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| H. G. Wells and Joseph Stalin |
The scope of the interview, after he spoke at length with
President Roosevelt, was to find out what Stalin was “doing to change the
world.” Wells told Stalin that he tried to look at the world through the eyes
of the “common man” not the eyes of a politician or a bureaucrat.
Indicating to Stalin that “capitalists must learn from you,
to grasp the spirit of socialism,” Wells stated that a profound reorganization was
taking place in the United States, the creation of a “planned, that is,
socialist, economy.” He witnessed Washington building offices, new state
regulatory bodies, and “a much needed Civil Service.”
Stalin expressed his skepticism about U.S. being able to
build a planned economy. It is not possible, he said, because “the Americans
want to rid themselves of the [economic] crisis on the basis of private
capitalist activity without changing the economic basis.” Stalin was touting the
new economic basis that socialism had built. In his view, the existing
capitalist system was rooted in anarchy. “A planned economy tries to abolish
unemployment.” But a capitalist would never agree to completely abolish
unemployment, Stalin said, because capitalists want to maintain a supply of
cheap labor.
Stalin was wrong about unemployment under a socialist Soviet
economy for three reasons:
1.
Data in general was never accurately kept or reported.
2.
The labor was highly manual with low levels of
automation; under a free market economy automation often displaces labor,
causing retraining of workers into other skills.
3.
Women who sought employment worked for shorter
periods of time and were thus not included in the statistics.
Stalin explained to Wells that planned economies increase
output in those “branches of the industry which produce goods that the masses
of the people need particularly.”
Having survived for twenty years in such a system Stalin
described, I remember precisely all the shortages of goods and services that
the economically illiterate central planners created, the long lines, the
rationing we had to endure, and the empty shelves everywhere.
Furthermore, to see how wrong Stalin was, just look today at
Venezuela under Maduro’s centrally planned socialist policies, a continuation
of his mentor’s, Hugo Chavez, and you will see the empty shelves and suffering.
Look at Castro’s Cuba after 50 years of central planning and at its decaying
infrastructure and decrepit buildings. Fidel “protected” Cuba’s hapless
citizens from the “evils” of capitalism and instead gave them a nightmarish
socialist economy and a political socialist dictatorship.
Stalin described to Wells that capital flows into those
sectors of the economy where the rate of profit is highest. A capitalist would never agree “to incur loss
to himself and agree to a lower rate of profit for the sake of satisfying the
needs of the people.” A central planner like Stalin did not understand supply
and demand, only saw collectivism, and viewed profit as evil. Who wants to open
a business if they are going to lose money?
Stalin admitted that “without getting rid of the
capitalists, without abolishing the principle of private property in the means
of production, it is impossible to create a planned economy.” When the “financial oligarchy will be
abolished, only then socialism will be brought about,” Stalin added.
He believed that Roosevelt’s “New Deal” was a very powerful
socialist idea. But, in Stalin’s opinion, Roosevelt would not be able to
achieve his socialist goals for many generations because “the banks, the
industries, the large enterprises, the large farms are not in Roosevelt’s
hands.”
All the railroads, the mercantile fleet, the army of skilled
workers, engineers, and technical personnel are all working for private enterprise,
he said. Even though the State offers military defense of the country, maintains
law and order, and collects taxes, this private ownership of the means of
production, renders the State unable to control everything, “the State is in
the hands of capitalist economy.”
Stalin explained that, if the State controlled the banks,
then transportation, then heavy industries, industries in general, commerce, an
“all-embracing control will be equivalent to the State ownership of all
branches of the national economy and this will be the process of socialization.”
I wonder if the Millennials understand that they would lose
their smart gadgets, TVs, laptops, and other electronics they love to their
socialist utopian dream of social justice. If they can’t get rich then
everybody must be equally poor and miserable.
The important question is, are American citizens ready to
lose everything they own privately, giving government carte blanche to own the
means the production and to tell them what they can and cannot have, consume,
and do?
Stalin argued that Roosevelt made an honest attempt to “satisfy
the interests of the proletariat class at the expense of the capitalist class.”
Today, we, the taxpayers/capitalist class, are still satisfying the interests
of the non-producers who receive welfare at our expense from the heavy taxes we
pay. Are we willing supporters of such idle individuals? Roosevelt, with his
programs, created a generational welfare class that feels entitled to what they
receive, and destroyed the family in the process.
Stalin described the two classes in capitalism, as he saw it
through the lenses of a socialist:
-
“The propertied
class” (the owners of banks, factories, mines, farms, “plantations in
colonies,” who chased after the “evil” profit)
-
“The exploited
class” (the class of the poor who existed by selling their labor)
Wells told Stalin that, although he personally saw the need
to “conduct propaganda in favor of socialism,” he met many educated people such
as “engineers, airmen, military-technical people” who regarded “your simple
class antagonism as nonsense.” Additionally, he asked, were there not people
who were not poor but worked productively?
Stalin admitted that “small landowners, artisans, small
traders” did not decide the fate of a country, but “the toiling masses, who
produce all the things society requires.”
We sure have a lot of unemployed and disabled “toiling
masses” today that are sitting idle at home and don’t seem to mind one bit,
benefitting from the “evil” capitalist spoils.
