Stalin changed the agricultural policy from Lenin's New Economic Policy to collectivization in November of 1929 as stated in his first five-year plan. Stalin did not view favorably the growing strength of the small landowners. Therefore, this new policy planned to use the collective farms to produce more grain than necessary for survival, allowing the government to seize the excess and sell it for profit to foreign countries. Collective farms were a few thousand acres apiece, run by between fifty and one hundred families as government workers. They would enable fewer farms to produce more crops, providing agricultural surpluses for industrial development. By condensing the number of farms, there would be an increase in workers for industrial production. In turn, this would help to promote the rapid industrialization of the Russian economy. The capital from agricultural surpluses would then be put to use for industrial investment. The harvest was split three ways: (1) compulsory deliveries to the state, (2) the Machine Tractor Stations (MTS) share, and (3) the shares of the individual members of the collective, in that order of importance. (Bullock, 267-268) The state's share was the source of capital investments in industry. The state sold off the confiscated or forcibly delivered grain at higher than average prices.
Stalin promised to facilitate the mechanization of agriculture by sharing machines while giving the Communist party control over the peasants. Since the state's share was top priority, Russia now had to import food to feed its people, which defeated the purpose of deporting the grain for profit. The money earned in grain sold abroad was to be put toward financing factories, dams, and power plants. Peasants fought back against the Communist party, stating their ancestors had fought the nobles for ownership of their farms in a bloody war. Stalin used violent suppression to obtain ownership of peasantry farms. As a result, Stalin killed twice as many people as Hitler in order to attain his goals. When food shortages started appearing, Stalin switched to the terror and brute force tactic to persuade the peasants to cooperate. Ten's of thousands of political party members and the Red Army were dispatched to the countryside, where peasants were beaten to force them to work on state farms. If they refused, they were either exiled to Siberia to a concentration camp or killed. The Red Guards (Stalin's army) crushed all uprisings, exterminating five million peasants in the process. One Russian economist,Von Laue, states collectivization was for economic purposes. He believes Stalin enforced this agrarian movement because he was trying to strengthen the weakness in the Russian economy. Stalin's ultimate goal was to make Russia a completely socialist country that could survive on its own without foreign aid. One of his goals was to produce enough food that would enable the survival of the Russian peoples. Stalin promised collectivization would help to facilitate the mechanization of agriculture by sharing machines. The improved availability of machinery also increased the output per peasant. This increase in machinery allowed more work to be done by less people, thus furthering industrialization. It increased the supply of workers for the factories, therefore increasing the rate at which Russia was industrializing. Stalin's promise of an increase in the standard of living was false since the government reaped the profits, not the individual. Laue argues that both industrialization and collectivization were for defending the nation against the Nazi attack, and reconstructing the war devastated nation. Another Russian Economist, Bullock. disagrees, claiming collectivization was a political move made to further Stalin's quest for absolute power. Stalin blamed the peasants, mainly the kulaks for the government's inability to achieve absolute socialism. In order to achieve his goals, he found ways to dispose of the problem. He called for the liquidation of the kulaks as a class, requiring to murder or deport them by millions. Unfortunately, Stalin's men made no distinction between rich and poor peasants. The peasants' rebellion from the confiscation of their land enabled Stalin to use brute force to get them to cooperate. He used the excuse of a class war to justify his retaliation measures. Some he had killed as a warning example for other peasants; some were exiled to Siberia to work in gulags, a Russian form of a Nazis concentration camp. His control over the peasants became another stepping stone toward complete and absolute power. Stalin's changing viewpoints on all his political decisions followed the fastest and easiest road to supreme authority. In 1928 he declared the expropriating the kulaks would be folly to the nation's economy. In 1929 he ordered their eradication as a class and did not allow them to join the collective farms.