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IMPROVING
SOCIAL SECURITY

as :

o

* MOSCOW — Now that I

mse have completed ten years as

_ a resident of Moscow, I feel I

_. should set down some of the

more important changes I

have noted, impressions I

_ have formed and lessons I

have learned in that period.
One conclusion I have

reached is that any Westerner
who expects — as I was in-

‘clined to,expect at first—that

e Soviet Union will advance

‘at an equal rate on all sectors

- expects both too much and
too little.

- To make a rough division, I

_ should say that progress has

~ exceeded my expectations in

those sectors where ‘socialist

_ planning can be given full
scope and that it lags in those
sectors where progress de-

pends in some \degree on the
unplannable vagaries of hu-
man nature.

-That doesn’t mean, of course,
that. “you can’t change na-
ture;”’ it means simply that,
in a period that is only a
minute fraction of mankind’s
' lifetime on earth, one should

a “not expect too great changes

in the character of the indi-

vidual — a point that seems
to be ignored by those writers
here who speak of the “new

Soviet man” as if he were

eS ‘some new species.

: - Fortunately, in the last few
years there have been a num-
“ber of organizational and
other measures that sharply
reduce the risk of any wrong-
headed individual in some
erptal position slowing down
‘progress in his own bailiwick.

In. this process the press is
taking an increasingly active

role, a role which, I find, sur-

prises many Westerners.
Hardly a day passes nowa-
days without a well-docu-
‘mented exposure in the press
‘of some quite highly-placed
‘individual who has been ig-
-noring both the instructions

— from the central authority

and the complaints of those

after living ten years in Moscow

working undey him.

Even when these exposures
are apparently “played for
laughs” — as in the satirical
weekly Krokodil, where they
are a regular feature — they
usually get. things done very
quickly, for the printed word
seems to be the best instru-
ment for cutting through the
red-tape curtain behind which
the local Little Caesars work,
or fail to work.

Because cases of this kind
usually occur in remote and
thinly-populated regions, one
of the measures that have got
rid of chair-warmers and
nest-featherers is the more
frequent and regular election
of chairmen of kolkhozes
(collective farms) and other
rural bodies.

Partly because the notori-
ous imponderables of agricul-
ture make exact planning dif-
ficult and partly because the
kolkhozes (unlike the state-
owned farms) still retain some
elements of private owner-
ship, there have been a num-
ber of unfortunate anomalies
in agriculture that you do not
find either in the industry
or the great public works of

~ the USSR.

It might be argued that the
most spectacular Soviet suc-

‘cesses in the past ten years

—for instance, the sputniks—
were due more to the genius
of brilliant individuals than to
poeialist planning. When I
suggested something like this
to a world-famous physicist
at Dubna (the
near Moscow where they have
the world’s greatest proton-
accelerator and, perhaps, the
world’s greatest concentration
of brain-power!) he told me:

“That isn’t the case, even in
the capitalist world. Scientific
endeavor nowadays is essen-

‘tially team work. And we

Soviet scientists have the
great advantage of being not
a league of competing teams
but one all-Union team. And

Boffinville

mA Resiern reporter's impressions

think of the ‘reserves’ this
team has in training — by far
the greatest body of science
students in the world. When
their time comes they'll be
able to field a team that will
put us, and any possible riv-
als, in the shade.”

During those ten years I
have ofen been asked by visi-
tors, ‘How do you, personally,
like living in the Soviet Un-
ion?” A short answer is that
although I have lived in many
countries on both sides of the
Atlantic I can think of no
country so exciting — and at
times so exasperating — to

live in. Certainly I have never

found it dull.

Many of the exasperations
could, I-am sure, be traced
to the stupidity of individuals.
I could give a long list of the
exasperations I have seen wip-
ed out in the past ten years,
but a few of them still survive.
For instance:

Here is one little contrast
that I ran up against the other
day: we can buy live fish
(they are brought by the ton

in tanks from the Baltic about

400 miles away!) at a food
stere a hundred yards from
our home, but we can’t buy a
replacement for the broken
belt of our floor-polisher.

A trivial example except
that it is not untypical and
except for the fact that the
paragraph above is taken
from an article I wrote four
years ago, and is still true to-
day — although I’ve solved
the belt problem for myself!

Meantime, there is never
“any slackening in the flow of
excitements — not only in the
shape of advances actually
achieved but in the feeling
that this country is always on
the point of making some new
and astonishing. leap forward,
in the feeling that “you ain’t
seen nothin’ yet!”

ARCHIE JOHNSTONE

{

OPEN FORUM

/ WA situation

G.E., Vancouver, B.C.: The
results of the recently con-
ducted strike vote in the B.C.
lumber industry clearly indi-
cates the almost unanimous
opinions of the woodworkers.
As the negotiations dragged
out this spring the member-
ship of the IWA has become
increasingly impatient with
the delaying tactics of the
bosses and their mouthpiece
FIR. e

With the opening of con-
tract talks this year the union
found itself in perhaps one of
the best bargaining positions
in recent times. Production,
sales and prices are reaching
an all-time high. In anticipa-
tion of tough bargaining on
the part of the IWA many of
the large operations scheduled
their holiday period for the
early part of July in the hope
that this would influence the
voting of the membership
(when coupled with the de-
laying of the negotiations) on
strike action. The lumber
bosses certainly realize the
importance of a strike vote
and of course how much it
can cost them in terms of dol-
lars and cents.

With the support it has re-
ceived from, the membership
the negotiating committee is
in a very good position to ob-
tain a substantial wage in-
crease this year. In consider-
ing the fact that our wages
have fallen far behind the
rest of the trade union move-
ment, and this in the face of an
ever increasing cost of living,
it is very necessary to our
livelihood that we get as
much as possible this year.

One of the lessons that we
must learn from our experi-
ences in recent years is that
the employers will attempt to
put over as cheap a contract
as possible. The very fact that
they would offer us only

BLOWING BUBBLES

seven cents an hour this year
and five cents next year is a
good indication of just what
they think they ean get away
with. It has been one of their
tactics te offer at the last
minute a few cents more in
order to avoid a strike.

The time has come in the
woodworking industry when
such two-penny deals will be
flatly rejected by the mem-
bership of the IWA.

The minority report sub-
mitted by Jim Bury can be
the basis for a reasonable’
settlement of our contract dis-
pute. A wage increase of 15
percent or 26 cents an hour
will help us to regain some of
the ground which we have
lost. The institution of an up-
ward revision in the plywood
industry is long overdue as
this is the poorest paid sec-
tion of the industry; contrast-

ing to the fact that the profits
made in this booming indus-
try are to say the least, fan-
tastic. Also, recognition of the
fact that tradesmen in the
lumbering : industry are under-
paid compared to their count-
erparts in other fields is given
in a proposal of an additional
12 cents to this category.

In order to wage a success-
ful struggle to gain such a
settlement all that is now re-
quired is for our membership
to remain united and reject
any attempt to settle for an
inadequate wage increase..

Robots take over

F, J., Vancouver, B.C.: The
slump is supposed to be over,
but the jobless lines are still
long. Push-button production
has pushed the warkers onto
the breadlines. As the robots
take over, jobs vanish. The
future looks grim, indeed.

July 8, 1939 — PACIFIC: TRIBUNE—PAGE 5