Soviet capitalism

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Soviet capitalism Anonymous 12/04/15 (Fri) 18:23:09 9d68ef No.33257

Ok /his/, what if the soviets in the 80s had decided to do like the chinese and open a series of trade areas where western market economy and foreign investors were allowed?

Would the USSR be like china is today?

>inb4 gobachev tried that

He tried a political aperture combined with very limited market reforms, in this case the soviet political apparatus would be the same but the trade zones would be far more accessible to outside capital than the meager reforms that happened, again extrapolate china's policies

>inb4 soviet inefficiency and shit industries

Again this is a much deeper reform in the economic sense, the problem with perestroika is that it kept dumb redundant industries going despite the deficit because muhjobs and didn't make it that easy for foreign companies to enter the market at all.

I see two problems, first that the soviets had at the time far better quality of life and expectations than the chinese did. Put simply china grew and still grows thanks to unskilled and semi-skilled but really really dirt-cheap workforce. The soviets would've been perhaps cheaper than europeans but most likely not at qualified and still far more expensive than the chinese. Then again there is the possibility that the soviets could have taken the lead in the electronics and IT industry since they had really good engineers and scientists at the time, with the outsourcing wave hitting the western world sooner than it did but with soviets rather than asians(including indians).

The second problem is that unless the soviets could get some really good lobbyists and pro-market types on their side I doubt that the western world would've looked the other way at the fact that it was still their main rival and potential WWIII enemy. The chinese got a lot of traction because the west needed a buffer to keep the soviets busy so they were willing to look the other way at the commie shit, but that would be the case with the soviets. Then again china is now the new USSR in a way and despite all the tensions there are no trade blockades afaik.

Anonymous 12/05/15 (Sat) 22:43:34 292f38 No.33337

I think you really underestimate how extreme the crass for the average Soviet working-class Joe would have been if the Soviet Union would have magically turned to capitalism. I mean, most former parts of the Soviet Union and its vassal states are fucked up enough as they are nowadays, but imagine someone telling you that your workforce suddenly is only worth one tenth of what it used to be.

Another question would have been whether or not the military apparatus and the secret police would have had any of this. Gorbachev already caused a plethora of drama when he went with his Glasnost policies, and I don't want to imagine how much more he would have created unless he gave all the big players equally big industry positions (which would have been unsustainable in the long run).

Anonymous 12/07/15 (Mon) 21:27:29 9d68ef No.33423

>>33337

>his Glasnost policies

Thats exactly the problem anon, he went with a political reform and an economic reform at the same time, you just don't do that. What gorby did was open a 70yr old can of worms that resulted in every conquered nation that was forced into the USSR no longer having to pretend that didn't suck ass.

Even the chinese who were more or less the old nation of china and thus had a far lesser risk of sudden regional nationalism didn't attempt to pull a political reform because they knew all the repressed feeling from the shit mao did would come out and undermine the new regime.

>but imagine someone telling you that your workforce suddenly is only worth one tenth of what it used to be.

That's why I used a copy of the chinese system, the "special economic zones" where areas that went capitalistic while the rest of the country remained the same. The soviet could've done the same with port areas like perm, crimea, vladivostok, leningrad/petersburg and kaliningrad becoming such zones

>he gave all the big players equally big industry positions

Thats what the chinese did, a bunch of big companies in china are owned by communist party members from that era.

Anonymous 12/12/15 (Sat) 01:42:11 11ce52 No.33540

Well, if such sweeping reform was passed, I'd imagine that the old apparatchik ministers and generals who've been clinging to their positions from the 60's throughout The Slump, would try and seize power in a violent coup.

The infighting would destroy any remaining authority of the federal government, and national republics would split off while/after this shit goes down.

:^)

Anonymous 02/01/16 (Mon) 22:00:25 000000 No.34918

>>33257

>Ok /his/, what if the soviets in the 80s had decided to do like the chinese and open a series of trade areas where western market economy and foreign investors were allowed?

It would be not as much "decided to" as "dug themselves too deep into crisis to dig out on their own".

Much like it was in 1920-s. There are two ways this could end:

1) Most of what matters ends up completely whored to teh Yankees. Everyone who isn't doesn't see why they need the Kremlins either.

2) A new uncle Joseph appears! He closes this shop and solves any remaining issues the hard way.

As to the foreign investors, not even theoretically possible. There weren't and aren't any. And could not possibly be - simply because running anything far up North-East without sea access cannot possibly be as profitable as in places like Taiwan and Mexico.

>Would the USSR be like china is today?

Let's review the starting position? USSR was already on the oil trade needle, the Kremlin was already full of professional backstabbers and pretty much everyone else was utterly disgusted and saw the Kremlins from Brezhnev and on basically as jumped up monkeys.

What could possibly allow this cesspool to end in any substantially different way than it did?