The tragedy of the Stalinist commons

 What really caused famine in Communist Kazakhstan?

In the early 1930s, Stalin forced rural Kazakhs to relocate in large state-owned farms.    Historically, Kazakhs had been nomads, driving their herds of cattle and sheep from one grazing area to another.  These animals were now relocated to the collectives.  Over the 1930s, when famines were common, the Kazakhs in collectives slaughtered more than 80% of the cattle and sheep, wrote Martha Brill Olcott.  Too little livestock remained in the late 1930s to sustain growth in the herds.  Famine worsened. 

Why didn’t the Kazakhs consider this when they slaughtered livestock on the collectives in the early 1930s?  In 1968, the biologist Garrett Hardin answered such questions with a parable. 

In a pasture open to all, Hardin wrote, each herdsman would try to keep as many cattle as he could. This would work fine when herdsmen were few.  But as they prospered, their number would grow and eventually strain the pasture's capacity.  "Therein is the tragedy.  Each man is locked into a system that compels him to increase his herd without limit -- in a world that is limited.  Ruin is the destination toward which all men rush, each pursuing his own best interest in a society that believes in the freedom of the commons.  Freedom in a commons brings ruin to all."

As economists interpret the parable (although not Hardin himself), the “tragedy of the commons” lay in its lack of private property rights: All farmers had the same rights to all the livestock.  So it would pay each to slaughter as many cattle as possible, to feed his own family -- even if he understood that an eventual reduction in herds could jeopardize his family.  After all, he could not much affect the future size of herds; this depended on what all the farmers did.  Since each would over-slaughter, the herds would die out.  To rephrase Hardin, “freedom in a collective brings ruin to all.”  --Leon Taylor tayloralmaty@gmail.com

Note

I adapted part of this article from a 1993 post of mine.

Good reading

Hardin, Garrett.  The tragedy of the commons.  Science 162.  1968.

Olcott, Martha Brill.  The Kazakhs.  Second edition.  Stanford, California: Hoover Institute Press.  1995.