Digression 4 : The Moral and Ethic Results of Bourgeois Reforms in Russia
Ford and Stalin. How to Live in Humaneness · перевод (English) · раздел 15 из 42
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Digression 4 : The Moral and Ethic Results of Bourgeois Reforms in Russia
«I recall an incident in Siberia where I once lived in exile. It happened in spring, at the time of spring tide. About thirty people went to the river to catch the logs carried away by the raging great river. In the evening they came back to the village, but one of their companions was missing. I asked them where that man was and they answered indifferently that he «remained there». I asked again: «How is it so, he remained?» and they answered with the same indifference: «What’s the point of asking, he must have drowned». And the next moment one of them started hurrying somewhere saying that he «had to water the mare». I reproached him for feeling more sorry for a beast than for a man. One of them answered backed up by all the others: «What’s the point of feeling sorry for them people? New people we can make any time, but a mare… it’s not that easy to make a new mare» (put in bold type by the authors: this moral attitude that is widespread among the simple people reveals the reasons for abuse of power after 1917). This might be a small and insignificant detail, which is nevertheless very characteristic. It seems to me that indifference towards people, towards personnel shared by some of our executives, their inability to value people is a remnant of that strange attitude of people towards other people «of that horrible attitude, to be more precise» which was demonstrated in the incident in distant Siberia that I had recollected a bit earlier.
WE MUST FINALLY UNDERSTAND THAT OF ALL THE VALUABLE CAPITAL IN THE WORLD PEOPLE, PERSONNEL ARE THE MOST VALUABLE AND THE MOST DECISIVE CAPITAL. WE MUST UNDERSTAND THAT IN OUR PRESENT SITUATION «PERSONNEL TURNS THE SCALE…» (put in capitals by the authors. A quotation from Stalin’s address to graduates of military academies made on May 4, 1934).
And it is truly so: «Personnel turns the scale». Those who disagree with this statement made by the outstanding Bolshevik manager, man of state thinking and economist, Joseph Stalin, can find consolation in a different formula, which is of a slave-owning nature in its essence:
«Assets [75] are resources owned by company «A». And though the EMPLOYEES of this COMPANY are probably its MOST VALUABLE RESOURCE (put in capitals by the authors) they nevertheless (are/ are not) a resource subject to accounting. Underline the correct answer» (Robert N. Antoni, professor at Harvard university Business school, “Essentials of Accounting”). [76]
Though various equipment and technologies are indeed important, in any sphere of maintenance of modern civilization it is not the money, equipment, technology and software, not the lifeless knowledge contained in books, not the infrastructures that do the work. It is the living people who control the whole thing and contribute their productive labor (whether manual or intellectual).
At the same time the overwhelming majority of products and services needed for an individual’s, a family’s, a nation’s life in modern civilization are of such a nature that they cannot be produced on one’s own by anyone. Manufacturing them in good quality requires the coordinated effort of dozens of enterprises and agencies:
They must work «as a single person» who is something like a multitude of personalities existing simultaneously. This «person» should perform the elements of the common work (the manufacturing process) in different places with proper professional skills and industry.
If this is not the case then any projects and ventures end up unrealizable (at the maximum) or at the least the quality of their products does not satisfy consumers and their participants themselves, depending on how far they were from this ideal. In some cases the project fails because one man out of the thousands of its participants has made a single mistake that passed unnoticed or if noticed uncorrected by other workers; or this one man could knowinglydo his part of the common job carelessly.
Totally removing man from the system of production and turning to a fully automatic and robotic production will not solve this problem. On the contrary, it will aggravate it:
· first, any software controlling automatic equipment is written by teams of humans. Both their strengths and weaknesses leave an imprint on this software;
· second, one of the basic qualities of most automatic applications is that it is impossible for people to control accuracy of its operation and to correct its mistakes at the pace at which automatically controlled processes (especially fast ones) proceed [77].
Owing to the above-mentioned qualities of the modern society’s production basis in any period of time at any enterprise it is the relations between superiors and inferiors and between workers of similar status, which determine whether it will achieve success or fail.