(Bullock, 268) Communists had initially considered private farming more efficient but Stalin changed his mind, arguing that collectives with the modern technology would suit the agricultural conditions in Russia. The famine that resulted from the slaughter of livestock was blamed on the peasants, since they refused to give up their property to the government in order to help the nation survive. Anything and everything that went wrong during his reign was blamed on the peasants in order to turn the nation against them, which gave Stalin the means and power to destroy them. Conclusion Stalin was an intelligent and sly dictator who knew how to manipulate people in order to get what he wanted. After studying his possible motivations for inflicting collectivization onto the Russian peoples, it can be concluded that he used an economic plan to accomplish his political goals. His motivation for implementing agricultural collectivization was both economic and political. His intelligence and cunning enabled him to twist the economic situation around in order to accomplish stability for the nation and satisfy his personal vendetta. For the first time in history, the government controlled all significant economic activity through a central planning apparatus. Both industrialization and collectivization combined made Stalin's hold on the economy absolute. His methods for obtaining this stability gave him political supremacy. By killing two birds with one stone, he accomplished something no other dictator had: complete, absolute power over his people. https://uk.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080302133808AAYW9z9
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Freightliner commercial and work trucks, new and used, are available for sale with clearance prices and special dealer lending due to this economic down turn. Due to a contracting market, many institutions have surplus Freightliner work and commercial trucks on their records that they need to retail or lease. These in-house inventories are non income producing, therefore putting tension on the bank to make a arrangement with the consumer. These opportunities can be originate in the asking price, the lending or a combination of both. An off lease commercial vehicle has been brought back to the lender as the lease has expired. The lessee has made a determination to give back the item in lieu of exercising the buyout option. A repo has arisen due to a failure to pay terms or a breach of the conditions of the lease. Either way, the lender has taken these trucks back and must recondition these Freightliners and either sale them or lease them. The lender will either advertise their listing through their internal sales force or outside professionals such as brokers to move their inventories as fast as possible. From time to time as these inventories aren't moving, the bank could place these Freightliner work and commercial trucks up for public sale The type of Freightliner work and commercial trucks we are going to distinguish as prospective opportunities for the consumer. are the following: Freightliner dump trucks, Freightliner semi trucks and tractor trailers, Freightliner garbage trucks, Freightliner tow trucks, Freightliner vacuum trucks, Freigthliner big rigs, Freightliner boom and cement trucks, Freightliner tanker trucks Some of the ways the start up and/or experienced business can find these opportunities are through trade publications, surfing internet search engines, contacting lease brokers for information and speaking to banks directly. In addition to the Freightliner work and commercial truck clearance public sale offering discounted prices, the banks are working with the dealers to reposition these trucks with minimum credit requirments for their upcoming consumers. Instead of complete paperwork and stringent lending qualifications., these lenders are working with the start up and experienced onsumers closely to make a deal happen. A quantity of banks are offering credit programs with 3-5% down with nominal credit starting as little as 525. No past year income tax returns and financial statements are required.. At the current time, there are selected semi truck Freightliner truck programs that don't require a credit check. This is a huge opportunity for the owner operator or company driver to take a semi truck without worrying about their credit being an obstacle. In this market with massive layoffs and numerous companies looking to scale finance their operations and expenses, this is a scary period for the company driver. For other trucking companies seeking owner operators only, these no credit check monetary gives the company driver and the unemployed semi truck driver a unique opportunity to obtain a truck. In closing, this is a buyers market for Freightliner work and comercial trucks. Check out all the deals in the market and make sure that you have a stable income base to assume any debt that you may occur. Happy shopping for your Freightliner work and commercial truck and its related financing. By: J.M Casa Article Directory: http://www.articledashboard.com J.M Luna has over thirty years experience in the financial field. This includes leasing, accounting and taxes, hard asset money and commercial lending. U.S Corporate Capital Leasing assists the start up and seasoned business for financing in all diferent fields. www.cclgequipmentleasing.com/Freightliner_trucks.htm www.cclgequipmentleasing.com/work_trucks.htm www.cclgequipmentleasing.com/leasing_repos.htm http://www.articledashboard.com/Article/Freightliner-Commercial-and-Work-Trucks-New-and-Used-for-Sale-with-Clearance-Prices-and-Special-Dealer-Financing/1321002 Farmer/writer Courtney Lowery Cowgill sells her farm's wares at a local Montana farmers' market.
