We propose, in brief, that all resources, all land and buildings, all manufacturing establishments, mines, railroads and other means of transportation and communication, should be, not private property, but the common property of all those who work. We propose that society should consist only of those who work which means that all members of society should be socially useful human beings. We propose that production be made to serve the needs of those who work, rather than to serve the needs of a few parasites. We hold with science that production and distribution of goods can be planned to avoid anything resembling the crises in capitalist society. Planned economy on the basis of common ownership without any class division is called Communism.
Before we proceed we must say a word or two about a proposal to have planned economy under capitalism. Roosevelt’s “New Deal” is supposed to be a kind of planned capitalism. Roosevelt proclaims “partnership” of government and employers for the purpose of regulating wages and hours of work, the amount of production and the prices of goods. Roosevelt promises to abolish the crisis by doing away with what is known as anarchy of production under capitalism.
Experience has proved that planning under capitalism is impossible. Mussolini tried it. Hitler talks about it. What resulted is capitalism worse confounded.
Roosevelt has introduced the National Industrial Recovery Act. But the “codes” under the Act do not do away with competition. Prices are to be fixed by the common consent of the manufacturers. It takes a good deal of dickering until the Manufacturers agree on a price, with the tacit understanding that each one will break the agreement as soon as it suits his private interests. But even if the manufacturers should adhere to the agreement, they are at liberty to compete with one another by introducing better machinery and by driving their workers to higher speeds. Thus, the very mechanism of the Industrial Recovery Act induces the capitalists to increase the speed of production and to eliminate workers, which means increasing unemployment.
Roosevelt’s “New Deal” is supposed to raise the wages of the workers. In point of fact, it cuts the wages of the workers in many instances, especially in the higher brackets. But even where wages had to be increased, such increases could not overcome the basic anarchy in industry. In the first place, prices of consumers’ goods rose even more rapidly than wages, so that the real wages of the workers, expressed in food, clothing and shelter, have actually been lowered; secondly, this rise in wages gave rise to an introduction of new machinery. The New Deal with its high prices, says the Annalist (a business magazine published by the New York Times) for July 28th, 1933, “will put a premium on efforts to lower the cost of production for the sake of much larger profits. This will be done by investing more capital in order to increase the productivity of labor and may very well result in new and revolutionary technical developments”. Revolutionary technical developments increase the production capacity of the plants, while the lowered standards off living of the workers make it impossible for here to buy all the goods produced. The very same discrepancy between production capacity and purchasing power which brought about the crash of 1929 is in full operation under the New Deal. The decline of production in the last quarter of 1933 is proof of that.
The New Deal was supposed to improve the conditions of the farmers. Roosevelt placed a “processing tax” of 30 cents on a bushel of wheat which, combined with the bad crops, drove the prices for wheat up. Roosevelt ordered 3.5 million bales of cotton destroyed in order to boost the cotton prices. Prices of commodities soared. Whatever benefits the farmers got from the price increases were wiped out by the increase in the prices of manufactured goods they had to purchase. The New Deal certainly has not done away with the crisis in agriculture. It has only aggravated it for the bulk of the farmers, while helping the food speculators (food trusts) and the larger landowners to make new millions.
When we Communists speak of planned economy we do not mean a plan similar to that of the N.R.A., which leaves everything in the hands of the individual owners. We do not mean a plan which leaves all the wastefulness, all the inefficiency and all the criminal parasitism of capitalism untouched, only increasing the power of the big industrialists and bankers by openly abolishing the none-too-enforced anti-trust laws and by fostering price-fixing by united manufacturers. We do not mean a system where, like at present in the U.S.A., the oil industry competes with the coal industry and both of them with the electric power industry, where the rayon industry competes with the cotton industry and both of them with the silk industry, where the lumber industry competes with the steel industry as building material, the railroad industry competes with the motor bus and both of them with water transportation, and so on.
We do not mean a system where the big industrialists swallow up the small and middle industrialists and where the big banker gobbles up everybody and everything (see the record of the House of Morgan as partially revealed at the recent Senate hearing).
When we Communists speak of a society organized on the basis of planned production and distribution we mean something entirely different. What we have in mind is very simple. It is clear-cut. Do away with production for profit. Make a survey of all available resources, plant and man power. Figure out how much of the products of each industry can be produced, say, in a year. Fix the annual consumption of the population at this rate. When you do so you are sure that nobody will go hungry or without a roof over his head. But this is not sufficient. Make it your purpose to increase production. Employ the best services of scientists to improve your machinery and your methods of work. Encourage scientific research to advance science for the purpose of improving life. Extend this improvement not only to industry and agriculture but to all realms of life. The output of industry is sure to increase. Distribute the fruits of increased production among all the members of society. Improve their well being. Increase production still more by further improving machinery and methods according to the latest data of science. Distribute the benefits of the increased production again among the population without exception, always heightening the technique of production to enrich the economic and cultural life of all the members of society and to ease their labor. Continue this process indefinitely. When you do so there will be no crises, no unemployment, no exploitation, no wars, no fear of the future.
Is this impossible?
