Текст книги "Ford and Stalin. How to Live in Humaneness"
Автор книги: (IP of the USSR) Internal Predictor of the USSR
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And that is the danger of having bankers[27] in business. They
Bankers play far too great a part in the conduct of industry. Most businessmen will privately admit that fact. They will seldom publicly admit it because they are afraid of their bankers
There has been a great reaching out by bankers
Now, let me say at once that my objection to bankers has nothing to do with personalities. I am not against bankers as such. We stand very much in need of thoughtful men, skilled in finance[32]. The world cannot go on without banking facilities. We have to have money. We have to have credit. Otherwise the fruits of production could not be exchanged. We have to have capital. Without it there could be no production. But whether we have based our banking and our credit on the right foundation is quite another matter.
It is no part of my thought to attack our financial system. I am not in the position of one who has been beaten by the system and wants revenge. It does not make the least difference to me personally what bankers do because we have been able to manage our affairs without outside financial aid. My inquiry is prompted by no personal motive whatsoever. I only want to know whether the greatest good is being rendered to the greatest number» (Ch. 12. “Money – Master or Servant”).
In his book Ford tells about the abject state of the Detroit-Toledo-Ironton railroad before it was acquired by «Ford Motors» and about his own relations with the usurious and stock exchange speculations sector of economy. And it is easy to see that these examples completely explain why all the post-1991 reforms bring no tangible result to the «average man». The point is that the «financiers» and lawyers in their majority (with minor exceptions), i.e. as professional corporations which took the cause of introducing reforms into their hands are capable of establishing neither an ethic nor a technical progress simply because those «financiers» and lawyers have knowledge neither of sciences and applied technologies nor of how enterprises are organized internally and communicate with their environments in every branch of industry. They are unfamiliar with the employee’s psychology and with the psychology of society on the whole. And they presumptuously turn a deaf ear on the words of true experts in those fields[33].
But by having said all of this Ford has in fact stood up against the very basis of the US financial system and consequently against capitalism of the Western type. His words about that «it was no part of his thought to attack» their financial system are no more than sheer politeness and a provision for some of his readers’ folly made after he has already disclosed every flaw belonging to the credit and financing system of the biblical type that is mollified or meticulously concealed by the dominating trend of economic science.
Those few quotations from Ford name the essential thing about Western capitalism that remained undisclosed by Marx in the implications and idle talk of his “Capital”. This essential is to this day being concealed under the cover of implications, idle talk and ignorance by Marxists who pretend to oppose capitalism which is a system of minority being parasitic on the majority yet by their ignorance and twaddle they back up this systemic parasitism.
These revelation-like statements Ford makes regarding the system-forming role that usury and stock exchange speculations play in the economy of Western capitalism are also one of the reasons why true «esoteric» Marxists and their masters have had to put it mildly a grudge against Ford while he was alive and continue having a grudge against him half a century after his death. That is why Marxists keep establishing an image of Ford being a fierce exploiter of the working class.[34]
On the other hand the liberal bourgeois «democrats» who support market economy are also in a predicament. Ford’s writings indicate that it is hardly possible to turn him into a propagandist image of a capitalist entrepreneur, a «self-made man» who personifies the fact that it is possible to make the «American dream» come true when following the «American way of life». In fact one can turn Ford into such an image only by slandering him and creating false notions of his personality, his approach to business and people, his very work in the society. But it is too tempting to get an ally of such a formidable authority: Ford is truly an outstanding personality. And so the liberal supporters of the market make every effort to do it. Let us give as an example the article headed “Henry Ford in Russia” by Alexander Livshits[35] printed in the “Izvestia” newspaper of January 11, 2002 (p. 2, «Observer’s column»).
