The socialist approach

CONTINUED FROM LAST WEEK

Give labour the necessary incentive and, granting that it is sufficiently educated and enlightened, it will exploit land diligently and compel it to yield its fullest possible increase.

What labour has always asked for by way of incentive, and what it (including the so-called entrepreneur) is being given now to that end, are wages and salaries and decent conditions of work. Labour’ has never asked for interest or profit or rent. As long as greed, cunning, and naked self-interest are munificently rewarded, so long will people regard them as the only driving force for initiative and efficiency. But if society shifts the emphasis and rewards other-regarding economic activities which are designed for the benefit, pride, and prestige of the people at large, altruism will become an equally powerful motive force for productive activities. Athletes, sportsmen, explorers, discoverers, inventors, artists, and literati have in their great and ennobling undertakings shed greater lustre on mankind in general, and on the entire society to which they belong, than the capitalists have ever done or can ever pretend to do while they last. These great and immortal men are the real innovators and accelerators of social progress. Indeed, without the explorers, discoverers, and inventors, capitalism would never have had the success which we previously noted to its credit. Yet these outstanding men were known to have pursued their arduous but epoch-making undertakings partly for the love of the undertakings themselves, and partly to gratify their respective desires to widen the horizon of human knowledge and achievements. They spurn the profit motive, and shun greed and selfishness as plague. The only reward they ask for is success in their particular venture or field and the gratitude of their people. It is gratifying that the masses of the people who constitute the bulk of the labour force have these qualities latent in them. They can and should be awakened, developed, and harnessed.

FOUR: The detractors of socialism have said that it is one thing to vest the means of production in the State; but it is another to manage productive activities as efficiently as the capitalists. They maintain that State officials, by training and tradition, are unqualified to handle industrial and business management efficiently and successfully, Well said. But that does not stop us from countering that this contention is extremely fallacious. As long as greed or naked self-interest remains the driving force in any undertaking, State officials just cannot cope. They are trained te serve the entire public, and to work for the public weal, with as much dedication and selflessness as possible. In any race, therefore where SELF is the prize, and ‘GREED is the automatic starter, State officials are just incapable of making any start at all, not to talk of being able to compete with those whose sole pursuit in life is SELF, and whose only driving force is GREED. It is, therefore, erroneous and fallacious in the extreme to compare State officials with the capitalists. And lest we forget, it 1:1L1st be pointed out in this connection that the so-called entreprener- is today more or less in the same category as a State official, save that the former is expected to serve the interests of his employers to the exclusion, prejudice, and detriment of others in the same industry or competing trades as his employer. The State official has no such circumscribed and antagonistic sphere of operation. The whole State with its entire people is his parish. It follows, therefore, that in a socialist State where greed is discouraged, and the welfare of the people is enthroned, State officials will be just as efficient as, maybe even more efficient in this atmosphere than the entrepreneur; that is, granting that other things are equal. We have been told of the corruption and red-tape which exist in the public service, as if the business world itself is a kingdom of purity and despatch. The truth is that we only hear of those few industrial ventures which succeed because of the probity and diligence of their organizers. The world rarely hears of those innumerable ones which go bankrupt and die, because of ineffable corruption, inefficiency, and complete lack of despatch. Anyway, we now know from the experiences of socialist countries, and even of Britain, that State officials can manage industrial and business ventures efficiently and successfully, under an atmosphere free , from greed and naked self-interest. Finally, on this point, it is pertinent to stress that the management of public ventures need not be left exclusively in the hands of State officials who were trained and brought up as such. Those citizens who have acquired expertise in industrial and business management, and who have adapted or are prepared to adapt themselves to the new dispensation, should be drafted into the public service and converted into State officials for the purpose of the efficient and successful management of public ventures. We concede that many under-developed countries will be hard put to it to mobilize a sufficient number of indigenous State officials with the requisite probity and expertise to manage their public undertakings. But this line of reasoning presupposes that a country is necessarily compelled to restrict employment only to its citizens. This, as we all know, is certainly not and cannot be the case. Any skills in which a country is, for the time being, deficien could be hired from abroad, until its own citizens have been trained in sufficient numbers to provide them.

FIVE: It is contended that without the aid of the price mechanism such as obtains in a competitive market, production can neither be intelligently planned nor efficiently executed. Consumers’ preferences will not be clearly indicated; and consequently the things that are required will not be produced in the desired quantity and quality, and those that are produced may be such as nobody wants to consume.

CONTINUES NEXT WEEK

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