Part Ⅱ
Differences between communism and capitalism
Chapter 5: Production department
(1) A special feature and ideal image of communism
There is a book which mentioned characteristics of communism in its production section. It is Mr. Miyakawa Minoru's work "Economics Guide" (publisher: Aoki Bookstore). Some points will be extracted below from "a characteristics of socialist economic systems" from this book.(pp.326 to 330). Though Mr. Miyakawa assumed that socialism is the first step of communism, I think here that socialism is a type of communism.
(Point. 1) Joint ownership of means of production
In socialist society, means of production (building/machine of a factory, facility/soil/raw materials of a mine) are owned (joint ownership) by society. Working people cooperate using means of production that they share mutually, and produce in order to fill their materialistic and cultural desires better. A working man in a capitalist society labors in order to let a capitalist gain, so, labor is sacrifice for a working man. However, in a socialist society, a working man labors for himself. Accordingly labor becomes a pleasure, and working men help one another, and make efforts in order to raise the productivity of labor.
(Point. 2) A planned economy
In a socialist society, the whole population share the means of production and labor themselves, and material property is made in order to fill their materialistic and cultural desires. Besides, production is socialized to a high degree. Accordingly national economies are necessarily planned precisely in order to achieve a purpose of production, and must develop well-balanced between production and consumption, and among various productive sections.
Primarily, balance of sections between means of production and means of consumption is realized, and secondary, balance of factories and agriculture is realized. As a result, panic disappears, and an unemployment does not exist.
If a characteristic of communism in production section is summarized from above; it will be (a) Joint ownership of means of production.
(b) Planned economy.
Mr. Minoru Miyakawa describes the situation of society resulting from the above very optimistic. But the real situations of communist countries seem to be very severe.
(2) Reality of communism
Optimism theory for communism is led from the belief that a "planned economy" can be executed smoothly if only "joint ownership of means of production" comes true. The system of communism is surely set by "joint ownership of means of production", but a "planned economy" can not always be successful. For example, a thousand times as much as current labor must be paid for a plan and control of economy if every means of production in Japan is nationalized. When the scale becomes too big, an organization or a system loses dynamism, and becomes stiff.
When a national huge organization loses dynamism, and becomes stiff, what kind of evil will bureaucratism and irresponsible principles bring forth as the result? Some cases will be introduced as follows.
① Waga Sokoku (My Country and The World)
; by Andrei D. Sakharov, translated by Tadasi Takahashi (P. 136); translation by the author.
"So far socialism was always one-party rule, and was power-grasp of bureaucratism which was greedy and incapable, and was the confiscation of all private property, and had secret police and the sort of terrorism, and was destruction of productive power, and was that the people were forced to unlimited sacrifice for recovery and expansion of productive power destroyed, and was violence toward freedom of conscience and freedom of faith."
② ditto
(P. 148)
"What kind of domestic reform will be needed in order to save this country from constant general crisis situation, and to exterminate a crisis to all mankind with it ?
(a) Partial denationalization of all economic and social industry except heavy industries and major traffic service communications media.
(b) Partial denationalization in fields such as service industries (repair industry, hotel or restaurant) retail business, education, medical care is especially urgent.
(c) In agriculture, it is necessary that partial non-collectivization and encouragement by government of individual enterprise part, which is the most productive and the most available in order to recover social and mental soundness of farming community."
③ "The Sankei Newspaper evening paper,"
; dated June 12, 1974, Rechikin professor:
"When I came to Japan I could understand the situation of this country and know American circumstances from the newspapers and the magazines, too. In these countries, luck is also necessary, but people are evaluated if they work diligently. But in the Soviet Union, it is completely on the contrary. In the Soviet Union individual effort is not recognized however hard one may make efforts, but children of high-ranked persons are made to take good positions even if they do not make an effort or have minimal ability. In the old days, there was an ideal of socialism also in the Soviet Union. But now it is just like a feudal society. I graduated from Leningrad Electricity Industry University in 1960, and belonged as an expert of electronics industry to one research institute. There, no one studied sincerely, because there was no evaluation. I could not endure such a lazy life, so I converted the course into Japanese study."
④ ditto
"The theory of socialism is good, but all become crazy when it is applied in reality. An ideal to socialism had been burning after the revolution in the Soviet Union for a quarter of century. But today with material sufficiency, the governing class is born, and they begin to restrain the person objecting to them because of "the criticism for socialism." While the material sufficiency causes increase of the voice among citizens to demand personal freedom and free election besides equality of bread, current leaders, however, do not think about protecting the power of themselves."
