4.4 The Ethics of Bolshevism: CONSCIENTIOUS Labor to the Welfare of Laborers
Ford and Stalin. How to Live in Humaneness · перевод (English) · раздел 16 из 42
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4.4 The Ethics of Bolshevism: CONSCIENTIOUS Labor to the Welfare of Laborers
In accordance to what has been said in the previous chapter H. Ford who is widely known as a businessman and industrialist is besides that an economist and sociologist. Moreover he is a more consistent scientist than the supposedly professional academicians as he starts analyzing labor relations within the system of multiindustrial production and consumption in the society by proclaiming an ethic principle:
The human right to work and to partake of the product of the work he took part in determines what objectives should be assigned on the microlevel of the multiindustrial system of production and consumption in order to ensure its systemic integrity.
H. Ford says:
«There is no reason why a man who is willing to work should not be able to work and to receive the full value of his work. There is equally no reason why a man who can but will not work should not receive the full value of his services to the community. He should most certainly be permitted to take away from the community an equivalent of what he contributes to it. If he contributes nothing he should take away nothing. He should have the freedom of starvation. We are not getting anywhere when we insist that every man ought to have more than he deserves to have - just because some do get more than they deserve to have.
(…)
It is very easy, unless one keeps a plan thoroughly in mind, to get burdened with money [83] and then, in an effort to make more money, to forget all about selling to the people what they want. Business on a money-making basis is most insecure. It is a touch-and-go affair, moving irregularly and rarely over a term of years amounting to much. It is the function of business to produce for consumption and not for money or speculation. Producing for consumption implies that the quality of the article produced will be high and that the price will be low - that the article be one which serves the people and not merely the producer. If the money feature is twisted out of its proper perspective, then the production will be twisted to serve the producer.
The producer «including entrepreneurs» depends for his prosperity upon serving the people. He may get by for a while serving himself, but if he does, it will be purely accidental, and when the people wake up to the fact that they are not being served, the end of that producer is in sight» (Introduction. “What Is the Idea?”).
If one might draw a generalization in regard to the whole of society it might be as follows: «as soon as people figure out that the system does not serve their welfare its collapse will be at hand» (at hand on the historic time-scale, of course). Moreover so if the people have already made up a vision of the system they will substitute the anti-national one with which has already happened in Russia. [84]
Ford devotes the entire Chapter 8 to the ethic principles of production and consumption organization, principles of the kind which would make the average man feel that the system works to his benefit. Because the average man can sense this all the people will understand those principles as the educational level increases and culture develops. People will keep following them knowingly and purposefully for the sake of their personal welfare, the welfare of their descendants and the common welfare of all the other people.
«It is not usual to speak of an employee as a partner, and yet what else is he? Whenever a man finds the management of a business too much for his own time or strength, he calls in PARTNER (put in capitals by the authors) to share the management with him. Why, then, if a man finds the production part of a business too much for his own two hands should he deny the title of «partner» to those who come in and help him produce? Every business that employs more than one man is a kind of PARTNERSHIP (put in capitals by the authors). The moment a man calls for assistance in his business - even though the assistant be but a boy - that moment he has taken a partner. He may himself be sole owner of the resources of the business and sole director of its operations, but only while he remains sole manager and sole producer can he claim complete independence. No man is independent as long as he has to depend on another man to help him. It is a reciprocal relation - the boss is the partner of his worker, the worker is PARTNER (put in capitals by the authors) of his boss. And such being the case, it is useless for one group or the other to assume that it is the one indispensable unit. Both are indispensable. The one can become unduly assertive only at the expense of the other - and eventually at its own expense as well» (Ch. 8. “Wages”).
This paragraph leaves no doubt that Ford does not tolerate the «master-and-servant» type of relationship between employer and employees that is actually more befitting a slave-owner.
And now let us quote from the book by Joseph Stalin “The Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR ” where Stalin writes about the new ethic reality emerging within the Soviet society:
«The economic basis of this antithesis is the exploitation of the country by the town, the expropriation of the peasantry and the ruin of the majority of the rural population by the whole course of development of industry, trade and credit under capitalism. Hence, the antithesis between town and country under capitalism must be regarded as an antagonism of interests. This it was that gave rise to the hostile attitude of the country towards the town and towards "townfolk" in general.
Undoubtedly, with the abolition of capitalism and the exploiting system in our country, and with the consolidation of the socialist system, the antagonism of interests between town and country, between industry and agriculture, was also bound to disappear. And that is what happened. The immense assistance rendered by the socialist town, by our working class, to our peasantry in eliminating the landlords and kulaks strengthened the foundation for the alliance between the working class and the peasantry, while the systematic supply of first-class tractors and other machines to the peasantry and its collective farms converted the alliance between the working class and the peasantry into friendship between them. Of course, the workers and the collective-farm peasantry do represent two classes differing from one another in status. But this difference does not weaken their friendship in any way. On the contrary, their interests lie along one common line, that of strengthening the socialist system and attaining the victory of communism. It is not surprising, therefore, that not a trace remains of the former distrust, not to speak of the former hatred, of the country for the town.» (“Remarks on Economics Questions Connected with the November 1951 Discussion”, Part 4. “The Issue of Closing the Gap between Town and Village, between Mental and Manual Labor and of Eliminating the Differences Between Them”).
The above quotation demonstrates that what Ford thought to be an ideal the American society must aspire to (now this is also an ideal for the Russian society) was a reality for the Soviet society of the late 1940-s - early 1950-s [85] in many if not all the collectives.