By Courtney Lowery Cowgill January 28, 2011: 11:59 AM ET Courtney Lowery Cowgill runs Prairie Heritage Farm, a small organic farm near Conrad, Montana, where she and her husband grow vegetables, turkeys and ancient heritage grains. She also writes a monthly column about farming for New West and the Daily Yonder. As a farmer, most of my days are filled with the tangible: the green shoots of new seedlings, the softness of a tomato ready to be harvested, the cackle of a flock of turkeys, roosting where they shouldn't. But farming is as much about the intangible as it is the tangible. Things like cash flow and balance sheets. About your dreams -- and when to take on debt to finance them. So when my husband and I were first planning our farm, we were sure to make the cash flow just as much a priority as the crop rotation. We were watching the local-food movement sweep across the country, and we were inspired. We thought those ideas could work at home, too. So, two years ago, we packed up our life in Missoula, I quit my job as the editor of New West, and we moved back home to rural Montana to farm. We had no money and no assets to leverage. What we did have was a whole lot of people pulling for us. So we asked a handful of friends and family for a loan. We said we would pay them back in three years time with 3% interest. That's a better deal than they could earn in, say, a CD, and we would pay less for the loan than we would at a bank. Plus, we would have a group of investors to advise, support and cheer us on. We started with a community-supported agriculture model, which means we have 60 people "subscribe" to our harvest -- i.e. they pay us in the spring for a weekly share of the bounty. That works well, because it gives us start-up capital each spring for seed, poults, irrigation equipment and the like. For two years, this system has been great to us. Investors are happy. CSA shareholders are happy. We've been doing just dandy as community-supported farmers. Now, though, we'd like to expand the grains and move toward living on the land we're farming. (Commuting to a farm just doesn't work.) But we need equipment. And we will have to buy a piece of ground instead of just leasing. It all makes financial sense. The business plan works. But it only works if we go to the bank. That just terrifies me. I grew up on a wheat-and-barley farm that trudged through the farm crisis of the 1980s. For a majority of my childhood, the kitchen table was buried in bills. My brother and I knew to get as far away from the house as possible if my parents were in the middle of "doing books." The pressure of debt -- of equipment loans, of operating loans, of land payments -- was palpable in my family and every other family like mine spread across the American prairie. But to make it in the commodity-driven agriculture economy, you had to get bigger. And to get bigger, you borrowed. We watched farms around us -- mostly the small ones, but some big ones, too -- crumble under that pressure. The '80s farm crisis was a good example of how dangerous too much, or the wrong kind of, debt can be. But it's also true that if it weren't for the banks that line the main streets of farm communities across the country, there wouldn't be many farmers on the land at all. In a perfect world, we wouldn't need an institutional loan to get our farm off the ground. But I've watched too many entrepreneurs try to eke their way through and fail, partly because they were under-capitalized. So while I'm terrified of taking on debt, I know that the other route can be just as risky. We recently sat down with our neighborhood agricultural loan officer. He's just about the nicest guy in town, but isn't afraid to tell us how bad things could be if they don't go as planned. As we walked through those worst-case scenarios, I realized that it's not the debt that's scaring me, it's what the debt means. It's been easy for me the last two years to think of our farm as an experiment, something we could walk away from. We're young, educated, experienced people. Surely, we could find something else if this failed. In fact, in convincing me to farm years ago, my husband used just that argument to reassure me we would not end up where my parents were when my childhood farm faltered. So, I've held an escape route in the forefront of my mind. That is what gave me permission to follow this folly and allowed me to take all the small steps we've taken thus far. It has also, however, kept me from taking big ones, and that's no way to start a business -- or a life for that matter. It's true that each little decision -- each seed put in the ground and each new customer signed up -- marked another small commitment. And two years later, those have added up to a big one. But if all we ever take are those small risks, we're never going to truly get where we want to go. So, when we were in the banker's office this month, I had to remind myself that whether or not we take on this debt, we're putting everything on the line. These loans would just be a conduit for the big leap. And maybe it's time we leapt. First Published: January 27, 2011: 10:26 PM ET http://money.cnn.com/2011/01/27/pf/courtney_lowery_cowgill/index.htm |