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Ford and Stalin. How to Live in Humaneness · перевод (English) · раздел 14 из 42
Перевод исходного произведения; точность перевода оценивается отдельно.
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Having made this digression let us go back to Ford’s book:
«I have no quarrel with the general attitude of scoffing at new ideas. It is better to be skeptical of all new ideas and to insist upon being shown rather than to rush around in a continuous brainstorm after every new idea. Skepticism, if by that we mean cautiousness, is the balance wheel of civilization. Most of the present acute troubles of the world arise out of taking on new ideas without first carefully investigating to discover if they are good ideas. An idea is not necessarily good because it is old, or necessarily bad because it is new, but if an old idea works, then the weight of the evidence is all in its favor. Ideas are of themselves extraordinarily valuable, but an idea is just an idea. Almost any one can think up an idea. The thing that counts is developing it into a practical product.
I am now most interested in fully demonstrating that the ideas we have put into practice are capable of the largest application - that they have nothing peculiarly to do with motor cars or tractors but form something in the nature of a universal code. I am quite certain that it is the natural code and I want to demonstrate it so thoroughly that it will be accepted, not as a new idea, but as a natural code» (Introduction. “What Is the Idea?”).
This is a brief paragraph but very rich in meaning if one discerns in the terms «code» and «natural code» something different from the penal code, «gentleman’s code» of the criminal community and other crooks, «code of honor» of various corporations of individualists, «moral code» of a communist or a capitalist and the rest of written and unwritten legislation of a crowd-“elitist” society.
In fact in the above quotation Ford says that in his work he sincerely and in good conscience follows a code of objective human rights as far as he has managed to discover and to grasp them. And in his book he describes his vision of a normal algorithms of controlling production and distribution in society according to a conception alternative to the biblical one which dominates the Western civilization: the conception of buying everything up by means of mafia-like corporate supra-national usury. Yet Ford is not writing down his ideas in a rigid form of a law code titled «On Economic and Financial Activity, Labor Relations and Social Security» or a treatise on sociology whose structure corresponds to the lengthy list of big and small issues that are discussed. He is simply telling a story where economic, psychological, cultural and social issues are all intertwined as they are in real life. And every man is capable of understanding Ford’s story if he wishes to understand, if he is interested in these issues and if he is aware of their importance for ensuring both his own prosperity and the prosperity of other people (excluding aggressive parasites from the ranks of the prosperous since parasites must not prosper).
Also Ford says that he firmly believes in the following.
He has discovered and tested the means to control production and distribution of products and to solve social problems connected with production and distribution, and those means would be recognized by the society as the norm.
After this norm is established the system that was successfully implemented in «Ford Motors» will become a natural way to do business and to take part in ventures headed by people who also adhere to this norms.
It is also important that these ethic and organizational norms of managing a business have proved their viability on the microeconomic level in a macroeconomy of the Biblical-Talmudic type which is based on domination of usury and stock exchange speculations organized by mafias and supported by all the might of state and its legal mechanism. [68]
Now let us demonstrate Ford’s views on production and consumption which form the backbone of a technical civilization’s life. Ford says:
«The primary functions are agriculture, manufacture, and transportation [69]. Community life is impossible without them «of the technology-based civilization, though life of a biological civilization based on different moral and ethic principles and beliefs is possible». They hold the world together. Raising things, making things, and earning things are as primitive as human need and yet as modern as anything can be. They are of the essence of physical life. When they cease, community life ceases «of a technology-based civilization» (Introduction. “What Is the Idea?”).
This paragraph makes it clear that Ford begins describing his social and economic views with stating that the multiindustrial system of production and consumption is systemically integral. Its performance determines whether the society as a whole or certain groups within it prosper or not. Consequently it determines the non-economic aspects of prosperity that depend on the economy.
Ford goes on:
«There is plenty of work to do. Business is merely work. Speculation in things already produced «as well as speculating with money, i.e. usury» - that is not business. It is just more or less respectable graft. But it cannot be legislated out of existence (put in bold type by the authors: this is a legalized way of stealing in most countries). Laws can do very little. Law never does anything constructive [70]. It can never be more than a policeman, and so it is a waste of time to look to our state capitals or to Washington to do that which law was not designed to do. As long as we look to legislation to cure poverty or to abolish special privilege we are going to see poverty spread and special privilege grow. We have had enough of looking to Washington and we have had enough of legislators - not so much, however, in this as in other countries - promising laws to do that which laws cannot do.
When you get a whole country - as did ours - thinking that Washington is a sort of heaven and behind its clouds dwell omniscience and omnipotence, you are educating that country into a dependent state of mind which augurs ill for the future. Our help does not come from Washington, but from ourselves [71]; our help may, however, go to Washington as a sort of central distribution point where all our efforts are coordinated for the general good. We may help the Government; the Government cannot help us.
(…)
The moral fundamental is man’s right in his labor «and the products of labor». This is variously stated. It is sometimes called “the right of property”. It is sometimes masked in the command, “Thou shalt not steal”. It is the other man’s right in his property that makes stealing a crime. When a man has earned his bread, he has a right to that bread. If another steals it, he does more than steal bread; he invades a sacred HUMAN right (put in capitals by the authors).
If we cannot produce we cannot have - but some say if we produce it is only for the capitalists. Capitalists who become such because they provide better means of production are of the foundation of society. They have really nothing of their own [72]. They merely manage property for the benefit of others. Capitalists who become such through trading in money are a temporarily necessary evil. They may not be evil at all if their money goes to production. If their money goes to complicating distribution - to raising barriers between the producer and the consumer - then they are evil capitalists and they will pass away when money is better adjusted to work; and money will become better adjusted to work when it is fully realized that through work and work alone may health, wealth, and happiness inevitably be secured (put in bold type by the authors) (Introduction. “What Is the Idea?”).
And the above quotation makes it clear that the right to work naturally implies the right to the products of one’s labor. But because in the multiindustrial production and consumption system work is performed collectively the individual is entitled only to his own share of the work’s product. Besides, many products are discrete [73] and many even non-discrete products are consumed discretely by portions or collectively [74], therefore the right to receive the objects produced in most cases cannot be actualized in natural form.
This circumstance leads to the following question:
What is the best way to adjust money (which is in itself nothing), or rather money circulation, to labor and consumer relations between people in the systemic integrity of multiindustrial production and distribution of products? For it is exactly the efficiency of this systemic integrity that determines and predestines many things regarding the welfare of society and each of its members.
Ford asks the same question only in a somewhat different wording because he discusses its different interconnected aspects in different parts of his text.
While analyzing the system of self-regulation of production and distribution that has formed in the USA and the West in the course of history in order to answer the many-sided question we pointed to above, Ford adheres to the systemic views he has put forward earlier. He puts it straight:
«I only want to know whether the greatest good is being rendered to the greatest number» (Ch. 12. “Money - Master or Servant?”).
And this is a clear and unambiguous display of supporting bolshevism which acts to the benefit of the majority («bolshinstvo» in Russian) of laborers who do not want anyone to parasite on their life and labor.