Page:Neurath O. (1942) International Planning for Freedom.pdf/15

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436
EMPIRICISM AND SOCIOLOGY

(4) The Nazi organization has features similar to those of the war organization of the Western democracies, but the ruling party has used the opportunity to build up a 'pyramidal' structure of authorities, destroying all self-government, all trade unions, suppressing lodges and other citizens' organizations; this leads to an 'orchestration' as we see in democratic countries. Production is not based on profit but on decisions made by authorities. Shareholders and other owners of factories and banks receive their revenue.

(5) An organization in which profit is not used as the directing index (or perhaps relatively seldom) and in which nobody gets an income as shareholder, is the Soviet Union with a one-party system. Neither trade unions, cooperatives, nor similar bodies have an independent existence. No citizens' organizations are in a position to compete with the, as it were, omnipotent state.

(6) A variety of (5), perhaps partly realized in the Soviet Union, as far as 'profit reckoning' in the balance sheets is used for judging the efficiency of a factory. Even then the role of profit is further reduced, because the central planning authority is always in a position to cover the deficit by new investment.

(7) More-than-one-party organization without profit as directing agent, without profit as source of income - usually called 'Democratic Socialism': up to the present such an organization is only a programme. Provided are: bodies with self-government, as e.g. trade unions, which take care of the workmen's happiness, sometimes in opposition to bodies which take care of production; other interests are secured by other bodies, such as cooperatives.

(8) Some people think that a variety of (7) may be regarded as a useful possibility, based on profit as a bookkeeping figure, which may be used for certain decisions; this variety is without shareholder's profits.

We should analyze the respective behaviour ofthese types and of many sub-types. Experience has taught us, e.g., the lesson that the governments of more-than-one-party states (e.g., U.S.A. and Great Britain) have no particular inclination to go to war (here it does not matter to what other facts we may relate this attitude). In these states there will perhaps be a great number of people who, in harmony with their tradition, are interested in a post-war world commonwealth, in which war would be avoided as during the two centuries of the pax Romana.