
In Soviet Union, Optimization Problem Solves You (2012) - mpweiher
http://crookedtimber.org/2012/05/30/in-soviet-union-optimization-problem-solves-you/
======
dang
Discussed in 2015:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10679582](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10679582)

~~~
baursak
For those more interested in this, there's a follow-up to comments, which
results in this (still on-going?) exchange:

\- The original article (linked by OP):
[http://crookedtimber.org/2012/05/30/in-soviet-union-
optimiza...](http://crookedtimber.org/2012/05/30/in-soviet-union-optimization-
problem-solves-you/)

\- A comment made by Paul Cockshott (a Marxist economist and computer
scientist, most known for "Towards New Socialism" book):
[http://crookedtimber.org/2012/05/30/in-soviet-union-
optimiza...](http://crookedtimber.org/2012/05/30/in-soviet-union-optimization-
problem-solves-you/#comment-416201)

\- Shalizi's response to Cockshott, among his other responses to other
comments:
[http://bactra.org/weblog/919.html](http://bactra.org/weblog/919.html)

\- Cockshott's response to above:
[https://paulcockshott.wordpress.com/2018/06/25/plan-
balancin...](https://paulcockshott.wordpress.com/2018/06/25/plan-balancing-
algorithms-reply-to-some-criticisms/)

------
davidgould
I'll add that the book Red Plenty is entertaining and thought provoking and
quite fun to read. The historical and cultural scenes depicted are interesting
as well however you feel about the case for central planning.

------
js8
It seems to me, contrary to what is often claimed, the problem of central
planned economies (not just state-wide ones, but also company-wide ones) is
too much optimization at the expense of robustness.

In top-down planned systems, there is always somebody who says something like
"we only need this one thing for everybody". For example, in communist
Czechoslovakia, there was only one factory designated to produce certain
electronic chips. But then everybody becomes dependent on that one factory,
and if that one factory slips in schedule, everything that depends on it will
slip.

There is a fundamental trade-off to be made. You can have an efficient system
but it's robustness (ability to withstand a failure or adapt to change) will
be very low.

But the planners are often willing to take risk of being less robust for the
sake of efficiency, because it usually gives you a free promotion in human
status hierarchies.

(If you ever worked in a large company, I am sure you can recognize the above
effect, somebody hyper-optimizing through a mandate, and it has 2nd order
effects in decrease of efficiency.)

Compare that with market economy, which actually has huge overabundance of
production capacity, and multiple producers of almost everything. This is less
efficient but works really well in practice. (However, it has the other kind
of problem; there is no way the free market can recognize that there is too
much companies, without the agony of "malthusian" overcrowding and associated
nasty effects such as more stress for everybody. Things like bullshit jobs are
probably an end result.)

~~~
vbezhenar
The inefficiency of market economy is terrible. Also it leads to production of
bad products where repairability, quality is sacrificed to reduce costs and
increase sells (who would make a good light bulb, which will last years if you
can make a bad light bulb which will last months and sell dozens of them). I'm
living in post-USSR country and a lot of old consumer goods which were "made
in USSR" are an etalon of quality compared to modern goods.

I still think that central planned economy is superior to market economy. USSR
failed because of human factor and probably because computers were not good
enough to produce proper plan on a USSR-scale, but even with those factors it
was able to compete with the rest of the world in science, space, military.
It's quite fascinating.

~~~
ekianjo
> even with those factors it was able to compete with the rest of the world in
> science, space, military.

Competing on a few key sectors is easy when you sacrifice the livelihood of
your whole nation, spoil their property, and send millions to the Gulag to
deter any political opposition.

And the Soviets did not compete in "Science". They competed on military and
space exploration mainly, but most of the other areas of Science were left dry
by the Soviets, or left to crazy experimentation based on pseudo science in
agriculture. Most of the genetic discoveries were done in the US, most of drug
development happened in the US, computer development was way ahead in the US
as well - there is no world where the Soviets were competitive across the
spectrum.

And let's not forget that the US continuously shipped grains to the URSS
because they could not produce enough food for their own people consistently.
You can't do Science if you can't even grasp agriculture.

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1979/10/04/h...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1979/10/04/huge-
grain-sale-to-soviet-union-approved-by-
us/41b3bc1d-8f75-4ed6-98db-77556322a3d9/?utm_term=.58b4394f3c2e)

~~~
coldtea
> _Competing on a few key sectors is easy when you sacrifice the livelihood of
> your whole nation, spoil their property, and send millions to the Gulag to
> deter any political opposition._

Don't forget that Russia (and thus USSR) started of as a poor agrarian nation
to begin with, much behind in industrialization than the US, UK, etc.

