[87] Becoming proficient in conceptual power and working purposefully towards establishing the Soviet power. Since it is the way statehood can exist and the laboring majority can execute power on the part of all people.
[88] Under the condition of constant increase in prices which acts as a macroeconomic factor the same question can be asked the following way: «How long will this cattle bear without a murmur an administration that does not raise wages and does not struggle to use the full power of the state for eliminating the main reasons of price growth — bank usury and stock exchange speculations?»
This question remains topical throughout all the years of Russian reforms. As directors and businessmen refuse to ask that question and to answer it articulately it becomes clear that they — simply as people, no matter what they are professionally — are shit, with minor exceptions.
In another quotation from the book H. Ford makes a far more definite statement on this issue:
«Cutting wages is the easiest and most slovenly way to handle the situation, not to speak of its being an inhuman way. It is, in effect, throwing upon labor the incompetence of the managers of the business» (Ch. 9. “Why Not Always Have Good Business?”).
He continues on this topic in Ch. 10. “How cheaply can things be made?”:
«It is not good management to take profits out of the workers or the buyers; make management produce the profits. Don’t cheapen the product; don’t cheapen the wage; don’t overcharge the public. Put brains into the method, and more brains, and still more brains — do things better than ever before; and by this means all parties to business are served and benefited. And all of this can always be done».
In other words by lowering wages the administration (and statesmen who create macroeconomic prerequisites for it by their policy) acknowledge their own inconsistency both as managers and as honest people.
[89] Trade unions were H. Ford’s aversion because their talkative leaders were unable to take part in this dialogue having no knowledge of products, technologies and production organization. H. Ford is essentially right on this point: when staff and administration treat each other as comrades and respect their common cause trade union bosses seeking the role of negotiators turn out to be unnecessary. In all other cases trade union bosses in their majority are just another corporation of parasites who are sometimes used by backstage forces to deal with employees who seem disagreeable to them and … with businessmen by forcing their staff to go on strikes and make demands that are known to be unrealizable.
That is why trade unions are a weird kind of «school of communism» (an aphorism by V. Lenin imprinted on every page of trade union cards in the USSR).
[90] H. Ford speaks on this issue unambiguously in Chapter 5, “Getting into Production”:
«… for of course it is not the employer who pays wages. He only handles the money. It is the product that pays the wages and it is the management that arranges the production so that the product may pay the wages» (put in bold type by the authors).
[91] This is similar to the principle of the first stage of communism if Marxist terminology is to be used: «take from each person according to his ability, give to each person according to his contribution».
[92] This feeling gave rise to enthusiasm in work. We have all been taught since 1985 by «humanist democratizers» that Stalin the tyrant and despot exploited this enthusiasm in the most atrocious way. And he has left this enthusiasm to his successors, and they have gradually stifled it in the years that passed since Stalin’s murder.
[93] The difference between income from the enterprise’s sales of its products and its expenditure on raw materials, component parts and services provided by outside enterprises that are consumed in the production proper.
[94] In a normal macroeconomy such loans must bear no interest or be granted on preferential terms, i.e. the sum to be returned to the enterprise must not exceed (and sometimes be even less) than the amount of loaned money.
[95] However Russian defenders of rights also keep silent on these problems as if being utterly dumb. Unlike these people H. Ford saw clearly how this issue relates to a human being’s freedom:
«If you expect a man to give his time and energy, fix his wages so that he will have no financial worries. It pays. Our profits, after paying good wages and a bonus—which bonus used to run around ten millions a year before we changed the system—show that paying good wages <i.e. the main part of payments, the salary> is the most profitable way of doing business» (Ch. 8. “Wages”).
[96] Production output can be calculated both in natural values and by production costs. H. Ford say the following on this subject:
«A department <i.e. operating departments> gets its standing on its rate of production. The rate of production and the cost of production are distinct elements. The foremen and superintendents would only be wasting time were they to keep a check on the costs in their departments. There are certain costs—such as the rate of wages, the overhead, the price of materials, and the like, which they could not in any way control, so they do not bother about them. What they can control is the rate of production in their own departments. The rating of a department is gained by dividing the number of parts <i.e. manufactured accounting units of departments’ production> produced by the number of hands working. Every foreman checks his own department daily—he carries the figures always with him. The superintendent has a tabulation of all the scores; if there is something wrong in a department the output score shows it at once, the superintendent makes inquiries and the foreman looks alive. A considerable part of the incentive to better methods is directly traceable to this simple rule-of-thumb method of rating production (put in bold type by the authors). The foreman need not be a cost accountant—he is no better a foreman for being one. His charges are the machines and the human beings in his department. When they are working at their best he has performed his service. The rate of his production is his guide. There is no reason for him to scatter his energies over collateral subjects.
This rating system simply forces a foreman to forget personalities — to forget everything other than the work in hand. If he should select the people he likes instead of the people who can best do the work, his department record will quickly show up that fact» (Ch. 6. “Machines and Men”).
[97] Besides, superior executives should be responsible for employment assistance within the bounds of the enterprise including organizing and financing retraining for employees dismissed from the units of the enterprise and ensuring that their financial status does not deteriorate.
And the macroeconomic system organization should be likely responsible for employment assistance at other enterprises also ensuring that the financial status of employees dismissed from regional enterprises does not deteriorate if it is possible.
These two factors of the micro- and macrolevels are one of the way by which the priorities of the society’s economy manifest themselves: whether the priority is satisfying the needs of people or serving various morally unhealthy clans of oligarchs and their spongers.
[98] This is a kind of «party maximum» for the managerial sphere. («Party maximum» was the limit of income for ALL-UNION COMMUNIST PARTY (BOLSHEVIKS) members. Experts and executives received a smaller salary in comparison to non-party people holding equivalent posts. In the first years of the Soviet regime this maximum protected the party as a means of social self-government from crooks and go-getters. It was later abolished as though it was unnecessary.