Calling J.P. Morgan “old Morgan,” Wells described him as “a
parasite on society,” who “merely accumulated wealth.” On the other hand, Wells
admired Rockefeller whom he described as a “brilliant organizer” who “has set
an example of how to organize the delivery of oil that is worthy of emulation,”
while Ford was “selfish.”
Further excoriating the capitalist system based on profit
that, in his opinion, is “breaking down,” Wells surprised Stalin by saying, “It
seems to me that I am more to the Left than you, Mr. Stalin; I think the old
system is nearer to its end than you think.”
Stalin corrects him that these capitalist men possess great
organizational talent which the Soviet people could learn from. “And [J. P.] Morgan,
whom you characterize so unfavorably, was undoubtedly a good, capable
organizer.” But people like him who “serve the cause of profit” are not “prepared
to reconstruct the world,” they are
not “capable organizers of production.”
Reminding Wells, “don’t you know how many workers he throws
in the streets,” Stalin added that capitalism will be abolished by the working
class, not by the ‘technical intelligentsia’ or the ‘organizers’ of production.
If this “technical intelligentsia breaks away spiritually from their employers,
from the capitalist world, that will take a long time and only then can they begin
to reconstruct the world.” The
working class will become the “sovereign master of the capitalist class.”
In reality, this working class Stalin described as the
savior of society, was a dumbed-down, poorly paid, miserable majority who could
not care less if the factories under-produced, broke down, and were never
repaired. They were paid regardless of how much they produced, how many
mistakes they made, what shoddy products they sent to the market, how much
theft was going on in order to barter with others to survive, and did not own
much of anything. This working class pretended to work and the communist
organizers and centralized planners pretended to pay them.
The Soviet economic system was a dismal model which failed miserably
and eventually collapsed on its own utopian weight while the free market system
thrived.
Unfortunately today, the Democrats and Social Democrats are gaining
tract in their efforts to resurrect around the world a mummified model of
economic failure, inventing new euphemisms, in order to stay in absolute power
and control of the population.
Wells described the Royal Society whose president had
delivered a speech on “social planning and scientific control.” The Royal
Society, he told Stalin, held “revolutionary views and insists on the
scientific reorganization of human society. Mentality changes. Your class-war
propaganda has not kept pace with these facts.”
“Capitalist society is in a cul de sac,” Stalin responded, and “A devoted and energetic
revolutionary minority requires the passive support of millions.”
“Revolution, the substitution of one social system for
another, has always been a struggle, a painful and cruel struggle, a life and
death struggle,” Stalin admitted. And the process will not be “spontaneous and
peaceful, it will be complicated, long, and violent.” And the new world order “revolutionaries”
should use the police to support them in the fight against “reactionaries.”
“That is why the
Communists say to the working class: Answer violence with violence; do all you
can to prevent the old dying order from crushing you, do not permit it to put
manacles on your hands, on the hands with which you will overthrow the old
system.”
Citing history, both Wells and Stalin described how
Cromwell, on the basis of the Constitution, resorted to violence, beheaded the
king, dispersed the Parliament, arrested many, and beheaded others; how much
blood was shed to overthrow the tsars; how the October Revolution overthrew the
old and decaying Russian capitalist system and how the “Bolsheviks were the
only way out.”
Explaining the Third Estate (the common people) which existed
before the French Revolution, Stalin pointed out that “not a single class has
voluntarily made way for another class” and the “Communists would welcome the
voluntary departure of the bourgeoisie.”
Wells argued that force must be used within existing laws
and “there is no need to disorganize the old system because it is disorganizing
itself enough as it is.” In his opinion, “insurrection against the old order,
against the law, is obsolete, old-fashioned.” In addition to the educational
system which must be radically changed, this is how Wells explained his point
of view:
1.
He supports order.
2.
He attacks the present system “in so far as it
cannot assure order.”
3.
He thinks that “class war propaganda may detach
from socialism just those educated people whom socialism needs.” (H.G. Wells, p.
20 of the interview transcript)
Stalin countered with his own points:
1.
“The social bulwark of the revolution is the
working class.”
2.
An auxiliary force must exist; the Communists
call it a Party.
3.
Political power is the “lever of change” to
create new laws in the interest of the working class.
From my experience, the only interests represented in the
socialism/communism of my youth were the interests of the dictatorial ruling
elite of the Communist Party. They became the millionaire rulers at that time, and,
when disbanded and stripped of power, their heirs became the billionaires of
today.
Ending the interview, Wells thanked Stalin for his
explanations of the fundamentals of socialism and said that millions around the
world hang on to every word Stalin and Roosevelt utter.
Stalin, engaging the infamous and demagogue idea of ‘self-criticism,’
which had sent many honest intellectuals to gulags, replied that much more
could have been done by the Bolsheviks, had they been “cleverer.” Wells
suggested making human beings “cleverer” by inventing a five-year plan for the “reconstruction of the human brain which
obviously lacks many things needed for a perfect social order.”
The idea of mind control, which is not so far-fetched today,
brought shivers down my spine. Bombastic and not-ground-in-reality Five-Year centralized
plans issued by the Communist Party elites and their apparatchiks who had no
idea how the economy should be run, many of whom did not have but an elementary
education and could barely read, write, and do simple math, those plans brought
the economies in all Soviet satellite countries to unmitigated disaster.
