American, British, and German businessmen industrialized Soviet Russia during Stalin’s reign in the 30s (the bloodiest period) building a thousand factories, hydroelectric power plants, metallurgical facilities, vehicle manufacturing factories.
Koch of Koch Industries’ fame, whose family now funds The Heritage Foundation and the Cato Institute, built 15 refineries (due to a patent infringement case he couldn’t work in the US at the time). Albert Kahn’s firm was involved in construction of more than 500 industrial facilities (the Moscow branch was the largest architectural bureau in the world back then). Siemens and General Electric provided modern equipment for the factories, American Hugh Cooper, GE, Newport News Shipbuilding built hydroelectric power plants. Ford, Austin Motor Company, (Italian) RIV helped with the automobile plants (some were initially assembled in the US, disassembled, then reassembled in the USSR) which were equipped with the products of 80 American and some German engineering companies. American firm Arthur G. McKee and Co. designed metallurgical facilities, Chicago-based Freyn Engineering Co. provided blast furnaces and steel mills, etc.
I was always under the impression that surely Roosevelt or some other commie sympathizer in the Government had something to do with it, that it was an act subsidized by the US government the way land lease was. I’m surprised to learn that the businessmen, apparently, were all paid handsomely. But where did Stalin get the money?
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Selling museum exhibits (many initially expropriated from rightful owners), 6 tons of them. “3 soviet RUB per kilo of Rembrandt” as one source notices.
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Expropriation of everything of value (e.g., household items), foreign banknotes under the guise of combating “speculation” (an equivalent of 8 tons of gold in 1930 alone, 12 tons in 1932 accrued by a precursor of KGB). Rightful owners were killed or sent out to GULAG.
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Export of agricultural products produced by slave labor (workers in Kolkhozes will start receiving salaries only in 1950s, passports and rights to leave “their place” only in 1970s) which was one of the reasons of mass starvation and premature death of millions.
Shouldn’t people taking money from corpses be considered accomplices? In the light of Koch’s story 1, do you consider Rand’s position on patent law well-founded: authoritarian regimes have no qualms when it comes to intellectual property, it’s the free ones that suffer; wouldn’t commercial secrets be a better approach (allowing multiple inventors to discover the same things independently / leaving people honestly creating something alone)?
A person’s moral judgment is based on knowledge of his nature, and a moral code that answers the question “how do I exist?” – presupposing the primary choice, which is to exist. Bare existence is meaningless, things only exist having a specific nature, and man’s nature is to survive by reason. Therefore, we should seek that which is required for man’s survival qua man, and not by force which is the proper means of survival of predator animals. In a social context, this means that man must live for his own sake, not being a sacrificial animal and not making other men sacrificial animals. Human interactions are to be governed by the principle of trade.
Reason and force being opposites, one should not initiate force – force contradicts the Objectivist moral code. When existence according to reason is not possible, either because a metaphysically-given emergency such as a volcano or being the victim of force, a person faces a terrible choice requiring reflection on one’s hierarchy of values: see the discussion in “The ethics of emergencies”. It is fully irrational to say “Because force exists in this society, I cannot exist”. See “The question of scholarships” where Rand explains the moral issue behind accepting public scholarships, which is one form of receiving knowingly-stolen property.
Government theft is ubiquitous, to the point that one cannot exist while avoiding all actions tainted by improper government force. One should not sacrifice oneself because others have turned some people into sacrificial animals. One should gain value, not throw it away, in one’s choices. But it can be difficult to decide whether a particular choice is a gain or loss of value to an individual. It is currently very trendy to attach certain moral evaluations to products, i.e. fair-trade X and ethically-sourced Y. Leaving apart the fact that most of these “principles” are bullshit, this defines a kind of moral filter, whereby you can make an informed decision to shun products produced by a repugnant means. If one’s aversion to upstream rights violations is very strong, then you can search for those goods that are demonstrably free of the taint of a particular kind of force (never taxes and business regulations, which are universal). Preserving the product of your mind (saving money) is another value, and you can test the relative position of your moral principles by asking whether you would spend 100% more on a product to avoid products created under a dictatorship.
It would be plainly immoral to advocate that a government enslave others in order to facilitate a business deal. One should denounce governmental acts of force. One should not refrain from a business deal that would result in a significant increase in value (one should not sacrifice oneself), just because there is some moral taint to the deal. However, this has been somewhat moot since 1930 since import of goods produced by slave labor into the US has been illegal for almost a century.
Yeah, the problem with laws based on abstract principles is that someone has to judge what the facts are. In the US, that means that POTUS or his minions have to make a decision, and neither Trump nor Biden made that decision w.r.t. Russia. It’s still illegal, but the law isn’t being enforced in many instances. Congress has taken only mild steps to ramp up enforcement. Incidentally, the original law was not based on morality, it was a protectionist anti-import intervention.
No good deed goes unpunis.. er wait a minute.
It’s immoral to receive stolen goods, of course, but it gets complicated if the government gets involved. They can force you directly (such as by passing laws making it illegal to refuse to do certain business transactions, such as the ones you know to be immoral) or indirectly in various ways. If you are being forced directly, it is clearly not your fault. The indirect case is more insidious. It can occur for example if you have to compete with other companies and the government simply allows all companies to profit from these stolen goods or funds. You might prefer not to, but that puts you at a competitive disadvantage that might put you out of business, so you have to either engage in self-sacrifice to do the right thing, or do the wrong thing along with everybody else just in order to make a living. Then you have to use your hierarchy of values to decide which is the lesser of the two evils – if one is lesser.
There is of course a difference between a person who accepts stolen goods only reluctantly and hopes for the thefts to stop (and preferably even speaks out against them if free to do so), versus one who accepts them greedily and hopes for more theft. But if anyone is to be blamed it’s the government for allowing the situation to arise in the first place.