Comrade Martes claim that "Although the Soviet Union was still behind several "western" capitalist countries in *many respects* [my emphasis-A.O.] scientifically and industrially" is nothing more than bourgeois claim.
Should he claimed that USSR was still behind several "western" capitalist countries in *some* respects, I would *not* have replied to his initial assesment. The advances made by USSR was not limited within the industry. The advances in agriculture was well ahead of the the western countries. The achievements in agriculture is very well documented in a book "The Land In Bloom". There are also advances made in medicine and other sectors of science. However, When comrade Martens makes his claim he relies on the information provided by the anti-communist western bourgeois writers. Here is part 1 of the passage from "Stalin Is Communism" article that was written a while ago. 1. SO-CALLED BACKWARDNESS OF THE TECHNOLOGY OF PRODUCTION IN THE U.S.S.R. This is nothing but a lie that is being put forward by the imperialist bourgeoisie and the traitors to the U.S.S.R. to achieve their political aim of belittling communism in the eyes of the world proletariat and demoralising the Soviet peoples. The U.S.S.R. had the best factory technique in the whole world by the time Stalin has died. Let us read an example of this from an ardent opponent of communism, Dr. A. D. Booth; ".. A spectacular example of a modern automatic factory, which is often quoted is the Russian piston factory completed in 1951. In this the raw material, in the form of ingots, is received and melted under controlled conditions. A completely automatic process then produces castings, which are 'fettled' (that is, the risers and the pouring spout are removed). These castings are heat treated and automatically tested for hardness, imperfect members being rejected; they are then machined, gauged for weight, and tin-plated. Lastly a completely automatic inspection grades the finished products into size (this is important because the output of a factory of this type will not be completely perfect and it is therefore convenient to produce a range of sizes which can be used as replacement for engines in various states of wear) and finally the whole operation of protective coating, wrapping and packing the castings into crates is performed in an automatic manner. Here again, as in the case of early windmills, the components start at the top of the building and work their way steadily to the bottom to emerge as finished products and it is a nice commentary on progress that the most recent and the earliest of our automatic processes resemble one another so closely." Andrew D. Booth, D.Sc., Ph.D. Automation and Computing. P. 18. Staples Press. London. 1958 And from a sort of a socialist, Dr. S. Lilley: "...But the two most complete examples of automation (that I know of) are both in the U.S.S.R. In one of them, aluminium ingots are fed in at one end of the line, and at the other end there emerge every day 3,500 fully finished car pistons, wrapped and packed. In the other, the greater part of the process of making ball and roller bearings is done automatically. The latter is to be found at the Kaganovitch First State Ball-bearing Factory in Moscow, a factory with a very progressive technical policy.... ...... The piston plant started work in I950 a remarkably early date in the history of automation. Since it is probably still the most completely automatic plant in the world, it will be worthwhile to describe it in some detail. The process of converting aluminium ingots into packed pistons is completely automatic with only two exceptions. At the start of the process, in the I950 model, a labourer loaded the ingots on to a conveyor. But a second plant, which came into operation in I954 or I955, eliminates that piece of work; the ingots are now tipped into a hopper, from which they are automatically loaded on to the conveyor. That leaves only one manual operation, namely a visual inspection of the castings for flaws. The details of the process may be followed from Figures 1 and 3, while Figure 2 shows part of the line. .... ... The paradox looks even more startling when we recall that the piston plant started work in I950. The work of designing and building it must have been done in the last two or three years of the nineteen fortiesoĢthat is to say, at a time when even transfer machines were known only theoretically in Britain and even in America they were only just beginning to be seriously developed.... ..... But they knew that in a few years' time, after a great effort of reconstruction, they would be able to put far larger resources into automating industry on a large scale. And so they decided to plan ahead for that time. They would spend the next few years gaining experience, so that when they were ready they could go ahead with automation at the maximum possible speed. Mere building of transfer machines would give only very limited experience. A modest programme on those lines would continue, but the main emphasis was to be on a project, useful in itself of course, which would give them wide experience in automation techniques. And so they decided to aim at the completely automatic manufacture of car pistons, precisely because it was complicated and difficult, because that one project would force them to master the automation of practically every basic process in engineering production." (Automation and Social Progress. S. Lilley. London. Lawrence & Wishart. 1957. P. 43-51) Further, let us read from the pages of the " Political Economy ", the preparations of which book is discussed by Stalin in his "Economic Problems of Socialism in the U.S.S.R.", and which came out just after his death. " The highest stage of mechanisation is the automation of production, which is the use of self-regulating automatic machines. Closely connected with automation is the system of telemechanics, which is the remote management and control of working machines. Where the entire complex of machinery covering a production process as a whole is self-regulated, there is an automatic system of machinery. An automatic system of machinery carries out all the production processes required for the working up of raw material into finished product, without direct human interference, and only requires supervision by the worker." ( Political Economy, 1957, Lawrence & Wishart, London. 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