It could seem that this experience of life in the USSR confirms that Stalin’s statements on the fundamental economic law of socialism and its implementation on the basis of planned control of economy are most surely nothing but preposterous meaningless babble; that real life has proved that planned economy is not viable if it is to serve the interests of the majority of people.
Yet if one correlates the extract quoted from “Economic Problems of Socialism in the U.S.S.R” with Digression 6 it becomes clear beyond doubt that on the contrary the history of the post-1953 USSR including the mess the country got into in the times of «zastoi» and «perestroika» proves that Joseph Stalin gave the right definition of the economic laws of socialism yet after his assassination the strategy of social and economic development was worked out and implemented in the way that severely violated both the fundamental economic law of socialism and the law of regular and balanced development of economy.
In order to exemplify this statement we shall make another digression.
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Digression 7:
The Post-Stalin USSR
was an Anti-Socialist State
As for the fundamental economic law of socialism, which defines the goals of production and distribution of products in a society, there was no strict differentiation and division between the degraded parasitic and the demographically grounded range of needs neither in the general political economy of socialism nor in the applied theories of controlling economy on a planned basis.
In the Stalin period it can be explained by solving the tasks of the country’s social and economic development on the basis of Marxism which the Russian culture accepted but had no time to comprehend in correlation with the actual life situation. The intellectual potential was spent in struggles within the party, technological and organizational aspects of restructuring national economy in the 1920s — 1930-s. Then all every effort was directed to win the Great Patriotic War (World War II as it is called in the formed USSR) and to carry out the economical restoration and re-equipment of military forces (when missiles and nuclear weapon were introduced) that followed. But after the restoration period was over and “Economic Problems of Socialism in the U.S.S.R” was published the complete failure and futility of social and economic sciences in the USSR can be explained only by the degraded parasitic morality of the scientists themselves. The more vicious in morals — the more corrupt and obliging and higher in the social hierarchy, but at the same time the more stupid and less efficient in defining and solving the problems of actual life and social development.
As a result of such indifference of science and politicians towards the two incompatible ranges of needs alcohol and tobacco products were taking the leading places in the revenues of the USSR budget. And by the mid-1980-s each rouble gained from sales of alcohol was attended by 3 — 5 roubles (in different assessment) of direct or indirect damage registerable by bookkeeping. It was caused by faults, factory accidents, absenteeism, spoilage, hooliganism and more serious crimes and results of people’s actions under the influence of alcohol. There is also damage that evades bookkeeping and includes health damage to the new generations given birth by drinking parents and cultural damage caused by absence of proper education and by genetic potential’s degrading under the influence of alcohol.
The same can be said about the production and usage of tobacco products and, especially today, of different dopes.
As a result the USSR — Russia in post-Stalin period fell, falls and in the nearest future will fall behind the requirements of time in mass solving of moral, scientific, technological and organizational problems of its development which define its international position and the attitude the local “elites” and common people of other regions of the Earth share towards it.
It’s also no use speaking about the satisfaction of people’s needs by means of development and improvement of production on the basis of high technologies. The old enterprises were working for decades without upgrading their technological base and the new ones were constructed according to projects, which provided for the use of old technologies and morally outdated equipment. Above all «dolgostroy» (long-term building) flourished caused by the violation of proportions between the planned amount of works and the productive capacity of the construction industry.
It means that in the post-Stalin period it was not only the fundamental economic law of socialism that was violated but the law of planned proportional development was systematically violated as well. In our opinion the most striking example of violating proportions resulting from falsely defined targets i.e. from violating the fundamental economic law of socialism, — are the forays of «virgin soil reclamation» and the development of the USSR Armed Forces.
The first virgin soil crop exceeded all expectations. It was reaped … and mainly rotted because the infrastructures of accommodation, storage, grain processing and transport had not been created in advance. Moreover during the first forays on the virgin soil an agrotechnics, that did not agree with the natural conditions of Kazakhstan steppe, was employed and in some regions up to half a meter of fertile soil was carried away by weathering. It will take the soils thousands or at least hundreds of years to recover from this damage.
The personal blame for this sabotage, this biosphere environmental crime lies completely on Nikita Khrushchev, the members of the Central Committee of Communist Party, the deputies of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of those years, the State Planning Committee, the corresponding departments of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR and the Lenin All-Union Academy of Agricultural Sciences.
This could have not happen if it had been done according to common sense, the fundamental economic law of socialism and the law of planned proportional development of national economy.
In this case the roads and accommodation would have been built first of all. The agricultural production would have been limited by the amount necessary to feed the new-coming population. In several years aeromechanics would have been modified to agree with natural conditions of the region. And then on this basis the problem of food self-sufficiency of the USSR would have been solved in the regular succession of generations and in constant care for the sustenance of the soils’ fertility[143].
One does not need to be a genius to work out in advance a plan for reclamation of virgin soils very much like this sequence of successive and mutually coordinated actions. It was necessary simply not to regard a plan as some sort of a record to beat, not to make much of abstract numbers in order to blow up a propaganda boom, but to concentrate on what in particular should be done, in what succession and by whom, what resources are necessary for it and what metrologically consistent indices give ground that one may proceed to the next stage of a complex plan.
Another expression of the “elite” policy of constraining population to the degraded parasitic range of needs are «khrushchevki» (standard blocks of flats built during the times of Khrushchev). Their «architecture» psychologically depresses an individual and their overcrowded conditions (or «compactness and «combined lay-out» of everything and all, if to use the slang of those times). Their small size and number of rooms destroyed the extended family. Thus the «khrushchevki» epoch caused an irretrievable damage to formation of individuals in several generations, because nothing can substitute an everyday communication of a small child with his grandparents[144].