The credibility gap

T IS-an interesting pastime to
stroll through toy depart-
ments and look at the phe-

nomenon known as adult games.

The credibility gap is a dice
game, where each player has a
Liberty Bell token and draws
from two decks of cards; one is
a deck called the Administra-
tion’s Pack of Lies, and the other
is the Citizen’s Cards.

The goal is to reach the cen-
tre of the board where lies the
Big Wheel and his Truth Vault,
by means of a three ring track
marked off by red, white and
blue squares. The track starts
at the Washington Airport from
which the players move forth to
acquire “truth trophies” for un-
covering ‘political lies.”

The value of the truth trophy

HILE USS.
Johnson was out on

President

' his recent ‘peace’
safari, shedding crocodile
tears for the loss of that
“great champion of peace and
democratic freedom,” Austra-
lia’s late Herbert Holt, mean-
time attempting to bamboo-
zle the Pope with his latest
‘peace’ trickery; things were
happening at home.

As is customary of course,
‘LBJ’s Yuletide ‘message’ to
the American people (spil-
ling over into Canada), was
also well larded with hopes
for ‘peace and prosperity’ to
all, as befits the great Ameri-
can tradition. I can well im-
agine the LBJ Yuletide dithy-
ramb made countless millions
in the teeming ghettos of
America, both Black and
white, hold their stomachs
and literally gag.

Just about the time LBJ

was wishing “yo ... all” a
Prosperous 1968, another
“message” was coming

through, clear and brutal
_ from metropolitan and state
Officials via the Associated
_ Press, TVand other news
media. A message from
Miami, New Jersey, Philadel-
phia, Little Rock, Chicago,
New Haven and other key
centres: This “message” was
to the effect that the forces
of repression were really go-
ing to “get tough” in 1968.
No foolin; in 1968 its going
to be real “bullets for the
mob” instead of “war on pov-
erty” or peace in Vietnam.
In 1968 all Americans who
march for peace, homes, jobs
or bread are to get genuine
“hot lead.” According to the
AP story “felons are going to
learn that they can’t be bond-
ed out from the morgue.” The
“felons” of course are the
American people who refuse
to “go all the way with LBJ”

Looks like another “long
hot summer” in 1968!

In the November edition of
the Catholic Worker pub-
lished in New York there is
an article by the Rev. Father
Peter Berrigan telling of the
arrest and imprisonment of
himself and three associates
by the FBI.2 These ‘men: had
cut open their, veins, and, Jet)

_ away.” Since their imprison-

depends on the seriousness of
the political lie, for the lies fit
into 36 categories. Some of the
categories are an “artful am-
biguity,” “diversionary anec-
dote,” an “indignant evasion,”
‘“dmpassioned doubletalk,” ‘“stra-
tegic deception” and “escalating
lie.”

However, there are such wind-
falls as “the anonymous leak”

giving the lucky player a real .

break. Or landing in the ‘State
Department Archives” can win
the player three trophies by that
action alone. Political Luck is
precarious, though, for the play-
er can just as easily get tangled
up in something as unfortunate
as a “statistical cobweb.” The
first player to gain 20 trophies
is the winner.

their blood spill over the
Selective Draft Records in
Baltimore, Ohio:

“We shed our blood wil-
lingly and gratefully in what
we hope is a radical and con-
structive act. We pour it
upon these files to illustrate
that with them as with these
offices; begins the pitiful
waste of American and Viet-
namese blood 10,000 miles

ment Father Berrigan and his
associates have also added a
hunger strike to their protest
—against the U.S. war in
Vietnam, and official brutal-
ity at home.

Recalling his early teach-
ing as a Catholic priest, Fa-
ther Berrigan says, “I recall
a Louisiana summer some six
or seven gears ago, when the
State Legislature passed near-
ly 300 pieces of law, most of
these against Black people.
Finally I recall a ‘saying of
Tacitus, remembered from
two painful years of college
Latin; the more corrupt a so-
ciety, the more laws it
needs.”

~ “The law therefore is or- .
dained,” writes Father Ber-

rigan, “to protect our free-

doms, not our basic human

rights — property not people.

This society knows very little

about what is fundamentally

good for people—it knows a

great deal about what it has

decided is good for people.

Its law expresses perfectly”
what it holds dear and desir-

able . . . our social monolith

reacts like a wounded animal

—reacts to absorb, to ridi-

cule, to ostracize, and all fail-

ing—to crush.”

Thus the great monolith of
U.S. imperialism with its er-
satz freedom steps out on the
threshold of 1968 with pledg-
es of “peace with honor” (?)
via a heavier bomb tonnage
for Vietnam —and promises
of “bullets” and the morgue
for Americans at home.

A characteristic, if albeit
not a pleasant yulitide ‘“mes-
sage” to start off a New Year.
But the American people —
and the Vietnamese people
will undoubtedly write ‘the’

The Shevchenko
Male Chorus and the
Toronto Mandolin Or-
chestra have released
their second album.
The new recording in
which the chorus and
orchestra devotethem-
selves to interpreta-
tions of Ukrainian
songs establishes the
group as foremost in
this field in Canada.