The pictures of huge queues aside, USSR was a huge jump in standards of living
and consumption for millions of people compared to before (which even included
a tradition of serfdom).

USSR had also started quite early with non-central planning (NEP was a "free
market" attempt similar to today's China), but ended it to quickly allocate
resources between WWI and WWII to being able to withstand invasion. Quite
prescient it was too.

I'd say USSR would have done much better without Stalin at the helm, without
WWII that had a 30+ million human toll, and with NEP continued (it was stopped
sometime in the late 20s).

> _And the Soviets did not compete in "Science". They competed on military and
> space exploration mainly, but most of the other areas of Science were left
> dry by the Soviets, or left to crazy experimentation based on pseudo science
> in agriculture._

Maybe invest in some science history books? The "crazy experimentation based
on pseudo science in agriculture" (Lysenko I guess) is a known early example
(then again the west had its own share or pseudo science, remember
lobotomies?), but they had tons of important scientists and engineers in all
fields, much beyond "space exploration and military" \-- from Kolmogorov to
Basov, and tons of inventions we depend upon today...

~~~
ekianjo
> The pictures of huge queues aside, USSR was a huge jump in standards of
> living and consumption for millions of people compared to before (which even
> included a tradition of serfdom).

A huge jump? Versus the tsar regime, probably - it was a catastrophe in
itself. But compared to the Western world, GDP growth was miserable and
clearly behind all "modern" countries in comparison.

[https://artir.files.wordpress.com/2016/03/all19501.png?w=640](https://artir.files.wordpress.com/2016/03/all19501.png?w=640)

It was, anyway, clearly going to hit a wall economically.

> About Science

Your argument does not refute anything of what I mentioned. The Soviets were
behind in most disciplines. And their had clear ideological barriers that
prevented them from doing actual Science, in case you forgot:

> Already in 1920s, certain fields of scientific research were labeled
> "bourgeois" and "idealist" by the Communist Party. All research, including
> natural sciences, was to be founded on the philosophy of dialectical
> materialism. Humanities and social sciences were additionally tested for
> strict accordance with historical materialism.[2]

> After World War II, many scientists were forbidden from cooperation with
> foreign researchers. The scientific community of the Soviet Union became
> increasingly closed. In addition to that, the party continued declaring
> various new theories "pseudo-scientific". Genetics, pedology and
> psychotechnics were already banned in 1936 by a special decree of the
> Central Committee. On August 7, 1948, the V.I. Lenin Academy of Agricultural
> Sciences announced that from that point on Lamarckian inheritance, the
> theory that personality traits acquired during life are passed on to
> offspring, would be taught as "the only correct theory". Soviet scientists
> were forced to redact prior work, and even after this ideology, known as
> Lysenkoism, was demonstrated to be false, it took many years for criticism
> of it to become acceptable

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_and_technology_in_the_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_and_technology_in_the_Soviet_Union#Soviet_Nobel_Prize_winners_in_science)

and...

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suppressed_research_in_the_Sov...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suppressed_research_in_the_Soviet_Union)

There is this thing about soviets is that you can't at the same time fight
Truth in all areas of daily life, and at the same time promote the scientific
method. It's just not compatible.

~~~
baursak
> A huge jump? Versus the tsar regime, probably - it was a catastrophe in
> itself. But compared to the Western world, GDP growth was miserable and
> clearly behind all "modern" countries in comparison.

I'm curious, how useful is a GDP measurement in a "communist" country where
there are no monetary transactions to obtain the most important human needs --
housing, education, daycare, leisure, vacations, etc?

~~~
7sidedmarble
You need to learn more about these countries then. Don't just buy the
propaganda.

One of the ways Marxist-Leninism splits from traditional Marxism is Lenin
believed (or realized that) a communist state would need to go through a
transitionary market period with strong regulations and planning. The USSR
never abolished money. That is way way way farther then they managed to get.
There were super markets (not great but I Western standards, but they were
there). They believed an ideal socialist state would take a long time to
achieve.

Here's a link about shopping and money in the USSR:
[https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/...](https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3g2ibc/what_was_shopping_like_in_the_soviet_union_like/#ampf=undefined)

China is basically the same story, but the market was even stronger.

