Therefore, he reasoned (Preobrazhensky), private property and the market should be abolished in the countryside, so that all investible surplus could be squeezed out of it by the government suppressing agricultural prices. Such surplus was then to be shifted to the industrial sector, where the planning authority could make sure that all of it was invested. In the short run, this would suppress living standards, especially for the peasantry, but in the long run it would make everyone better off, because it would maximize investment and therefore the growth potential of the economy.
(...)
However, in 1928, it all changed. Upon becoming the sole dictator, Stalin filched his rivals' ideas and implemented the strategy advocated by Preobrazhensky. He confiscated land from the kulaks, the rich farmers, and brought the entire countryside under state control through collectivization of agriculture. The lands confiscated from the kulaks were turned into state farms (sovkhoz), while small farmers were forced to join cooperatives or collective farms (kolkhoz), with a nominal share ownership.
Stalin did not follow Preobrazhensky's recommendation exactly. Actually, he went rather soft on the countryside and did not squeeze the peasants to the maximum. Instead, he imposed lower-than-subsistence wages on industrial workers, which in turn forced urban women to join the industrial workforce in order to enable their families to survive.
The irony is that, without Stalin adopting Preobrazhensky's strategy, the Soviet Union would not have been able to build the industrial base at such a speed that it was able to repel the Nazi invasion on the Eastern Front in the Second World War. Without the Nazi defeat on the Eastern Front, Western Europe would not have been able to beat the Nazis. Thus, ironically, Western Europeans owe their freedom today to an ultra-left-wing Soviet economist called Preobrazhensky.
Why am I nattering on about some forgotten Russian Marxist economist from nearly a century ago? It is because there is a striking parallel between Stalin's (or rather Preobrazhensky's) strategy and today's pro-rich policies advocated by free-market economists.
(Ha-Joon Chang: 23 Things they don't tell you about capitalism; pages 138-140)
The Great Leap Famine and Amartya Sen (LA HAMBRUNA DEL GRAN SALTO ADELANTE Y AMARTYA SEN)
Flesh and blood, body and soul are gone. All is well, and the little fulcrum of truth that could lift the world is lost. As such, history becomes a collection of legends, of lost and imagined stories, that are baseless and unfounded. From this perspective then, how important it is that we can remember, and possess our own memories that are neither revised nor erased. It is the least amount of certainty and evidence that we can provide when we speak a little truth.
Memories cannot change the world, but it gives us a genuine heart.
If there comes another Great Leap Forward someday and people revert to using backyard furnaces, it can at least convince us that sand will not turn into iron, and one mu [a unit of measurement, approximately 667 sqm] of yield will not weigh 100,000 catties. We will at least know that this is the most basic common sense, and not some miracle of consciousness producing matter, or air creating food. If there’s another Cultural Revolution of some sort, we’ll at least be able to guarantee that we will not land our parents in prison or on the guillotine.
Because of this, I hope that each of you, and all of us who’ve experienced the catastrophic Covid-19 will become people who remember; people who derive memories from memory.
Writing poems after the Auschwitz concentration camp period was indeed barbaric, but it is even more barbaric if we simply choose to forget it in words, in conversations and in memories—it is indeed much more barbaric and horrifying.
If we can’t be a whistle-blower like Li Wenliang, then let us at least be someone who hears that whistle. If we can’t speak out loudly, then let us be whisperers. If we can’t be whisperers, then let us be silent people who have memories. Having experienced the start, onslaught, and spread of Covid-19, let us be the people who silently step aside when the crowd unites to sing a victory song after the battle is won—the people who have graves in their hearts, with memories etched in them; the people who remember and can someday pass on these memories to our future generations.
"THE MAD #FARMER LIBERATION FRONT": WENDELL BERRY IN #GERMANY & #EUROPE (8-01-2024) https://t.co/TasS3DNL3D
— Guillermo Ruiz Zapatero (@ruiz_zapatero) January 8, 2024
La gente debería escuchar al #agricultoralemán@AnthonyLeeLsvD
Contra toda la #sociología y contra todo pronóstico, una "revolución" del #campo en el siglo XXI
https://t.co/qhbVKttIuI
— Guillermo Ruiz Zapatero (@ruiz_zapatero) January 10, 2024
LOS #AGRICULTORES Y LOS #FANTASMAS DE #MAO Y #STALIN
Las élites occidentales buscan hoy, como Mao y Stalin, prescindir de los agricultores, sus economías y conocimiento@JuanviPalleter https://t.co/vM9xe915aa
