They’ve Had It

November 19, 1956

In Newsweek of July 30 and Aug. 6, I wrote two columns questioning the main assumptions of two articles by Harry Schwartz in The New York Times of June 25 and 26. The theme of these articles was that: “An economic race whose outcome could decide the fate of the world is in progress. The leaders of international Communism expect to win the contest by beating capitalism at its own game—production.”

It is of course important not to underestimate Soviet military power. But there is an equal danger of paralyzing resistance to Russian Communism by gross exaggeration of that power. Admiral Radford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has testified that “defense hysteria” has led to precisely such gross exaggerations.

Even Russian steel output, which gets first priority because of its military need, has not been too impressive. In a study for the National Bureau of Economic Research, published last May, G. Warren Nutter pointed out: “[Russian] output of steel ingots in 1913 . . . was the same as that which had been reached in the United States in 1890, 23 years earlier. In 1928, Soviet output lagged 36 years; in 1940, 35 years; and in 1954, 38 years. The recently announced Sixth Five-Year Plan would, if realized [my italics], reduce the lag behind United States steel production to nineteen years . . . [or only] four years smaller than in 1913.”

‘BREAD AND LIBERTY’

When we come to overall production, including civilian, the Communist claims of “beating capitalism” become ludicrous. I pointed out in my earlier articles that there was no good reason for supposing most Soviet statistics to be trustworthy. Reasons for doubting the Communist production boasts have now become overwhelming. For a time the Soviet leaders were able to cover their failures by plundering occupied countries. We can only guess how desperate the plight of the Hungarians must have become to drive them to their heroic revolt, and to their poignant twin demands for “Bread and Liberty.”

Meanwhile specific light has been thrown on production in Poland. On Oct. 16, the Warsaw newspaper Trybuna Ludu acknowledged that Communist Poland’s claims to industrial improvement in the Stalin era were mostly myths. “In industrial development,” this Communist Party organ admitted, “we are about ten years behind the chief European capitalist countries and about 30 to 40 years behind the United States.”

GOMULKA’S PROPOSAL

Then on Oct. 20, Gomulka, Poland’s Communist leader, made some jolting confessions before the Central Committee of the Polish Communist Party. The country, he said, faced a serious inflation. Collectivization of agriculture had been an expensive failure. Individual peasant farms yielded 16.7 percent more produce to the acre than collective farms, and 37.2 percent more to the acre than government-owned state farms. The failures of the collective farms, he continued, had been concealed. “The imbecility of agricultural policy . . . brought ruin to many an individual farmer.”

The situation in industry was certainly no better. Productivity in the coal industry in 1955 was 12.4 percent under that of 1949, though Polish coal miners had been forced to work 93 million hours overtime. Some of the machines and installations Poland was forced to produce, he said, “[had] so far found no application in production and will not find any such application for years to come.” Two million persons were working at unneeded tasks, and still there was large-scale unemployment.

When Gomulka came to housing, he pointed out that in the six-year plan since 1950 Poland had built only about 40 percent of housing needed for mere replacement. And then the bombshell “The insufficient amount of building materials could be overcome by resorting to private enterprise.” (My italics.)

For the last decade Americans have been bombarded with the cliché that if they do not continue to pour their money into the “underdeveloped” countries those countries “will turn in desperation to Communism.” Now we see nations that were forced into Communism trying to turn in desperation to private enterprise.