Eagle, I don't want to form an alliance anymore.

For the first six months, the ministries were suppressed by the political momentum of the OGAS and the workers' Soviet reforms and did not dare to openly resist; but the ministries would not disappear out of thin air, so they went into the shadows.

Ministries hold the power to allocate resources, so they prioritize supplying materials to compliant enterprises and cut off the supply to those who do not. OGAS can see this bias, but it can only see it, not correct it. Correction requires political power.

It has also learned to use "security" and "confidentiality" as shields to strip some companies' data from the OGAS network, with each reason being legitimate.

The result was that blind spots began to appear in this nationwide network. It even started placing its own people in the position of Chairman of the Workers' Soviet!

While it was formally an election, behind the scenes, the political work system of the ministries was doing the work. Over the course of a year, a considerable number of Soviet chairmen from enterprises became people in the ministries.

The supporting systems were even more of a drag. Production was running smoothly, but the wholesale supply system was still stuck in the 1970s. Factories could manufacture, but buying raw materials still relied on old connections and back channels.

OGAS clearly shows that this factory is short of a certain part and that factory happens to have it in stock, but there is no mechanism to make these materials actually flow – the allocation power is still firmly in the hands of the State Material Supply Committee and ministries.

The result was a strange situation: the data showed reasonable allocation, but in practice, things were still proceeding according to the old methods. OGAS was teetering on the verge of degenerating from a decision-making system into a pretty display system hanging on the wall!

What sent chills down Slava's spine was that the supply of consumer goods was starting to tighten.

This is a common problem with planned economies; all the pressure is on supply and production.

Productivity has increased and workers' incomes have risen, but the rate of income growth still exceeds the rate of increase in the supply of consumer goods.

The reforms of the past six months have been most effective in the production materials industries such as machine tools, steel, and chemicals. Reforms in the consumer goods industries have lagged behind. The extra rubles that workers have are mainly used to buy the little stuff that is already on the shelves, rather than new products being introduced.

However, prices are fixed by the government, so when supply falls short of demand, prices don't rise; instead, they appear as longer lines, emptier counters, and more people using back channels.

By June 1987, some residents in big cities were complaining that they were earning more money than before, but they couldn't buy anything with their money!

If you can't buy anything, you can only save your money. The balance of residents' deposits in savings banks is soaring.

Slava knew this was a bomb with a fuse—these unsold rubles hanging in the books would flood the market the moment something actually became available, whether it was a legitimate product or black market goods!

This would create an explosive inflation, which is how the country was hollowed out and detonated on another timeline!

His version might arrive a year or two later, but the machine's operating logic would be exactly the same.

No, we need to reform!

After reviewing the stack of survey materials, Slava closed the door and summoned the group of mathematical economics experts together again.

"Comrades," he said bluntly, "our previous reform direction was correct, but it was sliding in a dangerous direction. The root of the problem is that we directly linked incentives to output and profits that the factories could control—"

Once people discover that 'what numbers I report determines how much money I get,' the data immediately becomes corrupted.

We can certainly deploy sensors on the production line—we did that a few years ago—and what was the result?

Sensors are physical devices, and their installation, maintenance, and calibration are all controlled by the factory. Our workers' classic methods for dealing with piecework statistics are to let the counter run idle, interfere with the electronic equipment with magnets, and repeatedly trigger the same action in front of the sensor to make it record more.

No matter how advanced our nationwide information network is, the sensors at the very end are still physically tamperable. This requires specialized countermeasures—but we are currently only addressing the technical aspects, which only solves the immediate problem. We need to address the fundamental issue at the systemic level.

The skeleton that he and the experts developed was divided into several layers.

The bottom layer redefines the enterprise as a data unit responsible for production, rather than a profit center.

Enterprises no longer "operate"; they only "execute" and "provide feedback." They no longer have the power to independently sell their products on the market. All output enters a unified national material distribution network. However, this distribution is dynamically calculated, not decided by the State Planning Commission on a whim for the entire year.

This is the advantage of OGAS—real-time data transmission and dynamic adjustment of decisions.

Data from every piece of equipment, every batch of raw materials, and every process in the company is uploaded in real time. This data is not for workers to see for their bonuses, but for the system to see inventory, bottlenecks, and production capacity.

Prices are no longer determined by market matching, but are calculated by "shadow prices"—the dual variable in linear programming is itself the price, something Academician Kantorovich proved in 1939, and he won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1975 based on this.

When Kantorovich was mentioned, Slava paused. This Soviet mathematician and world-class economist had just passed away this April, not living to see the day when his theories were truly adopted by the country.

On another timeline, Kantorovich's influence was suppressed, and his ideas on optimal programming were shelved as a "mathematical game."

Slava decided to publicly elevate the status of this recently deceased academician in the new legislation and publicity.

