Chavez is angry that he cannot overturn the law of supply and demand

Wouldn't life be awesome if we could just buck basic economic laws? I mean, screw the prevailing market price! If we lower the price for any good or service to zero, we should be able to produce at whatever quantity we so desire.

Where's my manna?!

As with Bolivia's refinery seizure a couple of years ago, I'm of two minds about this kind of hijinks. Part of me boils with rage that these a**holes wait for someone else to build a facility, and then grab it. On the other hand, part of me wants to say to the companies, WTF did you expect when you put a huge piece of immobile capital in a grabby, socialist-leaning 2nd-world country? Some people never learn.

Speaking of people never learning, was Chavez alive during the 20th century? Is he aware of how the socialist experiments worked out, or does he just not care?

All of that bugs me too. But what really bugs is Chavez's flippant use of price controls. You would think humanity as a whole would know better by now that price controls result in either shortages or surpluses. It's just batty. Apparently the poor in Venezuela like it that way, so let them eat cake (if they can find any).

I should be interesting.

It's difficult for a monopoly that touches nearly every item of food we eat at some point in its travels from the field to our mouths, to claim that it doesn't earn a premium on it's product, but either way Chavez has certainly taken on a worthy opponent.

The only difference is that the evil monopoly (and I'm not fan of monopolies) will provide the people with food because profits are to be made.

Since profits are inherently evil, the government, as an extension of the peoples' will, will try to rectify this evil by seizing the monopoly. And as a result of making things fair and just, the state usually ends up making a bad situation worse by creating shortages through price ceilings.

Another thing to keep in mind is that this shortage can then be used as a means of attacking an outsider, whether that be the Gringo or Big Business.

I'm just not such a slave to worship of the market that I don't believe in trust busting is all. You true believes are so quick to play No True Scotsman. Tsk tsk.

Whether or not Cargill has a presence in Venezuela, I'm sure land will be farmed and food will be processed. The only question is, how much of a fight will the company put up to retain their property?

I didn't understand your "shortage as a means" remark. You mean hunger will rally the troops for invasion?

I read the article that Chavez is pissed because all the rice producing companies aren't increasing their production of a commodity that he has placed an unusually low price cap on. I suspect the rice price is a ploy for him to grab some more assets, while trying to look like he's 'for the people'. Also his reelection is coming up soon and he has to keep the masses in his court.

Oh. I see. You must be the reasonable type, not like those true believers. You probably entertain other ideas, roll them around your mind, asking questions, etc. Though, I suspect, you're not a true believer in trust busting because that would simply not be reasonable.

The last remark was made because Venezuela is not a racially homogeneous country. The poor tend to be darker in color and with large proportion aboriginal ancestry. The Gringos, on the other hand, tend to be primarily of European extraction and also tend to be the ones that control and operate much of Venezuela's businesses. So the anger caused by the shortages caused by price controls could easily be directed toward whatever productive elements of Venezuelan society that happen to still be around.

It's the South American Zimbabwe, in other words.

6: except there isn't any evidence that there is a trust to be busted here. The article even says that Cargill is one of a number of rice producing companies that are producing par-boiled rice instead of the price controlled version.

The problem here is that Chavez has placed a price cap on a commodity, and expects that the commodity will still be produced in the same quantity. That is simply ignoring the laws of supply and demand.

And no, if the price cap remains, land probably won't be farmed, and food probably won't be processed, at least not in the same quantities. Which is why there will be shortages. Which Chavez will probably blame on the white minority in Venezuela and evil foreign influences rather than his own policies.

I think you guys give Chavez credit for far too much imagination, intelligence and education. The guy is a bandit in a suit whose one great idea is that if it pisses off the US it's got to be good.

Okay. All that has been said here is true.

But ... something is wrong with Latin America. Now, it is true that they were growing -- most of the countries -- before the collapse of capitalism. But the reason people like Chavez get into power is that for the majority of people in these countries, there does not seem to be a clear path of continual improvement in their lives.

