The supporters of liberalism and the market economy there is a view that the planned economy can not develop, so no development in the USSR was not, and all products copied from Western counterparts. Free-market liberals believe that only the liberal model with free market relations and state interference in the economy is able to bear fruit.
But is it?
Let’s start with the fact that in Europe and the United States economy is not such a market, as is commonly believed in liberal circles. Any large transnational corporations (TNCs) is carried out in accordance with plans drawn up by the leadership, the departments of marketing, sales, manufacturing departments and so on. All activities within corporations is planned.
Each TNC is a small planned economy. However not so little actually, but in any case planned.
Each Corporation plans to launch new products, plan the cost of their development, is planning the construction or upgrading factories, plans to transfer production planning optimization of costs (including staff reductions). Just yesterday was the news that the largest electronics manufacturer Hewlett Packard has planned next year to cut several thousand employees in the framework of the cost optimization program. This is the plan.
Production of Boeing and Airbus painted for many years to come. Even orders lined up. Strictly on the basis of Queuing orders in the production and painted. Nobody makes long-haul aircraft “in stock”, then they were sold on the free market at free prices.
Simple items such as shampoo, dummies, bottles of Cola, etc. – are produced on the basis of assessment of market size and sales results last month, last quarter, last year. That is again planned.
But here’s the miracle: that of Apple, Boeing, P&G and the like, planning their work, driven by the progress – the liberal market did not doubt. And the fact that the Soviet Union developed, they challenge.
Okay, leave aside the Western corporations. Let’s see, the Soviet Union was developing or not.
Assuming that the USSR did not develop, as an agrarian country, which was Russia in 1916, where the literacy rate was somewhere around 10-20%, and 80% as the country won the great Patriotic War, launched the first satellite and man in space, constructed nuclear power plants, nuclear icebreakers, and more? Just copied from their Western counterparts?
And then copied the T-34? A BM-13 (Katyusha)?
How did you copied the Kalashnikov assault rifle, which is the most popular firearms in the world and produced in many countries under license, and without it?
Why copied poplar, s-300, MiG and Drying, superior to its foreign analogues? Why copied submarines and so-forth?
There is probably a typical rinkus liberals say that the defense industry was a certain exception, it spent people’s money, so there’s something a bit evolved. Screwed to its Western counterparts the extra nut and they flew farther and better, because the extra nut was cast of pure gold (titanium, tungsten, platinum) and spent all the money of the country.
Okay, let’s leave defense alone. But why copied nuclear-powered icebreaker Lenin, which was the world’s first surface vessel with nuclear power plant? Or some people think that to build a nuclear-powered icebreaker does not figure to do? Take any ship, copy, take any nuclear reactor, copy, put the reactor on the ship from above, combine with propellers – and ready?
Anyway, I do not exclude that rinkus liberals around and talk. Because he doesn’t understand that any large economy is primarily routine in nature (at the level of the state budget and budgets of the corporations that form the backbone of the economy) and only then can include market mechanisms. But the main thing is it was a planned part of the economy is directly related to its development, because any development should be allocated the resource and the resource allocation to development is the act of planning. And if someone lacks mental capacity to understand it, then no nuclear-powered icebreakers will prove nothing. If a person has only to head to believe in free markets and in it is – then it can really think that the world’s first nuclear-powered icebreaker was “stupid copy with the usual icebreaker and nuclear reactors, put one into the other and start to swim.”
By the way, why in the USSR copied a nuclear reactor?
Why copied a nuclear bomb according to liberals, I can guess, but why copied fusion?
Why has copied the world’s largest icebreaker 50 years of Victory? With two little ones?
Why copied car Win, which by some estimates had the world’s best aerodynamics among all production cars for many years?
How did you copied the Il-86? With Il-76? And then copied the Il-76?
Why has copied the world’s largest turboprop aircraft An-22 Antei? Also with two little? Or three?
Why the copied Mi? With Sikorsky? And what if you copied the Mi-26 is the world’s largest production helicopter, put a lot of records? Also with two little? Or three?
And then copied coaxial helicopters Kamov? Who else in the world produces coaxial helicopters?
And why in the USSR copied the first artificial satellite of the Earth and vyvodila it to orbit booster? With the German V? Then why is the Soviet Union orbited the first artificial satellite, not Germany or the US? In the United States are unable to copy the FAA, and the Soviet Union could?
