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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These terms are a part of the sort of professional «slang» which was used by top party and government officials in the USSR of the Stalin era. Each of them covers a broad area of interconnected cultural and economic phenomena. That is why for the majority of our contemporaries who have no coherent understanding of the production and distribution processes in the society or have a twisted knowledge of them the following digression must be made in order to elaborate on the ideas stated quite briefly by Stalin in his work “The Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR” which is in fact his address to all sane and well-meaning people.
There is none other «will» left after Stalin.[106]
The following digression deals with inter-branch proportions, defining objectives for production and distribution, market mechanism, addressed directive control and planning.
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The systemic integrity of any multiindustrial production having a historically formed set of technologies applied within the system can be characterized by the following three basic features:
In order to get the final product consumed by people and social institutions outside the production sphere (the state, public ass o ciations, etc.) one needs to produce intermediate (raw mater i als, semi-finished goods, components, etc.) and auxiliary pro d ucts (means of production, i.e. «investment goods») co n sumed within the produ c tion sphere.
Therefore full capacity of most branches of industry (usually termed «gross capacity») that includes both intermediate and final products is higher than the capacity of any such branch taken by i t self when measured against its final product only. In other words the efficiency factor of a multiindustrial system of production and co n sumption is always less than one ( or less than 100 % in a di f ferent representation ) because of the necessity to manufacture intermed i ate and auxiliary products.
Production of a certain range[107] of final products requires a definite ratio of the full (gross) capacities of all the industries constituting such multiindustrial system of production and consumption.
For example, in order to manufacture one car one needs mat e rials in amounts determined by the car’s design, technologies, pr o duction’s organization and general standard: this much of steel; this much of non-ferrous metals; this much or rubber and plastic; this much of glass; this much of transportation services, etc. All these goods and services are mostly delivered to the motor-car construction industry by other branches. Consequently the full (gross) capacity of, say, metallurgy, is the total volume of goods it delivers to other branches plus metal used for its own needs plus metal sold as the final product to consumers for everyday needs. The same approach should be applied to define production r e quirements and the full (gross) capacity of all other industries.
Expanding the range of final products to a definite set value requires an increase of full (gross) pr o duction capacity throughout the whole of the production system in a definite proportion between different industries determined by the d e sired expansion of the range of final products.
In order to clarify this statement let us carry on with the prev i ous example. In order to expand produ c tion of cars by a certain amount one needs to expand production in all the supplying indu s tries by the a p propriate amount. In order to expand production in a single supplying industry one needs to expand production in indu s tries that are suppliers of that industry and so on.
Besides, an increase in the number of operated cars will in time cause a growing need for fuel, lubrica t ing oil and hydraulic liquids, for expanding the motorway network, parking lot and se r vicing infrastructure. And those will in their turn require to i n crease production capacity of industries besides the suppliers of the automobile branch.
Consequently expansion of automobile production and the secondary needs for petrochemicals, a better motorway infrastru c ture and servicing, etc. stimulated by this expansion require to produce the means of production necessary for the increase of ou t put as well as for the renewal of equipment, technology, organiz a tion and management and for expanding all the industries i n volved.
And the fact is that production of means of production («i n vestment products») for these industries in some cases must pr e cede the growth of the automotive industry’s capacity though in other cases it may accompany this growth or follow it with a ce r tain delay in time.
The above statements hold true for increasing the production output of any industry, the automotive i n dustry simply taken as an explanatory example.
Besides, when certain technologies and business organization are adhered to proportions between different industries’ capacities are accompanied by certain rigid proportions of professional training and employment. It follows that:
Mobility of the systemic integrity of a macroeconomic system in terms of being capable of a structural reorganization and switching from one product to other products is to a large extent determined by whether the population’s general cultural background enables people to leave their current professions and acquire new skills in a short period of time.[108]
The proportions of the exchange in intermediate products between industries, which is involved in the process of manufacturing a certain range of final products, are described in interindustry balance equations. These formulas are heavily relied on by theories of macroeconomic planning and control worldwide and such theories have got practical proof of their workability.[109]
In terms of mathematics interindustry balance equations are a system of linear equations[110] (i.e. unknown quantities are included into the equations raised to the first power only). In this system the unknown quantities are the gross (full) capacities of industries, and the absolute terms of equations are the desired range of final products (i.e. the industries’ net output). The factors of the unknown quantities in every equation are called the factor costs and are the product volume of every industry of the set considered necessary to produce one registering unit of the industry described by the considered equation of the system (in the example of motorcar production considered above the factors of costs are the quantity of steel per car[111], quantity of glass per car etc.)
