>>No, it would have been _less_ efficient. No one would, I thin, argue otherwise. But _efficiency_ is a stupid criterion for human activity. It constitutes what I call the Trap of the Present -- a trap glorified by Bernstein (The Movement is Everything) and decisively condemned by Luxemburg in her speeches at the a898 Converence of the SPD. Some former members of the SWP like to quote Cannon to the effect that "The art of politics is knowing what to do next," which is just another way of featureing efficiency rather than intelligence in political thinking.
Carrol<< I think my point was that the Manhattan Project was extravagantly wasteful as well as authoritarian. That would be the strong points of my argument. Back to the wheat: in one sense Lysenko was right, and that was the Medelians weren't helping him produce better wheat. One issue was that the non-Mendelian plant breeding tradition of the 19th century (it could accomodate Lamarkism or Mendelism) that so helped the US become the world's 'bread basket' didn't help Russia move wheat northward. It ran its own timeline--when longer term climate took its toll and created the dust bowl and ecological ruin of what was plains and prairie that should never have been put under the plow. Much later the Soviet Union took outside advice on winter wheat and did move it northward, and then had some years of success--only to suffer severe crop failures when there was a series of very cold winters. So the US hits its limits with precipitation and the Soviet Union hit their with the cold. Bring on the wheat purchases of the 1960s. Borlaug combined plant breeding techniques and some Mendelian understanding to create 'miracle wheat' for Mexico, but those techniques didn't produce a miracle wheat for the Soviet Union, regardless of Lysenko's or beliefs (which were pro-plant breeding, negative on most aspects of Mendelian genetics) or Borlaug's beliefs (which were Mendelian training, but traditional plant-breeding in practice). Efficiciency might be a good criterion for agriculture if you have a shortage of labor, a shortage of transport and a shortage of storage--as well as a shortage of fertlizer. You had make the best use of what you got. I see Lysenko more as someone who understood what the peasants were facing every year, which probably made him too skeptical of the science (and the competing schools of thought). This isn't the only clash between practical, real-world farming techniques being reluctant to take on the state-of-the-art science. CJ _______________________________________________ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