And why in the USSR copied the Rover – the world’s first lunar Rover successfully worked on the surface of another celestial body?
Why has copied the world’s largest reflecting telescope?
Why copied Sayano-Shushenskaya HPP?
And Soviet cinema – is also a copy from Western movies? The movies that we watch so far is a carbon copy of Hollywood? Or movies according to rinkus liberalus the concept of “development” is not included?
And the fact that the USSR started with the agrarian economy and population, the literacy rate which did not exceed 20%, and finished with a unique orbital station, an advanced ice-breaking fleet, advanced energy (including nuclear energy), advanced weaponry, and most importantly – with a population of literacy which approached 100%, and the level of secondary education was the highest in the world – this is not development?
Development is the outcome that was not achieved earlier, reaching a new qualitative level. And these results from the USSR. And reaching a qualitatively new level.
And to think that the first to go into space, build a space station, to create a nuclear icebreaker fleet, etc. can only be due to copying and screwing some super expensive nuts – not just naive. The statement that the USSR did that copied the Western models is a common distortion, which involved rinkus liberals, defending their shaky position.
The position of the liberal marketeers shaky, because after the transition to their cherished liberal market economy, Russia has not only not achieved anything even remotely similar to the achievements of the USSR, but even lost much of what had.
What made Russia in the 90s? What has been built over 10 years of market reforms? What was the development?
And what prevents the market to develop Russia today, to start businesses, invest in them and sell the results of market development in the free market?
Hampered by the fact that development requires investment, and investment costs. And it needs to make a decision about investing resources in the development of a production, science, education and culture. A decision – it is the act of planning.
Moreover – the decision to invest resources is not taken just so, it is accepted on the basis of calculations and the plan of implementation. On the basis of the plan! Development without planning is impossible!
A free market only allows you to sell the results of what has already been developed and produced. And if nothing is planned or designed, then the free market becomes a medium for the exchange of natural resources for imported goods that we see. And in addition to the natural resources sold the means of production, the remainder of the USSR.
So a planned economy without a free market to develop very well. But the market economy, devoid of proper planning and government regulation – can only degrade, gradually sliding down to subsistence farming, a copy of which by and large is.
As for copying their Western counterparts in the Soviet Union – it was also.
Buran can be considered a copy of the Shuttle. However, he flew in an unmanned mode, so the copy was highly modified. And the Lada was a copy of Fiat. But also improved and surpassed the original handling characteristics.
However, there were examples completely failed, regressive up, so to speak. This is a copy of the development by IBM and DEC. Starting to copy Western computers, the Soviet leadership has buried its own design, which not only existed, but were in the 50-60 years at a modern level. Cut your own computing equipment, the Soviet leadership made the USSR a trailer West of the computer industry, and then the automatics, robotics and electronics. This has led to a growing gap in the efficiency of production in all other industries, as well as to delays in… the effectiveness of planning, which is not possible without data processing.
And it happened in 70-e years, under Brezhnev, whom many still consider to be the best Secretary. Although in reality he was a proud dropout, exchanged development of the country on collection of medals and cars. He put the Soviet Union on the gas pipe and taught the entire nomenklatura to destroy the country’s future for the sake of houses, awards, titles and other benefits – I learned to change the future on a full current to prozhirat him to drink and to flush the toilet.
And the Soviet Union lost to the West not because of the planned economy worse than the market, but rather because the planned economy is better and the only way of development.
The Soviet Union lost, because due to the growing backlog in the field of automation and computer science that emerged in the 70-ies, the planning process, we began to concede on the effectiveness of the planning process in the U.S. and other Western countries. There is better to process the data, better than expected demand and planned production, better automated it – and as a result has achieved a higher efficiency, which in 80-e years it has become evident to ordinary Soviet citizens.
So no, the market won a planned economy, but planning in the United States and Europe (governments and corporations) won planning in the USSR.
As for the question developed whether the Soviet Union – Yes, evolved. And until the early 70’s- very successful. Evidence of this development is may 9, April 12, helicopters Mil and Kamov, Ilyushin and Antonov aircraft, almost all modern weapons the armed forces, nuclear submarines and icebreakers, nuclear and hydroelectric power and more. And Soviet movies that you probably still see – also prove that the Soviet Union was developing.
And the best proof of the development of more than 200 million people took in 1991 diplomas and certificates.
