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Totally removing man from the system of production and turning to a fully automatic and robotic production will not solve this problem. On the contrary, it will aggravate it:
first, any software controlling automatic equipment is written by teams of humans. Both their strengths and weaknesses leave an imprint on this software;
second, one of the basic qualities of most automatic applications is that it is impossible for people to control accuracy of its operation and to correct its mistakes at the pace at which automatically controlled processes (especially fast ones) proceed[77].
Owing to the above-mentioned qualities of the modern society’s production basis in any period of time at any enterprise it is the relations between superiors and inferiors and between workers of similar status, which determine whether it will achieve success or fail.
Therefore when executives share such notorious prejudices in their relations with subordinates as «I’m the boss — you’re the fool», «perso
If this psychological and ethic climate is maintained among staff members by the executives whose behavior is more befitting to a «pukhun» (leader in a criminal community») or «barin» (Russian landlord) and by other factors of social importance the enterprise is doomed to exist in abject misery. A hierarchy of real fools and «smart» rascals pretending to be fools is formed at the enterprise breeding incompetence and establishing a gap between the post and the qualities the holder of this post has. This happens on every level of controlling the manufacturing processes and controlling the collective. The same goes for the economy as a system formed by many enterprises managed on the principles described in the previous paragraph.[78]
Unfortunately, in the course of the post-1991 reforms in the countries of the former USSR top executives on the whole (with minor exceptions known to few people) treated the collectives they headed with permissiveness and carelessness. CEOs and top managers of most enterprises misused their authority, suppressed and dismissed those who opposed their aggressive parasitism and self-seekingly made money. Considering themselves and their relatives to be the society’s «cream of the cream» and the true proprietors of those enterprises — the first generation of capitalists, they redistributed Soviet NATIONAL property (according to the legislation in force) and COOPERATIVE property of the KOLKHOZES (collective farms) to their own benefit.
Virtually everywhere CEOs and top-managers treated employees as if they were working cattle without a single human right. In the collectives that could not withstand this outburst of «barstvo» (the high-brow way Russian land-owners treated serfs) and permissiveness displayed by the mafia of CEOs and top managers such attitude gave rise to many people’s unwillingness to work honestly and conscientiously.[79]
Actually in many collectives employees silently hate[80] or simply despise and ignore the entire management because they know them to be profoundly vicious people who have been systematically and impudently misusing their authority with impunity over many years.
This psychological and ethic atmosphere that reigns in many (perhaps in the majority of) collectives is the most prominent result of the post-Stalin «ottepel» (“democratic” thaw), «zastoi» (stagnation) and «democratic reforms» in Russia and other countries of the former Soviet Union.
It follows that establishing a psychological and ethic atmosphere that would motivate individuals and collectives at enterprises to work conscientiously is the chief problem one needs to solve at the majority of enterprises. Solving it will enable enterprises to work to the benefit of society and thereby enable Russia to get over the social and political crisis.
This problem needs to be solved because in the current psychological and ethic climate any personal professionalism no matter how high it is and what sphere it belongs to is rendered futile by the absence of voluntary conscientious support from one’s associates.
This holds true for anyone’s professionalism: ranging from a janitor’s or a dish-washer’s professionalism to professionalism of truly outstanding men of science, culture and of the state’s head.
Yet all recent discussions on labor ethics pass by the issue of psychological and ethic motivation of conscientious labor in collectives. The reasons for it are known: venality of sociologists, economists, political observers and analysts who speak on these issues in the mass media. They are more comfortable nattering about «investments» and «securing investors’ trust» — this matter does not offend anyone and imposes no commitments.
But without solving the problem of re-establishing an ethic motivation to conscientious labor in COLLECTIVES one ca
At least those who sincerely support communism are more or less aware of the necessity to reinstate the ethic motivation to labor. The majority of those who support Russia’s return onto the capitalist way of development expect to solve all problems of politics and organizing production and distribution by the following means:
bribery — paying a salary big enough to the people recognized as «highly useful» by the bosses of the social system or to those whom many people and entire spheres of social activity depend on (these people comprise the privileged, artificially “elitized” social minority and to some extent the so-called «middle class» whose income to a significant extent consists of unearned parasitic income);
economic constraint to labor — those disloyal and easily replaced are under the threat of losing their jobs and their pay is kept at the minimum level (they form the majority that is almost totally dependent on the government and on the financial and economic authority of the usurious bank mafia, top managers and the stratum of businessmen whose enterprises ca
repressions against the members of society who have been prompted to become criminals by the system itself because of the following reasons:
the culture supported by the system has restrained and perverted personal development of most people, therefore many people’s mentality is very far from the mentality of a successful personality. Having proved noncompetitive in making a legal career they enter the criminal path;
people can find no other way to protect themselves from the crowd-“elitist” hierarchy’s oppression;
the structure of the Western type society which conceals heterogeneous slavery has no place for a human being. A successful (integral) personality[81] is therefore always a criminal in respect to the system’s founding principles as it was the case of how societies treated Buddha, Christ, Muhammad and many others.
Yet these very principles are laid as foundations of management by marauding administrations of many enterprises. Such managers are ethically and professionally capable only of getting rich by misusing authority, plundering and squandering what has been created by previous generations, and are not capable of providing for a qualitative development and expansion of the enterprises they are heading.