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WORLD

Explosive debate underway on economy

‘Why underpay for meat
and overpay for footwear?’

A historic debate is beginning to unfold in
the Soviet Union over the future course of the
festructuring drive, known in Russian as
Perestroika. For the first time since perhaps
the 1920s, broad policy options are clashing
M public — focussing upon an explosively
Controversial manifesto of ‘‘market social-
‘sm’ published in the latest issue of the jour-
nal Novy Mir. It seems that every aspect of
Social and economic policy has been thrown
pen for scrutiny and discussion, and the
only certainty is that nothing will ever be the
Same again.

Mikhail Gorbachev recently stressed that

__ the battle for the concept of perestroika has

already been won. Virtually all Soviets now
accept the need for radical reform and there is

_ 20 organized political opposition to it. How-

€ver, there is a profusion of views on how to
Proceed in practice. And, while there is no
resistance to the idea of positive change, de-
Pending on a person’s social position — i.e.:
are they a manager, bureaucrat, production

_ Worker, academic, pensioner? — and a host

of other factors, attitudes and interpretations
an vary wildly. There are many who ad-
Vocate change in general but not for them-
Selves in particular.

The Soviet Communist Party is presently
locked in discussion over the draft of a new

law on state enterprise.’ When finally
framed and adopted, this law will have far-
Teaching effects on Soviet economic or-

- Sanization, beginning the arduous process of

transforming it from an economy based on
Command — that is to say, directly run froma
Central “‘control panel’’ of economic plan-
Ners and bureaucrats — to one in which the
initiative and responsibility is vested in the
thousands of economic enterprises and col-

Ctives of workers who operate them.

A Tough Challenge

The party is facing a tough challenge from

41 economy which has stagnated in many

respects, at a mid-century level of develop-
Ment, which is overgrown with bureaucracy

_ and addicted to outdated technology and

Methods of work. The party leadership is
Sttiving to clearly define what the new ap-
Proaches must be, and then begin imple-
Menting them in a decisive way. The
8neralized commitment to the goal of re-
Sttucturing, which is apparent everywhere,
Needs to be galvanized and channeled into

“onstructive action.
he urgency of this is underscored by a

_ T€cent sociological survey taken among 6,000

°scow workers and managers. It showed
an alarming degree of confusion and even
Ubiousness about perestroika. Just one in
Ve top directors questioned felt that the re-

5 Tucturing was being applied in their fac-

lories in a satisfactory way. Not a single shop
manager thought so. The closer a worker is to

the Point of production, the survey conclud-

» the less likely he is to feel any tangible
— of perestroika in his own job up until
On the other hand, the Soviet media has
Succeeded in vastly transforming itself over
.1€ past year or so, as has academia and the
Mellectual sphere in general. In con-

ence, the debate around the direction |

q
that perestroika should now take has been
d into the public arena to a degreee

Almost unheard of in Soviet society.

Remarkable Polemic

thaps the most remarkable polemic on
*°0nomic policy to be publicized in this coun-
. 7 Since Stalin battled with Bukharin over
__- Ustrialization in the late 1920s, is an article
“the June issue of Novy Mir by Nikolai
tios €lyov, a political economist at the pres-
8lous Institute for the Study of Canada and

How to bring prices in line with reality is part of
the debate underway. Photo: Buying melons
in a Tadzhik farmers’ market.

the USA. It is a brilliant, even devastating,
assessment of the current stage of Soviet
economic development and has, almost liter-
ally, set the country on its ear.

Briefly summarized, Shmelyov charges
that all of the ills and inefficiencies which
beset the Soviet economy flow from the
Stalinist past when hyper-centralization and
total bureaucratic control over every aspect
of production and distribution were the rule
of the day. In place of this complex maze of
red-tape and interfering authority, he ad-
vocates the creation of a socialist market with
the law of supply and demand as the essential
economic mechanism and profitability as the
only criterion of an enterprise’s viability. The
USSR must go over from “‘administrative”’
socialism to ‘‘cost accounting”’ socialism, he
says.

Bieler is not advocating a return to
capitalism, and, he says, “‘those who under-

stand that it is by no means due to any mana- —

gerial decisions that the classes a society
consists of emerge, exist, and disappear from
the stage of history are perfectly aware that
such an apprehension is groundless.”

Salutory Effect?

Nevertheless, some of Shmelyov’s
recommendations, if followed, would lead to
results that are symmetrical with, if not iden-
tical to, some of the phenomena of capital-
ism. These contain the seeds of an explosive
political debate which is likely to emerge in
the months to come. Among them:

e Shmelyov proproses that Soviet society
permit the creation of ‘‘a comparatively small
reserve army of labour’’ — in other words,
unemployment. Putting some people on the
dole for a while, he says, will have a salutory
effect on the discipline of all workers and is
preferable to maintaining idlers, drunkards
and incompetents in their jobs.

e He argues that the price structure must
be totally revised to make all goods reflect the
‘“world pattern’’ of prices. In the USSR this
would mean huge increases for such goods as
staple foods, housing, public transport, etc.,
while the price of most manufactured prod-

From
Moscow
ee a ene
Fred Weir

ucts would come down. “After all,’” he says,
*“‘why underpay for meat and at the same time
overpay for fabrics and footwear? And why
not buy both at real prices?”

e He suggests that private individuals with
money to spare (there is a huge build-up of
savings deposits in the USSR) should be
permitted to invest in joint-stock companies,
to put their extra funds to work for industrial

modernization — and to receive.a return on

their investment. ‘‘Is it better for the state
when these sums are hidden in a stocking?”’,
he asks.

