p We have reviewed the role of electricity, chemistry and automation in the building of communism’s material and technical basis. But they are not the only instruments for building that basis.
219p Many industries, particularly the consumer goods industry, require raw materials produced in agriculture, which, in addition, provides people with food. The standard of living and society’s progress towards communist abundance depend, in substantial measure, on the level of agricultural development, and, therefore, one of the most urgent and difficult tasks of communist construction is to achieve an upswing of agricultural output.
p In the U.S.S.R. agriculture has made considerable headway during Soviet years. There has been a marked increase in the output of grain and other products. At the same time, the level of agricultural production is still not high enough to ensure the abundant satisfaction of the rapidly growing food requirements of the population. This is due chiefly to the population increment and the rise of real incomes. The outlook, therefore, is that requirements will grow even more rapidly than before.
p Moreover, shortcomings and errors arising from subjectivism and the ignoring of the objective laws of economic development have been brought to light in agriculture in recent years. These shortcomings and errors, which affected planning, financing, crediting and the price policy, slowed down the growth of agricultural production, causing a certain disproportion in the country’s economy as a whole. The Party has launched urgent measures to promote agriculture, strengthen the collective and state farms and increase the profitability of agricultural production.
p Agricultural output, it was pointed out at the 23rd Congress of the C.P.S.U., is to be boosted chiefly by intensified farming through mechanisation, electrification and chemicalisation as well as large-scale land improvement in zones with unfavourable natural conditions. However, intensification yields results only when it is rational, i.e., founded on a comprehensive account of natural and economic conditions and real land, material and manpower resources. The choice of the ways and means of intensification has to be economically substantiated with expert computations.
p Such are the basic features of the material and technical basis of communism and the ways of building it as charted in the Programme of the C.P.S.U.
p A large contribution towards creating this basis is being made by the five-year plan of economic development of 220 the U.S.S.R. for 1966-70. Fulfilment of this plan will ensure considerable progress in communist construction and the further strengthening of the Soviet Union’s economic and defence potential. The principal objective of this five-year plan is to make the utmost use of scientific and technical progress, promote the growth of all branches of social production, enhance production efficiency and raise labour productivity in order to achieve a further considerable expansion of industry and consistently high rates of agricultural development, thereby securing a substantial rise of the standard of living and a fuller satisfaction of the material and cultural requirements of all Soviet people. The plan envisages a growth of approximately 50 per cent in the industrial output and a marked increase (25 per cent on the average) in agricultural output.
p A point we must make here is that on the basis of economic development the plan provides for the solution of important social problems: accelerated rate of growth of national prosperity, which creates the material prerequisites for the all-round development of man; further progress in erasing the essential distinctions between town and country and between mental and physical work; the strengthening of the fraternal alliance of the peoples of the U.S.S.R.; and a still further consolidation of the political and material foundations of the alliance between the working class and the peasants.
When the material and technical basis of communism is built, the U.S.S.R. will have an abundance of material and spiritual values for the entire population, and this will enable it to go over to communist distribution according to needs.
Notes