So let's do a Thought Experiment: The Conservative-Libertarian Cabal (okay, Sensible Liberals can have a seat at the Control Panel) is given a Mind Control Machine, and takes over Chavez' brain.

What do we have him do, that will result in real economic and social development in his country? Or did he come to power via demagogic manipulation of unrealistic hopes, so we should just restore the status quo?

You're such a devil, Doug.

As long as we're fantasizing, I'll get the ball rolling. This is a list of things that are desirable* (I take it the question isn't about their feasibility since we're assuming a mind control machine):

Enforce property rights. Enforce contracts. Don't put in place price controls. De-nationalize things that have been nationalized. Establish the rule of law. That means laws are announced in advance, not ex post facto, then enforced. Have elections that take place regularly, reasonably frequently, and on pre-specified dates. Establish a constitution that limits the government's powers so that certain things are taken off the table ab initio. E.g., prohibit the gov't from restricting freedom of religion, freedom of speech, etc. Require the presumption of innocence and other procedural rights for those accused of crimes...

Etc., etc., etc.

Doug, you know the list as well as anyone else here.

*When I say they're desirable I'm making certain assumptions, e.g., people don't want shortages, etc. Maybe they do want these things, in which case we can only observe the experiment with detached calm.

I know the liberals are supposed to sit this out, but I can't help noticing the detached calm of your plan Carnophile.

If Chavez was in charge of the US and we had the level of outside ownership that Venezuela experienced prior to Chavez, would you regard that as a good thing?

If all of the large factories in the US were Russian, and profits necessarily went to Russia, would you be comfortable with that?

14 > How would being uncomfortable with it justify stealing from someone? Being good or bad (with outside ownership) does not justify nationalization. Extenuating circumstances might give reasons, such as near slave labor practices or obvious extreme economic exploitation but this is a poor idea, and it certainly wouldn't encourage any new for investment.

15 - You wouldn't have steal - unless you regard eminent domain as theft, but it seems to me that it is not in a country's (and by country, I mean the citizens as a group) best interest to have the major assets controlled by people that don't live there.

If it wasn't an issue, we wouldn't require our President to be a naturalized citizen.

Never under estimate the power of your own prejudices.

>14 vq5p9:
If Chavez was in charge of the US and we had the level of outside ownership that Venezuela experienced prior to Chavez, would you regard that as a good thing?

If Chavez were in charge of the US, I'd be banging at the doors of a mental institution, begging, with the Ramones, to be sedated.
As to foreign ownership, I have no objection.

If all of the large factories in the US were Russian, and profits necessarily went to Russia, would you be comfortable with that?

Yes. I'm baffled that people object to this.

(They're paying wages and salaries to their domestic employees, who are free to work there or not. It is their best option to work there - as they themselves judge - their judgment is revealed by their choice to work there. (If the Russians are forcing us to work at gunpoint, we've got a different scenario.)
They're selling products to domestic consumers, who are free to buy them or not. Etc.)

FYI, I'm not one of those who's always yapping about the "trade deficit," a non-issue that I regard as a distracting irrelevancy.

What I want to know is how all the factories ended up in the control of those companies of one nation. The only ways I can think of that happening is if there was a serious deficit in human capital in the native population or if there was collusion of some sort between the large businesses and the government. With the former, it would at least seem to be acceptable to have outsiders run these factories because the human capital necessary to construct and run large factories would be limited in the native population. With the latter, if you're pocket book is large enough, you can gain advantages over the competition by granting favors to high level government officials.

Collusion between government officials and big business is particularly pernicious since even in advanced Western democracies it is practically impossible to eradicate this menace.

Eminent domain is theft. How can you justify taking the property of others in order to build a highway, school, hospital--and even more disgusting--a business with a larger tax potential?