Interindustry balance equations can be considered in two forms. First, they can be based on natural calculation of capacities and costs factors in terms of output quantity according to the nomenclature of products and industries on which the balance model is based. Second, they can be based on calculation in value terms also in accordance with the nomenclature of products and industries on which the balance model is based. All these issues are fully covered in literature on the subject.
The following proportions are meant under microeconomic proportions. They are the ratios of full capacities of the different industries, which constitute this multiindustrial production and consumption system, and the ratios of these industries’ net outputs to their full (gross) capacities, as well as the proportions of the population’s professionalism and employment.
A structural reconstruction of macroeconomy is an alteration of these proportions and the absolute values of the production capacities in the entire lot of industries. A structural reconstruction can proceed on the basis of a plan having a clearly set out objective. It also can proceed under the pressure of circumstances, so to say, spontaneously. Though when looking into the matter more deeply one might find that the pressure of circumstances induced by the social and economic «element» turns out to be a process planned and controlled by backstage groups. This option has been predominant during the last few centuries.
Let us now turn from the issue of production to the issue of how products and services are consumed in the society. Consumption turns out to be characterized by its own proportions, which are determined by the two following factors. On the one hand, they are determined by the way needs emerge as such within the society (i.e. regardless of any limitations in satisfying them), and on the other hand, by the limitations imposed on how fully those needs may be satisfied by the system of distributing[112] manufactured products.
All the needs of people and social institutions fall into two cat e gories:
biologically allowable needs conditional on the demography. They comply with the healthy life-style maintained in succession of generations by the population and biocenoses of the regions where the products intended for satisfying those needs are produced and consumed. These needs are determined by the biological nature of the Homo Sapiens species, by the population’s cultural background, age and sexual structure;
degraded parasitic needs. Satisfying them is directly or indirectly detrimental to those engaged in production, to consumers, contemporaries and descendants. It also disrupts the biocenoses located in the regions where the products are manufactured and consumed. These needs are primarily determined by perverted and defective morals and are maintained through those perversion and defects reflecting in cultural tradition and succession of generations.
Though some products may change one category for the another depending on the standards of production and consumption, most products of the modern civilization are unambiguously placed into one of the categories. The category is determined objectively due to the possibility of revealing the cause-effect relations between the product’s kind and the consequences its production and consumption have.[113] Only incorrect attribution of a certain product to one of the described categories is subjective (including mistakes caused by incorrectly determined standards of production and consumption). Yet life will make us face the consequences of those errors exactly because all needs and products are objectively divided into two mentioned categories.
Satisfying needs is the aim not only of production, but also of distribution of products in the society. We must elaborate on this phrase or it will be taken for an obvious and true commonplace, yet is essentially devoid of meaning due to its abstract nature.
If the society is in any way engaged in multiindustrial production and is in any way distributing products to be consumed by physical and juridical persons who need them (both in the production and consumption spheres) it follows that the means of assembling[114] the multitude of microeconomy into the multiindustrial production and consumption system are objectively set (tuned) to fulfilling certain definite goals – namely, the needs generated by the members of society (individually and collectively). It follows that:
«The market mechanism» is nothing but words (whose meaning is absent in some minds[115]) which designate a more or less efficient algorithms of the means of assembling the multitude of microeconomy into the systemic integrity of macroeconomy.
Therefore, the advocates of market self-regulation should cast aside their prejudice and learn that the «market mechanism» by itself cannot and does not perform the task of defining targets regarding production and distribution of products in the society. What it does is adjusting production and consumption to the targets that have already been formed and which the market mechanism turned out to be adjusted to. And such adjustment occurs regardless of whether the society (or some of its members) understands the nature and methods of adjusting the «market mechanism» to certain definite[116] goals or not.
