First of all, we do want the 40-Year Plan to become the standard method of planning for government ventures. That Mikhail Gorbachev, the final Soviet Premiere, was working on a 12th and 13th 5-Year Plan in 1986 shows the effectiveness of marketing goals by timeframes. Stalin created a 5-year plan for chess playing and another for the destruction of religion. The concept of a 5-Year plan worked as a rallying cry to energize people.

Not that the 40-Year Plan wants to employ propaganda. Rather we seek a to create a set of linguistic terms with agreed upon meanings that puts everyone on the same page. However, we don't plan to utilize concentration camps, forced labor, or mass murder in order to achieve our objectives (which are still being worked out - the first few years of the 40-Year Plan are for visioning and dialoguing).

The ends don't justify the means, and the 40-Year Plan, to succeed, must include as many voices as possible, and treat them all equitably (send us your ideas!). Stalin in 1930 outlawed equality. Egalitarianism, he said, was a petit bourgeois notion. Orwell mined this vein for his "some quadrupeds are more equal than other quadrupeds" idea in "Animal Farm."

Second, we want to set realistic goals within timeframes we can grasp. Stalin set impossible goals and manipulated time. He eliminated the seven-day week (including the Sabbath) and replaced it with a four-day on/one-day off work cycle.

Staying within the Gregorian calendar will help us. And perhaps it will take us 20 years to mobilize the population to create the will to change the health care system, and then another 20 to create that universal health care system based on compassion and prevention. We have to educate a new generation of doctors and nurses, and that will take at least 20 years.

Being honest about our progress on these goals is vital to the 40-Year Plan's long-term credibility. This year, my goal for the 40-Year Plan was to write 52 columns. It looks like I have about completed that. Hurray! Fulfilled goals feel good, and we don't want to create a treadmill atmosphere.

Additionally, the 40-Year Plan doesn't seek to promise what it cannot deliver. Stalin promised happiness and an end to hunger. No government in all of human history has handed happiness to its people. Life, my friends, prominently features suffering. Don't be fooled.

Third, Stalin didn't give a hoot about the planet. Post-Soviet states now endure environmental catastrophes like the drying of the Caspian Sea as a result of the rapid industrialization Stalin sought. The 40-Year Plan must consider the health of the planet for the next 10 40-Year Plans.

Fourth, central economic planning doesn't work. Alan Greenspan's hold on the American economy grows more tenuous daily. We need to think local, and find solutions on a block-by-block basis. The more leaders and energized participants the 40-Year Plan grows and recruits, the better off our country and world are.

We want people to think for themselves and contribute their ideas to help us all improve. Teamwork.

12/15/04

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Josef Stalin

5-Year plan worked as a rallying cry to energize people

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Learning from Stalin's 5-Year Plan

5-Year plan worked as a rallying cry to energize people

Learning from Stalin's
5-Year Plan