This sort of utilitarian thinking is what leads people to justify all kinds of statist nonsense; you know, for the people.

"unless you regard eminent domain as theft"

no, but it can be, especially now that Chavez isn't even paying for them any more, just IOUs.

I think you plan for Venezuela continues to favor the US rather than the country your supposed to be creating the system for.

The country exporting goods is changing real wealth for paper that may or may not hold value and they don't even get to choose who's paper.

Were I dictator, i would regard that as a serious problem.

Japan didn't get where it is without behaving in a protectionist fashion and I think the ruler of a small country like Venezuela would do well to copy their current example.

Because it is so easy to copy another country's policies, which are usually the result of a back and forth between the elites and are influenced by time and place.

Japan may have in fact got where it was in spite of that country's elites' penchant for economic protectionism. The causality could easily run the other direction. China is becoming a successful country due to the liberalization of the economy, which allows foreign companies to set up shop and run factories within China. Before economic liberalization, China's economy epitomized protectionism.

China is also VERY aggressive when it comes to eminent domain. They want a road and residents get one month to move out, so perhaps it's also the great flexibility they have in creating infrastructure.

Likewise Japan also plays both socialism and capitalism cards heavily. The flexibility to do both is clearly the winning hand.

What you can get with eminent domain, you could easily get with simply paying people for their property, either buying it outright or renting it.

Again, China's eminent domain policies, I'm assuming, probably were not all that different from when it was a communist state. So, like the Japan example, China is probably growing in spite of those barriers.

Freedom is great. I like it.

Japan has been in a recession for something like 15 of the last 20 years. Don't quote me on that exact figure, but it ain't good.
(I don't believe in post hoc ergo propter hoc, but as long as we're playing that game...)

"I think you plan for Venezuela continues to favor the US rather than the country your supposed to be creating the system for."

Er, yes, well, I'm sorry to differ with you. Just to be clear, I’d be against the nationalization even if the company had been a private Venezuelan-owned company in the first place.
Cf. concern within the US about the gov't nationalizing banks. Our opposition to nationalization isn't opportunistic, MrsHeisenberg; we really mean it. You yourself called us "true believers"!

Yes I know, but in your own words, how do you know we haven't flourished in spite of our Capitalist ways.

Economic law.

I'll let Milton Friedman explain a small component of that.

So many untested theories....

That's why I'm an Austrian economist. ;)

Drat!... my thread diversion has been diverted.

I do indeed know, although probably not as well as anyone, the basic institutions which will help channel natural human creativity into long-term constructive activity. The rule of law above all.

However, the rule of law doesn't just manifest itself magically. It requires nurturing, and above all, it needs a strong social base of people who see that the rule of law, despite the occasional inconvenience that it can give to any specific individual, is in their interests. This is not something which is immediately obvious to people who have grown up in a society in which force or fraud are the natural reflex responses to advancing one's interests.

So, my question should have been: were these institutions not in place prior to Chavez? Evidently not, given the social problems of Venezuela.

I appreciate that, evidently, no one here, including me, knows much about the nitty-gritty details of Venezuela. So we are reduced to repeating generalities. But the devil is in the details.

The few Venuzuelans I know, or know of, who are opposed to Chavez, don't seem to have this view about the importance of the rule of law, the free market, and so on. They would appear to be happy to see a return to the situation before Chavez, when, incidentally, they were doing okay. There don't seem to be any radical reformers in Venezuela who want to go the rule of law, etc. route. So Chavez is what we get.

And: I am not convinced that a pure libertarian solution is necessarily the best one, if indeed it's a solution at all.

For example, I believe that the state, using redistributive taxation, can play a positive role in developing freedom. It can, and should, guarantee a good education to all its citizens -- by vouchers, state schools, whatever. An uneducated mass of people is not a secure foundation for the rule of law, and other good things.