The album, prior to
its release to music
stores, may be pur-
chased through mem-
bers of the orchestra
and chorus or by di-
rect mail order
through the Shey-
chenko Male Chorus,
300 Bathurst Street,
Toronto, Ontario. The
cost is $4.25.

final footnote/fs- 0) tay
a AG

wor? Lethe Rac ws sae 2 ge,

JANUARY 94 988 PRCTFIC TRIBUNE Page SRN

Soar

PND e RA Dene
AUG ee Cow

Economy

(Continued from Page 9)
level of world productive forces
will be in 15 or 20 years, what
levels the GDR will need to
reach them, and then sets out
the targets necessary from year
to year to reach that level. In
other words, the plan starts with
the objective and then works
backward. It is aimed at tackl-
ing the problems of today from
the viewpoint of tomorrow.

Planning concentrates on ten-
dencies of progress in science
and technology and those sec-
tors of the economy on which
all others depend. These sectors
are the electro-technical indus-
try, electronics, engineering, the
chemical industry, metallurgy
and power.

e New Accounting Methods

and Factory Management

Factories in the GDR are join-
ed together in a form of social-
ist trusts called Associations of
National Owned _ Factories
(VVB). Eighty of these associa-
tions direct about 1,700 large
state factories.

Previously these VVB’s were
administrative bodies financed
directly from the state budget.
Now each factory or group of
factories will have to pay its
own way, to show a profit (so-
cialist surplus value) through a
new system of accounting that
includes the concepts of prices,
costs, profits, sales, research and
new technology. Each factory is
not only responsible for produc-
ing goods but also for selling
them on the home or interna-
tional market. This latter point
is no small factor in ensuring
the production of high quality
goods.

The profit is split three ways.
Part of it. goes into the general
revenues of the state. Another

_part is retained for investment

and expansion. The third part
is paid to workers in the form
of bonuses.

The state budget finances
only new projects or changes
that are too big for individual
factories or VVB’s to introduce.

e Worker Participation in
Factory Management
Factory plans’ and objectives
cannot be, adopted before they
are discussed ‘and’ endorsed by

of GDR

spurts

the workers in the factory. Plant
managers must account for their
activities directly to the work-
ers in the factory at meetings.
A minister or factory director
subjected to serious criticism at
trade union meetings is likely
to be replaced.

The union in the factory has
the responsibility of improving
-working conditions and protect-
ing the workers interests when
new automated processes are
introduced. Workers displaced
by technological change receive
full pay while being retrained
and must be kept on the factory
payroll until new jobs are found
for them either in the factory
or elsewhere.

e@ Economic Incentives

As mentioned above, part of
the profit made in a factory is
paid directly to workers in the
form a bonuses, over and above
wages, the reward for good
work. If a factory goes over the

top in its plan and makes extra |

profit, 75 percent of it goes into
the bonus pool.

The incentive of bonuses en-
courages workers and manage-

“ment alike to keep down the

costs of production, including
the installation of new labor
saving machinery, eliminating
waste, and producing goods of
high quality that will readily
find a market.

Workers, technicians and en-
gineers are highly rewarded for
new labor-saving and cost-sav-
ing techniques.

Bonuses are one of the me-
thods which successfully link
individual interest with the in-

terests of society to everyone's.

benefit.

e Industrial Price Reform

An essential part of the new
system of planning and manage-
ment was the industrial price
reform brought about in 1964.
It was necessary because prices
for products subsidized by the
state such as coal, power, gas

* Consumer prices have _not

forward

been affected, however,
have remained stable.

The results of these economic
reforms have been highly grati-
fying and help to account fof |
the amazing economic miracle
that is the GDR today.

Only seven countries in thé {
world today have a higher in
dustrial production than the
GDR, a land of only 17 million
people.

In 1966 economic reforms in
the GDR entered still anothef
new phase, with new emphasis
on better planning and the wide-
spread introduction of advanced
and automated methods of pro-
duction.

The method of planning is a |
follows:

The State Planning Commis-
sion provides a minimum of im -
dex figures which are guides.

and

Using these figures the fac-
tories draw up their own plans
which are submitted to the vari- |
ous Associations of Nationally
Owned Factories. From there
they go to the State Planning
Commission and finally to the
Council of Ministers.

The Council of Ministers modi-
fies them if necessary in keep-
ing with national objectives. i
Then back they go to the fac-
tories and again start on their
way up. :

A further development of
worker participation introduced
in 1966 was the provision for
the election of production com-
mittees in the factories, com-
posed of the best workers, tech-
nicians, engineers and_ trade
union leaders. These committees
share responsibility with man-
agement for drafting and carry- :
ing through the factory plans |
and the production of high qua-
lity, low cost products.

It won't be too long before
capitalist industrial states will

teoee rw ee SHEKEL EPO LOR O POOR Pe A dd ot r)