>>7522So I might try some of these arguments, since Cockshott Gang is at it again.
I'll tell you why cybernetic planning was scrapped in the USSR - because the plan of the higher ups knew that the same thing was being done globally, and there was no further use for duplicating effort. The new economic plan called for eliminating most of humanity, who were useless to their preferred forms of society. After Khrushchev, all the upper rungs of the Soviet system thought about was how to sell out and get out while the getting was good, and then you had the scientists who wanted to be fed goodies forever and pissed on those who weren't worthy in their view. There's no "planning" that gets around that basic imperative that the classes that mattered followed, that the philosophies given to them insisted was natural and normal. When you uphold an amoral view of history and what we do, you're going to get the expected result. Gee, no one saw ZAT coming, right?
No one is ignorant of what the people want. The people, if they believe speaking of what they want is at all safe and not likely to get them killed, will tell you what they want, and have been willing to say this without too much prodding or effort. The rulers and favored classes never ever want to give the people what they wanted, because what the people wanted was security - which means they would hold a share of wealth, no questions asked or insinuations made. That would be the first condition before anything else is considered. Once the people have what they wanted out of it, they have no reason to regard the state or "society in the abstract" as something worth their efforts. Sure, there is a basic level of decency that allows society to exist, but beyond that, people want security. The Soviet system provided some level of that for enough people, and those who had no security were never going to be allowed that ever again. The Marxist view of humanity was just one of many views among higher society that held humanity in contempt and treated the lower orders accordingly. That's entirely on their own terms, and that spoke to the interests of the middle class generally. Everyone who lived through the USSR, and people who were alive then will tell you this, would tell you that the ideology and "the system" was rife with opportunism, rather than the source of good. The people who boost the system make abu
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