| I agree with you that this is not primarily a logistics but really a social problem. I think the section on the Soviet Union in the article addresses specifically that point. > The proponents of the economic calculation problem now tell us that the proof of the failure of socialism lies in the collapse of the USSR. However, what failed in the USSR was not the planned economy, but the lack of democracy. > The economy was not democratically planned by the workers, but by a state bureaucracy. The Stalinist bureaucracy usurped the democratic power of the workers and peasants who had led the 1917 October Revolution and expropriated the capitalists from power. The misery and scarcity created by the Civil War and the invasion of 21 imperialist countries, including Canada, was the manure on which the bureaucracy grew like a weed. > In the 1920s and 1930s, the planned economy allowed the USSR to move out of its semi-feudal conditions and developed the means of production sufficiently to defeat the Nazis and become the second world power. But from the 1960s onwards, production became more complex, and the bureaucracy gradually became unable to calculate all the information to plan production properly. > Indeed, how could it be possible that a few hundred civil servants in Moscow could plan an economy of hundreds of millions of people? The bureaucrats wanted to meet their production quotas, even if it meant cutting back on product quality and lying about the economic information in their departments. > What authoritarianism and lack of democracy in planning does is to degrade economic information and undermine planning. This is what explains why the USSR has entered into economic stagnation. Bureaucrats then brutally re-established capitalism in the USSR in 1991, leading to shortages, mass unemployment, the return of prostitution, and more. > As Trotsky said, “the planned economy needs democracy as the human body needs oxygen.” An example of what that democracy could look like is presented in the next secion as well. > There are several ways of imagining the democratic mechanisms under socialism. It will be up to the workers themselves to decide them. But, for example, we could have general assemblies in the workplace, so that the workers can decide together how to organize that workplace. We could elect workplace management committees, recallable at any time and accountable to the workers. Workplace and neighbourhood assemblies could send delegates to city and regional committees, to a national congress, and eventually a world congress, which would be responsible for coordinating the entire supply chains from production to distribution. Scientists, technicians and engineers could advise the assemblies and committees in their decision-making. > State-of-the-art computers and algorithms from nationalized Amazon would be used to assess changes in demand. Information would be sent directly to workers in the collectivized factories so that they could coordinate storage in warehouses and distribution centres. These computers will be able to calculate production costs and the number of hours of work that go into the production of each commodity. And this will help elected committees to plan product prices based on the needs of the population. |