A country has buried its geniuses for decades; now it's time to pay the price!

The middle layer, the incentive mechanism, must be scrapped and rebuilt.

Bonuses can no longer be tied to profits; they need to be combined with several different types of things.

First, shift the incentives from output to quality and bottleneck contribution. Cybernetics algorithms can calculate which worker or shift contributes the most to alleviating the bottleneck of the entire network. This kind of system-level contribution cannot be seen by the workers themselves and must be calculated by the entire network. It is meaningless to falsify bonuses based on this, because falsification only inflates the local numbers, but system-level contribution is calculated by the entire network.

The second approach is to maximize the use of non-monetary incentives—housing, children's education, nursing home places, priority purchase rights for scarce consumer goods... These were already more effective than rubles in the Soviet Union. OGAS can be distributed to people based on system-level contributions, which is less likely to trigger inflation than issuing rubles, and is also more appealing to socialist narratives.

Thirdly, replace individual incentives with collective incentives. Layer-by-layer collective rewards at the work team, workshop, and enterprise levels can avoid the problem of workers in Yugoslavia being fixated on profit sharing, while also energizing collectivism.

There's also a more radical fourth approach—the labor time bank. Excess contributions can be exchanged for reduced working hours and extended leave, rather than cash. This avoids the pressure on consumer goods supply while providing tangible benefits to workers; in cybernetics, this is called "using leisure to balance consumption."

The top layer was for the repositioning of the workers' Soviet.

Slava no longer allowed the workers' soviets to manage the profit distribution system of Yugoslavia. In the new structure, the primary function of the workers' soviets was to act as a mass oversight body for the authenticity of data—

Workers can see real-time data from their own factory, neighboring factories, and upstream and downstream operations. The Soviet's responsibility is to uncover data fraud. This is the true application of combining information technology with the mass line.

The second function is the right to propose and experiment with local process improvements—workers know their own processes best, and the Soviet can propose ways to improve them, and after practical evaluation, they can be commended and rewarded. This is a continuation of the tradition of Stalin's Stakhanov movement and rationalization proposals in the 1930s.

The third function is to address matters that are closely related to workers and do not undermine the planned economy, such as working conditions, safety in production, and welfare distribution. These can be left to the Soviets to decide.

As for systemic issues such as investment, pricing, and profit distribution, the Workers' Soviet cannot touch them; it is merely a node in this vast data network.

Gorbachev had previously pioneered a dual-track system for enterprises, but now Slava has had experts completely scrap it.

All output is allocated according to the plan, but this plan is dynamic. The fatal flaw of the traditional planned economy is that the plan is fixed for one year and becomes outdated after it is fixed. What OGAS wants to do is to compress this planning cycle to the extreme, theoretically it can be compressed to a week or even a day - of course, the current level of technology can only compress it to a month at most.

But this is already so much better than settling accounts once a year! With the rollout of the OGAS system and the improvement of infrastructure, one day they will be able to adjust the planning cycle to be measured in days.

In the future, what and how much businesses produce will be dynamically determined by cybernetics algorithms based on real-time demand across the entire network, while consumer demand will be uploaded in real-time through retail outlets.

This was Grushkov's original idea.

Once this system is truly in operation, there will be no need for the market to exist, because the system will be doing the resource allocation work that the market should be doing, and theoretically it will be doing it better—there will be no information asymmetry, no speculation, and no monopoly rent-seeking.

But everyone understands that the toughest part is the distribution of consumer goods. This is the hardest nut to crack on the OGAS path, and the experts are arguing the most fiercely about it. In any case, the alliance won't be able to achieve it for at least twenty years.

The final, well-developed future plan was to strive to provide every citizen with an electronic account by 2004—before the completion of the Soviet Union's 15th Five-Year Plan—to record points based on their labor contributions.

Stores act as data nodes, uploading inventory information and purchase records for every item in real time. The system allocates production and logistics based on demand forecasts—theoretically, this can eliminate shortages, as shortages indicate failed system predictions and can be eliminated through iterative algorithmic updates. The ruble is retained as a secondary unit of account, with the primary channels for consumption being points combined with planned supply.

This kind of thing was unimaginable given the computing power and infrastructure of the 1980s, but Slava, with knowledge from another timeline, knew where to invest resources—the semiconductor base in Zelenogler was readily available. The key was to prevent it from blindly copying IBM and to guide it in the right direction.

A passable plan has finally been put together.

Sigrún has taught at the Iceland University of the Arts as a part-time lecturer since and was Dean of the Department of Fine Art from -. In – she held a research position at Reykjavík Art Museum focusing on the role of women in Icelandic art. She studied fine art at the Icelandic College of Arts and Crafts and at Pratt Institute, New York, and holds BA and MA degrees in art history and philosophy from the University of Iceland. Sigrún lives and works in Iceland.