And I suspect that this sort of education does not happen in a lot of Latin American countries, which, if so, is a major problem. (In Mexico for example, contrary to the reflexive leftist belief about trade unions, the Teachers Union is a major barrier to education -- it's more like a Mafia operation which allows its members to collect salaries without having to teach.)

So what I really want to know is -- why was Venezuela in the situation it was, such that a Chavez can get the devoted support of millions of people?

And if the answer is that it was highly statist and screwed-up before Mr Chavez took over, then he's just maintaining the status quo, and we don't really have anything new to complain about.

Which implies that the loudest anti-Chavez voices we are allowed to hear are expressing their desire, not for a libertarian/conservative rule-of-law revolution, but for a counter-revolution which returns Venezuela to the corrupt old statist ways.

We don't need allies like that.

the rule of law doesn't just manifest itself magically... it needs a strong social base of people who see that the rule of law, despite the occasional inconvenience that it can give to any specific individual, is in their interests. This is not something which is immediately obvious...

Indeed. Thus we might have to cultivate an attitude of detached calm while they figure it out for themselves experimentally.

This is why I'm sort of happy to see the occasional socialist experiment now that the monolithic Soviet bloc is no longer a threat. The best way for a country to understand the wonderful benefits of omnipotent government is to simply let them have a go at it. Eventually, perforce, they'll learn.

This is why I'm sort of happy to see the occasional socialist experiment now that the monolithic Soviet bloc is no longer a threat. The best way for a country to understand the wonderful benefits of omnipotent government is to simply let them have a go at it. Eventually, perforce, they'll learn.

Meanwhile in socialist countries, many are glad to observe our credit meltdown, thinking 'Eventually, perforce, they'll learn."

Socialism that emerges from a milieu that values honor, respect, democratic norms of governance, freedoms, essentially coming from a Western ethic is one thing. A bandit with a populist persona and sticky fingers who runs things through coercion and corruption is something entirely different. I don't think one can really put Cesar Chavez in the line of European socialists. Hugo Chavez craves what all bandits crave: power.

Meanwhile in socialist countries, many are glad to observe our credit meltdown, thinking 'Eventually, perforce, they'll learn.'

Yeah, really! Stop having regulators sue you if you don't relax your lending standards, and you'll get better lending standards! We'll learn eventually.

Edit: Don't take Liebowitz's word for it. The regulators themselves are happy to flaunt the fact that they required lowered lending standards.

Socialism that emerges from a milieu that values honor, respect, democratic norms of governance, freedoms...

Name a country that is democratic and socialist.

Use the word "socialist" precisely. I.e., NOT the party in power calls itself socialist, but there is no private industry, production is undertaken via central planning: by State ministries according to five-year plans, etc.

France, UK, Canada

PS. Not Communism, right? Socialism.

In all those countries the vast bulk of production is undertaken by private firms for profit, not by state-owned enterprises according to central planning.

PS: If a large welfare state actually is socialism, then we libertarians and conservatives CAN bitch about socialism if Obama wants e.g., more government involvement in health care...right?

I believe those countries are eat up with private enterprise, just as we are. I used socialism because that was the short hand being thrown around here when what was actually being referred to was the system of state/market economics in Europe.

State defined, planned, organized, created and dictated economies don't work and to attempt to forge one leads only to a river of blood.

Obviously socialism is a matter of degrees, and any society for which the state provides any service - such as defense - could be described as having socialist aspects.

I agree that I can't think a of a single completely socialist country, nor any completely democratic, nor any completely capitalist ones.

Incidentally, most everyone has experience with socialism - their family growing up.

Oh, God. Not the family = socialism analogy. Your family is a socialist unit, therefore you should have no problem with socialism at the national level because you are comfortable with socialism at the family level.

You know, if you think about it, if the family is considered the smallest unit of socialism, then you should have no problem with socialism at the national or even international level.