In any process of control (or self-control) that is initially intended for achieving a certain number of defined aims those aims have different priority[117] and form a hierarchy where the most important aim comes first and the aim that could be rejected (declined, turned down) if the complete number of aims cannot be reached comes last. In this hierarchy termed as aims vector individual and group aims form a sequence contrary to the sequence in which they would be forcedly rejected under pressure of circumstances. One of the circumstances making it impossible to achieve the complete number of chosen (announced, stated) aims is their being mutually exclusive.[118]
It is characteristic of the crowd-“elitist” society that it generates a number of mutually exclusive aims. This leads to the market mechanism’s being adjusted to certain definite ranges of production and distribution in social groups according to the aims that are placed at the top of the hierarchy of needs. The crowd-“elitist” society has an inherent systemic property – its ruling “elite” is responsible for a larger part of the degraded parasitic range of needs[119]. Among other ways of abusing their power within society the “elite” make themselves superior to the rest of the society in paying capacity.[120] Because of this the «market mechanism» is objectively adjusted to satisfying the needs of the “elite” in the first place by means of income and savings distribution. As the degraded parasitic constituent prevails among those needs the demographically grounded needs of the rest of society (the majority of population) are satisfied due to such adjustment of market mechanism upon the residual principle[121]. Besides it is the “elite”’s way to «diminish» the rest of society in order to strengthen their “elitist” social position. To this end it encourages the common people to adhere to the degraded parasitic range of needs («it is easier to govern people who drink heavily» etc.)[122] This way the majority of people and the society on the whole have even a smaller chance of satisfying the range of demographically grounded needs.
The market mechanism regulates the distribution of products within production sphere and beyond according to what is termed by political economy as «the law of value». This law says that average prices of commodities express the average labor inputs for their production in the society. Yet since in many activities «labor inputs» cannot be measured directly[123] the «law of value» turns out to be inconsistent in terms of metrology due to grounding price formation on «labor inputs» whose quantity it is impossible to measure. Nevertheless, if one accepts the fact that market prices exist for an objective reality, price ratios of different products (intermediate, auxiliary, final) define the yield and profitability of their manufacturing under the technologies and business organization accepted by the manufacturers.
If the system of macroeconomic regulation is absent or underdeveloped[124] businessmen react to prices being formed on the markets by expanding and starting production of some products and removing production of other products. Accordingly if one considers the processes of production and distribution of products in the society during sufficiently long time periods the so-called «law of value» does regulate the inter-industry proportions and the absolute activities of production in each of the industries.
The market mechanism is capable of regulating many things if not everything in a society’s life. Yet the real freedom of private heterogeneous entrepreneurship under the fundamental economic law of capitalism – «get more profit right now!» – makes all of us face the question about the nature and quality of this regulation.
* * *
During the epoch when macroeconomic regulation did not exist the «law of value» worked the following way. Bad harvest was a calamity: food is short, prices on food rise, curtailing the solvent demand in other industries and causing an outflow of workforce and ruin of producers. A rich harvest was equally a calamity: food is in affluence, prices fall to a level when producers of agricultural goods go broke. This leads to reduction of their share of solvent demand on other markets, a slump in production in other industries whose effort was on satisfying their needs. In historic reality it came to burning grain in furnaces simply to stop the price on it from falling. People utterly forgot about the past bad harvests and about the bad harvest that could yet come in future. A rush demand caused by real needs or by the whims of vogue leads to a rush raising of production capacity in the corresponding industries. Production capacities buildup requires time, and the rush demand could disappear while that time passes. Or the rush rising of production capacity could lead to the supply of the product on the market becoming superfluous in regard to the current needs of society or the solvent demand. This causes prices to fall below the level of production’s self-repayment and to the ruin of entrepreneurs who have invested wrongly.
This kind of mess is «natural» for the historically real capitalism with a free market that has formed on the basis of free private enterprise and free price formation in the sphere of production. Yet this capitalism comes with a special annex of free usury and stock-exchange speculations which the supranational bank corporation is engaged in. This corporation is capable of arranging a financial crisis on purpose and with a pre-planned timing in any country it controls using it as on of the means to achieve goals of a non-financial nature. This was exactly how financial and economic crises in pre-revolutionary Russia were provoked, this was how the «great depression» of 1929 was arranged in the USA spreading throughout the whole capitalist world of the time.