The plan was only the first step in a long journey. Slava knew perfectly well that the OGAS path was politically ten times more difficult than Gorbachev's market-oriented path.

On another timeline, Grushkov's OGAS was never killed for technical reasons.

The biggest obstacle is that ministries are unwilling to hand over information and decision-making power to a central system.

After all, statistical fraud is a tool that ministries rely on for their survival. Once the real data is put online, it's like exposing everyone's dirty secrets!

The KGB also had an instinctive security concern about a nationwide information network—once that network was established, the KGB itself would be under surveillance.

A hero doesn't want to be investigated by another hero.

And the most critical question is—what about the Party's leading position?

If decisions are made by algorithms, then what is the basis of the Party's political authority? Algorithms? And who controls the algorithms? Is it a case of technocratic rule?

To implement this system, an economic plan alone is not enough; Slava needs to find it an impenetrable political armor. And this armor can only be found in one place—Lenin.

Slava locked himself in his office and began reading Lenin's Selected Works. He wanted to figure out one thing:

Did his proposed workers' Soviet management of enterprises align with Lenin's original intentions, or did it contradict them?

If his political enemies were to characterize this as "violating Leninism" from an ideological standpoint, he, the General Secretary who came to power through a coup and whose foundation was not yet firmly established, would immediately be in a lot of trouble.

Turning the pages, he discovered that Lenin's ideas about the Soviets were not monolithic at all, but rather evolved gradually.

The Lenin of 1917 was the Lenin he had always dreamed of.

In that year, Lenin wrote in "State and Revolution":

"...The form of state under the dictatorship of the proletariat is not a parliament, but a Soviet. The Soviet combines legislative, executive, and supervisory functions, and all public officials are elected and can be removed at any time."

The salaries of public officials shall not exceed those of skilled workers;

Abolish the standing army and replace it with an armed people.

In 1917, Lenin defined the Soviet as an economic management body, stating that the Soviet should manage production and distribution, and that workers should supervise production.

Upon reading this, Slava immediately slammed his fist on the table—this was exactly what he wanted!

But the art style changes as you flip through the pages.

Lenin from 1918 to 1921 was a different person. This Lenin advocated a single-management system, expert-led factory management, the adoption of Taylorism from capitalism, and strict labor discipline—which conflicted with the idea of ​​"workers' Soviets managing enterprises."

After all, Soviet Russia was in the midst of a civil war at the time, and the regime was about to be overthrown, so it didn't care about the Soviets anymore. War Communism replaced everything.

Then, at the 10th Party Congress in 1921, Lenin implemented the New Economic Policy while passing the Resolution "On Party Unity," which characterized the "workers' opposition" who demanded the transfer of economic management to the trade unions as having "syndicalist and anarchist tendencies," and suppressed them.

Slava closed the book and rubbed his temples. This was the historical minefield he had to wade into head-on—the workers' Soviet management of enterprises that he wanted to implement was, in history, a plan that Lenin himself had labeled as "syndicalist" and rejected.

That night, he didn't let Director Nian leave. The two of them worked out this set of ideological ammunition bit by bit by the light of the desk lamp in the office.

“I think the key issue for us is not whether we have violated Lenin,” Director Nian pondered, “but which Lenin is the legitimate one. You are the General Secretary, so the power of discourse is in your hands, but you have to take the initiative to seize this position.”

Slava first established Lenin of 1917 as the orthodox leader—openly speaking, the system of one-man leadership, expert management of factories, and special treatment of cadres since Stalin was a deviation from Lenin's thought at that time, and he, Slava, was a returnee.

Then he had to explain the deviation from 1918 to 1921, acknowledging that Lenin did advocate for a single leadership system during those years, but he had to clearly demonstrate that it was a temporary retreat that the revolution had to take under special conditions, such as armed intervention by fourteen countries, the White Army civil war, industrial collapse, a sharp decline in the number of the working class, and extremely low levels of education.

Moreover, Lenin himself repeatedly stated that the one-man rule was temporary, and his deep concern about bureaucratization in his later years in 1923 precisely proved that he never forgot his original intention from 1917.

Lenin did not defeat time, but time has proven him right.

In 1921, Lenin suppressed the core of the workers' opposition for two reasons: the workers' lack of education and the small number of the working class.

Slava's argument is that neither of these two points holds true today. The Soviet working class has grown from several million in 1917 to hundreds of millions today, making it the world's largest working class; the education level of Soviet workers far surpasses that of 1921. And most importantly, Lenin said in 1921:

“Government can be so simple that any literate worker can master it.”

