Comrade Grechishnik, asks: how is the question of personal property to be understood in a socialist society?..
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The enemies of socialism, all sorts of bourgeois scholars and publicists, portraying the socialist order in a false light, assert that socialism denies personal property.
The ideologists of the bourgeoisie cannot conceive of personal property without private property. Indeed, under capitalism, social production is in the hands of the capitalist class and will use it to ensure maximum profits by exploiting the majority of the population. The personal property of the working people and their personal consumption are strictly limited here, they exist only to the extent necessary for the exploited to be able to create surplus value – a source of enrichment for the capitalist class.
In a capitalist society, personal property is based on private property. Everything that the capitalists call their personal property is, in essence, their private property, acquired through the brutal exploitation of the working masses. The sphere of influence of the American billionaire Morgan covers banks and corporations with a total capital of 55 billion dollars. The Du Pont family of American billionaires has several palaces. large houses and estates located in New York. Philadelphia, Washington, London, Paris and other cities. Only in the vicinity of Wilmington, the Du Ponts have 21 country estates. One of these residences has 150 rooms, including 40 bedrooms. The Dupont family owns many dozens of cars, a large number of luxury items. At the same time, millions of American workers are homeless,
Only socialism, by abolishing private ownership of the means of production and establishing public ownership, for the first time creates an unshakable economic basis for ever more complete satisfaction of the personal details of the working people.
K. Marx and F. Engels in the "Manifesto of the Communist Party" wrote that the Communists do not intend to abolish the personal appropriation of the products of labor that serve directly for the reproduction of life. The Communists only want to destroy the miserable character of such appropriation, "when the worker lives only to increase capital, and lives only insofar as the interests of the ruling class require it." The founders of Marxism pointed out that socialism restores individual property on the basis of public ownership of the means of production.
Under socialism, the means of production are public property, and production, in accordance with the basic economic law of socialism, is carried out not for the purpose of extracting profit, but in the interests of ensuring the maximum satisfaction of the constantly growing material and cultural needs of society. The continuously growing and improving socialist production is a powerful basis for a systematic rise in the standard of living of the Soviet people and for the comprehensive satisfaction of personal needs.
Under socialism, the entire created social product, both means of production and consumer goods, is public property.
There is no parasitic consumption in the USSR. Therefore, social production is constantly developing in the Soviet country, the national income is growing at a high rate, which is used to further expand production and to satisfy the personal needs of members of society. Hence the vital interest of the working people in the continuous growth of social property.
In the USSR, the condition for the growth of the personal property of citizens is labor in the socialist economy. Consumer goods distributed among the members of society in accordance with the socialist principle of distribution—from each according to his ability, to each according to his work—become the personal property of citizens. The working people of the USSR receive about three-fourths of the national income from the consumption fund to satisfy their personal material and cultural needs. The most significant part of this fund goes to the working people in the form of wages, income for workdays, pensions, stipends and is the main source of personal property of citizens, determines its size. The other part of the consumption fund, which grows with the development and expansion of socialist production,
The labor income of the population in the USSR is growing from year to year. At present, the real wages of workers and employees are several times higher than the pre-revolutionary level, and the incomes of collective farmers significantly exceed the incomes of individual peasants in pre-revolutionary Russia. The real incomes of workers and employees, calculated per worker, in 1952 were higher than in 1940 by about 68 percent, and the real incomes of peasants, calculated per worker, were higher, by about 73 percent.
The following example shows how the Soviet worker lives, what kind of personal property he is able to have. The driver of the mine named after Dimitrov trust "Krasnoarmeyskugol" Y. Sarancha has his own house, a car "Victory", good furniture, a radio, a large personal library, etc.
In the interests of a continuous increase in the real incomes of the working people, the Soviet state systematically reduces retail prices for all consumer goods, reduces the contributions of the population from personal income to the state budget in the form of taxes and fees, as well as by subscription, for a loan. In 1952 the working people received 61 billion rubles more from the budget than they contributed to the budget from their personal incomes, and in 1953 they receive 127 billion rubles more.
