Vladimir Chabanov - Harmonious Economics or The New World Order

The data provided above allows to see that the US allocates as much for healthcare and social security as for education. It is also evident that if these expenses did not pay back, they would not be so significant. The expenses for reproduction of work-force in the US in 1947—1989 alone increase 5.5 times, while those for reproduction of fixed capital – by 3.7 times only. As the UK Prime Minister Tony Blair said, “ Knowledge-based economy has people as its main resource ’. This idea was supported by Bill Clinton, who believed that “ Sustained growth requires investment in human capital, education, healthcare, technology, infrastructure ’ 43 43 Cit. ex J. Godwin, Clintonomics: How Bill Clinton Reengineered the Reagan Revolution (AMACOM Div American Mgmt Assn, 2009), 195. . However, modern Russia would rather save on its people.

Social labour productivity is highly dependent on the labour and living conditions of workers. Therefore, all measures that improve the labour ergonomics increase its productivity, as well. But one of the biggest impacts on SLPis that of the extent of people’s satisfaction: the higher it is, the more significant their contribution in the production process.

Let us consider a specific example. To keep a worker idle – like a machine – about 2 Mcal of energy is needed. If the worker consumes 3 Mcal, he can use one 1 Mcal for useful work only, that is 33% of the energy received from the food he eats. Then, if the same worker consumes 4 Mcal of food, he can use 2 Mcal for work. This shows how the increase in the amount of food eaten every day by 25% lets the worker do twice the amount of work he did before. This is why academician S. G. Strumilin concludes that “ the more we want to save on economy, on income and food norms, the bigger damage we will suffer ’ 44 44 [ Translator’s note: Translated by me.] [37].

Eminent entrepreneur Henry Ford believes the same: “ Wages is more of a question for business than it is for labour. It is more important to business than it is to labour. Low wages will break business far more quickly than it will labour’ 45 45 [ Translator’s note: The original incorrectly references these words, the quotation is cited from Today and Tomorrow by Henry Ford (Garden City Pub. Co., 1926), 151.] [38]. Saving on people is, thus, a costly approach, however promising it may seem. That is why all unpopular measures are,in the end, regressive (sic).

SLPconsiderably depends on the technical equipment of labour, and this subject has often been brought up by authors. However, there is no definite answer here. In fact, machine production and maintenance require so much effort, that their use does not always help to save social labour. That is why the science that works out progressive principles, machines and technologies is believed to be one of the major production forces of the society. Plato wrote that “t here is nothing more powerful than knowledge, it always and everywhere overpowers pleasure and all other things ’. “ Our economy is not based on natural resources, but on intelligence and application of scientific knowledge ’ (Philip Handler, President of the US Academy of Sciences). And advanced economies do understand this.

As the result, American companies are the only to spend more than $15 billion on training and education of their personnel annually. For the implementation of the Equal Opportunity in Education Act adopted in the US in 2002 alone $26.5 billion was allocated. The total costs of education in advanced economies amounts to 5—6% of their GNP.

In Russia, however, they have never reached 1%, and in the years of crisis dropped further to 0.23% of the GDP. As the result, the salaries of professors employed at the Russia’s Higher education system were 1.5 times lower than the average for the country. The salaries of other academic workers are too shamefully low to quote here. Teachers in Russia do not earn enough to afford a minimal living standard. Doctors and nurses, however essential their work might be, are struggling to make both ends meet. It is evident that such stimulation neither stimulates the country’s development, nor creates proper conditions for the SLP increase or production acceleration.

Thus, the state as such, in order to assure its proper functioning, relies on quite specific expenses, just like a house or a complex piece of equipment require regular maintenance. Otherwise, they turn into a ruin. That is why a redistribution of the national income to private individuals beyond reasonable level turns out to be mortal for the country.

Still, one of the most efficient factors that increase SLP is improvement of labour organisation.It does not require as much time and money, however, it efficiency is superior to that of all other factors combined. Besides, notwithstanding all other conditions, only harmonious organisation is capable of shaping harmonious economics, and of creating conditions for the implementation of all highly-productive advances. This factor remains the backbone of any enterprise or economy restructuring. All the rest is nothing more than its result.

We are not considering here the factors related to the scientific labour organisation, such as specialization, and introduction of rational labour methods and techniques, because all of them have already been studied in great detail. This approach reduces organisation to building an optimal structure for production based on the combination of two dialectically different factors, i.e. labour differentiation and labour cooperation. Without providing an ample description of these phenomena, we will just point out some of their properties that would be interesting for the current analysis.

In the process of evolution, it has been remarked that professional labour differentiationin space and time increases significantly labour productivity. This tactic helps split human activity into specific functions and operations, none of which are meaningful on their own, by all of which when combined creating a completed product. Such organisation makes better use of the individual workers’ capacities, improves their qualification and instruments of production, and assures rational consumption of work time. As the result, among workers there are more and more experts in a narrow field of specialization.

This factor influences the formation of all social organisation structures (see Figure 1). Besides, the more complex and specialized production, the deeper labour differentiation. “ How far the productive forces of a nation are developed is shown most manifestly by the degree to which the division of labour has been carried ’ (K. Marx and F. Engels [39]). Thus, the division of labour types according to their functions is one of the most powerful factors of progress.

On the other hand, labour differentiation leads to the need for agreement and unification of separate workers and worker groups within the common working process, for interaction of all levels of production from individual employees and teams to entire enterprises, subindustries and sectors of economy. This association and interaction between the separate specialized workers in the labour process bear the name of labour cooperation(from Latin cooperation ). This phenomenon is one of the key factors of labour organisation.