Arthur Seldon, when Editorial Director for the free market Institute of Economic Affairs, forecast long before the event that Russia (the Soviet Union as then was) would go capitalist before the end of the century. As often is the case with one of Britain's unsung intellectuals, his prediction came true albeit a few years earlier than even he expected.In this short but excellent text, Philip Vander Elst begins from the starting point of Ludwig von Mises position in the socialist calculation debate of the 1930s. He demonstrates that the opponents of Mises and also Hayek did not prove their case and explains why their position, mistakenly accepted as the winning arguement, was false.
From there Vander Elst moves to examine the planning processes of the Soviet Union and shows how the planning of such a gargantuan empire is technically impossible given the number of products involved, the number of producers involved and without even taking into account the changes that invariably take place.
This precedes a consideration of the historical record of the USSR and an exposition of how technological transfer between the industrialised west and the USSR has taken place over the years and of how that transfer was diverted by the USSR authorities to be used to try to keep up with western economic progress.
The author concludes that even with the transfer of technolgy to the Soviet Union and the updating of workers skills is insufficient to maintain the technological and economic standards of the Soviet Union, He argues that the planning process is fatally flawed in that it contains an inherent contradiction. Technology transfer can only work if it is set in an environment which allows it to adapt quickly to change ie in a free market or capitalist environment. Ultimately he sees the collapse of the system and the emergence of some form of capitalism.
This is a well written, easily read, closely argued book which was originally published in 1981. A very prescient Research Monograph indeed.