«The American Henry Ford made a car-factory out of a bicycle-shop. He invented the assembly line[36]. Set up production of cheap cars. People started driving. So one had to build roads. And the whole economy followed. Henry himself became a rich man. Had Ford been born in the USSR, he would most probably end up at a defense factory. What’s the limit? World’s best armoured troop-carrier. An order conferred. A quarterly bonus payment. His business talent would have to be stifled. Or he would have been sent to chop trees in Siberia.[37]
Ford would also have a difficult time in modern Russia. How can one manufacture cars when banks refuse to give long-term loans? But this is not the main point. Russian bureaucracy would knock Henry down. Not only is it a fierce one. It requires lots of money to spend. And what the businessman spends on bribing officials he makes up in the price of his product.[38] (…)
Civilized businessmen think bribes unacceptable. That is why they pass Russia by. And investments are desperately needed. The government, so to say, has grasped the problem. It has passed three anti-bureaucratic laws. It has made registering and getting a license way easier for juridical persons. (…)
What did we get from the government’s innovations? Up to now only one thing is clear: that the government has made a move in the right direction. It is hard to say more. It all depends on how new legislation will be followed. What is even more important is whether regional authorities will start re-defining bureaucratic rules or not. Following the principle: «federal law prohibits giving orders and our local law allows it»[39]. Of course the local law is termed differently and uses different means to do it. (…)
Believe me, I am no reactionary. And I am not an enemy of the reforms. It is simply that I am sure that the average man is always right.[40] If he gains from reforms, everything has been done the right way[41]. If he loses, it’s the other way round.
We’ll see what we’ll see. It is still possible that in future both registration and licensing procedures will have to be made stricter. There is nothing here to be afraid of. It takes years to build a system of state control. It was so in America. And when the government finally set the firm rules there came Henry Ford. And things got on».
One may ask: has Alexander Livshits read books by Ford proper and lies intentionally? Or he has not read those books and writes nonsense about how «Ford Motors» got started and was running business regardless of what Ford himself wrote about it, telling lies in an impudent manner due to his ignorance and weak mind because he is prejudiced against Ford by gossip and myths?[42]
And this man holds a doctor’s degree, he is a professor… There are many doctors and professors of his like in Russia, they are the “elite”. It might well be time to disband the Supreme certification board and the whole hierarchy of academic degrees. So that scholars have no titles of honor but their own good name.
Actually Ford made the career of the industry’s founder and «Ford Motors» became a flourishing PRODUCTION and finance corporation (not a FINANCE and «industrial» group) without any help of long-term bank loans. The business returned the money because it was beneficial to the entire society. In that historic period loan interests were moderate in the US and the population’s solvent demand allowed for expanding business both in the qualitative and quantitative way because management efficiency ensured self-repayment.
Ford discovered how production and consumption development are paralyzed by the parasitic finance system based on mafia-like unhindered bank usury and stock exchange speculations. And he came to this conclusion even in a situation relatively favorable for renovating and expanding production.
Yet neither Alexander Livshits (former advisor on economic issues to the President of Russia, later supernumerary advisor to the government of the Russian Federation), nor the many chairmen of the RF Central Bank dismissed after a short time of holding the post, nor Russia’s economic science and conventional sociology do not see[43] the paralyzing effect usury and stock exchange speculations have on micro economy as well as macroeconomy. Over all the years of the reforms loan interest rates have by several times exceeded the probable production growth rate calculated in constant prices. Therefore no management no matter how efficient is capable of turning a furniture workshop into a high-tech enterprise of a national, let alone global scale. And if such loan interest rates remain valid and the outburst of «stock» transactions continues any enterprise that has advanced technology and organizational structure is bound to degrade to a most primitive rule-of-thumb production.
* * *
Digression 1 :
On System-Forming Delusions
In this connection it would be a sin not to recall the system-forming nature of science[44] and higher education.
Do state officials including A. Livshits, politicians, businessmen, economic reporters of mass media, economists and lecturers of finance and economics faculties at universities and colleges turn a blind eye on the fact that loan interest and speculations with «stocks» paralyze the society’s economy because they are truly mistaken due to their weakness of mind, ignorance and amateurism? Or is this an evil design accomplished in a perfectly professional way by venal rascals and hypocrites whose objective is enslaving the rest of society while it is drugged by ignorance and stifled financially by the oligarchy of usurious bankers, stock exchange speculators and their backstage masters? Let everyone answer this question on one’s own and act accordingly.
We should also point out the fact that financial and economic «blindness» of politicians, academicians, and scholars, is of a selective nature. Those very «blind» people show an amazing acuteness of sight and act very actively in finding faults with the government for its policy on taxes and subsidies. All the years of reforms mass media supported by academic authorities have been wailing about high taxes which are strangling production, making capital seek cover abroad, provoking double-entry book-keeping and hiding income to escape taxation by physical and juridical persons etc. Therefore the issue of taxation in its connection with usury must also be elucidated correctly.