~~~
baursak
I’m aware that there were money and shopping in the USSR, thanks. I’m also
aware that there was no real estate market in the USSR, daycare and education
of all levels was free, vacations weren’t paid for, etc. I’m assuming none of
those are in GDP calculations? That was my question.

------
atemerev
For me, the principal problem of central planning is that you cannot plan for
innovation. Innovation works best in competitive capitalistic environments,
where there is a significant prize awaiting innovators.

~~~
claudiawerner
Haven't there been many innovators and scientists who come from the most
unlikely walks of life, and die penniless? Did Einstein, for instance, not
have to divide his time between work at the patent office and groundbreaking
research?

~~~
v_lisivka
You should compare number of implemented innovations and market disruptions
instead.

------
petermcneeley
Central planning is the response to Von mises argument about economic
calculation in socialist countries.

[https://wiki.mises.org/wiki/Economic_calculation_problem](https://wiki.mises.org/wiki/Economic_calculation_problem)

~~~
jayalpha
The funny thing about Mises is:

He understood socialism and its' problems much better than capitalism. He
never understood capitalism but got stuck with his understanding in something
reflecting a middle-ages barter economy.

~~~
UncleEntity
Citation please?

~~~
jayalpha
No English citation available.

But this English article implies basically the concept:

[https://www.resilience.org/stories/2014-02-12/limits-to-
grow...](https://www.resilience.org/stories/2014-02-12/limits-to-growth-at-
our-doorstep-but-not-recognized/)

"Unfortunately, the problem this appears eventually to lead to, is collapse.
The problem is the connection with debt. Debt can be paid back with interest
to a much greater extent in a growing economy than a contracting economy
because we are effectively borrowing from the future–something that is a lot
easier when tomorrow is assumed to be better than today, compared to when
tomorrow is worse than today."

Capitalism is a debt based economy, requiring to pre-finance industrial
production. In the end, the debt pressure drives the whole process. Something
Mises, who never worked in a company his whole life, fundamentally did not
understand. He thinks you have to "save" to "invest" later.

~~~
UncleEntity
> He thinks you have to "save" to "invest" later.

Because that's the truth.

You can't just produce "things" out of thin air so the idea that you can
finance future production without (someone, somewhere) deferring present
consumption is not really valid. All interest is is an incentive for people to
defer present consumption for a higher level of future consumption.

Unless, of course, you just print up a bunch of money and then you aren't
exactly "borrowing from the future" but taking from the current holders of the
currency through lower future consumption due to inflationary devaluation of
the currency [--edit--] and also taking from the current holders of the
currency by artificially driving up current prices.

And that Robinson Crusoe bloke stuck on an island...

~~~
jayalpha
> > He thinks you have to "save" to "invest" later.

> Because that's the truth.

Well, start telling this VW, BASF, Dow Chemical, Ford and the whole bunch the
next time they take a billion dollar loan in expectation that it will pay off.
Even Intel has 30 Billion long term debt.

> You can't just produce "things" out of thin air so the > idea that you can
> finance future production without > (someone, somewhere) deferring present
> consumption is not > really valid.

Exactly this is what capitalism is about. The the pressure created by debt, is
exactly what makes capitalism very dynamic.

> Unless, of course, you just print up a bunch of money and

The idea that "only gold is money" was stupid, is stupid and always will be
stupid. Even with gold back money you would be able to take loans. The only
thing you would achieve is lower economic growth.

> And that Robinson Crusoe bloke stuck on an island...

THe Robinson Crusoe guy is perfectly a guy that Mises is describing. But he is
closer to a middle ages barter economy than to anything called capitalism.

This touches some things:

"In simplest terms, our problem is that we as a people are no longer getting
richer. Instead, we are getting poorer, as evidenced by the difficulty young
people are now having getting good-paying jobs. As we get poorer, it becomes
harder and harder to pay debt back with interest. It is the collision of the
lack of economic growth in the real economy with the need for economic growth
from the debt system that can be expected to lead to collapse."
[https://www.resilience.org/stories/2014-02-12/limits-to-
grow...](https://www.resilience.org/stories/2014-02-12/limits-to-growth-at-
our-doorstep-but-not-recognized/)

~~~
UncleEntity
Wait, you literally think Mises says that loans don't exist?

You know he wrote whole books on the subject of modern banking and in none of
them did he claim "only gold is money", right?