We do not even have to refer you to the experiences of the Soviet Union where this is actually being accomplished. We refer you to the experiences of these United States. The total national income of the U.S.A. for 1928 was estimated at about 89.4 billion dollars. This would have meant $750 for each of the 120 million of the population of the United States, man, woman and child, or over $2,000 a year for a family of three, if it were not for the fact that more than one-half of this national income went to owners of land and capital — and don't forget that this was a year where mass earnings were rather high. Under a system of Communism nothing would go to the private owners of land and capital because there would be no such owners, and everything would go to the working people because everybody would be a worker. But Communism would not content itself with a national income equal to that produced under capitalism. Communism is an incomparably higher organization of society than capitalism. If the Soviet Union, an industrially backward country, was capable of increasing the output of industry 300 per cent in five years, an industrially more highly developed country like the U. S. A. would be able to increase its output at least five times in fare years. Assuming then that the national income of the American Soviet was originally equal to that of 1928, the income of a family of three after the first American five-year plan would be more than $2,000. If we add the use of all the cultural facilities, all the buildings and all the playgrounds now denied the working class, the income in terms of utility would increase still faster. In ten years, even at a moderate rate of industrial development, working only about five hours a day, a family of three would have a standard of living measured today by, say, $20,000 a year. And that would be only a beginning, for human inventiveness knows no limit and the progress is unending.
The application of science to human society was the slogan of the technocrats in the heyday of their propaganda. But the technocrats proposed to busy themselves with production without reorganizing the foundation of society. This is why all their recommendations remained suspended in the air. In one respect, however, they were correct: they showed what immense possibilities for the satisfaction of human wants are contained in the achievements of science and in its future growth.
Communism compared to capitalism is like capitalism compared to the economy of the native Indian population of three centuries ago. Communism builds. It encourages scientific advance on a colossal scale. It makes man complete master of nature and of the social system. It reduces human labor to the easy task of supervising machinery a few hours a day. It leaves mankind free to engage in the higher intellectual pursuits. It makes every worker a highly cultured being and everybody responsible for the welfare of all. It inscribes on its portals: Let everybody work according to his ability; let everybody receive from the common stock of goods according to his needs. In the lower stage of Communism, called Socialism, the mile is that everybody receives according to his work; but here too there is no exploitation, no oppression, no insecurity, no poverty, but everybody is working and world is made the badge of honor. Life is made humane. With this begins the great ascent of man.
But isn’t it a utopia? Aren’t those Communist dreams? We propose to show that the Communists are the greatest realists, that the program advanced by them is not only capable of fulfillment, but that the forces that will realize it are already in operation.
Speaking about realism. The year of grace 1928 certainly was a year of prosperity in America. Everybody hailed the new era. Professors advanced ingenious theories to show that the progress of industrial expansion could not be checked. Newspapers hailed the great organizers of industry, who, in their judgment, made this unprecedented progress possible. Preachers and scenario writers, vaudeville singers and Senators, generals and Salvation Army lassies — everybody gloried in America’s powerful upswing. And the leaders of the Socialist Party, who are supposed to be against capitalism, declared that capitalism in America was on the upgrade, that its constructive forces were growing and that the only way radicals could expect to accomplish anything was by pleading with the powers that be for some concessions to alleviate certain social evils.
It looked all sweetness and light. But there were those stubborn Communists who refused to share in the general hallelujah. Those fellows were equipped with the Marxian method. Some clever guys in the American labor movement made light of that “old German scholar” Karl Marx, who, they said, spent his life in the British Museum and knew nothing about America of today. Yet what Marx did was to provide revolutionary workers with a method wherewith to analyze society, and that method can be applied to every society whether Marx himself is alive or not. The Marxian method was further advanced by Lenin who applied Marxism to 20th century capitalism, the era of the rule of finance capital, which he called imperialism. Lenin was thus able to predict, not only the World War, but also the Russian revolution.
The method of Marx and Lenin made it possible for the Communists of America to foresee what all the thousands of learned professors and practical industrial leaders failed to see: the coming of the crisis in the U.S.A. Why was it possible for them to predict the coming disaster? Because they analyzed the basic forces of capitalist society, they understood the maturing contradictions, they did not let themselves be fooled by the superficial progress. They were the only realists in America. Compared with them, such men as Ford and Morgan, Mellon and Dawes, Hoover and Mills, looked like shadow-hunting fools.
Or take the realism of Soviet achievements. When the Communists (Bolsheviks) seized power in Russia in November 1917, all the wise men of the world, statesmen and professors, socialists and liberals, predicted the imminent downfall of the new regime. Yet the Communists believed it could succeed. Here and elsewhere, the Communists were equipped with the Marxian analysis. They were under the leadership of Lenin. They knew what all the theoreticians of the capitalist countries refused to understand: that within the working class there had come into being a new power, a new consciousness born out of the new freedom, a new driving force that could not be crushed. Were they dreamers? Far from it. They were scientists, social scientists. The Communists are the only social scientists in the world today.
A scientist is not against dreaming, but his dreams are real. A scientist has before his mental eye the whole structure he plans to erect before the first foundation stone is laid. Is he dreaming? Not at all. He is equipped with the understanding of the laws of nature; he knows his material; he knows how to arrange it; he visualizes all the processes which his material will have to go through until it is shaped to form a building. He knows the machinery and the other equipment necessary to carry his plan to completion. And yet, he is the biggest dreamer in the world because he dreams of things that can be made to exist. His dreams are not shadows. They are forecasts of realities to come.
In the very same way, Communists are dreamers. But they are practical dreamers. They see the forces of present day society at work. They see the trend of this work. They realize the absolutely unavoidable outcome of the clash of social forces. They realize what has to be done in order to hasten the unavoidable outcome. They have before their mental eye a complete picture of the fundamentals of society to be erected on the ruins off capitalist society. They see the social instruments whereby this stumbling block of a capitalist system can be cleared away to give room to the new, the Communist, society. They apply their forces at the most advantageous points to achieve the greatest results.
While the final goal, the Communist Society, is always kept in the Communists’ mind, they have a practical; and realistic program for every day. They do not expect you to sit idly by and wait until a Communist Society has fallen into your lap like a ripe apple off a tree. They formulate for the working class a program of action through struggle, based on the needs of the workers and exploited farmers at the present time.
Next: IV. The State