The Soviet experiment with Pure Communism*
Introduction
In 1957, forty years after the Russian revolution, Michael Polanyi (HE IS THE RIGHT WING NEO CON BROTHER OF KARL POLANYI)  summarized
the state of Soviet studies by pointing out that despite, or because of the fact
that “volume upon volume of excellent scholarship [was] rapidly accumulating
on the history of the Russian Revolution … The Revolution [was] about to be
quietly enshrined under a pyramid of monographs.” This condition continues
to persist even after seventy years of reflection upon one of the most fateful
events in political–economic history. Despite heroic efforts by Paul Craig
Roberts and Laszlo Szamuely  to lift the Revolution from underneath the debris
of wood pulp, confusion still permeates historical discussion of the meaning of
the Soviet experience with Communism.4 “We have forgotten,” as Polyanyi
wrote, “what the Russian Revolution was about: that it set out to establish a
money-less industrial system, free from the chaotic and sordid automation of
the market and directed instead scientifically by one single comprehensive
plan.”5
The grand debate over the Soviet experience from 1918 to 1921 revolves
around whether the Bolsheviks followed policies that were ideological in origin
or were forced upon them by the necessity of civil war. If Bolshevik economics
was ideological, then Marxian socialism must confront the failure of its utopia
to achieve results that are even humane, let alone superior to capitalism. If it
was spawned by an emergency, then the Soviet experience from 1918 to 1921
does not provide any lesson for the economic assessment of socialism. (Some
recent authors wish to argue that the policies now known as “War Communism”
were produced by both ideology and emergency, and, as a result, they
fundamentally misunderstand the meaning of the Soviet experience with
socialism.)6 In order to evaluate these opposing interpretations, let me first lay
out points of agreement and conflict among those interpreters of the Soviet
experience with socialism who have established the two poles of the grand
debate......

SEE  https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/search?q=WAR+COMMUNISM

SEE  https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/search?q=SOVIET+UNION

SEE  https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/search?q=STATE+CAPITALISM 

SEE  https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/search?q=RUSSIAN+REVOLUTION

SEE  https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/search?q=RUSSIA 

SEE  https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/search?q=COMMUNISM