Think about it--what is a family? Your mom and dad? How about your mom, dad, grandfathers, and grandmothers? Your cousins? If you keep going vertically up the family tree and horizontally, then you should be able to connect yourself to a peasant in China or a herdsman in Kenya. Therefore the all of humanity is your family. If all of humanity is your family and you believe socialism exists at the family level, then you are hard pressed to oppose socialism at the national or international level.

Indeed. I very carefully said "name a country" above precisely because I anticipated that if I didn't, I'd hear about
1) family
2) Israeli kibbutzes
3) various communalist experiments involving ~70 people.

I can't think a of a single completely socialist country, nor any completely democratic, nor any completely capitalist ones.

Snort.

>33 geneg: Geneg, could you do me a big favor and change your references from Cesar Chavez to Hugo Chavez, which is what I'm sure you meant? Cesar Chavez was quite a different person, and definitely not a "bandit with a populist persona".

>42 Carnophile: Ok, Carnophile, can YOU name a completely socialist or democratic or capitalist country? Or perhaps you were just clearing your nose.

No. You misunderstand. I was not saying that there's any pure cap or soc country or perfect democracy. I was saying that MrsHeisenberg's response to the question was rather, er...unconvincing.

Asked to name a country that is socialist and democratic, if you respond, "Well, is there really any such thing as perfect democracy?" etc., you're evading the question.

Or she was pointing out why the question isn't worth answering.

>43 jmcgarve: - ">33 geneg: Geneg, could you do me a big favor and change your references from Cesar Chavez to Hugo Chavez"

Done. thanks for the correction. I get John Dean and Howard Dean mixed up, too.

>46 jjwilson61:
You mean, that she'd rather not answer it.

That's okay, geneg did.

Sorry, I didn't mean to leave anyone hanging, but I did say that I couldn't think of a completely socialist country, so I did in fact answer you question.

And I stand by earlier assertion that every country is a blend. The problem then becomes comprising a criteria for judging the "goodness" of the blend.

OMG this is just pathetic.

"Was there any electoral fraud in the 2000 election?"

MrsHeisenberg: "Well, what do we really mean by 'democracy,' anyway? I mean, has there ever really been a perfect democracy?"

Was the Emancipation Proclamation good for the former slaves?

MrsHeisenberg: "Well, there's no such thing as perfect freedom, so..."

Weak, MrsH. Really freakin' weak.

Oh, this is just too rich. I was reviewing this thread to see exactly where MrsH went wrong, and I happened again upon her “No True Scotsman” remark at #6. So I Google that bad boy to see what she’s talking about (it’s pretty clear from the context, but just to be sure) and I come across the Wikipedia entry on No True Scotsman.
Here’s where it gets good, MrsHeisenberg: That Wikipedia page has a link to Loki’s Wager, which you might find interesting.

Carnophile, for all your offensive snarking, it is very difficult to make your question make any sense. The original question was "Name a country that is democratic and socialist", where you define socialist to mean there is no private industry, etc. Ok, given that question, we can, and have, given the perfectly valid responses:

A. The definition of "socialist" given is not one we accept.

B. But, if we for the moment accept that definition, there are no longer any socialist countries. Even North Korea allows a marginal amount of private enterprise. So, no, we can't identify any blue unicorns, because we can't identify any unicorns.

C. If we try to give the question some content, it might be along these lines: Can we name any countries where the government share of GDP is very large, which are also democratic? Well, the government share of GDP in Sweden was at one time around 60%, and it was still a democracy. There are countries where the government share of GDP was or is higher than 60%, and these have not been democracies. There are also countries where the government share of GDP is very low, e.g. Guinea, which aren't democracies either.

The Penn World Tables here: http://pwt.econ.upenn.edu/php_site/pwt62/pwt62_retrieve.php list a bunch of countries and give the government share of GDP for each. All the most interesting cases (Cuba, Vietnam, North Korea, etc.) are given as n/a, unfortunately, in this repository.

