«Our profit, because of the rapidity of the turnover in the business and the great volume of sales, has, no matter what the price at which the product was sold, always been large. We have had a small profit per article but a large aggregate profit. The profit is not constant. After cutting the prices <this was Ford’s social and economic strategy[103]>, the profits for a time run low, but then the inevitable economies begin to get in their work and the profits go high again. But they are not distributed as dividends. I have always insisted on the payment of small dividends and the company <i.e. «Ford Motors»> has today no stockholders who wanted a different policy[104]. I regard business profits above a small percentage as belonging more to the business than to the stockholders.

The stockholders, to my way of thinking, ought to be only those who are active in the business and who will regard the company as an instrument of service rather than as a machine for making money. If large profits are made — and working to serve forces them to be large — then they should be in part turned back into the business so that it may be still better fitted to serve, and in part passed on to the purchaser (put in bold type by the authors). During one year our profits were so much larger than we expected them to be that we voluntarily returned fifty dollars to each purchaser of a car. We felt that unwittingly we had overcharged the purchaser by that much. My price policy and hence my financial policy came up in a suit brought against the company several years ago to compel the payment of larger dividends. On the witness stand I gave the policy then in force and which is still in force. It is this:

In the first place, I hold that it is better to sell a large number of cars at a reasonably small margin than to sell fewer cars at a large margin of profit. I hold this because it enables a large number of people to buy and enjoy the use of a car and because it gives a larger number of men employment at good wages. Those are aims I have in life. But I would not be counted a success; I would be, in fact, a flat failure if I could not accomplish that and at the same time make a fair amount of profit for myself and the men associated with me in business.

(…)

Profits belong in three places: they belong to the business — to keep it steady, progressive, and sound. They belong to the men who helped produce them. And they belong also, in part, to the public. A successful business is profitable to all three of these interests — planner, producer, and purchaser.

People whose profits are excessive when measured by any sound standard should be the first to cut prices. But they never are. They pass all their extra costs down the line until the whole burden is borne by the consumer; and besides doing that, they charge the consumer a percentage on the increased charges. Their whole business philosophy is: «Get while the getting is good». They are the speculators, the exploiters, the no-good element that is always injuring legitimate business. There is nothing to be expected from them. They have no vision. They cannot see beyond their own cash registers.

These people can talk more easily about a 10 or 20 per cent. cut in wages than they can about a 10 or 20 per cent cut in profits. But a business man, surveying the whole community in all its interests and wishing to serve that community, ought to be able to make his contribution to stability (put in bold type by the authors)» (Ch. 11. “Money and Goods”).

Now let us again turn to J. Stalin. Having come out with his understanding of the fundamental economic law of the historically real capitalism (the understanding we quoted in the beginning of Chapter 4.3), a few paragraphs further in the text of “Economic Problems of Socialism in the U.S.S.R.” Stalin gives the definition of the fundamental economic law of socialism:

«Is there a basic economic law of socialism? Yes, there is. What are the essential features and requirements of this law? The essential features and requirements of the basic law of socialism might be formulated roughly in this way: the securing of the maximum satisfaction of the constantly rising material and cultural requirements of the whole of society through the continuous expansion and perfection of socialist production on the basis of higher techniques.

Consequently: instead of maximum profits — maximum satisfaction of the material and cultural requirements of society; instead of development of production with breaks in continuity from boom to crisis and from crisis to boom — unbroken expansion of production; instead of periodic breaks in technical development, accompanied by destruction of the productive forces of society — an unbroken process of perfecting production on the basis of higher techniques» (put in bold type by the authors) (“The Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR”, “Remarks on Economics Questions Connected with the November 1951 Discussion”, Chapter 7. “The Basic Economic Laws of Modern Capitalism and of Socialism”).

If one compares what Ford said about the goals of production in the society, about the purpose (function) and distribution of profit at an enterprise with Stalin’s definition of the fundamental economic laws of socialism one can see that Ford’s words fit into Stalin’s definition of the fundamental economic law of socialism very well. Therefore one needs to be very resourceful in justifying falsehoods if one seeks to negate the following conclusion:

Ford and Stalin were honest and conscientious laborers. They promoted the common cause of bolshevism (of which they might have had a slightly different understanding) in different countries, in different historic circumstances, but to the benefit of all workers (laborers) who earn their bread.

Yet before we carry on (proceed) to the explanation Stalin provided for the fundamental economic law of socialism and the means to bring it to life (implement it) we need to make yet one more digression.

Digression 6:

Political Economy of the Industrial Civilization

(In brief)

Let us start with making clear that all statements about some countries entering the «post-industrial» stage or being very near to entering it are nothing more than ravings of a madman or an attempt to impose this delirious view upon people in order to make «milking» them easier.

All the so-called «industrial» and «post-industrial» societies cannot do without products and services produced by means of industry, i.e. through a functioning multiindustrial system of production and consumption in its integrity. It is true that some countries have shoved out enterprises most unfriendly to the environment or most labor-intensive and now specialize in high technology, legal squabbles of all sorts, financial and stock-exchange speculations and putting up shows. This fact does not alter the core of the matter: they are still dependent on the technosphere.[105]

The authors of textbooks on political economy which students studied in the Soviet-era universities kept babbling about «the law of value», «the law of regular and balanced development of economy» without grasping the essence of the practical economy existing in the society and thereby evading the object region of political economy as a science. The content of post-Soviet textbooks on political economy is not much more credible. They are also meaningless and absurd when judged from the positions set forth in Digression 2: “The Axioms of Modern Economics”.

While the authors of those textbooks and lecturers on social sciences in schools and at universities babbled about economy many readers had no custom and ability of thinking independently. The consequence of these two factors combined is that quotations from “The Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR” which we are going to consider in the next chapter 4.5 would seem unclear to many. They would seem unclear simply because they have no concrete knowledge of metrologically consistent terms which could describe the microeconomic and macroeconomic relations termed by Stalin as «the law of value», «the fundamental law of socialism», «the law of regular and balanced development of economy», etc.