The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News, The Echo and The Sun. SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 29, 1930. THE FIVE YEARS PLAN.

Auckland Star, Volume LXI, Issue 283, 29 November 1930, Page 8

The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News, The Echo and The Sun.

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 29, 1930. THE FIVE YEARS PLAN.

For the cause that lacks assistance, For the wrong that needs resistance, For the future in the distance, And the good that we can do.

At the present moment the whole o£ Russia's political and economic existence appears to revolve round the Five Years Plan. According to a "Times" correspondent, "the importance of all other questions is measured in terms of their relationship to the Five Years Plan," and if 150,000,000 Russians are really taking the Plan seriously it will soon become necessary for the rest of the world to consider the possible consequences of this new orientation of Bolshevik activities.

The Five Years Plan has emerged by a sort of logical necessity from the conflict of ideas and theories that,has raged in Moscow ever since Lenin disappeared from the scene. The New Economic Policy meant the adjustment of Bolshevik principles to capitalistic conditions. But when Stalin succeeded to Lenin's authority he seems to have decided that there was more to be gained by proceeding' on stricter Marxist lines, and as the earlier experiments in economic reconstruction failed, the Soviet hierarchy evolved a scheme for the complete industrial, commercial and financial reorganisation of the whole country within five years.

The Five Years Plan is supposed to operate from 1928 to 1933. Its immediate purpose is to exploit the natural resources and develop the economic life of the country and its people on the largest possible scale, with the utmost possible rapidity. As Jugov, Avho has written a book on economic tendencies in Russia, puts the case, the great object is "to combine the maximum of production with' the minimum of expenditure in the shortest conceivable time." The experiments carried out by the Soviet State under the "Nep" policy proved that Russia suffered seriously through her industrial inferiority to capitalistic nations. The Five Years Plan is intended to remedy this defect. With an immense wealth of that statistical information in which social reformers s always delight, the Bolshevik leaders have proved to their own satisfaction that they can "speed up" -production to an almost incredible extent by proper organisation and "stimulation." It is anticipated that by 1933 the total output of primary products in Russia will be increased by 50 per cent, and that nearly double the amount of grain now sold will then be available for use and export.

While agricultural industry is being thus "socialised," an immense impetus is to be given to the mechanical industries. ■ The Bolsheviks firmly believe that through the operation of the Five Years Plan the national income will increase at a rate three times as, great as the pre-war increase in Russia and three times as great as that of the leading industrial countries of the West. To achieve these ends the people are expected to subject themselves to a system and a discipline which, according to Feiler, is "like Providence, omnipotent (at least in intention) and.all-wise (at least in desire)," but autocratic, stern and merciless. •-...'.

The effects of this system, which has now been at work for two years, have already made themselves felt unpleasantly in Western countries. In America an outcry has been raised by the heads of the coal, timber and manganese industries against the importation of Russian goods produced or prepared by convict labour. The' American Press supplies lurid descriptions of the ruthless exploitation of these hapless serfs by the Soviet. But an even more important objection to the trade in Russian goods is the charge that the Russian people are being converted into a nation of "robots," mechanical toilers who are not free to choose hours of toil or rates of pay or conditions, of work. Against such competition —virtually slave labour —the Western industrial communities could not expect to hold their ground; and this, points to one of the most,important objects, that the Five Years Plan keeps steadily in view—"the eventual destruction of all enterprise run by private capital throughout the world." No doubt the "dumping" of Russian wheat in huge quantities in British and American ports is an ominous feature of the system, and the time has come for Europe and America to decide, in the light of the Five Years Plan, whether they are still prepared to deal with the Soviet State on equal terms.- •