So, yes, citation please?

~~~
jayalpha
He wobbles of "saving" and "investing". Sitting on a desk, having worked his
whole live beyond a desk and never for a free market enterprise, he tries to
understand capitalism.

Do you remember his quote: "

“Credit expansion can bring about a temporary boom. But such a fictitious
prosperity must end in a general depression of trade, a slump.” — Ludwig von
Mises

Wow. Look who is talking. A master or an idiot? You never know. Out of
curiosity, can you show me an economic boom that does NOT come with a credit
expansion? The sentence is a tautology. Meaningless. "The Banana is big but
it's shell is bigger". Wow.

~~~
UncleEntity
Uh, huh...

What he is talking about is the boom-bust cycle and not whatever you're
claiming which, honestly, I have no clue.

~~~
jayalpha
There are no real insights by Mises, except an extraordinary well description
of a free market, middle ages, barter economy.

~~~
UncleEntity
That and a devastating attack against socialism (from which they never
recovered) which is the very reason you felt the need to engage in _ad
hominem_ attacks...

But, alas, if had ever actually read anything he wrote you would see his
insights don't really apply to a barter economy at all -- unless they want to
do something crazy and solve the coincidence of wants problem to evolve into
an actual modern economy.

------
rileyphone
What the author fails to address is the most recent research into the planned
economy that Towards a New Socialism advocates. It advocates for an economy
that is still socialist in nature (in seeking to eradicate the commodity form)
while still aggregating opinion into production as market forces do. This is
accomplished by using a labor token while using market forces to influence
prices and planning. Sure, it can't be optimised perfectly, but neither can
our current one, and that is never the goal of a socialist economy anyways.

------
SII_of_SII
One thing I got out of the article is that an alternate-reality communist
economy can be more efficient than a capitalist economy, given a good
objective function. The way to do it is to simulate a market economy on your
central-planning computer: Simulate a network where each node models a
consumer or supply chain unit. This runs the same computation as a market
economy, but propagates price signals much faster. It's faster and cheaper to
do an RDMA access than to wander around a grocery store comparing the price of
bread to rice.

The trouble is in formulating a good objective function. Perhaps you can solve
the problem of consumers expressing preferences that Cosma discusses in "The
Given Assortment, and Planner's Preferences" by imitating a market economy.
Each person receives a fixed salary which they spend at state stores. Since
this is how the computation performed by a market inputs consumer preferences,
this is the input used by the central computer in its market simulation. But
the simulation reaches equilibrium much faster than the real market and its
objective function is more fair than a real market (since everyone gets the
same salary).

I suppose there are bigger problems with formulating the objective function
than consumer preferences. Creative kinds of economic activity are important
and leaders that want to hold control may not allow you to formulate the
objective even if you could.

~~~
nine_k
Second-order effects kill it:
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_calculation_problem](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_calculation_problem)
At least, this has always occurred in the reality we have got. Visit Venezuela
for the latest example.

------
Animats
He sets up his own straw man, and demolishes it. Big deal.

If you really had to solve this problem, you'd need to divide it into sub-
areas, like "clothing" and "heavy machine tools", and solve it hierarchically.
The solution will be somewhat suboptimal but should come close.

The trouble with a capitalist model is that it's a huge collection of
feedbacks and delays, so it oscillates around some optimum. That's a basic
result from control theory. Delay causes instability.

The USSR's Gosplan had a monthly reporting cycle and a yearly planning cycle.
That was pre-Internet and too slow to work. WalMart has a daily reporting
cycle (probably faster now) and a weekly planning cycle, and runs a consumer
economy bigger than the USSRs.

Not that industrial optimization is the controlling issue today. That's a
problem for when you don't have enough manufacturing capacity. We're past
that.

~~~
tvanantwerp
I don't think the planning in the USSR and Walmart are remotely comparable,
and not just in terms of timeliness. A central planner is deciding who needs
what, how much, when, and where. But Walmart is _discovering_ who needs what,
how much, when, and where. They aren't decided well in advance what people
need; they are working to understand what people want and how to get it to
them. How much you can sell and at what prices drive their forward-looking
decisions around what people value. Without those signals, a central planner
can't really know who values what. It's just guesswork.

~~~
claudiawerner
Must it be guesswork? Most of us have devices (computers and mobile phones)
that could very easily be used to register demand for various products and to
show what's available. In what way precisely does Walmart work to understand
what people want which a planned economy could not possibly?

