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

91–100 of 141 posts

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

#91

Post by maratd »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #28

The little preface says that Wells was critisized for being too 'deferential' toward Stalin (Wells was a socialist, of course). It is actually striking to me... today, one can imagine NO journalist engaging in as _confrontational_ an interview with ANY politician or person in political power. Politicians today don't even expect to talk about ideas, certainly not with journalists for publication, let alone to be chall…

> 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.

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

#92

Post by opo »

firstOrder wrote: post #56
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 interview took part when the economy in the UK and USA had hit the skids, while the USSR's economy was chugging along like gangbusters. In fact, a significant number of English and west European workers moved to the USSR to work since there was a labor shortage. American firms went there as well. Whatever the economists were talking about, the US had just started to change to an incredibly centralized, semi-plan…

>...Under Stalin the USSR's economy was doing great.

How are you defining "great"?

>...Also the price argument is tautological and not falsifiable.

The importance of the price system for efficient resource allocation is pretty much accepted by all mainstream economists to the point of being taught in introductory economics textbooks.

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

#93

Post by stormbrew »

Tycho wrote: post #51
alyxr wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What are these elementary requirements Food, water, housing, clothing, healthcare, education. The list is long, but basic. I'm sure you can come up with the rest. > and aren't they now satisfied? Not for the vast majority of people living in the vast majority of countries. Even in your own, I'm sure imperialist country, huge masses of the population are in want.

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…

> 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 probably don't have access to health care or a decent education.

If their cheap labour weren't present, you wouldn't be able to buy a year's supply of clothing for a day's wages.

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

#94

Post by JoeAltmaier »

stormbrew wrote: post #93
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…

> 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.

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

#95

Post by opo »

wsxcde wrote: post #23
arethuza wrote: post #4

Not one mention of the terrible famine in the Ukraine which had occurred over the two previous years. As Malcolm Muggeridge wrote, initially a supporter of the Soviets until he witnessed what their policies actually meant as a correspondent for the Guardian in Moscow: "The novelty of this particular famine, what made it so diabolical, is that it was the deliberate creation of a bureaucratic mind, ... without any cons…

Honest question, what's the point being made here? Are you attempting to imply that because Stalin presided over a terrible famine his political ideals must be flawed? Churchill and friends presided over the Bengal famine of the 1940s. Six million people died in a famine during which food was exported out of Bengal to aid the British war effort. Or what about the British East India company raising land taxes from 10%…

Your description of the Bengal famine differs in many regards from that given in the wikipedia entry (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengal_famine_of_1943) If you have sources, can you update the wikipedia entry. (Honest question - I know very little of this famine so don't know which is the more accurate description.)

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

#96

Post by lostlogin »

maratd wrote: post #91
jrochkind1 wrote: post #28

The little preface says that Wells was critisized for being too 'deferential' toward Stalin (Wells was a socialist, of course). It is actually striking to me... today, one can imagine NO journalist engaging in as _confrontational_ an interview with ANY politician or person in political power. Politicians today don't even expect to talk about ideas, certainly not with journalists for publication, let alone to be chall…

> 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

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

#97

Post by thaumasiotes »

maratd wrote: post #91
jrochkind1 wrote: post #28

The little preface says that Wells was critisized for being too 'deferential' toward Stalin (Wells was a socialist, of course). It is actually striking to me... today, one can imagine NO journalist engaging in as _confrontational_ an interview with ANY politician or person in political power. Politicians today don't even expect to talk about ideas, certainly not with journalists for publication, let alone to be chall…

> 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.

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.

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

#98

Post by forrealx »

pessimizer wrote: post #43
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…

Your claims are a lot more controversial than you're making them appear. It's intellectually dishonest to present them as settled fact.

Hardly. If you suppress overt pricing system, hidden ones always emerges. Usually, they're based on "favors" and "threats." Of course, they're a lot less effective and far more dangerous since they're dictated by, and subject to, the whims of the socialists.

"Women also submitted to Beria's sexual advances in exchange for the promise of freeing their relatives from the Gulag. In one case, Beria picked up Tatiana Okunevskaya - a well-known Soviet actress - under the pretence of bringing her to perform for the Politburo. Instead he took her to his dacha where he offered to free her father and grandmother from NKVD prison if she submitted. He then raped her telling her 'scream or not, doesn't matter.' Yet Beria already knew her relatives had been executed months earlier. Okunevskaya was arrested shortly afterwards and sentenced to solitary confinement in the Gulag, from which she survived."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavrentiy_Beria

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

#99

Post by e12e »

opo wrote: post #95
wsxcde wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honest question, what's the point being made here? Are you attempting to imply that because Stalin presided over a terrible famine his political ideals must be flawed? Churchill and friends presided over the Bengal famine of the 1940s. Six million people died in a famine during which food was exported out of Bengal to aid the British war effort. Or what about the British East India company raising land taxes from 10%…

Your description of the Bengal famine differs in many regards from that given in the wikipedia entry ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengal_famine_of_1943 ) If you have sources, can you update the wikipedia entry. (Honest question - I know very little of this famine so don't know which is the more accurate description.)

You might find the following to be a valuable starting point:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/legacy/thereporters/soutikbiswas/...

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

#100

Post by lostlogin »

pessimizer wrote: post #40
jrochkind1 wrote: post #28

The little preface says that Wells was critisized for being too 'deferential' toward Stalin (Wells was a socialist, of course). It is actually striking to me... today, one can imagine NO journalist engaging in as _confrontational_ an interview with ANY politician or person in political power. Politicians today don't even expect to talk about ideas, certainly not with journalists for publication, let alone to be chall…

>today, one can imagine NO journalist engaging in as _confrontational_ an interview with ANY politician or person in political power. Just a guess, but are you saying this from an US POV? As an USian, I can't imagine seeing journalists confront or challenge a politician except by accident. Even when those accidents happen, the journalists and civility become the center of a follow-up media frenzy, rather than the sub…

Came here and read your comment immediately after seeing the link I've left. A (perceived?) weak press in the US has a way to fall before it get to the level seen today in Russia. http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/04/20/russian-politician-ord...
Post reply on HN