In Victor Kravchenko's book, I Chose Freedom, he becomes a keen member of the Communist Party and is outspoken in criticising inefficiency in production. His writing and reputation comes to interest people higher up the hierarchy to the point where Sergo Ordshonikidze, an intimate of Stalin, gets to hear of him and is introduced to him at the plant.
Ordshonikidze asks him how the work is going. Kravchenko replies, "Good, though it could be better."
Ordshonikidze asks what he means but Kravchenko says he can't express it in a few words. Ordshonikidze encourages him to talk on. This is what Kravchenko says:
"Well, it's like this, Comrade Commissar. There's too much apparatus, too many people checking on each other. I've looked into the record of pre-revolutionary years in this very plant and I find that our administrative staff have gone up almost 35 per cent. That seems to me wrong. People are in each other's way. Everybody is responsible for results which means that nobody is responsible. We work badly and spend too much. Why is that capitalists made profits in this plant, and we show only losses? After all, the workers work as well as in the past, so the trouble much be in ourselves."
His very reminiscent of what happens in state industries in the here and now. There is widescale administrative overmanning in the NHS and education. Kravchenko struggles to understand exactly how a state run system comes to be so much less efficient than a capitalist one. It is a very important subject. It should be studied in schools and universities.
(Incidentally, it emerges further on that some of the people 'checking on each other' are trade union and Communist Party officials.)
Posted by James Bartholomew • Indexed in General
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Ermm... no.
State enterprises may be theoretically restrained from regulation, but in practice they are not. The regulation is usually practiced on private industry whose required standards are often significantly or even absurdly higher.
Part of the reason for this is cost. Private Schools have always had to meet Fire Regs. for example, but for years State Schools did not, because of the enormous potential cost.
What you get, then, as a private organisation or industry is junk like http://www.spiked-online.com/Articles/0000000CAD08.htm
The reason is that state employees are virtually untouchable, and spend all their time working for promotion and budgets and so on.
Those few that don't : teachers, doctors, nurses, social workers, policemen and women, who actually take the flak on the front line are not growing, because who would want to do that if you can get the same or often more money for some pointless skiving job (see Wednesday's Guardian every week) ?
There is no real responsibility ; County Councils continually screw up and nothing ever happens, they just take it out of the Council Tax.
Unless these people are penalised like the rest of us are, nothing will happen to improve things. If there is no "failure" there is no "success" either because no-one will be bothered.
Posted by: Paul at August 31, 2005 10:24 AM
Paul is wrong.
Policemen, teachers, etc. have had a pay bonanza under this government. Policeman also have the most amazingly generous pension scheme which many can take well before they're 50. And as for doctors - they have seen the most extraordinary pay increases in the past few years thanks to the ability of their unions (sorry, professional bodies) to extract huge extra payments for minor changes in working practices. As Blair boasted in the Queen's speech debate, our GPs are now paid twice as much as in France (over £100k on average).
All these groups have performed poorly in recent years and yet the taxpayer has to pay them ever more.
Posted by: HJHJ at August 31, 2005 04:36 PM
I agree with what you say HJHJ (Nice name :)) but you kinda support my point. People in County Councils get those handout pensions and salaries as well, more or less irrespective of how they perform ; that's why there's no quality, there's no pressure. It's almost impossible to get sacked.
Even in the worst cases the incompetent are bought off to keep things quiet. A *very* senior Social Services person I knew was considered to be basically barking mad by just about everyone ; (and this is a clinical diagnosis of mental instability not slang !) ; the LA in question would only let her do paperwork and their lawyers would not talk to her, they turned their backs on her quite literally. They paid her off and she bought a house in Italy out of it.
If (as my LA Norfolk do continually) the Public Sector screws up and wastes money, then the Council Tax is simply raised to cover it, or they borrow it.
Posted by: Paul at August 31, 2005 06:34 PM
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Surely the answer is that all state enterprise are constrained by regulation in an effort to protect the consumer. This, which has been said many times in the past is something which though they have the best will in the world is impossible to achieve for all the reasons which also have been noted on many occasions. I've come to believe that this persistence is of the same nature as people who still think the earth is flat.
Posted by: Frank Corker at August 24, 2005 07:08 AM