An index of democracy by country is found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index . Of course, one may argue with the ordering. (I don't think I'd put Israel as high as it is, for example, but that's because I think you have to include the occupied territories. But I digress.) In general, I don't see a correlation between how much of the economy is private and how democratic it is, although if we could get the numbers for all of those n/a entries in the PWT, there might be some correlation. There does seem to be some correlation between the wealth of the country and democracy, but even this is quite inconsistent.

WHOA! It’s amazing how much you guys don’t want to answer a simple question! I just tossed it out there kind of at random too. I had no idea it would lead to such resistance.

I see. You were never interested in an answer, just the provocation. I'll have to remember in the future not to take the bait.

32: Name the countries that are sitting on the sidelines unaffected by the credit meltdown. Even China, which thought it was insulated from the trouble, has learned otherwise. I can't think of any country that isn't completely isolated from the world in general (like, say, North Korea, which has all its own problems), that isn't dependent upon the global financial system.

The key question is not, how high the taxation rate is, or even how much of the economy is state-owned, but whether or not it is possible for the people of said country to change, peacefully, the situation.

Sweden has a relatively free economy, and a very comprehensive welfare state. The trade unions there are smart -- they let the capitalists run production, while they (or their party) takes care of distribution. And they are willing to take wage cuts when necessary. They backed out of some of their statist measures about twenty years ago, by the way.

What the Swedes show, from one side, is that human behavior is not just a simple function of formal economic institutions. We should have learned that lesson many times over -- often by seeing socialist economic institutions produce other than the ideal "socialist man". But in this case, it's free-market ideologues who are confounded, because a pretty socialistic economy has produced a pretty good society.

And, on the other side, we have seen that pure free markets don't give us utopia either, especially in countries which have terrible class divisions which are largely along ethnic lines. In other words, culture -- and I know that this is a vague term -- plays a big role.

If everyone was like the Swedes, the world would be very different. (Cue a great Soviet joke here, which I will save for another time.)

Conclusion? There isn't much of one. We have to muddle along, trying this, trying that, seeing what sort-of works in each country, trying to improve things without plunging into Utopian Hell. The English managed to tame their monarchy and fashion it into an instrument of parliamentary democracy, as did the Nordic countries. But elsewhere it didn't work out that way and probably was not possible, mainly due to the obstinate reactionary stupidity of the monarchs concerned.

Privitization of telecommunications has worked pretty well in the UK, which is why few in this country want to return to a nationalized telecoms system. Privitization of the railways, at least as it was implemented here, was a failure. Conservatives -- as opposed to free market ideologues -- and liberals and social democrats -- as opposed to socialist dogmatists-- ought to be able to handle this. The rough analogy is the transition in thinking about the physical world from Aristotelian First Principles to empirical observation ... or something like that.

>52 jmcgarve:
Vis-a-vis Sweden, it has never been socialist. It has had high tax rates, but that is very different from 60% of the economy being undertaken via state planning. There is a difference between having the government tax us and then buy planes from Lockheed or Boeing, and the entire defense industry (airplane factories, tank factories, armaments factories, etc.) being a subdivision of the government.

More relevantly to the Swedish case, a high amount of welfare spending is not socialism... as liberals themselves incessantly remind us. The government handing you a lot of money is not the government appropriating all the land and factories and setting production by central planning.

A quote from some Comparative Systems book:

Only about 5 percent of Swedish enterprises are government operated. More than 90 percent of all businesses are private; roughly 5 percent operate as producer or consumer cooperatives.

Now that’s just one source, but here’s another at the CATO institute:

No Nationalization. The SAP did not nationalize industry on a large scale. Although nationalization was a point of principle in the Social Democrats' program, it was never implemented. Industrial policy until the 1970s was essentially limited to two government procurement programs for advanced technology for military aircraft and nuclear power. In both cases, development took place at private firms, not at government facilities. Until 1970 government-controlled manufacturing amounted to 5 percent of the total. State ownership and management, where they existed (e.g., railways and public utilities), were guided by professional ethics and not hampered by political considerations.
No Economic Planning. Nor did the SAP try to impose national economic planning. That does not mean that the state did not influence the use of resources to a large extent. High taxation and the welfare state inevitably influenced their use. But there is a difference between that kind of intervention and central planning...