The relations between executives and average employees described by Stalin are so strikingly different from the ethic results of bourgeois reforms in modern Russia that capitalist parasites will claim them to be a fantasy of Stalin’s having nothing in common with reality. But saying this they forget that they have been screaming about Stalin the tyrant «exploiting the people’s enthusiasm» without ever asking themselves what was the source of that enthusiasm. And the point is that its source was the psychological and ethic motivation to labor conscientiously in a collective that existed in the society on the whole. This motivation existed because staff and executives were not enemies bound by the common chain of production relations but «friends and companions, members of a united manufacturing team whose vital concern is the welfare and expansion of their enterprise. The hostility between them has vanished without a trace».
To use a better word there was no trace of this hostility yet the its seeds remained intact in the society’s noosphere. After Stalin was assassinated state policy was altered by party, government and financial executives bent on introducing “elitism”, and these noospherical seeds grew into the reality of nowadays, full of class antagonisms and tensions.
Comradeship should serve as the basis of work organization as work is inevitably and objectively of collective nature at most modern enterprises. This principle also provides grounds for the payroll policy:
«There is nothing to running a business by custom - to saying: “I pay the going rate of wages.” The same man would not so easily say: “I have nothing better or cheaper to sell than any one has.” No manufacturer in his right mind would contend that buying only the cheapest materials is the way to make certain of manufacturing the best article. Then why do we hear so much talk about the “liquidation of labor” and the benefits that will flow to the country from cutting wages - which means only the cutting of buying power and the curtailing of the home market? What good is industry if it be so unskillfully managed as not to return a living to everyone concerned? No question is more important than that of wages - most of the people of the country live on wages. The scale of their living - the rate of their wages - determines the prosperity of the country» (Ch. 8. “Wages”).
He elaborates on these statements a few paragraphs later:
«It ought to be the employer’s ambition, as leader, to pay better wages than any similar line of business, and it ought to be the workman’s ambition to make this possible (put in bold type by the authors). Of course there are men in all shops who seem to believe that if they do their best [86], it will be only for the employer’s benefit - and not at all for their own. It is a pity that such a feeling should exist. But it does exist and perhaps it has some justification. If an employer urges men to do their best, and the men learn after a while that their best does not bring any reward, then they naturally drop back into “getting by.” But if they see the fruits of hard work in their pay envelope - proof that harder work means higher pay - then also they begin to learn that they are a part of the business, and that its success depends on them and their success depends on it.
“What ought the employer to pay?” - “What ought the employee to receive? These are but minor questions. The basic question is “What can the business stand?” Certainly no business can stand outgo that exceeds its income. When you pump water out of a well at a faster rate than the water flows in, the well goes dry. And when the well runs dry, those who depend on it go thirsty. And if, perchance, they imagine they can pump one well dry and then jump to some other well, it is only a matter of time when all the wells will be dry. There is now a widespread demand for more justly divided rewards, but it must be recognized that there are limits to rewards. The business itself sets the limits. You cannot distribute $150,000 out of a business that brings in only $100,000. The business limits the wages, but does anything limit the business? The business limits itself by following bad precedents.
If men, instead of saying “the employer ought to do thus-and-so,” would say, “the business ought to be so stimulated and managed that it can do thus-and-so,” «yet this requires workers and businessmen to be Bolsheviks in their morals and ethics», they would get somewhere. Because only the business can pay wages. Certainly the employer cannot, unless the business warrants. But if that business does warrant higher wages and the employer refuses, what is to be done? [87] As a rule a business means the livelihood of too many men, to be tampered with «i.e. careless in regard to these people». It is criminal to assassinate a business to which large numbers of men have given their labors and to which they have learned to look as their field of usefulness and their source of livelihood. Killing the business by a strike or a lockout does not help. The employer can gain nothing by looking over the employees and asking himself, “How little can I get them to take?” [88] Nor the employee by glaring back and asking, “How much can I force him to give?” Eventually both will have to turn to the business and ask, “How can this industry be made safe and profitable, so that it will be able to provide a sure and comfortable living for all of us? [89]”
But by no means all employers or all employees will think straight. The habit of acting shortsightedly is a hard one to break. What can be done? Nothing. No rules or laws will effect the changes. But enlightened self-interest will. It takes a little while for enlightenment to spread (put in bold type by the authors). But spread it must, for the concern in which both employer and employees work to the same end of service is bound to forge ahead in business.(…)
It ought to be clear, however, that the high wage begins down in the shop [90]. If it is not created there it cannot get into pay envelopes. There will never be a system invented which will do away with the necessity of «productive» work. Nature has seen to that. Idle hands and minds were never intended for any one of us. Work is our sanity «above all of moral and psychic health», our self-respect, our salvation. So far from being a curse, work is the greatest blessing. Exact social justice flows only out of honest work (put in bold type by the authors: though it would be more precise to say «conscientious labor»). The man who contributes much should take away much [91]. Therefore no element of charity «and actually financing parasitism and sloth» is present in the paying of wages. The kind of workman who gives the business the best that is in him is the best kind of workman a business can have. And he cannot be expected to do this indefinitely without proper recognition of his contribution. The man who comes to the day’s job feeling that no matter how much he may give, it will not yield him enough of a return to keep him beyond want, is not in shape to do his day’s work. He is anxious and worried, and it all reacts to the detriment of his work (put in bold type by the authors: this is exactly what all post-Stalin reformers achieved on the territory of the former USSR).
But if a man feels that his day’s work is not only supplying his basic need, but is also giving him a margin of comfort and enabling him to give his boys and girls their opportunity and his wife some pleasure in life, then his job looks good to him and he is free to give it of his best (put in bold type by the authors) [92]. This is a good thing for him and a good thing for the business. The man who does not get a certain satisfaction out of his day’s work is losing the best part of his pay» (Ch. 8. “Wages”).
We shall stop quoting here because in order to make clear the point of our further discussion (discourse) several issues of managing an enterprise and its employees must be clarified.