The fundamental difference between the «pressure of taxation» b e longing to true statehood and the usurious vampirism of the anti-national mafia consists in that after money circulation has emerged:
Taxes take away from the producer a certain fraction of his actual production calculated in terms of value. After that if this fraction is not looted it is used to the benefit of the state. If the state represents the interests of the vast majority of conscientious laborers all that has been exempted from them in the form of taxes returns to the society in the form of social security provided by the state. In other words in such a state the «pressure of taxation» does not suppress anyone because everything exempted as taxes returns to the society this or that way.
Usury sucks out of the society a pre-set fraction of produced items in value terms. This fraction historically really is almost always larger than the efficiency of taking the loan as shown by bookkeeping records. Consequently the society finds itself a slave of supra-national corporation of bloodsuckers – racist usurers.
Such blindness to the effect loan interest and tax rates have on production and consumption which cannot be neutralized by taxing the bank sector proves the fact that economic science and conventional sociology in Russia are of anti-national and anti-state nature because they act in the interests of the supra-national mafia of usurers and justify financial, investment and political strategies desirable for it in a believable «scientific» way.
At the same time there is an opinion widely spread in the society, which is essentially inconsistent: that loan interest is supposedly vital as the source to finance bank activities that are really necessary to the society[45].
Consequently those who adhere to this view think that the fundamental requirement of prohibiting loan interest (including interest on bank deposits[46]) by law is an anti-systemic demand by «extremist laymen» that can supposedly ruin the institution of credit and the whole of macroeconomy. In their view the annual interest of 240 % in Russia of the Chernomyrdin and Livshits era are one extreme and a 0 % annual interest as a system-forming requirement of organizing the credit and finance system in the future economy of the entire mankind and not only Russia are another extreme.
From their point of view «normal» macroeconomy should have some «moderate» loan interest rates. Those rates on the one hand should allow banks to finance their essential activities and to pay out interest on bank deposits in order to encourage people towards using their savings for financing the development of enterprises that constitute the macroeconomic system of the society. On the other hand they should enable the majority of enterprises to make profit in all branches of industry and should not impair the population’s solvent demand.
When specific figures are named for the highest possible loan interest rates they are usually within the bounds of 5 to 7 % per year.[47]
Actually the advocates of this point of view confuse two fundamentally different questions. They are:
The question of financing the society’s infrastructure that among others includes bank infrastructure that serves for making payments and bank transfers. It also keeps books of the multiindustrial production and consumption system on the macro-level.
The question about anyone having a right to claim income that is essentially unearned. This income therefore has nothing to do with remuneration for past and future contribution to the society’s welfare and with social security provided regardless of participation in labor.
Work is done by people, not by money. People make products and services that when consumed are paid for with money.
If one bears this in mind, one finds the confusion of the two above-mentioned questions done by supporters of the “moderate loan interest rates”. Such confusion is unacceptable in social life, in state policy, in social science. Because it substitutes the question of slavery brought about by «moderate» loan interest rates with the question about the necessity of financing bank infrastructure. And this slavery is historically really executed by means of systemic bank usury. This is the way by which this fundamental issue of organizing the society’s life is excluded from discussion by confusing the two questions.[48]
Systemic bank usury is a means of executing mafia financial slavery. And the institution of credit is a game in which only one team scores. Since usurious creditors always gain financially while the whole of the society loses out. But besides that the «moderate» loan interest is detrimental to the society for several other reasons.
In a society where the bank system uses loan interest the statistic of bank deposits made by citizens makes the statistic on the amount of those deposits rise due to loan interest added to them. Interest on deposits for some of the depositors turns out to be comparable to their earned income. And for some other depositors they exceed income figures needed for consumption by the highest life standards. And this happens even when «moderate» loan interest rates are used that pose no threat to the macroeconomic stability and integrity. Besides, descendants of the original depositors inherit bank deposits. And notwithstanding the fact that they have not contributed to accumulating the original savings they have a legal right to enjoy this unearned income.[49]
Therefore, having agreed to the introduction of «moderate» loan interest rates (including interest on bank deposits) and having legalized it, the society encourages the richest from among depositors to become parasites instead of cultivating respect towards conscientious labor and encouraging it. The society does so by acknowledging their right to enjoy unearned income and by re-distributing to their benefit products manufactured by those who have no bank deposits or bank only small savings that produce interest of no importance for their personal or family budget.
