Book Review: Red Plenty

A celebrated review of Francis Spufford's Red Plenty (a semi-fictional history of Soviet economic planning). It opens with Spufford's 'zombie dance' passage on capitalism vs the communist dream of 'a dance to the music of use,' and the striking historical point that for decades the Soviets genuinely believed communism would WIN on GROWTH (reinvest profits not yachts; skip zero-sum advertising; share blueprints not patent-wars), and for a while even capitalists worried they were right (Sputnik, 7-10% 1950s growth). Then it went wrong — not because no one worked hard (incentives existed: death, demotion, Moscow transfer) but because of the ALLOCATION problem, dramatized in the pig-farmer-needs-wood and the tire-factory-150k-quota (machines measured by the kilogram!) stories that markets/prices would have dissolved. The 'hero' is Kantorovich (inventor of linear programming, perfect for allocation; warehoused after writing to Stalin), with Glushkov's cybernetic-computer-planning killed by a '100-million-years-of-computing' paper (Scott notes 25 doubling-times since 1960 would make it days). The reveal (V): Scott, as a rational/technical person, realizes he's 'super attracted to Communism' (smart people with a clear vision solving the engineering of a better future) — but Soviet communism isn't nerds-running-a-country, it's killing the country-running experts, replacing them with nerds from unrelated fields, then ignoring them; Plato's philosopher-kings selecting for ruthlessness over wisdom; gangsters pretending to be social scientists; the heavy-industry 'empire of inertia' that ended up 'actively destroying value.' Moloch did a judo move on the Soviets' attempt to destroy him.

Quality 82 · Excellent. Excellent (82). A vivid, synthesis-rich, frequently-cited review that makes the socialist-calculation/allocation problem intuitive (Kantorovich, linear programming, the pig-farmer and tire-factory stories), connects it to Moloch and coordination failure, and lands a memorable personal/conceptual reveal ('I'm attracted to Communism') plus the 'gangsters pretending to be social scientists' framing. One of Scott's best book reviews, in the Seeing Like A State tier.

Claude’s paradigm shift 62 · Notable shift. Notable (62). The material is Spufford's, but the economic exposition (the calculation/allocation problem, linear programming), the Moloch connection, and the nerds-attracted-to-communism reveal are a fresh, valuable synthesis.

Real-world impact 3 · Moderate. Moderate (3). An influential review within the rationalist/economics sphere (it made Red Plenty a touchstone for the socialist-calculation debate); its reach is intellectual.