The Bolshevik centennial

Today is pretty much the Russian Revolution centennial. Michael Roberts has a post, "The Russian revolution: some economic notes" which shows the power of central planning for extensional growth, but not for high-productivity development:

"The success of the Soviet extensive growth model in the 1950s and 1960s was undeniable. But a phase of economic stagnation began in the 1970s.  The attempt to move to a new regime of intensive accumulation, to one based on high productivity growth failed."

He finishes his post with:

".. for a compelling arguments on the feasibility of a planned economy delivering the needs of people, see Cottrell and Cockshott’s paper, Socialist planning after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

I read the paper (hope springs eternal!) only to find yet another technocratic solution to the dilemmas of central planning using high-powered computers and linear programming.

The Soviets never used these techniques because optimal allocation of resources was incompatible with bureaucratic self-interest. Each factory tried to understate its own capabilities while securing the largest possible inventory of stocks, 'just in case'.

Gaming The Plan was a matter of survival.

If you start from the (evolutionary: kin-selection, reciprocal-altruism*) fact that people in general look out for their own interests, and those of their families and friends, and will not self-sacrifice for the abstract interests of the Party or the Universal Proletariat, then you'll get a better handle on why central planning never seems to quite get things right.

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* But see Ultrasociety and "Culture-gene coevolution, large-scale cooperation and the shaping of human social psychology". Things have moved on since the early work of Hamilton and Trivers.