Therefore when executives share such notorious prejudices in their relations with subordinates as «I’m the boss - you’re the fool», «personnel must do what they are told and mind their own business», etc. and use the cliches «you’re the boss - I’m the fool», «I shall do anything you say without any pangs of conscience» when addressing their superiors this is most detrimental to any team work.
If this psychological and ethic climate is maintained among staff members by the executives whose behavior is more befitting to a «pukhun» (leader in a criminal community») or «barin» (Russian landlord) and by other factors of social importance the enterprise is doomed to exist in abject misery. A hierarchy of real fools and «smart» rascals pretending to be fools is formed at the enterprise breeding incompetence and establishing a gap between the post and the qualities the holder of this post has. This happens on every level of controlling the manufacturing processes and controlling the collective. The same goes for the economy as a system formed by many enterprises managed on the principles described in the previous paragraph. [78]
Unfortunately, in the course of the post-1991 reforms in the countries of the former USSR top executives on the whole (with minor exceptions known to few people) treated the collectives they headed with permissiveness and carelessness. CEOs and top managers of most enterprises misused their authority, suppressed and dismissed those who opposed their aggressive parasitism and self-seekingly made money. Considering themselves and their relatives to be the society’s «cream of the cream» and the true proprietors of those enterprises - the first generation of capitalists, they redistributed Soviet NATIONAL property (according to the legislation in force) and COOPERATIVE property of the KOLKHOZES (collective farms) to their own benefit.
Virtually everywhere CEOs and top-managers treated employees as if they were working cattle without a single human right. In the collectives that could not withstand this outburst of «barstvo» (the high-brow way Russian land-owners treated serfs) and permissiveness displayed by the mafia of CEOs and top managers such attitude gave rise to many people’s unwillingness to work honestly and conscientiously. [79]
Actually in many collectives employees silently hate [80] or simply despise and ignore the entire management because they know them to be profoundly vicious people who have been systematically and impudently misusing their authority with impunity over many years.
This psychological and ethic atmosphere that reigns in many (perhaps in the majority of) collectives is the most prominent result of the post-Stalin «ottepel» (“democratic” thaw), «zastoi» (stagnation) and «democratic reforms» in Russia and other countries of the former Soviet Union.
It follows that establishing a psychological and ethic atmosphere that would motivate individuals and collectives at enterprises to work conscientiously is the chief problem one needs to solve at the majority of enterprises. Solving it will enable enterprises to work to the benefit of society and thereby enable Russia to get over the social and political crisis.
This problem needs to be solved because in the current psychological and ethic climate any personal professionalism no matter how high it is and what sphere it belongs to is rendered futile by the absence of voluntary conscientious support from one’s associates.
This holds true for anyone’s professionalism: ranging from a janitor’s or a dish-washer’s professionalism to professionalism of truly outstanding men of science, culture and of the state’s head.
Yet all recent discussions on labor ethics pass by the issue of psychological and ethic motivation of conscientious labor in collectives. The reasons for it are known: venality of sociologists, economists, political observers and analysts who speak on these issues in the mass media. They are more comfortable nattering about «investments» and «securing investors’ trust» - this matter does not offend anyone and imposes no commitments.
But without solving the problem of re-establishing an ethic motivation to conscientious labor in COLLECTIVES one cannot build any kind of society: neither a capitalist, nor a communist one. If collectives ARE psychologically and ethically motivated to conscientious labor there is no problem of investments: if foreign investors refuse to fund the transformation of Russia with their bucks and euros they will shortly after that have to fight for every kopeck in order to fund their own appearance on the Russian market.
At least those who sincerely support communism are more or less aware of the necessity to reinstate the ethic motivation to labor. The majority of those who support Russia ’s return onto the capitalist way of development expect to solve all problems of politics and organizing production and distribution by the following means:
· bribery - paying a salary big enough to the people recognized as «highly useful» by the bosses of the social system or to those whom many people and entire spheres of social activity depend on (these people comprise the privileged, artificially “elitized” social minority and to some extent the so-called «middle class» whose income to a significant extent consists of unearned parasitic income);
· economic constraint to labor - those disloyal and easily replaced are under the threat of losing their jobs and their pay is kept at the minimum level (they form the majority that is almost totally dependent on the government and on the financial and economic authority of the usurious bank mafia, top managers and the stratum of businessmen whose enterprises cannot do without hired personnel)’
· repressions against the members of society who have been prompted to become criminals by the system itself because of the following reasons:
O the culture supported by the system has restrained and perverted personal development of most people, therefore many people’s mentality is very far from the mentality of a successful personality. Having proved noncompetitive in making a legal career they enter the criminal path;
O people can find no other way to protect themselves from the crowd-“elitist” hierarchy’s oppression;
O the structure of the Western type society which conceals heterogeneous slavery has no place for a human being. A successful (integral) personality [81] is therefore always a criminal in respect to the system’s founding principles as it was the case of how societies treated Buddha, Christ, Muhammad and many others.