⑤ "Controversy of Marxism"
Zentaro Wada's work (P. 66-67); translation by the author.
"The Soviet Union is a country with a planned economy. The plan and the management of economy is left to a small number of economic bureaucrats among 250,000,000 general population. Even a planned economy can get along simply with the heavy industries machine or munitions factories where it is easy to catch the scale and a standard of production, and where the amount or variety is limited.
In the production of the consumption goods where economy scale has expanded and become complicated, a plan can not be put into operation smoothly even on the planning ability of a small group of people. It is because the desires of the whole people are complicated and it cannot be measured in a simple calculation, whereas desires of people of 200,000,000 must be answered in concrete forms.
It is the politics faithful to human nature originally freedom that make people select according to their desires. But free society survival of the fittest was so denied that even the human desire has been oppressed. Selfish freedom, pollution, high interest rates and high prices which threaten a lot of people, should be controlled by politics. But the society which runs in competition as free as possible is ideal."
⑥ "Shinzo Koizumi's Complete Works"
(P. 69-70); translation by the author.
"The complaint against public employees or bureaucracy system is full among the people of Japan now. The complaint is towards trifle with power, inefficiency and non-integrity of public employees. I do not think that these dissatisfactions are all proper but there are reasons for most of them. How should we cope with this? An extremely simple answer is to reduce jobs of public employees as much as possible.
We can lecture any way which is kinder and more efficient between public employees and private business persons. Among the private business persons, the unkindness or inefficiency are revenged directly on themselves. The business persons of unkindness and inefficiency lose customers and money. In case of public employees, this retribution is not zero either, but is quite feeble and indirect."
The evil influence of bureaucracy is enough to make us pessimistic about the future of mankind.
(3) Referring to financial statements
Optimism and pessimism on communism will be stopped here.
Next, I will try to compare a communist economy with capitalist economy by referring to the simplest financial statements.
① Examination of Production Department
All expenses which are necessary to produce products are expressed on factory cost report. Expenses are divided as follows: material cost, labor cost, sundry expenses and depreciation expenses. Necessity for these expenses will be fundamentally the same whether in a communist society or capitalism society.
That is, these are necessary expenses even if in "the planned economy" on the basis of "co-ownership of means of production. "If we dare to compare them however, the point will be: which economy system is more efficient and less wasteful. It is hard to decide which is effective because it depends on passion, will, ingenuity of all persons concerned from government leaders to general workers.
In anarchy where there is neither a plan nor system, waste, it will produce more products than is socially needed. The product which is not of ingenuity cannot be used because it is of inferior quality even if produced as scheduled quantitatively. The former is the waste that is apt to occur in capitalisic society, and the latter is the waste that is apt to occur in communist society.
② Examination of Sales Department
First, I will try to point out the waste of capitalistic economy concretely with simple profit and loss statement. The necessary expenses in order to sell products are salaries, overhead expenses, depreciation expenses, interest expense, inventory loss, etc. The salaries contain salesperson salary, clerk salary and director salary. And overhead expenses contain the travel expenses, advertising and general publicity expenses, entertainment expenditure, sending costs, delivery costs, rent expenses, repair expense, office supplies costs, communication expenses, miscellaneous expenses, etc.
Among these expenses, advertising and general publicity expenses, and entertainment expenditure, are unique to capitalistic economy. Certainly, when a planned economy is put into operation smoothly, advertising and general publicity expenses and entertainment expenditure to sell are unnecessary and wasteful expenses.
On the other hand, I will try to think about waste, produced in communism economy. As I have not profit and loss statement made in communist society, I cannot point out the waste directly. But an example of the Soviet Union called a communist country will be introduced.
"There is anger for obvious misgovernment being done by bureaucratic management. Even a person who is distantly related to politics notices that a considerable part of vegetables, fruit and grain, which are harvested annually, are rotten. On their way to a farm, roughly 50 % of chemical fertilizers become useless." ("Our Mother Country" Saharohu's work P. 54)
When such a large-scaled waste is compared with waste such as advertising and general publicity expenses or entertainment expenditure in capitalistic market economy, which will be larger? After all, in producing department, it is difficult to compare which is more effective between capitalist society and communist society.
Next page (Chapter 6)