This idea was indeed wishful thinking back then, because the complexity of modern large-scale industry and the intricate web of the national economy far exceeded the comprehension of an ordinary worker. Therefore, such management could only rely on a few specially trained people and a hierarchical bureaucracy.

“But today,” Slava excitedly flipped through Lenin’s collected works, “information technology has changed this premise! Workers can sit in front of their terminals and check production data, inventory data, and the operation status of other units in real time. The Soviet democracy that Lenin described in 1917, which could only be seen as a distant dream at the time, has become a real possibility in terms of material technology for the first time.”

Lenin's vision in 1917 failed because of a lack of technical conditions. Slava brought those conditions, so Lenin's original aspiration could be realized.

That makes sense now! Perfect!

Of course, there are still many minefields. The Trotsky issue, the suppressed workers' committees in Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968, the revisionist label attached to Yugoslav workers' self-government, and the tension between "democracy" and "centralism" in democratic centralism...

Slava had to distance himself from these: Yugoslavia abandoned its unified plan, abandoned the leadership of the Party, and turned enterprises into competing market entities, while his system relied on nationwide informatization to bring the planned economy to a scientific level that Yugoslavia could never dream of, and the Party's unified leadership could not be diminished by even a hair!

Sigrún has taught at the Iceland University of the Arts as a part-time lecturer since and was Dean of the Department of Fine Art from -. In – she held a research position at Reykjavík Art Museum focusing on the role of women in Icelandic art. She studied fine art at the Icelandic College of Arts and Crafts and at Pratt Institute, New York, and holds BA and MA degrees in art history and philosophy from the University of Iceland. Sigrún lives and works in Iceland.

The armor was ready, but Koslava didn't rush to put it on and show it off to the whole party.

He understands this country all too well. If a comprehensive, policy-oriented document is issued and the domestic reaction is negative, then he'll be in a very difficult situation.

He decided to test the waters first—to have the Party's propaganda department publish a commentary to gauge the domestic sentiment and see how the veteran Party members, ministries, and intellectuals were reacting to the workers' Soviet.

The article was selected to be published in the magazine "The Communist" on June 20.

The title is "On Soviet Democracy in a New Historical Stage".

It begins with the fundamental question of the 70th anniversary—where does the future of the Soviet regime lie? It points directly to the growing discontent among the people with bureaucracy and the fact that a special class within the cadre ranks is eroding the Party's body. Then it turns its attention back to the root—to Lenin and to 1917.

It reiterates the four principles of the Paris Commune, one by one, and then poses questions to reality:

Is our factory manager elected by the workers? Can our ministers be replaced at any time by worker representatives? Do our senior managers and ordinary workers receive the same salary?

It acknowledges the “temporary retreat” from 1918 to 1921, mentions the period when Stalin solidified temporary measures into a permanent system, and explains with restraint why the past seventy years have not returned to 1917 – the fundamental reason being the lack of mature material and technological conditions.

Then it revisited Lenin's great formula—Soviet power plus nationwide electrification equals communism.

Now, this formula can be developed into: Soviet power + nationwide electrification + nationwide informatization = communism.

The article states that this is not a revision of Lenin, but a development of Leninism, bringing Leninism into a new historical stage.

It outlines the basic direction of the workers' Soviet in the new stage—to rebuild a substantive workers' Soviet, whose core function is to participate in the enterprise's process, safety, and welfare decisions based on data supervision, while the enterprise's production tasks, prices, and investments are still coordinated by the state planning agency with the assistance of the national information system, and the Party's leadership must be strengthened rather than weakened.

It also dedicated a section to responding to those unavoidable accusations—the "Yugoslav path," the "syndicalist bias" of 1921, and democratic centralism—clearly distinguishing itself from Titoism and from decentralism.

Long live the Soviet regime! Long live nationwide electrification and informatization! Long live the great and invincible Marxism-Leninism!

How will the domestic reaction be? What will the workers who have tasted the sweetness of reform but also been bitten by its hidden dangers think? How will the ministries and commissions that have been exposed by OGAS and are now resisting react? What will the intellectuals who have been fed by Gorbachev's openness for more than a year and whose minds are full of ideas about wholesale Westernization do?

Taslava, just you wait and see.

Sigrún has taught at the Iceland University of the Arts as a part-time lecturer since and was Dean of the Department of Fine Art from -. In – she held a research position at Reykjavík Art Museum focusing on the role of women in Icelandic art. She studied fine art at the Icelandic College of Arts and Crafts and at Pratt Institute, New York, and holds BA and MA degrees in art history and philosophy from the University of Iceland. Sigrún lives and works in Iceland.

Meanwhile, thousands of kilometers away in Beijing, the title of this article caught the attention of another group of people.

With the 19th All-Union Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union about to convene, China will send a high-level delegation to this grand gathering that brings together almost all Marxist political parties from around the world—including Deng Xixian.