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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   2261 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for July 28, 2024

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

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Are modern military logistics really an example of a successful socialist system in action, as some left-wing individuals on Twitter like to argue?

You can look up "war communism", Trotsky had basically that exist idea and it failed miserably.

Military logistics are not an example of socialism. They are an example of central planning.

You can have capitalist central planning- dirigism, for instance.

It all depends on what you want your 'system' to accomplish. Militaries have reasonably well-defined goals, to "kill people and break stuff". They do a great job at that, and an okay-ish job at managing the logistics to support said goals. Their primary concern in the logistics effort is not actually efficiency; it's resiliency to adversary action. Efficiency is a secondary goal, which can become more of a focus against an adversary that can't suitably contest it (for example, Iraq was unable to significantly contest US logistics to build up theater forces in the run up to either Gulf War). Even then, it's not entirely clear what the measures of efficiency are/were.

If you include the procurement process as part of the entire system, things are even more muddy. Obviously, it doesn't help that any such procurement is also pointedly subject to adversarial pressures (in other words, adversaries are always trying to invest in ways specifically to make your investment worthless), but even not considering the adversarial piece, it's still kind of a mess. One of the best tables I've ever seen was in a document that was doing a retrospective on the air war in Gulf War I. It had a list of 'newfangled' weapons systems in one column, another column with quotes from the manufacturer's documentation about how it was designed to perform (for example, "all-weather, night, ..."), and then a third column detailing how it actually performed. It was pretty eye-opening for why military brass has a love/hate relationship with procurement; they want the shiny new stuff with the fancy capabilities, but they also don't really trust that all that shiny new stuff is actually going to work in practice.

But all of that is a bit of an aside, because fundamentally, what we're looking for out of an economic system rather than a military one is a system that provides the goods/services that general consumers want. One might still question whether that's actually what we want, but that's the typical goal. One example of tensions here is the question of whether what people happen to want actually trades off with some 'higher' goal. In the military space, an example would be, "Yes, we know that people (soldiers) seem to want one thing, but this other thing will definitely, absolutely be better at winning the war," with a simple example being something like the [CONTROVERSY ALERT, but Sagan, why is this still that much of a controversy...] the A-10. It's a thing where there are tons of people who say they want it, but TPTB are basically stepping in and saying, "No. You may want it, but we are really really sure that the way to actually win the damn war is to not give you what you want." But you can already see the fundamental tension here between needing to have a set of TPTB who are capable of making such a determination, free enough of all sorts of shitty political/other influences that result in actually terrible imposed decision-making.

Most free-marketers will say that this tension is even worse for a general economic system, and that we simply have no way of appointing a group of TPTB who can actually make those value judgments for society in a neutral, dispassionate way to optimize some relatively well-defined goal, because there are extreme difficulties in every step of that process. This challenge is considered an unfortunately mostly-unavoidable problem for the military, but a death knell for socialist economics, mostly because we have an alternative that completely avoids that problem. Then, in my mind, it really comes down to how much you personally believe that there actually is one or more very well-defined, very discrete problems in the economic system that admit a public choice-constrained solution to come in and declare, "No. You may want it, but we are really really sure that the way to actually accomplish [insert some description of some hopefully-somewhat-agreed-upon value here] is to do this instead."

wait I want to read 4 more paragraphs on the A-10!

Yes, centrally planned militaries have outcompeted all other types of military organisation. The market can outcompete the state on many things but the monopoly on violence and it's successful preservation and expansion are, at least for now, domains in which state organisation dominates. Volunteer militias and private military companies exist and have had victories against state-led armies in modern times but this hasn't lead to any long-term changes in the meta (even when volunteer militias win they usually just go on to establish a traditional military).

If you accept this view then those left-wing individuals have just gotten you to concede the minarchist position. State-controlled industry, dissolution of property rights etc are hills the socialists still have to climb and the historical record is very against them here.

Throughout history, militaries have been noted for their incredible waste and inefficiency.

In some rare cases, they can operate effectively. This is almost always during wartime – either because soldiers are willing to die for the cause or because they will be killed for disobedience. (Presumably, this gives the wartime military a significant advantage over Walmart).

Socialist countries have noticed this "one weird trick", which is why they try to frame the day-to-day business of government in terms of war.

In that militaries and socialist countries exercise absolute and capricious control of the lives of their subjects, they are quite similar, and often capable of amazing (though brief) feats of human achievement.

In some rare cases, they can operate effectively. This is almost always during wartime – either because soldiers are willing to die for the cause or because they will be killed for disobedience. (Presumably, this gives the wartime military a significant advantage over Walmart).

Well, I'd also note that for much of history, armies at wartime could be somewhat more self-funding that at present, thanks to looting and plundering — indeed, when it came to sacking cities, they could even be profitable endeavors.

Which gets to a counter-argument: the vast majority of modern military "soldiers" — those who aren't the "tip of the spear" actual fighting men — are performing roles that, up until sometime in the mid 19th century at the earliest, would be considered "camp followers." I note also how often generals and commanders would end up supplying their troops out of their own pockets — see George Washington petitioning the Continental Congress for reimbursement of various expenses of his troops. Add in things like buying and selling commissions.

So, is it really necessary that the camp followers of the past now be given the same uniform, the same honors, et cetera, as the actual warriors? (Or does this constitute a kind of "stolen valor" intended to lower the status of fighting men?) Could a modern army be run on an updated version of 18th Century "capitalist" logistics, rather than what we have now? Or is there something about the nature of modern combat that means military supply chains require this sort of "socialist" central planning to be effective?