In a morally healthy society income can belong only to one of the following categories:
Wages, salaries and bonuses paid for taking part in labor activity
Payments from social security institutions financed by state and public funds-in-trust that are not a remuneration for taking part in labor activity
Income received as a help from another person who has a motivation of his own. This help should be lent on the basis of a mutual agreement that does not violate the rights of the person receiving help (help should solve problems and not create new ones).
But income received from loan interest, including interest on bank deposits is legalized theft. This racketeering is an anonymous one because the racketeer does not deal with the people he robs personally, and therefore those who are being robbed by him have no opportunity of countering him personally.
Opponents to the above-mentioned viewpoint on moderate loan interest rates including interest on bank deposits will have to explain the following to the average laborer:
Why have some categories of unearned income been acknowledged as legal and other categories of unearned income – as illegal and criminal?
Why seizing legalized unearned income on one’s own accord has also been recognized as crime and is punished by law?
It is particularly desirable to explain it to the average laborer and not to the «average tax-payer» because in the historically real economy a tax-payer can turn out not to be a laborer though he pays taxes on his unearned income which is legalized in the society. And the laborer[50] has to provide food, clothes and all the things necessary for everyone including tax-payers who live an «honest» and law-abiding life on the unearned income that is legalized. The laborer has a right to know why he is supposed to provide for the life of those who can work but don’t, and sometimes to provide them with a higher standard of consumption than the one his own family can afford.
The idea to form the so-called «middle-class» is connected with the wish of major parasite investors, who live mostly by unearned income, to get lost among the facelessness of this «middle», where people do labor but their income consists to a large extent of the unearned income from «stock» of different sorts. The parasite investors seek to achieve it in order that the «middle class» would pettily watch the pennies it gets from it and stand up for the whole corrupt parasitic system.
An example of how thoughtless «middle-class» penny-watchers rise to defend the corrupt parasitic system is their objection to re-organizing credit and finance system on the basis of eliminating loan interest and interest on bank deposits.
Objections of this sort proceed from the assumption that eliminating loan interest (including interest on bank deposits) will cut down the credit resource of the bank system, as people will no longer place money into banks. This will undermine the very institution of credit (and consequently the economy on the whole). Such objections are unfounded.
First, the price list (price-current) on any marketplace is determined by the society’s nominal paying capacity including its crediting constituent and responds to any changes occurring on it. In other words the larger the portion of money loaned and not paid back in the volume of purchased products and services, the higher nominal prices.
Second, there are other means of macroeconomic regulation to ensure a credit status of the bank system, which will allow it to work efficiently[51].
But if every form of loan interest were banned by law, it would bring the society into a morally healthier state, it would improve its economy and finance, it would be accompanied by countless positive phenomena in other spheres of civilization’s activity whose value cannot be calculated by means of accounting.
As a result, macroeconomy will be primarily controlled by the rational will of people. This will is now being ousted from the sphere of macroeconomic management and suppressed in it by thoughtless automatism of collecting loan interest that ensures the welfare of the usurers’ corporation no matter how bad their mistakes and misuses in the macroeconomic policy on credit and investments are.
Therefore while loan interest is still in force, especially «immoderate» loan interest that serves to generate debts that are sure to be impossible to pay back, i.e. serves to establish a system of slavery on the financial basis, the following holds true:
Evading taxes is a method of resisting usurious slavery, moreover so when a large part of state budget is spent on «servicing» the state’s liabilities to foreign and domestic usurers and profiteers from the stock exchange;
The tax police and legal institutions serving it are in many aspects akin to the polizei whom the Nazi invaders hired among the locals in order to implement their strategy of enslaving the peoples of Russia.
Many entrepreneurs and employees cannot explain the difference and connection between usury and taxation as it has been done above, yet they feel both the difference and the connection between them. And because they feel them they formulate their policy on the micro-level of economy according to what was said above.