The growth of the personal property of citizens of the USSR is most clearly manifested in the data on the development of Soviet trade, through which the working people acquire the bulk of consumer goods. Over the past 28 years, the volume of production of consumer goods in our country has increased by about 12 times. From 1926 to 1953 trade (in comparable prices) increased almost 8 times.
With a significant increase in the sale of food products to the population in the post-war period, the sale of industrial goods and especially durable goods increased on the largest scale. This is an important indicator of the growth of the personal property of workers. Soviet workers and collective farmers are acquiring more and more personal items such as pianos, automobiles, motorcycles, high-quality footwear and clothing, fine furniture, and others. For example, the works, collective farmers and intelligentsia of the Stalin region in recent years have purchased about 5.5 thousand Moskvich, Pobeda and ZIM cars.
The Communist Party and the Soviet government outlined a number of major measures to ensure a sharp rise in agriculture and industry producing consumer goods. With a view to a rapid upsurge in Soviet trade, it is planned to increase the retail trade turnover in 1955 approximately twice as compared with 1950, against the 1.7 times envisaged by the five-year plan. All this will lead to a further increase in the personal property of the working people.
One of the important objects of personal property of citizens of the USSR are individual houses. The Party and the government attach great importance to individual housing construction and promote it in every possible way. Along with the colossal development of state housing construction, in recent years hundreds of thousands of workers and employees have acquired their own residential buildings. Housing construction in the countryside, where the vast majority of the housing stock is in personal ownership, has acquired a large scale. During the post-war years, about 3.5 million residential buildings have been restored and built in rural areas.
Thus, as social production grows, the national income grows, and the personal property of the working people increases. But personal property, which increases the material well-being of the Soviet people, by virtue of its consumer nature, cannot become a source of exploitation of the labor of others. In addition, as we move forward towards communism, an ever greater part of individual needs will be satisfied through various social, socio-cultural activities.
In the collective farms, along with the artel social economy, which is the main force of the collective farm system, each collective farmer has a personal subsidiary farm to satisfy some of the consumer needs of his family.
In accordance with the Rules of the agricultural artel, each collective-farm yard has a small household plot of land for personal use and a residential building, productive livestock, poultry and small agricultural implements in personal ownership.
The sources of education and the composition of the personal property of workers and employees of state enterprises and institutions, on the one hand, and the personal property of collective farmers, on the other, differ somewhat from each other.
First of all, the personal property of workers and employees consists only of consumer goods. Collective farmers, in addition, own certain means of production, for example, productive livestock, small agricultural implements. The incomes of workers and employees, their personal property, as a rule, have their source in labor in the socialized economy. As for the collective farmers, the main and decisive source of their income and property is work in the public economy, an additional source is work in the personal subsidiary farm. The share of personal income from public economy is increasing along with the growth and strengthening of collective-farm production, and along this line the level of satisfaction of the personal needs of the collective-farm peasantry is rising and will continue to rise. As for farming,
Until recently, in a number of cases, an incorrect attitude towards the personal subsidiary farming of collective farmers was allowed, as a result of which the number of livestock and especially cows in the personal property of collective farmers was reduced. Such an incorrect attitude undermined the cornerstone of the artel form of economy—the principle of the correct combination of the public and private interests of the collective farmers in the artel.
In the decisions of the Fifth Session of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR and the September Plenum of the Central Committee of the CPSU, a number of important measures were taken to correct the incorrect attitude towards the personal subsidiary farming of collective farmers and to strengthen the principles of the Charter of Agricultural Artel in all collective farms.
The Soviet country is now experiencing a new upheaval. The working people of the USSR, under the leadership of the Communist Party, on the basis of the powerful development of heavy industry, are carrying out a broad system of measures for a sharp rise in agriculture and industry producing consumer goods. This leads to a further serious improvement in the well-being of the working people, to an increase in their personal property, to an ever more complete satisfaction of the personal needs of the Soviet people.
P. Orekhovich Pravda, No. 331 (12899) Friday, November 27, 1953
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