Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

H. G. Wells’ interview with Stalin (1934)

newstatesman.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 141 posts

Re: H. G. Wells’ interview with Stalin (1934)

#121

Post by arve456 »

dang wrote: post #49
vijayboyapati wrote: post #34

The interview is interesting from the perspective of economic history because it reveals the prevailing thinking of the era; namely that capitalism leads to "anarchy" in production. What Stalin and others did not appreciate is that the free market produces a "hidden order", which was understood by many 18th and 19th century economists. Another major error of the era was the belief that central planning of an economy…

This counts as an ideological tangent, and therefore off-topic. There is no meaningful path from this article to Austrian economics. Edit: Perhaps this needs more explanation. "Stalin -> communism -> capitalism -> Austrians" is not a meaningful path, because there's nothing specific about it, nothing to tie it to this particular story. It merely uses the story as a launching pad to jump straight into a perennial ideo…

Yes, there is a specific path. One of the major themes of the interview is how socialism is efficient (and the future)", "capitalism leads to chaos" that may seem foreign to a lot of people now because pretty much no one believes in it anymore. At the time of the interview, a lot of people did[1]. Every econ 101 book (from high school/university) I've had refers to the debate about the economic calculation problem, and they're pretty clear about which side was right. This is not some "perennial ideological debate" anymore, but an interesting and very important historical development.

You messed up here. The relevance of the economic calculation problem should be obvious, and is not more ideological than the top comment of this post.

[1] Wells: "Recently I was dining with the Royal Society, our great English scientific society. The President’s speech was a speech for social planning and scientific control. Thirty years ago, they would not have listened to what I say to them now. Today, the man at the head of the Royal Society holds revolutionary views, and insists on the scientific reorganisation of human society. Your class-war propaganda has not kept pace with these facts. Mentality changes."

Re: H. G. Wells’ interview with Stalin (1934)

#122

Post by thaumasiotes »

mh_yam wrote: post #120
marincounty wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? I guess George Bush was extremely competent? I have found people who bring themselves to power had a rich father. (This will get deleted. Whenever I talk about the lack of Horatio Alger's, especially in the last 30 years--moderators get angry.)

Bush was a very intelligent man contrary to what many believe. http://keithhennessey.com/2013/04/24/smarter/

Your link has a certain amount of spin going on. Bush was a pretty intelligent man; his SAT scores are known. He got a 1206, the equivalent of a 1276 post-1995 but before the inclusion of the writing test. Certainly (well, I hope) not smarter than the average student at Stanford Business School, but, notably, smarter than Kerry was.

I think the more interesting questions here are, "how much power does the US president actually have?" and "how similar is becoming president to overthrowing the existing government and replacing it with yourself?"

Re: H. G. Wells’ interview with Stalin (1934)

#123

Post by thaumasiotes »

rat87 wrote: post #113
thaumasiotes wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In general, people who bring themselves to power tend to be extremely competent. Traditional classical Greek "tyrants" had a deserved reputation for solid, effective rule, but things would quickly fall apart after they died. So whatever else we can say about Stalin, there's every reason to expect that he'd be more than able to talk about ideas.

> In general, people who bring themselves to power tend to be extremely competent. Traditional classical Greek "tyrants" had a deserved reputation for solid, effective rule, but things would quickly fall apart after they died. Millions of famine deaths under Stalin are attributed to some mix of malice and incompetence. I am not saying that he was totally incompetent. He helped usher in a ton of industrialization that…

This is a fairly general issue if you're looking at "competence". Without disagreeing with anything you said, let me ask the following:

Assume you're going to collectivize agriculture. How well do you think that will go? What's the best achievable outcome?

Re: H. G. Wells’ interview with Stalin (1934)

#124

Post by maratd »

lostlogin wrote: post #96
maratd wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's also interesting to be reminded that Stalin was indeed a guy who could talk about ideas. He was an very intelligent man who genuinely believed in what he preached. Which is precisely why millions paid for his idealism with their lives.

And a reason why the west survived the onslaught of the Axis powers -the sheer grit, determination and bloody mindedness of the Russians. I recently discovered that the fall of Berlin cost more Soviet lives than the whole war cost the UK. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties

> And a reason why the west survived the onslaught of the Axis powers

The reason the West survived the Axis onslaught is because Hitler and his cohorts, unlike Stalin, were morons. Only an imbecile would open a second front with a country with which you have a non-aggression pact [1].

This highlights the frailties of intelligence nicely. Stalin was so thoroughly convinced that this was such a profound stupidity, that he refused to believe it even after receiving intelligence reports confirming as much.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molotov%E2%80%93Ribbentrop_Pact

Re: H. G. Wells’ interview with Stalin (1934)

#125

Post by JanezStupar »

firstOrder wrote: post #70
JanezStupar wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you implying that people claiming loss of there families were made up? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor#Soviet_and_Western_de...

