In order to relieve the peasant economy of this drawback the Government and the Party have decided to follow the policy of a gradual but steady reduction of prices for manufactured goods. Can this be called a practical policy? I think so. It is, for instance, a well-known fact that during the last year we have been able to reduce retail prices for manufactured articles by 8 to 10 per cent. It is also a well-known fact that our industrial organisations are systematically reducing the cost of production and wholesale prices for manufactured articles. There is every reason to believe that this policy will be continued. Even more than that, I must say that the policy of a steady reduction of prices for manufactured articles is the corner-stone of our economic policy without which improvement and rationalisation of our industry and consolidation of the union between the working class and the peasantry are impossible.
Another kind of policy is adhered to in this respect in bourgeois countries. Enterprises are usually organised there into trusts and syndicates to raise within the country prices for manufactured articles, to make them monopoly prices, to make on this basis as big profits as possible, and to create a fund for the export of goods abroad where the capitalists sell these goods at low prices in order to-secure now markets. The same policy was pursued here in Russia under the bourgeois regime, when, for instance, sugar was.sold in the country at exorbitant prices; for instance, in England this sugar was sold at such low prices that it was used as food for pigs. The Soviet Government works on diametrically opposite lines. It holds that industry must be at the service of the population, and not vice versa. It holds that a steady reduction of prices for manufactured articles is the fundamental means, without which a normal growth of industry is impossible, apart from the fact that the policy of reducing prices for manufactured articles contributes to increased consumption by the population, increases the demand of the urban and rural home markets and creates in this manner an ever-growing source to feed the further development of the industry.
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