~~~
tvanantwerp
Prices communicate not just demand in the sense of "I want it" but also "I
want it approximately this badly and not more than that". With no price signal
to indicate the extent of a demand, it's up to the whim of the planner to
decide who needs good X the most. Pressing an "I want this" button in an app
doesn't at all distinguish between "I'd like to have it if it's free, but it's
not essential" and "if I don't get this right now, my life is over". Sure, you
could try to engineer in levels of demand (nobody ever abused the "urgent"
button in email systems, right?), but what you'd ultimately end up doing to
get an accurate estimate of what trade-offs people prefer across different
demands for goods is that you'd have reinvented prices.

------
ASipos
Also, Scott Alexander on Red Plenty:

[http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/24/book-review-red-
plenty/](http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/24/book-review-red-plenty/)

~~~
7sidedmarble
Stopped reading at:

>In certain cases, Russians were very well-incentivized by things like “We
will kill you unless you meet the production target”.

Come on. Outside of POWs during the war (and that's not what were talking
about) no factory workers are getting dragged out back and shot. The story of
collectivization on farms is more complicated but it still didn't involve on
the spot murder.

It's like people watched that movie where the Russians are at stalingrad, and
the commisar gives every two men a rifle and shouts "first man shoots the
rifle, if the first man dies, the second man picks up and shoots the rifle."
\-- And then everyone collectively thought "oh, not only is this true but this
absolves me of any responsibility to actually learn about the USSR."

Read some books, talk to some older Russians. There was some extremely dark
times in the history of the USSR. But for a lot of it's history, it was just a
normal western-ish country. It wasn't like war time Nazi Germany 24/7\. You
weren't getting shot for not making enough hinges one day.

~~~
Fins
Umm, have you ever lived in USSR? Being born in the 80's doesn't count either.

There absolutely were times when being a few minutes late to work (not during
the war either) would get you a long prison sentence at the very least.

Also, it never were "a normal western-sh country". Russia hasn't been, and
USSR in toto had no reasons to be either.

Works of marxist "economists" shouldn't even be dignified with a discussion,
but is is greatly concerning that there is such a thing as whitewashing of the
soviet regime, and that it is considered to be far more acceptable that
whitewashing nazis.

------
unknownkadath
So if P=NP, Communism will triumph?

~~~
julienreszka
No. There will be a definite proof of it's failure.

------
peisistratos
In the three decades Stalin was general secretary, the Soviet Union had
enormous economic growth. Russia went from being a backward peasant country
ruled by a czar, to being the first country to send a satellite to space. Its
success and its example were what was feared. While unemployment was 25% in
the US in 1933, the USSR was charging forward, and US and European firms and
workers were going there to work.

On Stalin's death, Khrushchev announced economic growth was no longer a
priority, and other such policies, and stagnation set in.

China also had enormous economic development under the communist party from
1949 to 1978, and from 1978 to now (although the party took a right turn under
Deng Xiaoping in 1978, to where some question if China was socialist after
then).

The average inflation-adjusted hourly wage in the US is below what it was 45
years ago, leading to anti free trade Trump and Bernie Sanders and Alexandria
Ocasio Cortez. Also Corbyn, Syriza, Brexit, ping-pong from Lula to Bolsonaro,
TARP bank bailouts plus the carbon externalities destroying the planet.

Of course, I don't think a traditional Marxist worldwide communist revolution
of factory workers led by Leninist parties will happen.

The present economic system might be eradicated though. It has not been all
that long since European kings were having their heads chopped off or were
being bayoneted to death in basements.

~~~
x220
The USSR wasn't charging forward. It was charging into starvation, gulags, and
genocide.

~~~
StudentStuff
The USSR accomplished quite a bit coming from a nation of malnourished serfs
that were formerly used as cannon fodder.

Breaking up the existing communes and murdering the Soviets (then using their
name) were terrible things, but its impressive that a landlocked country with
minimal infrastructure and an uneducated populace could fight off Germany and
liberate most of Northern Europe, push the bounds of science, and be a world
power for a number of decades despite having half the populace of the other
world power of that era.

~~~
x220
>liberate most of Northern Europe

You mean liberate them just to enslave them again?