It's interesting how throughout the 1930s we see almost no mention of this in the New York Times. Which is what your link is pointing to. Now that armed right-wing bands have staged a coup in the Ukraine, we suddenly are hearing a lot of discussion about this right here, whereas when it was supposedly happening in the early 1930s, we see almost no mention of it in the press.

Because communication channels with the backwater Ukraine are totaly the same in 30's and 10's?

Re: H. G. Wells’ interview with Stalin (1934)

#126

Post by Kliment »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #94
stormbrew wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Clothing is very cheap - for a day's wages you could buy enough clothes to last years. And this is where we come to the fact that poverty has been, to some extent, exported beyond the borders of your country. In the modern world you can't just stop the economic analysis at your border, millions (if not billions) of people around the world take part in your economy and many of them are starving or malnurished and pr…

I'm not sure clothing isn't mostly automated by now. If not, it will be. The larger problem is, Nobody is needed for hand labor any more (or soon that will be the case). What do we do with the uneducated masses then? Educate them? We absolutely don't need a billion more engineers. Then what? I have no answer.

Unfortunately, garment processing is one field where automation is way, way behind other fields due to fundamental technical problems. There has been little to no progress in the past few decades compared to other related fields, notably fabric production (which is almost entirely automated now).

Re: H. G. Wells’ interview with Stalin (1934)

#127

Post by Tycho »

DanBC wrote: post #118
Tycho wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, let's see, I live in the UK. We have running, clean water in every part of the country, I've never heard of any problems relating to people going thirsty or becoming ill from the supply. Likewise with food, I haven't heard of anyone actually starving, and while you could conceivably run out of money to buy food, there's a safety net of food banks. Clothing is very cheap - for a day's wages you could buy enough…

> Which leaves just housing - only 0.1% of the people literally do not have a place to stay, and local authorities are obliged to provide accommodation for those people if they apply. There are also large private charities to address this issue. Local authorities absolutely do not have to provide accommodation for those who apply. Accommodation is provided to people in priority groups. Even people who have no home an…

So you are saying there are 24,000 people sleeping rough in Tower Hamlets each night? I doubt it. That's 10x the official statistic for the entire country (England).

Re: H. G. Wells’ interview with Stalin (1934)

#128

Post by DanBC »

Tycho wrote: post #127
DanBC wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Which leaves just housing - only 0.1% of the people literally do not have a place to stay, and local authorities are obliged to provide accommodation for those people if they apply. There are also large private charities to address this issue. Local authorities absolutely do not have to provide accommodation for those who apply. Accommodation is provided to people in priority groups. Even people who have no home an…

So you are saying there are 24,000 people sleeping rough in Tower Hamlets each night? I doubt it. That's 10x the official statistic for the entire country (England).

No, i am jot saying there are 24,000 rough sleepers. I am saying that even though the rules to get on a local authority housing list are tight there are still 24,000 people on the list for tower hamlets.

Some of these people are homeless but not rough sleepers.

Note that it is possible to be sleeping rough and not meet the criteria for acceptance to the LA housing waiting list.

Re: H. G. Wells’ interview with Stalin (1934)

#129

Post by Tycho »

DanBC wrote: post #128
Tycho wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you are saying there are 24,000 people sleeping rough in Tower Hamlets each night? I doubt it. That's 10x the official statistic for the entire country (England).

No, i am jot saying there are 24,000 rough sleepers. I am saying that even though the rules to get on a local authority housing list are tight there are still 24,000 people on the list for tower hamlets. Some of these people are homeless but not rough sleepers. Note that it is possible to be sleeping rough and not meet the criteria for acceptance to the LA housing waiting list.

Let's cut to the chase. Being 'homeless' because you have to stay with friends or relatives is not the same thing as living in a slum or a cardboard box. The only relevant point here is your last one, which I'm sure is technically true (although I'm not sure how temporary accommodation figures into it) but I doubt it accounts for a very large number of people.

Re: H. G. Wells’ interview with Stalin (1934)

#130

Post by monochr »

maratd wrote: post #124
lostlogin wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And a reason why the west survived the onslaught of the Axis powers -the sheer grit, determination and bloody mindedness of the Russians. I recently discovered that the fall of Berlin cost more Soviet lives than the whole war cost the UK. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties

> And a reason why the west survived the onslaught of the Axis powers The reason the West survived the Axis onslaught is because Hitler and his cohorts, unlike Stalin, were morons. Only an imbecile would open a second front with a country with which you have a non-aggression pact [1]. This highlights the frailties of intelligence nicely. Stalin was so thoroughly convinced that this was such a profound stupidity, that…

I am reminded of Churchill stopping the plan to kill Hitler after they had done pretty much all the hard work apart from killing him because he was afraid someone competent would rise to the top and (rather easily) fight the war to a standstill by letting the generals command their troops.
Post reply on HN