The second answer to the question proves to be the practically consistent one.[141]
Besides conforming to the vital needs of society, the planned range of production and consumption must be known to be achievable. Exceeding the planned values of indices when it is socially useful must be guaranteed by business and control o r ganization in all industries and regions.
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Basically this is provides full coverage of the industrial civilization’s political economy extremely summarized. This subject must be understood at least in such general way and it should be seen in real life. But conventional sociology and economy have a custom of keeping silence on such issues as the mutually excluding nature of objectives of production and distribution of products in society, on the methodology of planning and on planned adjustment of the self-regulating market mechanism. This happens because professional clerks (economists, accountants, bank financiers, stock exchange brokers) as well as the rest of the crowd are not supposed to know that they are all controlled in a robot-like manner in a very simple way. Since early childhood their views and professional skills are being formed to suit the goals of the masters and bosses of the system but they are not consistent in practice.
We have dealt with these problems very briefly in this work but we have tackled their essence. More details are provided in the «Brief course» by the IP of the USSR. As known from experience of promoting the Conception of Social Security, many people think it unnecessary to read it and become familiar with it. We think though that it is obligatory that all supporters of the Conception of Social Security must study it because we live in a civilization where everyone is dependant on the system of production and distribution of products. Therefore no one has a moral right to speak on economic issues until he has formed at least a most general idea of the following things.
what are the interindustry balances of product and financial exchange;
how they are connected with each other;
how the processes within an industry are described by the instruments of mathematical statistics and the probability theory;
how these description of the processes within an industry are connected with the accounting system;
what the instruments of adjusting the market mechanism to self-regulating production and distribution are;
how these instruments are reflected in the interindustry balance;
how the objectives of production and distribution typical of the society are reflected in the interindustry balance;
how should the planning system be built so that it would generate a succession of planned balances corresponding to completing morally healthy objectives of production and distribution of products;
how should the policy on taxes, subsidies, credit and insurance change while the succession of planned balances is being realized so that the real indices of production and consumption would be better than the planned targets and that the chosen objectives would be completed.
And the main thing is to understand:
why should defining targets within the planning system be demographically grounded within the course of the global policy;
how are the demographically grounded and the degraded parasitic ranges of needs determined in practice;
what needs are attributed to each class today.
One must know, understand and feel this even if one is not going to make a career and take up the post of the state’s leader, prime-minister or the minister of economy. One must know this so that the «great» schemers[142] and liars could not fool people any more.
In order to make it easier to master this knowledge and to help people break free from the prejudice of pseudo-economic myths we have published “The Brief Course…”
Now on the basis of the information provided in this digression we could move on to discussing Ford’s and Stalin’s views on normal economy of society.
4.5. Planned Economy of Bolsheviks
is a Socialist Economy
Having provided a definition of the fundamental economic law of socialism at the end of Chapter 4.4 Stalin explains it further and differentiates objectives and the means of accomplishing them.
«It is said that the law of the balanced, proportionate development of the national economy is the basic economic law of socialism. That is not true. Balanced development of the national economy, and hence, economic planning, which is a more or less faithful reflection of this law, can yield nothing by themselves, if it is not known for what purpose economic development is planned, or if that purpose is not clear <we have dealt with the task of defining targets in Digression 6>. The law of balanced development of the national economy can yield the desired result <i.e. attaining and maintaining the necessary level of industries’ capacities and the proportions between industries> only if there is a purpose for the sake of which economic development is planned. This purpose the law of balanced development of the national economy cannot itself provide <because the proportions between various industries and the absolute capacities are themselves defined by the targets set within this task>. Still less can economic planning provide it <as defining targets does not lie within the bounds of proportions between industries and the methodology of planning>. This purpose is inherent in the basic economic law of socialism, in the shape of its requirements, as expounded above. Consequently, the law of balanced development of the national economy can operate to its full scope only if its operation rests on the basic economic law of socialism.
As to economic planning, it can achieve positive results only if two conditions are observed: a) if it correctly reflects the requirements of the law of balanced <i.e. proportionate> development of the national economy <i.e. if the methodology of planning adequately models the proportions and relations between industries providing for predictability of the consequences of decision-making on economic policy> and b) if it conforms in every way to the requirements of the basic economic law of socialism <which means that the planned targets of social and economic development are set in accordance with the demographic setting and that the planning system is aimed at securing satisfaction of the morally healthy (vital) needs of everyone>» (“Economic Problems of Socialism in the U.S.S.R.”, “Remarks on Economics Questions Connected with the November 1951 Discussion”, ch. 7. “The Basic Economic Laws of Modern Capitalism and of Socialism”).
Yet the above-quoted extract (if divested of our explanatory comments put in <angular brackets>) to many would seem empty (meaningless) babble of a top party hierarch ignorant of practical issues and having nothing to do with economic reality of the Soviet society.
Many abide by this point of view justifying their stance by recalling the economic reality of the late «zastoi» and «perestroika» USSR. This was a time when there was shortage of most products ranging from foodstuff to furniture, housing and cars (that were yet considered to be among luxuries optional for a family household) and overstocking (glut) in some categories of products, such as an abundance of carpeting and cut-glass ware that existed at a time. Supplies of some products to the trading network experienced regular failures, among them even such basics as salt, soap, tooth-paste, sugar and sausage (which was at times available only in Moscow, Leningrad, republic capitals and closed «classified towns» («spetsgorodki»). Along with that there existed the «raspredeliteli» (distribution centers only for Soviet “elite”), where the Soviet “elite”, consisting of party, government, academic and other «nomenclature», got all the products they needed according to their individual rank no matter how poorly the public trading network was supplied. And those are just a few facts characteristic of that reality.