RE: Hit the road Jack, or how Im hitchhiking between Tunka valley & Ulan-Ude. (Lots of photos!)
Um, Russia had quite a capitalistic culture, as well as really strong traditions of meritocracy (a lot of Russian bourgeoisie was ex serfs that were given permission to follow their ideas, that allowed them to by their own freedom).
Anyhow, as an engineer that worked in the field for about ten years I understand what the limit is. As well as that the scarcity is generally a thing of the past. But the problem is not with scarcity, but with logistics.
The objective of capitalism is... to optimise resource distribution...
Um. If that is the objective of capitalism, then why is there such fields as advertising & marketing? They bring no value other then artificially create demand. Anyhow, here is quite funny and interesting blog about Chaos Marxism. I stumbled upon it while leafing through my discordian library, there was a "Chaos Marxism Primer" there. Please take a peek at it when you have some free time.
Speaking about "top down authority", thing is Russia had a period of communism, and it is actually characterised by bottom up authority. Check out the "soviets". They were low level committees of workers to decide on the best course of action. But at some point they were abolished.
Also NEP has nothing to do with big farms in USSR and elsewhere. It was closed somewhere in late 20s & eraly 30s.
Another thing is that right now the agro-corporations are working at displacing whatever farmers we have.
Another thing I'd like to mention is this guy Stafford Beer, as well something called Cybersyn which is The only viable attempt at planned economics! Thing is the economics in USSR wasn't truly planned. That is run by engineers and flexibly adjusted from the ground up with solutions sought at the bottom and rising if they can't be solved at that level. But the Chileans, they tried it. One if the highlights is:
The system was most useful in October 1972, when about 40,000 striking truck drivers blocked the access streets that converged towards Santiago. According to Gustavo Silva (executive secretary of energy in CORFO), using the system's telex machines, the government was able to guarantee the transport of food into the city with only about 200 trucks driven by strike-breakers, recouping the shortages caused by 40,000 striking truck drivers.
This is beside the point. What we have here is first of all Anarchist experiment. Is it capitalist or communist anarchism the time will tell. But since we all exist in the capitalist societies, it is helping people, and that is important.
I made note to read Rothbard & Mises. I'll write something as soon as that happens. :-)
I have no doubt that you will write after you read Mises, in particular.
My refutation of the 'communist' side of the anarchist philosophy is based on his methodology. As is the refutation of others, like @larkenrose and probably you can coax a discussion out of big figures who have got to the top of the trending feed here, @charlieshrem and @dollarvigilante and @marcstevens.
The thing that refutations of capitalism always conveniently leave out, is that the so-called 'capitalist governments' still operate using the covert and vicious methods of the old monarchies and dictatorships.
As for whether leninism's NEP affected the way that things are done in the former communist blocs, these changes towards corporatised farm ownership are in fact new, and are one of the tactics of globalists, amongst which such as the Hungarian George Soros are using their influence and if you have heard about the recent leak of Open Society Foundation's emails, this guy is actively promoting social disharmony and political smear campaigns and propaganda to advance his agendas.
and by the way, I have been reading a bit of history books lately. I think the Tsars were actually not doing so badly, but the Bolsheviks were so well funded by the western banker elite to perform their coup, that only modern decentralised technology could have stopped their successful destruction of the good things the Tsars did.
I am a Russophile, I have been for a long time. You don't need to convince me that amongst the slavic cultures in the last 150 years there has been many very important thinkers. For me it is a novelty because I was not able to learn about it sooner than I did, being on the other side of the curtain.
I moved to Bulgaria by accident, and it could just as easily have been Ukraine or Russia, were it as easy for me to go there. To me, Bulgaria is the most slavic of the nations that have signed up for the EU, and I have dutch citizenship, so this is mainly why I chose this place. But after coming, the locals have taught me about their history, like for example that it was a Bulgarian and a Macedonian monk who devised the Cyrillic writing system. Bulgaria is the second nation to join the EU who have resisted latinisation, thus on the euro notes you can see евро written in the denomination next to the greek. For me this has been quite an exciting thing, because, personally, I LOVE LOVE кирилица. I love the culture of the east of europe. I would be happy to live out my life in this part of the world, I am a huge fan.