Yet these very principles are laid as foundations of management by marauding administrations of many enterprises. Such managers are ethically and professionally capable only of getting rich by misusing authority, plundering and squandering what has been created by previous generations, and are not capable of providing for a qualitative development and expansion of the enterprises they are heading.
This way, supporters of reinstating capitalism in Russia display their utmost stupidity. At the beginning of the 21st century they are unable to see the truth that was clearly stated and published by H. Ford in the first two decades of the 20th century - after the bitter experience of the social calamities caused by class antagonisms not resolved in due time.
Notwithstanding what Ford said as early as the beginning of the 20th century there are still many fools among the Russian «businessmen» at the beginning of the 21st century who would like to live in a weird kind of society. This society consists on the one hand of «businessmen» having indisputable merits and on the other hand of employees who have no such merits and therefore suffer an «inferiority complex». They are sincerely delighted in their serving the «businessmen» and tolerate all their foolish and humiliating freaks without a murmur because… they are grateful to the «businessmen» who have hired them - «inferior people» - out of mercy, perhaps even at a loss.
Yet society of real people is different from these absurd visions and their like.
The protest against the efforts of «tough» «businessmen» (in the most common sense of the word) to bring down the rest of the people to the level of working cattle is predestined from Above (atheists would say - is in the nature of man). There are many ways in which the protest against “elitism” that humiliates and oppresses people has been manifested in the course of history. Some pretend to be an obedient servant while secretly waiting for an opportunity to stab the «benefactor» in the back, others wield a conceptual power in full awareness following the principle: «Wise men are not afraid of «mighty» rulers and do not need the «prince’s» gift. Their prophetic tongue speaks truth in freedom and follows God’s Will…» [82]
Thus actual crowd-“elitism” given rise by demonic «businessmen» (in the broadest sense of the word) who have «indisputable» merits systemically gives rise to diverse crimes viewed as such in regard to the “elitist” scheme of social order. Crowd-“elitism” systemically reacts to the crime it itself generates by establishing secret and special services. Some of their staff members also turn out to be the advocates of «business» and also start «playing tough» with other «businessmen» corporations and with the working people dependant on them. Therefore it is characteristic of crowd-“elitism” to accumulate in the course of time protest tensions that have been generated by “elitism” itself. And consequently adhering to the crazy ideals of crowd-“elitism” dooms any social system to failure. It is an attempt to squeeze this social system into the framework of the impracticable ideal in order to humor the ambitions of «businessmen» and their clans that have once achieved success on the first stage of the coming-to-be of their «firms» (in the broadest sense of the word).
The only way to resolve (release) the inward tension in a crowd-“elitist” society is to discard the crazy ideals of “elitism” and to transform the crowd-“elitist” society into humanity by means of purposeful alteration of the people’s morals and world understanding. This is the essence of bolshevism, which is the process of transition from the historically formed crowd-“elitism” to the multinational humanity of future Earth.
In this connection the following fact is of interest. All our efforts to find books by H. Ford in the original in the Internet have failed as well as the attempt to find those books in printed variant in the USA though there is no direct ban on publishing and selling them in the USA. Yet neither were Stalin’s works openly banned in the times of the «zastoi-sunk» USSR or in the period of democratic outburst in liberal Russia. This silent ban aimed at sinking the works by H. Ford and J.V. Stalin into oblivion has been imposed in those very countries where they have lived and worked for the welfare of society. This fact unites the work of these two outstanding personalities for the sake of the mankind’s future in spite of what the people who have banned them originally intended.