Or is there something about the nature of modern combat that means military supply chains require this sort of "socialist" central planning to be effective?

Yes. I'll try to keep this short because I'm meeting a friend in fifteen minutes so I've got to go fast. But with the advent of heavy artillery, planes, tracked vehicles, trucks, etc. the fighting strength of armies have switched rather decisively from individual armed men to the equipment they operate. Because this heavy equipment requires so much fuel, ammunition, maintenance, etc. to operate, this means that the center of gravity (in the Clausewitzian sense) of any army of the 20th or 21st century is in its administrative "rear" and the logistical operations they run. An army separated from its source of supply ceases to become an effective fighting force and has to devote most of its time to somehow surviving, if it can.

This is why the operational and strategic doctrines that emerged during WWII and after focused on creating ways for the mobile forces of your army to target these rear elements. The Soviet or German plan for any great offensive was to figure out the best way to achieve this: usually by creating some kind of breakthrough on a narrow front that your tank/mobile infantry divisions can exploit to get hundreds of kilometres into the enemy rear and target the really important things: railway junctions, bridges, communication nodes, ammo depots, repair yards, slaughterhouses, granaries, oil dumps, etc.

WWII is the period I'm most familiar with but usually armies operated even then with much more rear personnel than those at the front. The Western Allies had a ratio generally of 1:6 frontline infantry/armour:rest of personnel. The Commonwealth forces generally had more artillerymen in a corps than infantry. Germans and Soviets ran more infantry-heavy because they were less mechanized (especially the Germans).

You don't read many memoirs from cooks or artillerymen or tank repairmen because they didn't see much combat, at least among the western Allies. In the more wider-open Eastern Front things were more fluid and the Germans were particularly enthusiastic about pressing administrative personnel and other rear-area types into infantry roles because of desperate manpower shortages. In any case in the mass encirclements that characterized the big offensives in the East it didn't matter what your job was, your life was on the line and everyone had to fight.

The Commonwealth forces generally had more artillerymen in a corps than infantry.

Really? Isn't the rule that infantrymen are always the most numerous? Even if you include AA and AT...

More numerous than any other individual combat arm? Generally, often yes. But in modern professional armies they don't tend to approach a majority. How things might actually play out for conscription-based armies which train most conscripts as light infantry remains to be seen though I suppose.

For the UK (and the Commonwealth countries which largely followed their military organization during WWII) there were two very important deciding factors which relegated infantry to a lesser size than the artillery. Most importantly was the scale of losses during WWI: politically, demographically, economically, whatever lens you looked through they were so high they could not be repeated. That inevitably meant a focus on greater firepower and heavy weapons rather than having infantry carry the burden.

Less importantly aside from the brief fracas in France the initial major land fighting the Brits did was in North Africa when the Germans were roughly on par with the in the air and the desert allowed for fluid maneuvers. This meant more losses to rear-area personnel and so they carried more men and got a higher proportion of trained replacements. This ended up adversely affecting British and Canadian forces in Europe because the decline of German air power and operational maneuver greatly reduced the risk to non-infantry combat arms. There was a persistent shortage of infantrymen throughout 1944 and 1945.

It is important to note that this wasn't some crazy or ineffective idea: artillery was in WWII, like all other modern wars, the main killing power on the battlefield. Certainly if you read German memoirs they are constantly bitter about the total dominance of Western Allied artillery (and air power). In Normandy there was frequent complaining about it being a "rich man's war" because of how badly the Germans were being outshot. Allied artillery command and control was also significantly more sophisticated and was a huge advantage.

Yes in the sense that if you have a shit ton of cheap labor just about any shortfall in efficiency can be made up for in raw manpower.

Notice a few things about the military, and how it is odd for socialista to laude it:

  1. The military is very strictly hierarchical. Whereas a lot of socialist propaganda rails against hierarchies.
  2. Being a grunt in the military sucks. Most military personnel are grunts. Thus life in the military generally sucks. Thus life in socialism would generally suck.
  3. It is not a self sufficient entity. It is reliant on resources from a supporting government. Resources in the form of taxes, manpower, and technology. This suggests socialism is not self sustainable.

Your number 3 is the one that most closely addresses the "socialista" argument, which is generally along the line of 'you say market mechanisms are so great for distributing goods and services among people, but that's not what the military uses for determining which supplies go to which troops where, is it? No, they use the kind of central planning — "to each according to his need" — that you capitalist boot-lickers always deride as inferior and unworkable. Where's your capitalist army, then, if markets are so much better?"

How about a corporation as an ideal Socialist organization?

It has strong central planning (by the CEO), often with literal five-year plans. Good managers will distribute tasks based on each worker's ability, and assign resources according their needs.

Where are the capitalist corporations, you ask? They took one look at the downfall of Sears, and decided that Socialism is best.

There's quite a few differences you're glossing over.

Companies can fail and be born, and there are thousands of them at any one time. Plus they can get information from the price system that central state planners cannot. They also pay people according to negotiation, rather than according to needs.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1468-0335.1937.tb00002.x

Coase's The Nature of the Firm is probably the finest exploration of why firms exist. Basically it costs a lot of money to come to an agreement, and agents within the firm can save a lot of the cost of those agreements. So optimal firm size varies with how costly those agreements are to reach.

That's what annoys me so much about Sci-Fi that dramatically changes the cost of reaching an agreement and then ignores the enormous world changing effects such a change would have on the business world (with extremely low transaction costs single person entities would probably be the most efficient firm size in a lot of industries).

Corporations exist in a market system that sets the prices for all their inputs and outputs. Without it, making those 5 year plans would be impossible.

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