The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1934-11-27

a planned society. For example, the
theory of George Soule, which is
essentially that if the international
Social-Democratic parties, holds that
the development of engineering, of
naturalization, the Taylor system,
ETC., will automatically carry over
capitalism, step by step, to social
ist basis. This theory ignores the
central fact, that the faster produc-
ton and productivity increase, so
much deeper becomes the crisis Of
capitalism, the more inextricable its
contradictions. Crisis arises, not
from lack of productivity, but from
its excess above what can be con-
tanned within the relations of capt.
talist property. Any policy which
leaves intact capitalist property,
maintains thereby the cause of in
evitable crisis.
Technocracy, a peculiar American
product in social thought, rejects in
words both capitalism and commu-
nism. But its criticism of capitalism
is directed toward surface questions,
problems of distribution, not of pro-
duction. 1t finds all the evils of
capitalism in "the price system"
and thinks that different super
structure can be built without touch
ing the foundation of private prop
erty and production for profit. 1t
further supplements the old fetish
ism of commodities with a new fet-
ishism of mechanical energy, which
it emissions as displacing the work.
ing class as the moving force in
production. It's peculiar barrenness
in the field of practical policy is
only the necessary consequence of
cutting itself off from the source of
all life, the working class, the pro-
ducers. Technocracy contributes
nothing toward a solution of the
problem of planned society, it only
exhibits another example of decay
of capitalism and capitalist thought.
Fascist Plans
Upton Sinclair, with his EPIC
plan, envisages the growth of a self
contained use economy within the
general limitations of a profit econ
omy, by putting the unemployed to
work producing a subsistence for
themselves. The same thought, less
developed, is contained in the Roose-
welt project for subsistence farming.
But even less than it was possible
for slave economy and a modern
capitalist economy to live side by
side, is it now possible for use
economy to grow up within the de-
cayed profit system.
Such proposals, in practice, in
evitably degenerate into schemes for
lifting the burdens of unemploy-
ment relief off of the profits of the
capitalists, by throwing the surplus
population (the unemployed back
several centuries into pre-capitalist
economic forms, into a sort of serf-
dom, of forced labor, as an auxiliary,
unpaid, of the profit production. 1t
is an anticipation of Fascist econ
omic policy.
PrOletarian Dictatorship
We have insisted upon the estab-
lishment of working class govern
ment, as the essential pre- condition
to a planned economy. Does this
mean, however, as many think, that
we exclude other classes from parti-
cipation in such socialist economy
or from the tasks of its con-
struction? Not at all. On the
contrary, the Communist program
from its first enunciation has
foreseen the enormous Importance
of allies of the working class, first
of all the impoverished farmers (and
oppressed colonial peoples, ano
second, sections of the middle classes
and even of the ruling class, which
desert their class and go over to the
revolutionary working class. Ir
the Communist Manifesto, of 1S48, il
is stated on this question:
Entire sections of the ruling
class are, by the advance of in
dustry, precipitated into the pro-
letariat, or are at least threatened
in their conditions of existence.
These also supply the proletariat
with fresh elements Of enlighten-
ment and progress.
The process of dissolution going
on within the ruling class as
sumes such a violent, glazing
character that a small section Of
the ruling class cuts itself adrift
and joins the revolutionary class,
the class that holds the future in
its hands . and in particular, a
portion of the bourgeois ideolo-
gists, who have raised themselves
to the level of compromising
theoretically the historical move
ment as whole
Lenin also, while emphasizing the
leading role of the working class