The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1930-12-19
Planned Economy and the
Workers State

THE problems of planned economic system
agitate and profoundly interest the modern
world on both sides of the Atlantic The revo-
lutonary proletariat of the capitalist countries
sees in the Soviet economic system, that is in
the system of a planned economy, the prototype
OF the economic structure to the establishment
of which it must devote its efforts on the NOR
row after the victorious proletarian revolution
On the other hand the more profound and far
sighted minds among the bourgeoisie view with
alarm the growing instability of the capitalist
system as opposed to the successful unfolding of
organized socialist economy; and they endeavor
to discover in the Soviet economic organization
methods that might prevent, or at least retard
the decline of capitalist society. Unusually in
teresting in this respect is the admission of Pro-
fessor Raymond T. Bye, of the University of
Pennsylvania, who, after giving a detailed &C
count OF the Soviet system of planning and or
ganization declares:
This is a stupendous conception, which pre-
sents a real challenge to capitalism. If social
lists can demonstrate the feasibility of a CEN
trally planned and CO. ordinated industrial sys-
tenn, we may well question whether capital
ism must not find way to incorporate this
feature into its economy, if it is not to give
way to socialism.
This coming from a bourgeois economist of
the most powerful capitalist country, is a char
acteristic and almost tragic admission.
To see the only salvation for capitalism in
methods borrowed from planned socialist econ
omy-with what bitter irony these words of this
American bourgeois economist must ring in the
ears Of those singers of capitalism who so
zealously attempt to present the Soviet economic
system to the civilized public of Europe and
America as product of barbarism, ignorance,
Asatic backwardness and despotism But the at
tempt to incorporate the methods of organized
and planned socialist economy into the econ
omic system of capitalism is a futile venture: it
is an attempt to combine incompatible elements
based on mutually exclusive principles. Planned
economy is as inherent to the socialist system
as hopeless anarchy in production and mercess
competition, whether among individual capital
lists or among capitalist groups and states are to
capitalist society.
For indeed, what are the essential prere-
qusites, the essential foundations on which the
planned organization of Soviet economy develops
in spite OF colossal difficulties? They are as
follows:
l. The establishment of the dictatorship of
the proetarat
2. The naturalization of the land factories
workshops, railroads, banks, etc
3. The monopoly of foreign trade and the
strict regulation of economic relations with the
capitalist economy of the world.
A. Undertaking limitation and the final elm
nation of the capitalist, exploiting elements in
the villages-the kulaks.
5. The essentially different attitude as COM
pared with capitalist society, of the Soviet econ
omic system and hence of the Soviet State in
general, toward the proetarat, peasantry ma
tonal minorities, backward regions, ETC.
6. The fact that the great masses of the
proletariat agricultural aborers and poor pea
santry, and the bulk of the inteectuas are
deeply and vitality interested in the success of
the socialist economy and the resulting increas-
ing self-activity of the people. This radically
distinguishes the principle of Soviet economic
construction from the economic processes taking
place under conditions prevailing in antagonistic
bourgeois society.
7. Finally the ability peculiar to the Soviet
system to concentrate at any given moment
under the guidance Of single thought and will,
on the most important sectors of the general
line Of economic construction virtually all the
combined resources Of the state, the monopolistic
political party, the trade unions the peasant
CARNATIONS, the state trusts, syndicates, banks,
the co-opcrativcs, the press, schools, etc.
In order really to understand the very founda
tons Of the planned organization Of Soviet econ