You list many achievements of the USSR that are certainly impressive, I just
don't think they matter on the whole to the people who lived (and starved to
death and were murdered) in the USSR.

~~~
StudentStuff
Sounds like you seek to ignore & bury history. This is a path that leads to
few positive outcomes.

------
averros
What von Mises has proven logically in 1920 (and the practical experience has
confirmed it later over the course of 20th century - repeatedly, dozens of
times, in different countries, with different cultures) is that a centrally
planned (i.e. socialist) economy ALWAYS SELF-DESTRUCTS.

It has nothing to do with computers and collection of information and planning
algorithms. The issue (completely misunderstood by the author of the article
discussed) is that the very fact of coercing people destroys information about
their subjective utility functions which could only be gleaned by observing
FREE exchange. No amount of fancy software or social engineering will fix it.
Garbage in - garbage out.

Socialism is a very bad idea. No ifs and no buts about it. And, yes, Marx was
a kook. His entire economic and social theory is a humongous monument to the
principle of logical explosion: if you start with nonsense (labor theory of
value), you end up being able to derive anything from it. (The fact that labor
theory of value is nonsense is easily established by observing "value" created
by someone digging a hole and filling it in - any number of times, so as to
put in arbitrarily large amount of labor).

~~~
claudiawerner
Not to speak for or against Marx's law of value,

>The fact that labor theory of value is nonsense is easily established by
observing "value" created by someone digging a hole and filling it in - any
number of times, so as to put in arbitrarily large amount of labor

Is rubbish. In fact, if you read less than the first chapter of Capital Vol.
1, Marx specifically rebuts this argument on the third page, in which he
restricts himself to 'socially useful' labour performed at the rate necessary
to complete it. Not even anti-Marxists use this argument any more because it
simply doesn't hold for Marx's theory, nor even Smith and Ricardo's. Mises
himself doesn't use this argument.

~~~
averros
Of course, anyone who is friends with logic will immediately spot that
"socially useful" cannot be defined in any way which does not depend on
(drumroll) value to the people.

In other words, all Marx said is that value is created when labor creates
value. Duh. Circular reasoning of this sort is a hallmark of kookery, and it
takes a rather brainwashed mind (or absence thereof) to miss this obvious
logical fallacy.

There are other ways to demonstrate the idiocy of the labor theory of value:
for example by constructing a realistic scenario when clearly "socially
useful" labor (for example, work at a factory) destroys value of a "free for
all" resource which wasn't created by labor at all - i.e. by polluting the
air). Incidentally, Soviet Union was full of grossly polluting factories.

I think a personal anecdote is in order: unlike Western Marx fanboys I happen
to be formally educated in Marxism, at the top university in the USSR, no
less, (this was mandatory, I wouldn't poison my mind with that junk
willingly). The professor reading the course of Political Economy was the
well-known Marxist/Leninist textbook author and certainly was quite smart. So
after his first or second lecture (I don't remember exactly which, it was 30
years ago), I asked him to clarify exactly the point above: how to define
which labor is useful and which it is not. He called me into his office and
told me in no uncertain terms to never ask questions like that again if I
wanted to stay out of trouble (didn't help), and that the best answer was
"whatever Party directs us to work on". This pretty much clarified everything
regarding Marxism to me, and I took his advice to heart, so I still have my
transcript from MSU with "with distinction" ("отлично") marks for
Marxist/Leninist Philosophy, Political Economy, and Scientific Communism. I
guess I should thank him for a sound advice on surviving cult indoctrination.

~~~
claudiawerner
You are equivocating on 'value'; firstly, the law of value only applies to
goods which are commodities (complexes of 'use value' and 'exchange value') -
the 'use value' would be there even if the good were not traded, and it is
usually independent of the exchange value. In various pre-capitalist
societies, there were many such goods produced (but, as you can expect,
digging a hole might have use value to the person doing it, but not exchange
value which is dependent on society in general). Secondly, the law of value
only applies to goods which can be freely reprocuded, so it has difficulty
with patents and copyrights in modern society, so I don't claim that the law
of value 'works' for all categories of products in today's society.

Either way, you shouldn't act as though you and your professor uncovered some
kind of devastating flaw in Marxism, even at the time; it takes a lot of
hubris to accuse modern political economists and Marxists of being brainwashed
to such a basic 'logical fallacy'.

The law of value works such that a person digging a hole in the ground
obviously isn't producing exchange value, thus the person digging a hole won't
continue to do so, in the long run in society, the value of commodities is
quickly realized.

Here's a good page on the 'mud pie' (hole digging) argument:
[https://libcom.org/library/law-value-3-das-
mudpie](https://libcom.org/library/law-value-3-das-mudpie)