That is why the politicians who hope to legalize the income of physical and juridical persons, return the capital that had vanished abroad back to Russia are deceiving themselves. They will not achieve this without dealing away with systemic usury and speculations on «stock» as well as with scientific justification of their supposed necessity and inevitability in the economy of the civilization.
Russia feels it and is aware of this. And she won’t be able to develop further until legalized unearned income is eliminated. Attempts to act by force are only aggravating and prolonging the current crisis and will lead those who use force and their accomplices to no good.
Digression 2 :
The Axioms of Modern Economics
In order to make clear what conception[52] of controlling the productive forces of mankind H. Ford adhered to we must clearly define several theses regarding the modern system of production and distribution of products and services in the society.
Most of them are obvious because they constitute some of the objective qualities of the social and economic life of our age. Yet regardless of that the economic theories dominating in modern science are founded upon the assumption that different opinions hold true for the issues discussed and that the views stated below are supposedly false.
We shall not recall the times of Adam Smith and earlier. We shall leave alone Robinson Crusoe and Friday living on an imaginary island. We shall turn to normal everyday life of any modern society that has developed a technosphere and that has become dependant on it. One can make the following statements about its life and economy.
FIRST. With minor exceptions there are no products or services we consume that can be produced by someone on his or her own. Production of any object or service starting with the conception of its design and up to delivering it to the customer requires collective labor both directly aimed at producing the object or service and indirectly connected with its production (manufacture and maintenance of technical equipment, ensuring necessary conditions that accompany production, for example heating on the premises etc.)
In other words, collective labor of many people, sometimes passed on from generation to generation, is the basis of the we l fare of society on the whole. And it’s the basis of the welfare of social groups and ind i viduals within it. And any kind of personal labor that forms a part of such collective work is a combination of directly productive labor and management labor. The last is aimed at coordinating activity of me m bers of a single collective, as well coordinating activity of many co l lectives .
SECOND. If we proceed along the line of manufacturing a product in the opposite direction (start with the finished product, going then back to the stage of manufacturing semi-finished goods, components, technical equipment and, finally, to obtaining raw materials and energy) we shall see that the manufacturing process appears to be something like a branching tree. In this tree every «branch» is managed by administratively independent directorates of different enterprises.
These directorates even if their staff consists of a single member control activities by means of directives addressed to their specific area of «jurisdiction». These activities are:
Controlling certain stages of the manufacturing process (telling people what should be done and who must do it);
Controlling products exchange within the manufacturing process (telling how work must be passed on from one man to another).
The reason people started trading in all times and in all countries was their inability for different reasons to control the exchange of products efficiently using the addressed directive method.[53]
THIRD. Therefore the market of intermediate and «investment» products[54], which services the sphere of production and has a more or less open pricing, is a kind of «glue». It «glues» together different fractions of the manufacturing process, which are under addressed directive control of different directorates (because they are owned by different physical or juridical persons), into an integral manufacturing process. When the market can no longer act as this kind of «glue» the complicated manufacturing processes, which employ a great many directorates and staffs subordinate to them, break up into fragments for which there is no demand. As they are not self-sufficient systems in terms of production and consumption they begin to degrade until they disappear completely in the course of time.
FOURTH. It is not only the market that plays the role of such «glue», which integrates many private enterprises (microeconomy) into a macroeconomy. This role is also performed by culture on the whole: most of all by language culture[55], and by the system of standards[56] maintained in the society in particular.
FIVE. Sales of products and services to ultimate consumers (individuals, households, non-production social organizations, state institutions and so on) are ensured not only by a demand for the products, which are necessary to satisfy the needs of customers. It is also ensured by the paying capacity of potential consumers. As well as by the trends and their paying capacity one anticipates.
SIX. Financial circulation is a phenomenon that merely accompanies the exchange of intermediate products within the manufacturing process and consumption of products by ultimate consumers. It is a process, which controls production and consumption. The effect that financial circulation has on production and consumption, i.e. on whether the market is able to act as the «glue» or not, depends on the policy defined by the individuals who control the society’s finances. Namely: the government (issue of money, policy on taxes and subsidies), the bank sector (issue of money, setting loan interest rates and the volume of loans), insurance companies (volume of insurance and price on risks), etc.