This was what capitalism was like until the mid 20th century. Its market mechanism – the free market – was viewed as a system of self-regulation of production and distribution (including self-regulation of inter-industry proportions) and taken at long historic time intervals. It can be characterized by the following features:
suppressing the potential of guaranteed satisfaction of the demographically grounded needs of all laborers due to its adjustment to satisfaction of degraded parasitic needs as priority, and first and foremost – to satisfaction of degraded parasitic needs of the ruling “elite” due to the way current incomes and savings were distributed within the society;
disrupting productive capacities due to the regulating process’s instability in regard to factors that are beyond the bounds of manufacturing processes and of real needs of people (influence of natural elements, financial and stock-exchange speculations and hysteria, fashion etc.);
disrupting productive capacities due to «overregulating» – redundantly strong reaction to quick changes in the solvent demand distribution among specialized markets of products and services caused by whatever reasons;
being almost completely incapable of reacting to avert an unwanted event in advance and predominantly reacting to events that have already taken place. Even if this does not lead to disrupting productive capacities it results in low efficiency of the production and distribution system measured against the criteria of speed of operation and volume of output and delivery.
The above-mentioned features are inherent to the free market as a system of self-regulation of production and distribution of products in the society and of self-regulation of productive capacities’ levels and inter-industry proportions.[125]
Besides, after a certain production achieves a level of capacity allowing satisfying the demographically grounded needs assuredly and in a short time period, the demand will drop to a minimal level determined by how quickly previously satisfied needs come back. The market mechanism will block the structural reorganization of the multiindustrial production and consumption system yet it encourages artificial stimulation of demand by means of lowering the ergonomic and resource characteristics of production.
On the scale of the society in general this is a macroeconomy directed towards getting lots of people involved into a fuss (vanity) that is detrimental for everyone and not towards satisfying people’s vital needs.
The people are forced to bog down in this vanity by the macroeconomic organization. Thus they waste their vigor and time on it without a chance to develop their personality. Such direction towards creating an artificial vane business has the following reasons:
the market mechanism does not «know» how to dispose of labor resources that are released in the course of technological and organizational progress;
professional politicians, people of culture see no other way of social development but to offer the people released from labor to ruin themselves and waste their spare time indulging in satisfying their passions and sensualities, mostly within the same range of degraded parasitic needs (booze, gambling and shows, «safe» and «non-conventional» sex etc.)
Therefore, the more freedom market gets in the society the further people are from fulfilling their human potential: at work a man is an appendage to his workplace and outside work he has either no strength left or he wastes his time for drowning himself in a sea of pleasures.
In the feudal era and in the earlier times of blunt slavery social life was placed within a pattern of classes and castes preventing money from acquiring that almost absolute power within society it has assumed in the capitalist era, especially in the «wild» capitalism of free market. In the pre-capitalist era this circumstance concealed and partially curbed the flawed nature the system of free market regulation of production and distribution of products had in the society where inhuman psychology, ethics and morals are dominant.
* * *
But in the capitalist era it became evident to many that this system of production and distribution was flawed. That is why starting from the middle of the 19th century various measures were taken in different societies toward curbing its antihuman nature. These measures had and continue to have a broad range.
Among these measures are efforts to introduce the following:
progressive income tax;
progressive prices and charges – more like penalties – on consumption exceeding the limits set in legislature;
tax benefits for businessmen who spend their profits on funding charity foundations and programs of public consequence;
quotas determined by the State and agreements of producers concerning production volumes and delivery times of their products to the markets which have been divided between these producers;
governmental subsidies for the producers and consumers of certain products.
These measures and some other including those of a non-financial or economic nature to some extent suppress solvent demand and funding of production within the degraded parasitic range and allow to maintain the socially necessary volume of production in the demographically grounded range of needs in industries where with such production volume prices fall to a level when non-subsidized production becomes unprofitable or when consumption without subsidies is not possible on the prices allowing for the production’s self-repayment.
Measures of this kind can also to some extent level out the consequences of «overregulation» ensuring a more stable operation of industries and product distribution system. This kind of stability makes the life of many average people happier and predictable for themselves which partially mitigates personal and class antagonism in the society and adds some peace and order to social life.
These measures are not founded upon a conscious differentiation between the demographically grounded and the degraded parasitic range of needs. Because of that they bring no change into the nature of the inhuman civilization (judged by the psychic types that are dominant in it). They preserve flawed morals directing vices onto a course that poses no danger for the social system’s present stability thereby increasing chances of its potential future downfall.
