4.4 The Ethics of Bolshevism:
CONSCIENTIOUS Labor
to the Welfare of Laborers
In accordance to what has been said in the previous chapter H. Ford who is widely known as a businessman and industrialist is besides that an economist and sociologist. Moreover he is a more consistent scientist than the supposedly professional academicians as he starts analyzing labor relations within the system of multiindustrial production and consumption in the society by proclaiming an ethic principle:
The human right to work and to partake of the product of the work he took part in determines what objectives should be assigned on the microlevel of the multiindustrial system of production and consumption in order to ensure its systemic integrity.
H. Ford says:
«There is no reason why a man who is willing to work should not be able to work and to receive the full value of his work. There is equally no reason why a man who can but will not work should not receive the full value of his services to the community. He should most certainly be permitted to take away from the community an equivalent of what he contributes to it. If he contributes nothing he should take away nothing. He should have the freedom of starvation. We are not getting anywhere when we insist that every man ought to have more than he deserves to have — just because some do get more than they deserve to have.
(…)
It is very easy, unless one keeps a plan thoroughly in mind, to get burdened with money[83] and then, in an effort to make more money, to forget all about selling to the people what they want. Business on a money-making basis is most insecure. It is a touch-and-go affair, moving irregularly and rarely over a term of years amounting to much. It is the function of business to produce for consumption and not for money or speculation. Producing for consumption implies that the quality of the article produced will be high and that the price will be low — that the article be one which serves the people and not merely the producer. If the money feature is twisted out of its proper perspective, then the production will be twisted to serve the producer.
The producer <including entrepreneurs> depends for his prosperity upon serving the people. He may get by for a while serving himself, but if he does, it will be purely accidental, and when the people wake up to the fact that they are not being served, the end of that producer is in sight» (Introduction. “What Is the Idea?”).
If one might draw a generalization in regard to the whole of society it might be as follows: «as soon as people figure out that the system does not serve their welfare its collapse will be at hand» (at hand on the historic time-scale, of course). Moreover so if the people have already made up a vision of the system they will substitute the anti-national one with which has already happened in Russia.[84]
Ford devotes the entire Chapter 8 to the ethic principles of production and consumption organization, principles of the kind which would make the average man feel that the system works to his benefit. Because the average man can sense this all the people will understand those principles as the educational level increases and culture develops. People will keep following them knowingly and purposefully for the sake of their personal welfare, the welfare of their descendants and the common welfare of all the other people.
«It is not usual to speak of an employee as a partner, and yet what else is he? Whenever a man finds the management of a business too much for his own time or strength, he calls in PARTNER (put in capitals by the authors) to share the management with him. Why, then, if a man finds the production part of a business too much for his own two hands should he deny the title of «partner» to those who come in and help him produce? Every business that employs more than one man is a kind of PARTNERSHIP (put in capitals by the authors). The moment a man calls for assistance in his business — even though the assistant be but a boy — that moment he has taken a partner. He may himself be sole owner of the resources of the business and sole director of its operations, but only while he remains sole manager and sole producer can he claim complete independence. No man is independent as long as he has to depend on another man to help him. It is a reciprocal relation — the boss is the partner of his worker, the worker is PARTNER (put in capitals by the authors) of his boss. And such being the case, it is useless for one group or the other to assume that it is the one indispensable unit. Both are indispensable. The one can become unduly assertive only at the expense of the other — and eventually at its own expense as well» (Ch. 8. “Wages”).
This paragraph leaves no doubt that Ford does not tolerate the «master-and-servant» type of relationship between employer and employees that is actually more befitting a slave-owner.
And now let us quote from the book by Joseph Stalin “The Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR” where Stalin writes about the new ethic reality emerging within the Soviet society:
«The economic basis of this antithesis is the exploitation of the country by the town, the expropriation of the peasantry and the ruin of the majority of the rural population by the whole course of development of industry, trade and credit under capitalism. Hence, the antithesis between town and country under capitalism must be regarded as an antagonism of interests. This it was that gave rise to the hostile attitude of the country towards the town and towards "townfolk" in general.
Undoubtedly, with the abolition of capitalism and the exploiting system in our country, and with the consolidation of the socialist system, the antagonism of interests between town and country, between industry and agriculture, was also bound to disappear. And that is what happened. The immense assistance rendered by the socialist town, by our working class, to our peasantry in eliminating the landlords and kulaks strengthened the foundation for the alliance between the working class and the peasantry, while the systematic supply of first-class tractors and other machines to the peasantry and its collective farms converted the alliance between the working class and the peasantry into friendship between them. Of course, the workers and the collective-farm peasantry do represent two classes differing from one another in status. But this difference does not weaken their friendship in any way. On the contrary, their interests lie along one common line, that of strengthening the socialist system and attaining the victory of communism. It is not surprising, therefore, that not a trace remains of the former distrust, not to speak of the former hatred, of the country for the town.» (“Remarks on Economics Questions Connected with the November 1951 Discussion”, Part 4. “The Issue of Closing the Gap between Town and Village, between Mental and Manual Labor and of Eliminating the Differences Between Them”).
The above quotation demonstrates that what Ford thought to be an ideal the American society must aspire to (now this is also an ideal for the Russian society) was a reality for the Soviet society of the late 1940-s — early 1950-s[85] in many if not all the collectives.
The relations between executives and average employees described by Stalin are so strikingly different from the ethic results of bourgeois reforms in modern Russia that capitalist parasites will claim them to be a fantasy of Stalin’s having nothing in common with reality. But saying this they forget that they have been screaming about Stalin the tyrant «exploiting the people’s enthusiasm» without ever asking themselves what was the source of that enthusiasm. And the point is that its source was the psychological and ethic motivation to labor conscientiously in a collective that existed in the society on the whole. This motivation existed because staff and executives were not enemies bound by the common chain of production relations but «friends and companions, members of a united manufacturing team whose vital concern is the welfare and expansion of their enterprise. The hostility between them has vanished without a trace».