unimaginably better results than the planning of the USSR because of it alone

:o using technology to further societal progress instead of make line go up? What magicks this could be

the lack of computer utilization in the central planning process.

Red Pen or the Marxist Project has a vid on soviet cybernetics, where they show that the issue boiled down to bureaucratism causing the death of the project.

Thanks for this response! Do you have handy any more info about the specifics of

doing so would risk them losing their quotas and the economic bonuses that came along with achieving them.

? Like any actual numbers? The incentivization aspect of the USSR fascinates me. Here’s a poorly formatted quote from Parenti’s Blackshirts and Reds that talks about that:

Top-down planning stifled initiative throughout the system. Stagnation was evident in the failure of the Soviet industrial establishment to apply the innovations of the scientific-technological revolution of the 1970s and 1980s, including the use of computer technology. Though the Soviets produced many of the world’s best mathematicians, physicists, and other scientists, little of their work found actual application. As Mikhail Gorbachev complained before the 28th Communist Party Congress in 1990, “We can no longer tolerate the managerial system that rejects scientific and technological progress and new technologies, that is committed to cost-ineffectiveness and generates squandering and waste.” It is not enough to denounce ineptitude, one must also try to explain why it persisted despite repeated exhortations from leaders—going as far back as Stalin himself who seethed about timeserving bureaucrats. An explanation for the failure of the managerial system may be found in the system itself, which created disincentives for innovation: 1. Managers were little inclined to pursue technological paths that might lead to their own obsolescence. Many of them were not competent in the new technologies and should have been replaced. 2. Managers received no rewards for taking risks. They maintained their positions regardless of whether innovative technology was developed, as was true of their superiors and central planners. 3. Supplies needed for technological change were not readily available. Since inputs were fixed by the plan and all materials and labor were fully committed, it was difficult to divert resources to innovative production. In addition, experimentation increased the risks of failing to meet one’s quotas. 4. There was no incentive to produce better machines for other enterprises since that brought no rewards to one’s own firm. Quite the contrary, under the pressure to get quantitative results, managers often cut corners on quality. 5. There was a scarcity of replacement parts both for industrial production and for durable-use consumer goods. Because top planners set such artificially low prices for spare parts, it was seldom cost-efficient for factories to produce them. 6. Because producers did not pay real-value prices for raw materials, fuel, and other things, enterprises often used them inefficiently. 7. Productive capacity was under-utilized. Problems of distribution led to excessive unused inventory. Because of irregular shipments, there was a tendency to hoard more than could be put into production, further adding to shortages. 8. Improvements in production would lead only to an increase in one’s production quota. In effect, well-run factories were punished with greater work loads. Poor performing ones were rewarded with lower quotas and state subsidies. Managerial irresponsibility was a problem in agriculture as well as industry. One Vietnamese farm organizer’s comment could describe the situation in most other communist countries: “The painful lesson of [farm] cooperatization was that management was not motivated to succeed or produce.” If anything, farm management was often motivated to provide a poor product. For instance, since state buyers of meat paid attention to quantity rather than quality, collective farmers maximized profits by producing fatter animals. Consumers might not care to eat fatty meat but that was their problem. Only a foolish or saintly farmer would work harder to produce better quality meat for the privilege of getting paid less. As in all countries, bureaucracy tended to become a self-feeding animal. Administrative personnel increased at a faster rate than productive workers. In some enterprises, administrative personnel made up half the full number of workers. A factory with 11,000 production workers might have an administrative staff of 5,000, a considerable burden on productivity. The heavily bureaucratic mode of operation did not allow for critical, self-corrective feedback. In general, there was a paucity of the kind of debate that might have held planners and managers accountable to the public. The fate of the whistleblower was the same in communist countries as in our own. Those who exposed waste, incompetence, and corruption were more likely to run risks than receive rewards.

One more thing, and it’s more about the actual collapse of the USSR:

This led to the USSR losing its socialist characteristics little by little until it finally collapsed and became a neoliberal capitalist hellscape overnight.

My understanding is that most people wanted the USSR to continue, but still it fell. Check out these pics:

So was the actual collapsing part initiated by the leaders and then everyone followed, or how come those 77% that voted “stay” ended up actually USSRexiting?