There are many ways the society reacts to the flawed nature of the free-market regulation of production and consumption. The range of such reactions is crowned by the effort to introduce a system of production and consumption on a planned basis which conforms to really vital needs of all laborers and denies civil rights to unrepentant (persisting) parasites and those who oppose to organizing public life upon declaring the principle of conscientious labor to the benefit of all other laborers. In the course of history such social and economic order has been termed «socialism».[126]
Yet in order to grasp what the very possibility of making a practically consistent plan is objectively caused by we must turn again to the structure of vital needs generated by the society. Because planning deals with satisfying current and future needs then if it is impossible to determine and predict the dynamics of needs in future it is impossible to make plans and run the economy on a planned basis. Therefore the issue of stable predictability of needs is the key issue when running the economy on a planned basis is concerned.
Vital needs are the demographically grounded needs. They can be predicted decades in advance; and their being predictable decades in advance makes it possible to control them centuries in advance. Their predictability springs from the fact that by analyzing what the needs depend on they can be distributed between the three following groups:
needs where the volume of production required to satisfy them is proportionate to the number of population in groups formed on the basis of sex and age characteristics (these are – food, clothes, kindergartens, school, universities, jobs, etc.);
needs where the volume of production required to satisfy them is proportionate to the number of families corresponding to how the general number of families is distributed between types of families (single, childless couples, couples having many children; families where more than two generations live together under one roof; those living in town apartments; those living in private houses with allotments etc. – these group of needs includes mainly housing and most home appliances);
needs in infrastructure which are determined by the population’s way of life in the region and the aims of state institution’s activity (these are transport infrastructure, energy supply, information exchange, education and health service, army bases and combat training facilities etc.)
Because the demographically grounded needs of each group are predictable the economy can be adjusted and prepared in advance to the end of their full and assured stable satisfaction from generation to generation.
In this case society’s technological and organizational progress, and most of all its ethic progress contribute to stability of the multiindustrial system of production and consumption operating on a planned basis given that the state (viewed as a system of professional control of social life) executes a policy beneficial to the whole of society.
Yet an irreversible implementation of this scheme of operation in the economy and state control system will require quite a long time period. At best it will take up one generation’s active lifetime if this is a thinking generation, living in good conscience and developing their morality and ethics according to a world understanding that follows their conscience.
A plan in general , a plan as such, consists of the following:
a set of defined objectives and indices that are subject to objective control and that define each of the objectives and can reveal deviations in the process of implementation if such occur;[127]
a complex of actions (a scenario, perhaps a multi-choice one) which consist in utilizing various resources (discovered and defined) and means to complete the objectives chosen (there may be a certain order of succession due to different levels of priority of the objectives and the limited nature of available resources and means).
This definition is also applicable to plans of social and economic development. This is a very useful definition that explains what the plan is in essence. This definition makes clear that:
a plan of economic and social development is a set of objectives for production and product distribution and a scenario according to which the multiindustrial production and consumption system is controlled (control always has objectives because it is impossible without distinctly defined objectives);
and the market mechanism is one of the possible means by which the multiindustrial production and consumption system can be self-regulated. This means can be adjusted (if one knows how to do it) to completing certain objectives of production and distribution that have been recognized and set.
In other words when speaking generally some plans (scenarios) of the social and economic nature can include applying market mechanism for completing the chosen objectives, and other plans (scenarios) of the social and economic nature can exclude or ban self-regulation of multiindustrial production and consumption either completely or partially in some of its aspects.[128]
For Russia at the beginning of the 21st century (first of all) and other states of the former USSR this means that the cult opposition (since 1985 and until now[129]) of the so-called «planned economy» and «market economy» which have been considered to be two mutually excluding alternatives results from the superficial attitude, ignorance and folly of «economists» and parrot-like «analytic» journalists» who have made such statements before and continue making them now.
All this time intelligent people who are aware of the problem’s essence have held a different opinion.[130] For example A. Epstein in his article “More dangerous than an enemy”[131] published in the “Economicheskaya gazeta” (№ 41 (210), October 1998) quotes an interview with Saburo Okita, one of the «founding fathers» of the Japanese «economical miracle», given shortly before his death to professor A. Dinkevich:
