1.
Accelerated Industrialization
Beginning with 1949-50 the
“peoples’ democracies” entered a stage of accelerated
industrialization. [1] The
annual, biennial and triennial plans for rebuilding the economy
and repairing wartime destruction have now been succeeded by
five and six year plans for industrial development. These plans
tend to transform all of the eastern part of Europe from an
agricultural into an industrial area. Barring foreign military
intervention this transformation is already assured. It
represents a revolution in the economic structure of the old
continent, who.se long-range consequences, can hardly be
grasped. Century-old centers of economic stagnation and of
barbarism, in Slovakia, Hungary, Rumania, in the Carpathians and
along the Vistula, are thus rapidly being erased from the map of
the world. No political or social consideration can serve to
diminish the enormously progressive significance of this fact.
The accelerated and feverish pace of industrialization is
clearly expressed in the indices of production. In Bulgaria,
industrial production has tripled in comparison with the pre-war
period. In Poland it has reached the index figure 268. In
Hungary it has passed the index 200 and the plan anticipates
that in 1954 production will be three times that of 1949. In
Czechoslovakia production, has reached the index 180, as
compared with the pre-war period, and in Rumania the index at
175 while production for 1955 is set at 250% higher than that of
1950.
During the course of last year
a revision of plan targets took place in all these countries
except Bulgaria. This revision was in the direction of speeding
up the pace of industrialization. Thus for Czechoslovakia
industrial production for 1953 will have to reach twice that of
1948, whereas the initial plan only provided for an increase of
57%. A law of May 17, 1951 set as the new objectives of the
Hungarian five-year plan the attainment of an index of 310 in
1954 as compared with 1949 production, whereas the initial plan
had set the index only at 186.4. In Rumania investments which
had reached 145 billion leis in 1950 (some 4.5 times greater
than in 1948) are to rise to an annual average of 330 billions
starting with 1951. The goal of the Polish six-year plan had
been set in 1948 as three times the pre-war industrial
production. It is now intended to quadruple it.
This revision of plan
objectives requires above all a radical change in the
relationship of heavy and light industry in favor of the former.
In Czechoslovakia notably, the output of heavy industry, which
in 1951 made up 49% of the gross product of all industry, is set
for 55% in 1952, which means a 2.5% greater output of heavy
industry than in 1937 (and a production of light industry below
that of the pre-war period). In Hungary production of heavy
industry increased 32% in 1951 as compared with 1950, that of
light industry increased only 20%. Its target for 1954 is 70% of
all industrial production. In Poland the heavy industry sector
is to advance from 59.1% in 1949 to 63,5% in 1955. Even Rumania,
where heavy industry was almost completely non-existent,
committed 40% of its total investments to this sector in 1950
and 45% in 1951.
The development of the steel
industry takes the central place in the industrialization
plans for Eastern Europe. The entire buffer zone, including
eastern Germany, should produce 16 million tons of steel in
1954, that is to say, as much as the record production of Great
Britain, more than German production on the eve of the second
world war, and twice the pre-war production of Japan. Six new
installations for steel-works, blast furnaces and rolling mills
will be constructed toward this end: at Nowa Huta (a
new city of 100,000 inhabitants, 10 kilometers from Cracow) and Czestochova
in Poland, at Fuerstenwalde in eastern Germany, at Moravska-Ostrava
and Kosice (Slovakia) in Czechoslovakia, and finally at
Dunapentele in Hungary. Each of the centers will have a
productive capacity of over a million tons of steel annually.
Other smaller steel-works will be built or enlarged in Rumania,
Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary.
The anticipated development of electrical
production is startling in its proportions. The
electrification of Rumania is set for an annual production of
4.7 billion kilowatts in 1955. For the year 1960, per capita
production of 150 watts is anticipated as against 37.5 watts in
1951. In Czechoslovakia work is beginning on a dam equalling the
capacity of Dnjepostroi. In Poland the great dams of Jaworzno,
of Duchow and of Stettin are appearing, and a new dam is in
preparation near Warsaw which will have twice the capacity of
that of Genissiat.
A certain specialisation
is provided for the different countries in the course of the
industrialization plans. Czechoslovakia will primarily be the
forge of the buffer zone, being called upon to produce 4.5
millions of tons of steel in 1955, and its production of heavy
machinery (turbines, Diesel engines, transformers,
turbo-generators, rolling-mill equipment, etc.) is supposed to
provide the tools for all the countries of eastern Europe.
Eastern Germany will specialize in optics, precision tools,
naval construction, the production of cranes. Polish coal and
coke will furnish the foundation for the heavy industry of the
whole buffer zone; the Polish chemical industry, now second in
importance in the country (its production will have reached 800%
of the 1938 level by 1955!), will supply soda, fertilizer,
cement, and synthetic products (rubber, dyes etc.) to the buffer
zone. The export of Polish machine tools will be of vital
importance for the industrialization of neighboring countries.
Hungary will supply aluminum, railway cars and secondary
machinery. Rumania, finally, will supply oil and will have to
develop its agricultural machine industry for export.
The main bottle-neck
industrialization encounters in the buffer zone is the shortage
of coal. Whereas metallurgical and steel production must be
more than doubled, coal production in all the countries of
eastern Europe will experience an overall increase of only 40%. [2]
Poland, the principal producer, will have to increase its
production by 25% in order to attain 300 million tons annually
by 1955; this is a modest objective, since the production of
Silesian coal reached this figure under German management in
1943. The lack of mechanization and above all the decrease in
productivity makes the realization of even these objectives
doubtful. The successive campaigns of intimidation and of
favoritism towards the miners, waged by the Stalinist Parties,
have had little success up to now.
Overall, the successes already
attained by industrialization can be summarized in the following
comparisons: per capita industrial production in Czechoslovakia
has already surpassed that of France; Polish and Hungarian per
capita production have surpassed that of Italy; Poland by 20%.
For 1955. it is forecast that Czech per capita production will
reach the German pre-war level; that of Poland and Hungary will
reach the French level; that of Rumania will reach the Italian
level.
2.
Disproportion Between Industry and Agriculture
“The cause of our
present difficulties lies in the generally well-known
disproportion between the tempo of socialist development in
industry and the tempo of development in our agriculture,
which operates preponderantly on an individual basis and often
even according to capitalist methods.”
This is how Hilary Minc,
director of Polish economy and the most capable economic
specialist of the buffer zone, characterized the overall
condition of Polish economy last October (Trybuna Ludu,
Oct. 10, 1951). This characterization is completely correct. The
uneven development in industry and agriculture (at the end of
1951 the Polish index of industrial production was 268, the
index of agricultural production 95, the 1938 level being
equivalent to 100) is not at all however, “inevitable in a
socialist” economy (Minc means: an economy in the transitional
period). To eliminate this disproportion, all that would be
necessary would be, to pursue a long-term agricultural policy,
to devote an important part of industrial production to the
production of agricultural machinery and industrial consumer
goods, thereby accelerating the voluntary acceptance by the
peasants of cooperative production, which is more remunerative
and more productive.
Failing to foresee this
difficulty – typical of the great concern the Stalinists show
for the alliance between the proletariat and the peasantry! –
and as a consequence of the economic directives of the Soviet
bureaucracy, the industrial rise in 1951 produced only enough
agricultural machinery in 1951 to service one-sixth of the
agricultural enterprises and one-tenth of the arable land. It is
in this lag in the mechanization of agriculture that we must
seek the real reason for the food crisis which is now raging, in
varying degree, in most of the countries of the buffer zone.
Minc endeavors to explain this
crisis by the fact that the social structure of the population
has been profoundly altered. Prior to the war the number of
non-agricultural wage-earners amounted to 2,733,000; in 1951
this number rose to 5,200,000. Because of the large increase in
the urban population, which rose from 38.6% of the total
population in 1938 to 54.25% in 1951, a smaller number of
peasants must therefore feed an increased number of
city-dwellers. But this line of argument does not take into
account the fact that the pre-war population included an
enormous village overpopulation, which Polish sources
themselves estimate as a minimum of 5 to 7 million employable
workers. (Wirtschaftsdienst published by the
Polish Bureau of Information, August 1951). The same source
estimates the present reserve working force in the Polish
village as 2.5 million adult males. [3]
Consequently, it is not a lack of agricultural labor, but the
unremunerative system of small farms (831,000 Polish
agricultural enterprises, even now cover an area of less than
two hectares each which is at the bottom of the difficulty in
supplying the city with food).
In addition, there is the weight
of capitalist elements in agriculture (in Poland, 5.1% of
the peasants possess 15.6% of the land) and in trade (30% of
Polish retail trade is still in private hands) which gives
agricultural development in the buffer zone a distinctly speculative
trend. Minc explains that the enormous increase in the number of
hogs since the end of the war – this number rose from 2.7
million in 1946 to 5.1 million in 1948 and 9.9 million at the
end of 1950, thus surpassing the absolute number of the pre-war
period and practically doubling their production per hectare of
arable land – is the result of a government policy restricting
the export of wheat, allowing the peasants to use this wheat for
feed and purchasing hogs at a high price in order to export
lard.
In the autumn of 1951
difficulties in supplying feed set in as a result of the drought
and poor harvest. The rich peasants began to hoard grain (Polish
kulaks produce 26% of all the wheat) and potatoes for feeding
their hogs and to slaughter part of their sows, thus causing a
simultaneous shortage in meat and in potatoes in the city and a
fantastic rise in prices on the black market. In Hungary the
same phenomena had occurred several months previously.
Rakosi states (Szabad
Nep, December 2. 1951) that Hungarian industrial
production passed the index 250 (pre-war average = 100)
whereas agricultural production only reached 116. He explains,
more frankly than Minc, that even without the bad harvest caused
by drought, there would have been a crisis in food supply:
hoarding of wheat and potatoes converted to fodder; speculation
in meat; enormous price rise on the free market (Rakosi cites as
an example the price of a 140 kilogram calf which rose from 900
forint in the spring of 1950 to five to six thousand forint in
the spring of 1951). Whereas Minc advocates rationing as the
best immediate solution of the problem, Rakosi explains that
rationing introduced at the beginning of 1951 in Hungary had
increased speculation, and for this reason it was again
abolished in December. (Speech of Zapatocki in Rude Pravo
of November 1, 1951.) The same pheonomena also occurred in a
particularly harmful way in Czechoslovakia.
Pressure of
Rich Peasantry
The pressure of the kulaks
is manifested not only by hoarding but also by a considerable
delay in the payment of taxes. Both Minc and Rakosi give
numerous examples of this. Rakosi cites an example of a kulak
who had debts of 2,700 forint to the state and in the meantime
had purchased a house for 18,000 forint, a horse for 4,000
forint, a cow for 3,500 forint, and whose attitude was defended
before the village “council” – a significant indication of
the influence of the kulaks! – by the following argument:
“When a man has so many expenses, he just can’t afford to
pay his taxes.”
The example of the kulaks, Minc
recognizes, has developed speculative tendencies in the middle
peasants. There lies the most serious aspect of the situation,
for the middle peasants dominate agriculture, and the state must
be able to rely on their neutrality. Thus the Polish government
has been compelled to resort to coercive measures: compulsory
delivery of potatoes (decree of October 8, 1951); compulsory
delivery of a certain number of cattle, hogs and poultry (law of
February 1952). Rationing has been made more stringent in
Poland, Czechoslovakia and Rumania. The quota of grain
deliveries has been raised so high that not only the kulaks but
even some middle peasants have been obliged to buy supplementary
quantities of wheat on the free market in order to be able to
fulfill their obligations. The monetary reforms (October 1950 in
Poland, February 1952 in Rumania) had as their objective the
distribution of the monetary reserves of the kulaks.
At the same time, Minc, Rakosi
and Zapotocki insist on the fact that there is no question of
changing fundamentally the agricultural policy of their
governments; that they have no intention whatever of
“liquidating” the kulaks but solely that of putting a brake
upon their harmful activity. Thus Stalinist agricultural policy
in the buffer zone bears the stamp of hesitation, empiricism and
incoherence. [4]
The disproportion between
industry and agriculture, buttressed in turn by the
disproportion between the development of stock breeding and that
of feed, production – (whereas in Poland the number of hogs
practically doubled between 1948 and 1950, the production of rye
increased only 3%, that of barley 7% and that of potatoes 39%
– has provoked several phenomena of instability:
- Agricultural prices are
rising more rapidly than industrial prices: According to the
Bulletin of the Polish Information Bureau
(January 1952 issue) 10 kilograms of meat on the hoof before
the war would buy an average of 23 kilograms of salt or 14
liters of gasoline; today it buys 100 kilograms of salt or
50 liters of gasoline. Before the war the peasant had to pay
210 liters of whole milk for a plow. 100 kilograms of
nitrate fertilizer cost him the same amount. Today he can
buy a plow for the equivalent of 70 liters of whole milk,
and 100 kilograms of nitrate fertilizer only cost him 45
liters of whole milk, etc.
- Peasant consumption is
rising more rapidly than worker consumption: Per capita
consumption of potatoes in the Polish village declined in
1950, as compared with 1938, but per capita consumption of
wheat rose from 43 kilograms to 52 kilograms, and of meat
from 13.7 kilograms to 17 kilograms (For a Lasting Peace,
September 14, 1951). At the same time total agricultural
production is lower, except for potatoes, than that of the
pre-war period and the total population has decreased only
17%.
- From this fact the rather
considerable monetary increase in working-class family
income arising from the introduction of piecework, the
increase in overtime work, the generalization of woman
labor, does not find its equivalent in food upon the market,
loses its function as a stimulus and becomes a factor in
inflation, in the increase in prices and in increasing net
cost in industry. Minc stated on February 17, 1951 that
nominal wages in Poland had increased 17% during the past
year whereas labor productivity had risen only 9.1%.
According to Szabad Nep of September 17, 1950,
Hungarian industrial production increased 37.6% compared
with the previous year, but overall wages rose 47.3%.
3.
Development of Agricultural Cooperatives
Following the break of the
Cominform with Yugoslavia, the Stalinist leaders in Eastern
Europe were compelled by the Kremlin to proceed to the
collectivization of agriculture.
This endeavor collided not only
with inherent social difficulties – resistance by the
peasantry – but with almost insurmountable technical obstacles
as well: the inadequate number of agricultural machines. That is
why agricultural cooperatives often consisted of the simple
joining together of small farms without any resulting rise in
labor productivity. With economic imperatives taking the upper
hand upon the outbreak of the food crisis in 1950 and above all
in 1951, collectivization was generally slowed down or even
halted (notably in Hungary, by a decree dated February 28,
1951).
Nevertheless, a balance sheet
of this first stage of collectivization indicates the important
place which agricultural cooperatives and state farms will
henceforth occupy in the agriculture of the buffer zone. In Bulgaria
the number of producer cooperatives has reached 2,729, embracing
53.8% of all peasant families and 47.9% of the total area of
land worked! In Czechoslovakia, the acreage of
agricultural cooperatives is far in excess of one million
hectares and has reached 17% of the arable land. In Poland,
the number of cooperatives has increased from 243 at the
beginning of 1950 to 2,200 at the beginning of 1951 and 3,054
toward the end of that year, covering 13.5% of the arable land.
In Hungary, the number of families absorbed by
cooperatives and state farms has risen to 236,500, grouped in
4,652 cooperative enterprises which together with the state
farms cover 25% of the arable land. In Rumania, the
tempo of collectivization is slower and at present has only
reached a figure of 1,000 cooperatives, amounting to a small
percent of the arable land (270,000 hectares).
The structure of these producer
cooperatives varies greatly from country to country and within
each country. Grouping them together, in the category
“socialist sector of agriculture” is grossly inaccurate.
Thus in Bulgaria, the land incorporated into the cooperative
remains private property. After having paid the state in kind
the price for use of machines and the purchase of seed arid
fertilizer, 90% of the balance of the harvest is divided, 60%
in. accordance with the hours of work contributed by each member
of the cooperative, and 30% in accordance with the acreage
of land brought in by each member.
The middle peasants in the
cooperatives thus find in them a real source for appropriation
of the work of others, a means of getting around the law banning
the use of wage workers. [5]
That is why a substantial number of these middle peasants have
rejoined the cooperatives. The same phenomenon has also shown up
in Poland, where the number of poor peasants rejoining the
cooperatives has remained very small.
Condition of
Farm Machinery
If the number of available
agricultural machines is in itself greatly limited, the use of
these machines is still further restricted by an extraordinary
accident rate and by the lack of spare parts or poor functioning
of repair stations. Rude Pravo (February 2,
1952) explains that in the past autumn 20 to 22% of available
tractors were out of service in Czechoslovakia. Scanteia
(February 6, 1952) explains that in Rumania there is great delay
in the repair of tractors. From the last harvest up to January
20, numerous repair centers had not repaired a single tractor. Szabad
Nep of February 5, 1952 states that on February 1, the
agricultural machinery centers in Hungary had only carried out
46% of their plan for repairs, instead of the 71% forecast for
this date. In Czechoslovakia, this percentage was only 40.6%. In
Bulgaria, it is estimated that half the tractors are out of
service at the present time.
The Stalinist leaders in
eastern Europe have often emphasized the requirement that
admission to agricultural cooperatives should be on a wholly
voluntary basis. Nevertheless, the indirect economic
pressure used does not solely and justifiably strike at the
kulaks (by a policy of progressive increase in compulsory
deliveries and taxes) but at the middle peasants as well and
even the small ones. Deliveries of industrial, fertilizers and
location of agricultural machines systematically favor the
cooperatives as against the private enterprises. In Hungary, the
private farm used an average of 6 kilograms of chemical
fertilizer. per youg; in contrast the agricultural
cooperative used 92.6 kilograms! (Statisztikai Szemle
of Budapest, number 1-2, 1950). Since at the same time,
according to the same source, natural fertilizer hardly sufficed
to fertilize, 5.7% of arable land in the autumn of 1949, against
the 20 to 25% forecast, a very strong pressure is thus exercised
against the private enterprises.
Rakosi and above all Minc in
Poland have asserted many times that tolerable economic
conditions must continue not only for private enterprises in
general, but even for kulak enterprises. But each time the
Stalinist governments are confronted by increased pressure from
the kulaks, they are inclined to seek a solution in a new
extension of collectivization whose compulsory character is
thinly veiled. The incoherence of this orientation further
sharpens the generally incoherent character of agricultural
policy in the buffer zone.
4. Foreign
Policy and Equipment Difficulties
The application of
industrialization plans has considerably changed the structure
of foreign commerce in eastern Europe. Relations among all the
“people’s democracies” have multiplied. Overall plans. Of
development among several of these countries have been
elaborated. Thus, according to the organ of the SED Neues
Deutschland (February 2, 1951), Poland and
Czechoslovakia are together building about twenty factories, one
of them an electric plant at Dvory, synthetic textile plants, a
leather combine, etc. A Polish-Hungarian committee is
elaborating a five-year plan of economic cooperation, as well as
coordination of the industrialization plans of the two
countries.
According to the Soviet review Voprossi
Ekonomiki (July 1951), the foreign trade of these
countries is characterized by a clear tendency to replace bilateral
trade agreements and clearings by multilateral
agreements. An example of two agreements of this kind is given
by the commercial treaty of the end of 1949 among the USSR,
Poland and Finland, and among the USSR, Czechoslovakia and
Finland. Finland will supply the USSR with frame houses,
building timber, small vessels and other goods amounting to 100
million rubles; it will receive in exchange 80 million rubles of
Polish coal, and. Czech sugar, machines and other products in
the amount of 20 million rubles. Poland and Czechoslovakia will
receive from the USSR 80 and 20 millions, respectively, of live
stock fodder. This kind of triangular trade undoubtedly
increases the control of the USSR over the trade of all the
“peoples’ democracies.”
The USSR plays the role of
depot and redistribution center not only for trade of the
“peoples’ democracies” with capitalist countries but even
for trade between the various “peoples’ democracies.”
Nevertheless, this system permits a deeper integration of
economy among the buffer zone countries and represents a stage
toward a degree of common planning among all these countries.
The same role is played by delivery plans and long-term credits
which are taking an increasingly important place in reciprocal
trade among the countries of eastern Europe.
There is no doubt – and the
least benevolent among capitalist sources have had to admit it
– that despite the pillaging role played by the Soviet
bureaucracy in the economy of the buffer zone, eastern Europe
has reached a degree of economic integration and of a drastic
elimination of customs barriers that has no counterpart in the
parallel pathetic attempts in western Europe. The superiority of
the mode of production based on nationalization of the means of
production is thus confirmed anew.
The
Kremlin’s Special Privilege
This does not mean that there
has been a decrease in the various forms of exploitation which
the Soviet bureaucracy introduced into its relations with the
“people’s democracies” The “Soviet corporations,” SAG
in Germany, USIA in Austria, the joint corporations
Sovrompetrol, Sovromgas, Sovrochim etc. in Rumania, Maszovel and
Molai in Hungary, continue to play a disruptive role in the
economy of the buffer zone and in the reciprocal relations among
the “peoples’ democracies.”
Thus, according to the Neue
Zürcher Zeitung of February 2, 1951, the USIA
companies at the beginning of 1951 offered some thirty modern
steam locomotives on the Vienna Market at the very time when the
Soviet foreign minister was compelled to purchase 300 Swedish
locomotives because of inadequate production in the USSR.
At the very time when the
scarcity of oil is greater than ever in the Soviet bloc, the
camouflaged Soviet trade corporation in Austria OROP is offering
large quantities of Diesel oil, etc. These instances, resulting
from the needs for liquid foreign exchange on the part of the
Soviet companies in the buffer zone, demonstrate the anarchic
character still remaining in the relations among the Soviet
corporations, the economy of the country in which they are
located, and Soviet economy. [6]
Trade With
the West
Trade between the buffer zone
countries and the capitalist countries of the West has decreased
greatly, resulting from both the voluntary transfer of this
trade to the USSR and to the “peoples’ democracies,” as a
result of the need of freeing planning from the pressure of the
capitalist world market, and from the imperialist blockade. For
Bulgaria, Rumania, and to a degree even for Hungary, trade with
the imperialist countries has become negligible. On the other
hand; it continues to play an important role for Poland and
Czechoslovakia. Although the relative weight of Fast-West trade
has likewise decreased for these countries, the absolute level
of this trade remains high.
According to the Bulletin
économique pour l’Europe of the UN, Poland
exported to the countries of western Furope in the amount of
$305 million in 1951, as Against $230 million in 1950 and $172
million in 1938. Its imports from western Europe amounted to
$195 million in 1951, as against 164 millions in 1950 and 136
millions in 1938. As for Czechoslovakia, while its
exports to western Europe in 1951 were $171 million as against
$204 million in 1950 and $198 million in 1938, its imports from
western Europe rose in 951 to $187 million as against $171
million in 1950 and $135 million in 1938.
The principal suppliers to
Poland have been Sweden (iron ore), Denmark, Great Britain
(machines) and western Germany (machines); the main suppliers of
Czechoslovakia were Belgium, Switzerland, Sweden and western
Germany. In general the importance of trade with the
“peoples’ democracies” has declined greatly in the foreign
trade of all capitalist countries, with the exception of the
Scandinavian countries and, to a degree, that of Italy and of
Switzerland. This decline is particularly significant for Great
Britain and Germany which formerly obtained their food supplies
from these countries and sold them manufactured goods. It is not
solely due to the blockade. The requirements of the east
European countries are almost exclusively geared to industrial
tooling and to certain raw materials (non-ferrous metals,
rubber, cotton.) The blockade has made it difficult for the
“peoples’ democracies” to obtain these products (The
Economist of March 1, 1952 reports a speech of a Polish
Stalinist leader complaining of the scarcity of non-ferrous
metals caused by the blockade).
Despite the great efforts, both
legal and unofficial. which commerce of the Soviet bloc must
make to secure ball bearings, special steels, communications
equipment, piping for oil installations, the changed economic
structure of the “peoples’ democracies” is beginning to
show itself in its own export trade. A formerly exclusively
agricultural country like Hungary is now exporting
Diesel automobiles and air-conditioned railroad cars to Turkey
medical supplies and X-ray equipment to Egypt and radio
transmitters as far as Belgium. It has even recently concluded a
contract for the delivery of complete trains to Argentina,
entering into competition with the United States, Great Britain,
Germany and Belgium in this field. These are changes which will
in the long run have profound effects on the overall structure
of the world market.
5.
Productivity and Workers’ Resistance
The introduction of a
considerable quantity of new machines must necessarily bring
about an increase in labor productivity. Inevitable
difficulties can arise from the influx of hundreds of thousands
of peasants into industry who are unaccustomed to working with
machines in general and with costly machines in particular.
However, it is not this difficulty which is considered of prime
importance by the Stalinist leaders when they complain of the
inadequate output of labor in the buffer zone countries. What
they are after is an increase in the rate of output, the
speeding up of the tempo of work, generalization of the assembly
line, that is to say, they are demanding an additional physical
effort from the workers.
To this increased physical
effort there is added an increase in the work week, abolition of
Saturday off for miners, decrease in premium pay for night work
and overtime hours, female labor in the mining industry and in
unhealthy industries. In the face of these measures, the
resistance of the workers, particularly those of Poland, of
Czechoslovakia, of eastern Germany and to a degree those of
Hungary, educated by decades of fierce class struggle, is
energetic and even sometimes effective.
The surest means of pressure
that the Stalinist authorities have in influencing the attitude
of the workers is the fixing of wages by the state. In most of
the “peoples’ democracies,” the fiction of the
“collective agreement” between the trade unions (under
Stalinist leadership) and the state (under the same leadership)
has been dropped. Where it was introduced, as in eastern
Germany, it expressly provides that the government itself, if it
considers it necessary, can itself change or set the production
“norm” related to basic wages.
In Czechoslovakia (Neue
Zürcher Zeitung, May 27, 1951) the “basic wage”
for each factory was set in a stable fashion, which can no
longer be exceeded except in the case where the objectives of
the plan are surpassed. This means that should the work for
realizing the plan require hours in excess of those provided
they will not be paid for or they will result in a general
lowering of wages. This measure was accompanied by a general
rise in norms. In August 1951, a second revision took place (The
Economist, September 8, 1951), resulting in a real
reduction in average wages. Rabotnitchesko Delo
central organ of the Bulgarian Stalinist party, complains in its
issue of December 18, 1951, that the norms are too “rigid”
in Bulgarian industry.
Progressive raising of norms
and differentiation of wages are demanded in order to increase
the output of the workers. In Rumania, since the beginning of
1951, measures were taken to raise the norms, to reduce the
wages of unskilled workers and for payment of overtime. (The
Economist, January 13, 1951)
Price Policy
and Wages
Price policy represents the
indirect pressure instrument in the hands of the government:
without changing nominal wages, the increase in prices provokes
a decline in real wages. This is what is taking place notably in
Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary with the successive
introduction, abolition, and reintroduction of the dual price
sectors (rationed sector and free sector). In Hungary, for
example, upon the final abolition of rationing, there resulted a
price increase of close to 300% for bread, butter and beef, and
of about 200% for lard, sugar, vegetable oil and milk. At the
same time nominal wages increased only 28% (The
Economist, February 9, 1952). This is the method used
by the Stalinist leaders for taking away with the right hand
what they give with the left in order to stimulate productivity:
increases in nominal wages which are actually inflationary, as
we saw previously.
This is how the bureaucracy
suppresses what Eugene Varga has not hesitated to cynically
label “consumer fever and wage fraud” (Szabad Nep,
June 18, 1950), which consists in the fact, incomprehensible to
this philosopher of the bureaucracy, that “everybody is
seeking new clothes, new furniture, new homes and better food
... (whereas) it is in the interest of future consumption to
consume less today.”
In order to teach recalcitrant
workers how to “consume less” and still keep quiet, the
Stalinist governments are progressively introducing the work
legislation in force in the USSR. Whereas the workers; as a
result of the shortage of labor, could on their own initiative
leave their work place when they had the slightest reason for
dissatisfaction, they are today attached to the plant, as in the
Rumanian decree of November 21, which makes every change in
industrial employment dependent on a decision by the State. A
Polish law of December 15, 1951 imposes severe penalties for
minor “infractions of work discipline”: an unexcused absence
of 20 minutes (!) results in a reduction in wages; an unexcused
absence of more than an hour brings a loss of a day’s pay; an
unexcused absence of 3 days is punished by a month’s work at a
20% decrease in pay; an unexcused absence of 4 days by a 3
months’ work at a decrease of 10 to 25% in pay, etc.
But “relaxation of work
discipline,” absenteeism, relaxation of physical effort, are
the normal reactions of workers confronted with speed-up,
physical. exhaustion [7] and
an absence of goods to buy for their swollen nominal wages. All
the Stalinist dignitaries protest and weep because “work
discipline” is not so good. Rakosi stated at the beginning of
this year (Szabad Nep, January 13, 1952):
“It is obvious even today
as to what will take place if work discipline does not change.
We are vainly giving the leaders of economy the means (!) for
using legal methods for re-establishing work discipline. All
this will serve no purpose so long as the comrades are afraid to
use forceful measures.”
Several weeks previously
Zapotocki stated (Rude Pravo, November 1, 1951)
that the origins of the slowdown in economic development lay in
the relaxation of work discipline. The report of the secretary
of the Bulgarian trade unions states (Rabotnitchesko
Delo, December 18, 1951) that it is customary in very
many enterprises for a part of the workers to absent themselves
without valid reasons.
Alongside this elementary form
of passive resistance [8],
more active forms of resistance are already manifesting
themselves, linked with a certain stabilization of living
conditions. Here we must cite primarily the workers’
resistance against the conclusion of new “collective
contracts” in eastern Germany, which compelled the Stalinist
functionaries in the large plants to really discuss these
contracts before dozens of meetings; the open resistance of the
miners in the Ostrava Basin in Czechoslovakia; the demonstration
of 10,000 workers at Brno in Czechoslovakia in November 1951 to
protest against suppression of the Christmas bonus.
6.
Bureaucracy and the Rise in Production
Together with labor
legislation, the industrial management forms which have been in
force in the USSR for 20 years have now been introduced into the
“peoples’ democracies.” Since May 1950, the principle of
individual responsibility of company managers, and of their
omnipotence on the plant level, has been applied in Poland. In
Hungarian industry the same measure was introduced a year later
(For a Lasting Peace, November 16, 1951). Rude
Pravo published an article on September 26, 1951 in
which the same principle is insisted on. The reorganization of
industry which accompanies the fall of Slansky likewise tends to
strengthen the principle of individual responsibility in
managerial matters (Rude Pravo, September 9).
But at the same time that
Stalinist organs are fulminating against bureaucratism; at the
same time that they insult chairmen of workers’ committees who
think “they ought to meddle in the work of managing
companies and production, a work which should be incumbent on
the manager alone ... (who) fancy themselves managers
of the companies ... (who) do not know how to demand a
maximum of work (from the workers).” (Rude Pravo,
October 3, 1951) they find themselves under simultaneous
pressures of inefficiency of the bureaucratic management and of
the discontent of the workers.
The establishment last
September of a minister of state control, under Bacilek
in Czechoslovakia represents an interesting reaction on the part
of Czech Stalinist leaders in the face of this double pressure.
In order to combat bureaucratism, “all levers of command in
the state administration for control shall be confided
exclusively in workers” (Rude Pravo,
September 19). But at the same time, in order to continue the
struggle for increased productivity, the autocratic character of
the plant manager will not be questioned. The task of the
worker-controller will consist of “verifying the facts,
and nothing but the facts. But not to middle in the conflicts
and frictions inherent in the company.”
But the question is precisely
one of this kind of meddling. For what the workers are seeking
and will be seeking on an increasing scale are organs for
“meddling” in the “conflicts and frictions” which set
them against the bureaucrats in the plant. These organs are the
Soviets. And the factory committees existing in most of the
countries of the buffer zone are considered by the workers as
embryos of these organs of defense of the workers and of strict
control over the bureaucrats.
Whatever may have been the
measures taken by the Stalinist leaders to emasculate these
factory committees and to transform them into organs submissive
to the bureaucracy, each time they have had to feel the pressure
of the workers and have shown themselves as ineffective
instruments for the government. It is up to the workers to find
the means to transform them into effective defense instruments
for their own interests.
Socialist
Democracy
The Czech, Polish, Hungarian,
and needless to say the east German working class possesses the
necessary technical and organizational qualification to take
into its own hand the management of national economy. That is
the precondition for reviewing and revising the objectives of
the plan which are introducing permanent factors of instability
into economy; for correcting the relations between heavy
industry and light industry in order to raise the living
standards of the workers and peasants and thus create a material
base for raising productivity.
Modifications of the plans for
heavy industry must be directed towards priority production of
agricultural machinery, for mechanization of agriculture
represents the only way to abolish the disproportion between
industry and agriculture.
Revision of norms must reflect
the sentiments of the majority of the workers. All these
measures will not weaken but will strengthen the capacity of the
“new democracies” to resist imperialism, for they will for
the first time base this resistance on the conscious,
enthusiastic, limitless attachment of the masses to the new
system of production.
The higher the worldwide
anti-imperialist struggle rises; the greater the number of blows
dealt to capitalism by the international proletariat, the more
will the workers of the buffer zone regain confidence in their
own strength and will take to this road along which socialist
planning will be combined with socialist democracy.
Footnotes
1.
See our articles in Fourth International (May
1949 and September
1949) on the preceding stages of the economic evolution of
eastern Europe.
2.
Furthermore it is pointed out that in Hungary the increase in
the production of raw materials is considerably below the
general tempo of the increase in industrial production (Szabad
Nep, July 27, 1951). According to the Yugoslav paper, Borba,
June 10, 1951, this may be a calculated design of the Soviet
bureaucracy to increase the dependence of Hungarian economy on
that of the USSR.
3.
In Poland, an average of 90 people, 56 of them adults, live off
a farm area of 100 hectares, and in Hungary more than 200 people
on the average make their living from 300 yougs (171
hectares).
4.
In his previously cited speech, Rakosi acknowledges that the
huge exports of wheat in 1948, 1949 and 1950, had sharpened the
crisis. The anti-economic way in which agrarian reform was
carried out in Czechoslovakia and eastern Germany has had the
same effects.
5.
Tehervenkof, secretary-general of the Bulgarian Stalinist party,
correctly explains in For a Lasting Peace (May
5, 1950) that involved here is a matter of absolute rent, since
it concerns revenue arising from land property, independent of
yield from the land. A. Petruschof writes to the contrary in the
Moscow New Times of March 28, 1951, that this
revenue “has nothing in common with absolute rent.” Without
explaining why, of course ...
6.
Together with reparations and mixed corporations, the Soviet
bureaucracy has found a surprising new instrument of pillage: it
has just demanded from Bulgaria payment of 10 million dollars as
a charge against ... credits granted to the Bulgarian CP by the
Communist International over a 28-year period!
7.
The Hungarian review Tarsadalin Szemle
(July-August 1951 issue) fcit it necessary to “prove” by
ridiculous reasoning that Stakhanovism is not injurious to
health. The pulse of shock workers does beat a little stronger
at the beginning of the day, signs of exhaustion do appear, but
all of that can be eliminated by “the positive emotional
factor,” by “the desire and love” for production ...
8.
According to Rude Pravo of February 14, 1952,
the number of work places in the mining basin of Ostrava, where
shock brigade work was introduced, has steadily decreased. It
was 88 in May 1951, 54 in November and 44 in December 1951.
According to the newspaper Nova Svoboda, of
February 21, 1952, five of the 10 sections of the CP in this
region could not hold their meetings in January because of
inadequate attendance. In three sections, 17% of the members
were present, and in the remaining two, 45 and 50%.
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