Certainly, many of the mentioned and not mentioned, but known from the life of the post-Stalin USSR, facts are vices unconsciously, automatically inherited from the epoch of J.V. Stalin and earlier times.
However in the years of Stalinism they are forgivable for they were objectively determined by the fact that the socialist revolution took place in the country where 85 % of population were completely illiterate. The first educated generation of the Soviet nation grew up during the pre-war years. They mastered science (including Marxism which was imposed on them) and culture belonging to the previous ruling “elite”. They inherited the science and culture, which were already formed and retained all their vices. It was therefore inevitable that the predominant part of population was not free in its world understanding from the power of the vicious and obviously false ideas, which they duly put into practice.
But at the end of 1952 “The Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR” was published in which J.V. Stalin pointed out many of the problems mentioned by us directly or in connection with other issues. And when the «ottepel» started nothing — except corruption, obsequiousness and malignancy of scientists, «Soviet» intelligentsia in general, limiting them in their choice of objects for research and restraining in obtaining morally acceptable results — nothing prevented them from investigating and solving the problem formulated by S. Okito in the interview quoted in Digression 6.
Many years that passed after 1953 — the years of a different morality of scientists and politicians — allowed to get free from the mistakes and abuses characteristic of Stalin period and to develop all the good that was given a start and new power in the result of the Great October Socialist Revolution, building of socialism and victory in the Great Patriotic War of 1941— 1945.
However malignant scientists and politicians (under the connivance of the rest of population) carried to the point of absurdity everything that was good, perverted and violated it while developing everything bad. Logically there came the perestroika and the situation we have today as the in-between results of the then launched reforms.
All this shows that in the fragments quoted from “The Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR” by J.V. Stalin are no empty talking. In a brief work it is simply impossible to explain all the particulars and details[154]. Stalin determines only those problems and sets up those the goals that he finds essential to be solved by the entire population to ensure further successful development of the USSR as a multinational society in which everyone can master his genetic potential of development and become an individual.
Let us now return to the main issue of this part.
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It is well known that J.V. Stalin is an advocate of socialism and planned economy, yet many people tend to forget that he supports not a planned economy «generally speaking», but a planned economy definitely aimed at complete satisfaction of vital needs of all people in the society. The fact that the guaranteed satisfaction of morally healthy needs is meant is implied by the very Idea of socialism and social justice in its evolution in each particular historical epoch.
Let us now turn to the viewpoints of H. Ford. Earlier we have quoted his opinion on the central flaw of the system of private-capital enterprise as a system of production and distribution of products in the society:
«The present system does not permit of the best service because it encourages every kind of waste — it keeps many men from getting the full return from service. And it is going nowhere. It is all a matter of better planning and adjustment».
Thus it can be understood that H. Ford and J.V. Stalin share the following opinion:
National economy (and in the historical perspective — world economy) should be planned, socialist in its essence and it should guarantee in succession of generations the satisfaction of vital needs of laborers conscientiously participating in the economic activity, i.e. of the majority of society.
Suspicion may arise that this opinion, which belongs to the private owner – a capitalist H. Ford – is an incidental, unmotivated slip of the tongue or some ambiguity torn out of context[155]. That we use it with reference to Ford’s authority to provide grounds for the necessity of planned basis in economy on micro- and macro-levels and a socialist character of production-consumption social interrelations. Let us therefore turn to other parts of Ford’s work where the issue of necessity of planning in economy on micro- and macro-levels and of relations between the capital and the businessman and the rest of society is the major topic:
«By poverty I mean the lack of reasonably sufficient food, housing, and clothing for an individual or a family. There will have to be differences in the grades of sustenance <this — is a rejection of a barrack-equalizing pseudo-socialism>. Poverty can be done away with only by plenty, and we have now gone far enough along in the science of production to be able to see, as a natural development, the day when production and distribution will be so scientific that all may have according to ability and industry.
The underlying causes of poverty, as I can see them, are essentially due to the bad adjustment between production and distribution, in both industry and agriculture — between the source of power and its application (put in bold type by the authors)[156]. The wastes due to lack of adjustment are stupendous. All of these wastes must fall before intelligent leadership consecrated to service. So long as leadership thinks more of money than it does of service, the wastes will continue. Waste is prevented by far-sighted not by short-sighted men. Short-sighted men think first of money. They cannot see waste. They think of service as altruistic <i.e. unprofitable a priori> instead of as the most practical thing in the world. (put in bold type by the authors)[157]» (Ch. 13. “Why Be Poor?”).
«Although there is never a time when everyone has too much of this world’s goods — when everyone is too comfortable or too happy — there come periods when we have the astounding spectacle of a world hungry for goods and an industrial machine hungry for work and the two — the demand and the means of satisfying it — held apart by a money barrier <caused by many ways by the usury of banks and stock-market speculations>. Both manufacturing and employment are in-and-out affairs. Instead of a steady progression we go ahead by fits and starts — now going too fast, now stopping altogether. When a great many people want to buy, there is said to be a shortage of goods. When nobody wants to buy, there is said to be an overproduction of goods. I know that we have always had a shortage of goods, but I do not believe we have ever had an overproduction (put in bold type by the authors). We may have, at a particular time, too much of the wrong kind of goods. That is not overproduction — that is merely headless production. He may also have great stocks of goods at too high prices. That is not overproduction — it is either bad manufacturing or bad financing <i.e. an attempt to gain excess profit by forcing up prices>. Is business good or bad according to the dictates of fate? Must we accept the conditions as inevitable? Business is good or bad as we make it so. The only reason for growing crops, for mining, or for manufacturing, is that people may eat, keep warm, have clothing to wear, and articles to use. There is no other possible reason, yet that reason is forced into the background and instead we have operations carried on, not to the end of service <i.e. other people>, but to the end of making money <for oneself> (put in bold type by the authors)[158] — and this because we have evolved a system of money that instead of being a convenient medium of exchange, is at times a barrier to exchange[159]. Of this more later.