MODIFYING THE PLANS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXX, Issue 21400, 26 January 1933, Page 8

MODIFYING THE PLANS

"Tho first indispensable pro-requisite for the badly needed upward turn in the curve of agricultural production is a revival of the peasant's normal will to work, and this in turn means a relaxation of the previous concentration ,on big steel, chemical, and electrical plants and moro attention to the production of such articles of daily use as boots, textiles, furniture," tho writer continues. "The growing stringency with reserves of foreign currency is another factor which will most, probably make for t lie abandonment of some of the more ambitious projects of industrial in so far as they have not already been begun, and tho prospective contraction of schemes involving tho employment of great numbers of workers may cause at least a temporary recrudescence of unemployment. . . .

One naturally wonders what will be the fato of collectivised agriculture, perhaps the most far-reaching Soviet experiment under the Five-Year Plan, irj the event of a new turn of economic policy. It would bo liko unscrambling an omelette fo divide tho land again among tho fifteen million peasant families which are now organised in collective farms, and it seems most probable that tho Government will adhere to the ideal of collectivisation, merely endeavouring to give the peasant more individual stimulus within the framework of the collective farm. Wore attention to quality and less to swollen and meaningless quantitative figures; fewer 'drives' and 'campaigns' and more steady, normal work; a more sober estimate of what can bo achieved with Russia's human and natural limitations; these are likely to be characteristic traits of the era which will follow tho fierce drive of the first Five-Year Plan. This era, Especially in its first part, will necessarily bo devoted to redressing the, disproportions which are inherited from the first Plan and correcting its blunders."