NATURE HAS ITS OWN MIND

NATURE HAS ITS OWN MIND A Chastisement from the Past MYRIAD hurdles and eventual failure were encountered in implementing the communist ideal of public ownership. This experience has conclusively shown that efforts to collectivize what is essentially a private concern amount to more than a fight against a man-made system. Such efforts are a fight against nature itself, and such a struggle is doomed to failure. One of the basic principles of the Communist ideal is that there should be public ownership of all enterprises, and all goods should be free. One of the first departments to come under the influence of this ideal was agriculture. Ever since the Bolshevik revolution of 1917, there had been continual attempts, in Russia and other communist countries, to collectivize agriculture, and bring farming entirely under the control of the state. These efforts, however, met with failure. The big thrust towards collectivization was initiated in the 1930s by the dictator Josef Stalin (1879-1953). It soon became clear, however, that the transition from private to public ownership would not be smooth. To ward off the threat of starvation, the state awarded plots, averaging 0.3 hectares each, to collective farmers. These plots were to be farmed privately, in order to augment the farmers’ income and ensure that they were not swamped by the wave of the sudden transition from individual to collective farming. This was considered a “temporary evil”, a concession to necessity, which would be disbanded once the legacy of the previous economic system disappeared. Far from being a temporary evil, however, the predilection for private ownership proved to be more a permanent part of human nature. It is always painful for man to be torn away from his natural environment, and this was no exception. An estimated 5.5 million people died of hunger and associated diseases when they were forced into state and collective farms on Stalin’s orders. But an even more conclusive indictment of the state-owned system of agriculture came from the fact that, despite massive investments in the public sector, the private sector continued to flourish in the Private enterprise is not a man-made system. It is an integral part of human nature, and efforts to change human nature are doomed to failure.