societies across the countryside.

There is a generally accepted basic model of industrial development, where the initial effort is on promoting agricultural efficiency, with a manufacturing focus on light industry.  As agriculture becomes more efficient, food prices moderate and excess farm labor is released to work in industry; light industry is preferable earlier because it is usually both more labor intensive (thus absorbing the migrating peasants) and helps supply consumer goods.  There are many variants on this model, but the general format recurs across many cases.  Stolypin's reforms follow this basic model - his "wager on the strong" was an effort to reverse Russia's chronic agricultural inefficiency by generating a class of free peasants with the incentive, means and interest to improve methods and productions.  It is also consistent with the NEP's benign neglect of the countryside and toleration of private trading.

But it was not a model acceptable to Joseph "Steelman" or many other Bolsheviks, because it involved tolerating private property and trading and because of the belief that heavy industrial investment could produce the most rapid economic growth.  The latter has some validity to it, but the problem is that underdeveloped societies don't have the free capital resources needed to fund that investment at useful scale, and often don't produce enough excess food and other necessities to feed and house the construction and industrial labor required.

There is one way to make the heavy first development model "work" if you are ruthless enough: starve the peasants and steal the food.  That keeps urban food prices under control and thus boosts the real value of the industrial wage as well the providing the capital to fund those wages.  The weaker peasants die off, but once the industrial base is up and running, you can try to rescue the agricultural sector by rolling out machinery to the countryside.  A perverse take on Stolypin's bet on the strong.  In the urban sector, food prices can be controlled due to forced requistion, but consumption of other consumer goods (inclsuing housing) is suppressed to mobilize investment capital for industry.

Once you commit to that approach, the rest follows logically.  The Holodomor, forced collectivization, communal apartments, etc. - all of it is entailed by the pursuit of the development model.  Free steppe nomads are just a wasted resource at best; at worst, they might fill their historical role of taking in oppressed and discontented peasants and fomenting potential rebellions. Too dangerous to leave around when policy is to oppress the peasants on an extreme scale.

[OttoVonBismarck]

Once again you need to ignore the reforms that began around 1885.

It's not surprising that Russia had not yet caught up to other industrialized countries by the start of the war.  But they were developing rapidly.

They lost a major war to Japan, a country that just 30 years prior was far behind Russia in terms of modernization technologically. This was after 25 years of what you call "rapid development."

This is also FWIW, entirely a tangent. I never said Russia was incapable of technological development, what I said is they are historically an autocratic culture, and little has shown me they have the capacity for much beyond that.

What I did say about technological development and economic development, is the USSR dramatically outpaced Tsarist Russia, and that is absolutely true--unless you refute the basic facts on things like industrialization and electrification which I have already posted. Saying that does not mean I am saying Russia didn't develop technologically or economically at all under the Tsars. You're glossing over common sense and assuming things not actually argued, I assume because whatever point you are trying to make is easier that way (but I don't actually see that you are making much of a point.) In fact I don't see that you've meaningfully refuted the nature of Russian autocracy at all.

You need to think a little deeper than depending on racial stereotypes to see all this though.

Not even sure what in the fuck this means. Russian genetic heritage has nothing to do with the discussion whatsoever.

[OttoVonBismarck]

There is one way to make the heavy first development model "work" if you are ruthless enough: starve the peasants and steal the food.  That keeps urban food prices under control and thus boosts the real value of the industrial wage as well the providing the capital to fund those wages.  The weaker peasants die off, but once the industrial base is up and running, you can try to rescue the agricultural sector by rolling out machinery to the countryside.  A perverse take on Stolypin's bet on the strong.  In the urban sector, food prices can be controlled due to forced requistion, but consumption of other consumer goods (inclsuing housing) is suppressed to mobilize investment capital for industry.

The USSR was the world's 2nd industrial power at the time the Germans invaded. While Stalin certainly could not have known such a day would come when he started his "reforms", I would posit that if the USSR had not so aggressively shifted to heavy industry they may not have survived the Germany invasion.

Safe island countries like Britain or ones protected by two oceans like the United States don't have to worry about what happens if you modernize a bit too slowly, Russia did not have that luxury in the 20th century.

Now, would some alternative to Stalin have also shifted so quickly into heavy industry? Maybe. I'm not aware of any great contemporary examples of that occurring without some serious autocracy though. To some degree the countries that didn't use autocratic means to modernize were "lucky" in that they went through some of this stuff over the span of 200 years.

Countries like Imperial Japan, Russia/USSR, and China were playing a very big game of catch up, and their leaders understood the risks (to some degree) of not being able to at least make an effort towards catching up with the Western Great Powers.