Q. But cannot the Soviet workmen bring pressure to bear on the authorities by striking?
A. Strikes have been outlawed de facto in the Soviet Union since its earliest years. Soviet trades unions are merely the instruments for helping the State enforce discipline. They are the classic type of company unions. We can sum up this aspect of Soviet State Capitalism by saying that whereas this form of collectivism was intended originally to free the workman from all the disabilities, injustices, and inequalities suffered by the workman under the individual capitalist employer, all that has happened is that the workman has exchanged a comparatively weak, sometimes well-meaning, individual or corporate capitalist employer for a monster, all-powerful, completely egocentric, impersonal, soulless monopoly, the State, which has all the faults of the worst individual employer multiplied a millionfold. It is just as greedy as the worst individual, but has no check upon its greed, and it is never as efficient as the least efficient individual. It is Jack London’s Iron Heel in reverse.
Q. It was the original Bolshevik theory, was it not, that their Planned National Economy would be superior to Unplanned Capitalist Economy because it would prevent the cyclic recurrence of economic crises, such as 1929-1930? It was to end all booms and depressions by ending overproduction. Hasn’t the Soviet Union done at least that much?
A. We cannot tell, because the Soviet Union has never, in the twenty-three years of its existence, had anything like sufficient production, much less overproduction.
Q. Why couldn’t the Soviet Planned Economy succeed?
A. We can split the total failure into five parts: First, failure adequately to replace the profit system; second, failure of planned production; third, failure of planned distribution; fourth, failure of the monetary system; fifth, failure of Soviet construction to keep up with deterioration. Behind all these four failures looms the black father of them all, the Terror.
Q. Why do you devote so much importance to the Soviet Terror?
A. From having witnessed its importance in the Soviet Union. Aside from that, we ought to be able to recognize purely theoretically its paramount role in any attempt swiftly to transform an individualistic society into a collectivist society. For thousands of years men have been living more or less free individual lives. Suddenly it is decided to create a collective, as the Bolsheviks decided in Russia. At the time of the Revolution there were said to have been no more than ten thousand Bolsheviks. Eventually they were to impose their will upon 200,000,000 people and reorganize them into a vast, badly functioning, but nevertheless authentic anthill. To do this as swiftly as the Bolsheviks wanted it done required compulsion, applied without stint, to every unit in the ant heap. Having no say in the matter these multitudes of human beings were required to change every habit of their lives; were ordered even to change their instincts. It took unlimited compulsion to achieve a semblance of the goal. The instrument of compulsion was the Terror.
It produced an ant heap, but the ant heap never was able to do more than provide minimum food, lodging, and clothing for its ants. For a long time outside observers leniently agreed that this must be due to the strain of reorganizing an individualistic into a collectivist society, but now that a generation has passed, the tendency is to consider that more fundamental faults are to blame.
First, it appeared that the motive for work was not so effective in the ant heap as it was in the outside world, since from the day of its foundation until this moment the Soviet workman has produced less per capita per hour than capitalist workmen anywhere in the world. Furthermore, higher ranks, as engineers, technicians, superintendents, managers, and directors in the Soviet Union were so notably inefficient compared with their capitalist colleagues that for a time the anthill authorities imported and paid highly trained specialists from the outside world to set an example and teach.