Soviets — who tend to be mesmerized by
the authority of the printed word — have
been talking about almost nothing else since
Shmelyov’s article hit the newsstands a
couple of weeks ago.

Gorbachev’s Comment

Even Mikhail Gorbachev has felt com-
pelled to address himself to it, saying to re-
porters last week: ‘“*I would divide that article
into two parts. The first concerns itself with
the analysis of the state of affairs in the econ-
omy and it gives an extremely accurate pic-
ture of this. The second part is what the auth-
or proposes. It is, for instance, suggested that
there should be unemployment. This is un-
acceptable to us...

‘‘We are well aware of our weaknesses, of
outstanding problems, but we must not lose
sight of what socialism has given to us all.
The right to work, to education, free medical
services, housing — these are real values in
our society in which people are socially pro-
tected, today and for the future, and this is
the main thing.”

A few observations can be made at this
point, although much remains to unfold in
this exciting process. It is obvious that Mi-
khail Gorbachev has few doubts about his
vision of socialism’s future. It is also clear
that academics like Nikolai Shmelyov have
been waiting a long time to say what they
have to say, and have now come into the
open with articulate, razor-sharp arguments
and shattering analyses. This is all to the
good, but some important voices are still
missing from the debate.

Many Voices Missing

Trade unions, who so recently criticized
themselves for pandering more to the con-
cerns of management than the needs of
workers, seem utterly unprepared to meet
these new conditions. Surely they have
something to say about the inalienable right
of each person to participate in the social
production process? Surely they can elab-
orate alternative measures for dealing with
the very real problems of indolence, theft,
drunknesses and indifference to work? But as
yet they haven’t.

Surely, too, mass organizations represent-
ing the interests of women, students, senior
citizens and others will come forward to pre-
sent their views on changing a price structure
which tor decades has ensured universal ac-
cess to basic necessities.

It seems inevitable that in the months to
come such voices will appear and increas-
ingly make themselves felt in the debate. All
of the conditions are falling into place, and
the stage is set for a thorough, rapid, and
profoundly democratic transformation of
Soviet society to take place.

Nuclear test

STOCKHOLM — “‘It has
been an explosive weekend,”’
begins the SPAS monitoring
station in Sweden in a June 29
cable to the world media. ‘‘The
U.S., USSR and France have
all conducted nuclear tests.

“The U.S. tested a 20 kilo-
ton device in Nevada June 20:
the USSR tested a 100-150
kiloton device at Semipala-
tinsk on June 20, and France
tested a 15 kiloton device at
Mororua Atoll on June 21.”

SPAS says that since 1945,
the U.S. has conducted 841
tests, the USSR 617, France
153, Britain 40, China 30 and
India 1. Since 19 British tests
were conducted in cooperation
with the U.S., the total number
of nuclear tests is 1,663.

Urge U.S.-USSR
missile treaty

AMSTERDAM — Dele-
gates from Europe,‘the U.S.
and Canada at a meeting of the
World Peace Council here
June 13-14 have sent a letter to
the Warsaw Pact and NATO
States urging the earliest sign-
ing of an agreement to elimi-
nate both Soviet and American
medium and short range mis-
siles from Europe.

““We hope that as a result of
the decisions adopted by the
Political Consultative Commit-
tee of the Warsaw Treaty Or-
ganization in Berlin and by the
NATO Foreign Ministers
meeting in Iceland, a real impe-
tus will be given to the process

of nuclear disarmament,”’ the ©

letter says. “‘We believe that
for the first time the door has
been opened for the elimina-
tion of a whole class of nuclear
weapons. This vitally impor-
tant beginning should lead to
other significant steps in the
process which will lead to a
Europe free of all nuclear
weapons as well as to sub-
stantial reductions of conven-
tional ones.”

Israelis charged
for meeting PLO

TEL AVIV — Another Is-
raeli has been charged under

_the *‘Law Against Terrorism’’

for meeting with Palestine
Liberation Organization mem-
bers. Charlie Biton, leader of a
22-person Israeli group of
peace activists was met by po-
lice at the airport, June 15, on
his return from an international
gathering in Budapest where
the Israelis held talks with PLO
officials on ways to achieve
peace.

Biton, who heads the Demo-
cratic Hadish Front in the Is-
raeli parliament said he will re-
fuse to appear at the police
investigation. He told the
media the PLO had agreed
with a letter drafted by the Is-
raeli group which called for
withdrawal by Israel from oc-
cupied Arab lands and for
mutual recognition of the rights
of Israel as a state and the
rights of the Palestinian Arab
people, including their right to
an independent state alongsi
Israel. :

PACIFIC TRIBUNE, JULY 1, 1987¢ 5