CATO is a libertarian think tank, by the way, so you may not regard them as trustworthy. I regard these two sources together as trustworthy because the first is approving and the second is disapproving of Sweden, but they agree on the extent of state-run production.

We won WWII but lost the battle for the future. WWII was a cleansing fire for much of Europe. They were completely destroyed. As a result they had an opportunity, for better or for worse to make radical changes in their societies. Some changes worked better than others. My guess is anyone with a modestly successful socialized health care system would not trade healthcare distribution methods with us.

Being isolated from the world gave us many advantages after WWII, but as others rebuilt and retooled their systems over time we became the anachronism in the developed world.

The paradox of all good things and what happens to them in the end.

>54 jjwilson61:
I see. You were never interested in an answer, just the provocation. I'll have to remember in the future not to take the bait.

Actually, I took the bait that MrsH and jmc laid out: I got suckered into debating the meaning of the term "socialism," which is their way of avoiding clarity about whether there has ever been a democracy that was socialist.

To muddy the waters further, jmc is now pretending that he isn't quite sure what democracy means, either. And I fell for this whole thing, getting roped into citing facts about Sweden, etc.

So it is I who must resolve to foreswear the bait in the future.

Debates over definitions can muddle things, but sometimes are unavoidable.

Here is what we should debate: can, in practice, a society where everyone necessarily is a government employee, still be a democracy in the sense that we use the term? I don't see any theoretical reason why not, but I doubt that such a state of affairs could exist in practice.

And neither did the three gentlemen I quote from here:

"The power which a multiple millionaire, who may be my neighbor and perhaps my employer, has over me is very much less than that which the smallest functionaire possesses who wields the coercive power of the state, and on whose discretion it depends whether and how I am to be allowed to live or to work."

"It is in the interest of the wage-earner to have many other alternatives open to him than service under one all-powerful employer called the State."

"In any society where the State is the sole employer, opposition means death by slow starvation. Who does not obey, shall not eat."

I think the last one was Trotsky?

Don't know the others.

Whoa!!! Well done! How the hell did you know that? The first one was von Mises, and the second, Churchill. These two are predictable. But the quote from Trotsky is remarkable.

Lenin himself was starting to come to his senses, at least relative to other totalitarian minds of his time, that price controls and socialization of land were bad ideas. He went so far as to allow farmers the ability to sell at a market price and keep some of the profits. Lenin died, Stalin took over, and everything went further down into the depths of hell.

Lenin was becoming an economic fascist, a socialist mugged by reality.

>62 Doug1943:
Thanks. I think Mises once quoted that Trotsky bit, so I got it from reading Mises.
Mises remarked something like "Even Trotsky, in a rare moment of sanity, said..."

>63 codyed:
My Russian history prof remarked, "Lenin's New Economic Plan was working a little too well, the capitalists showing up the government planning, so they decided the NEP had to go."

(This guy must have been the last non-leftist History prof.)

This whole discussion is reminding me of the PBS documentary Commanding Heights. You can view the entire program here.

I don't think Lenin ever had any doubts whatsoever in the economic superiority of socialism over capitalism as an economic system.

The New Economic Policy which allowed a limited return to a free market was a tactical retreat -- nothing like what the Chinese have done -- and in any case Lenin did not think he would build an isolated socialist society in a backward country like Russia, which would fly in the face of all Marxist theory.

The Russian Revolution was only justified, for Marxists like Lenin, as a stepping-off place for the world revolution, first of all in the advanced countries of Europe.

Imagine von Mises advising the "government" of Haiti ... something like that.