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Bergson and Jasny on the Soviet Economy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 January 2017

J. Miller  and
A. Nove
J. Miller
Affiliation:
Department of Soviet Social and Economic Institutions, University of Glasgow, Scotland
A. Nove
Affiliation:
Department of Soviet Social and Economic Institutions, University of Glasgow, Scotland
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Extract

Western work on the Soviet economy is producing two new academic subjects: the first, which for want of a better term may be called the study of the Soviet “political economy,” includes the second, which may be described as statistical work on the Soviet economy. By “political economy” we mean the study of the structure of the society concerned in its dynamic economic aspect; and by statistical work we mean the collection, testing, aggregation and experimental manipulation of economic statistics (for example, national income studies which exclude consideration of the social relationships involved or the causes and effects within the social structure of producing and distributing that income).

Type
Research Article
Information
American Slavic and East European Review , Volume 13 , Issue 2 , April 1954 , pp. 215 - 226
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies 1954

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References

1 Jasny, Naum, The Soviet Economy during the Flan Era; The Soviet Price System; Soviet Prices of Producers’ Goods (Stanford: Stanford University Press, October, 1951, November, 1951, February, 1952, respectively)Google Scholar. Bergson, Abram, Soviet National Income and Product in 1917 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1953).Google Scholar

2 It is true that Bergson grants that his calculation is “subject to error at every stage,” but the point is not that there may be a margin of error of a few percent, which in this field represents a high standard of accuracy; the entire calculation consists of using percentages which just do not apply to the figures to which Bergson applies them. There are several other examples of this in Bergson's treatment of agricultural statistics. Thus on page 148 he applied the same ratio of gross to net output to the private household plots of peasants as to agriculture as a whole, although neither the assortment of the products nor the technique of production is even remotely comparable.

3 An example of Jasny's insight: it may not occur to a conventional scholar to include “theft from kolkhozy” among the items in the kolkhoz peasants’ income, and certainly it would fail to appear in any statistical records. Yet a moment's free ranging of the mind over the circumstances and conditions of the thirties, and probably more recently too, shows that it cannot be ignored, and if it is in the facts, then it must be in the study, and all considerations of academic respectability must go down before this real standard of academic work. (It should be mentioned in passing that Jasny's statistical analysis in his book on agriculture received remarkable confirmation in Khruščev's recent statement.)

4 Thus, Gerschenkron's introduction to his highly specialized study of Soviet machinery output gains immeasurably from his awareness of more general problems.