Time Will Run Back (17 page)

“You’re just back to the same problem,” Adams said. “If I’m a plant manager, and I invent a new machine, I’ll have to ask the Central Planning Board to get somebody to build it, or to allocate the materials to me so that I can build it. In either case I’ll upset the preordained central plan. I’ll have a hard job convincing the Central Planning Board that my invention or experiment won’t fail. If my invention does fail, and it turns out that I have wasted scarce labor and materials, I will be removed and probably shot. The member of the Central Planning Board who approved my project will be lucky if he isn’t shot himself. Therefore, unless the success of my invention or experiment seems absolutely certain in advance, I will be well advised to do what everybody else does. Then if I fail, I can prove that I failed strictly according to the rules.... Now take your other suggestion, chief. Suppose I devise a more economical method of making the product assigned to my factory. I will probably need different proportions of labor and materials, or different kinds of labor and materials, than I would with the old method. And in that case I will again be upsetting the central plan.”

Peter sighed. “That doesn’t seem to leave much room under our system for initiative, improvement and progress.”

Adams shrugged his shoulders.

Peter lit a cigarette and thoughtfully blew some smoke rings.

“Very well then, Adams. So under our socialist system we can’t have freedom in choice of work or occupation; we can’t have freedom of initiative. But can’t we at least give people more freedom in the choice of what they consume?”

“How are you going to do that?” Adams asked. “We issue ration tickets for everything we produce, and we try to distribute them evenly—at least within each of the Four Functional Groups. We can’t let people have ration tickets for more than we produce. They complain about that already.”

“No, Adams; but some people like cigarettes and others don’t; some like beer and others don’t; some prefer spinach to potatoes, and some like it the other way round. Why not permit everyone his choice?”

“Well, maybe we could work out something better than the present rationing system, chief, but the fundamental problem remains. People can consume only what is produced. We must draw up our production plans in advance, on the basis of the known needs and assumed wants of consumers. And then... well, I repeat: people can consume only what is produced. So how can they have freedom of choice?”

“I think there are two answers to that,” said Peter, after blowing a few more smoke rings. “We could still give consumers considerable freedom of choice
individually,
even if they did not have much when considered
collectively.
In other words, out of the stock of goods already produced, we could devise some method under which one person could get more spinach if he preferred, and the other more potatoes, instead of each having to take the exact proportion in which the total supplies of spinach and potatoes were raised.”

“Well—maybe, chief. But I still insist that the fundamental problem would remain unsolved. Considered collectively, how can consumers have any freedom of choice? They have to take what there is.”

“But can’t we find out in advance what it is they really want, and then make that? In other words, can’t we guide production to anticipate the wants of consumers, instead of merely obliging consumers to take what we have produced?”

“We are always trying, chief; but it isn’t so simple. Suppose, for example, that in relation to the wants of consumers we turn out too many peanuts as compared with pins? Then we will run out of pins sooner than we run out of peanuts. In other words, people will use up their ration tickets for pins before they use them up for peanuts. They will then start taking peanuts because they can’t get any more pins—”

“Oh, come!”

“Well, change the illustration—They will start taking more spinach, for example, because they can’t get any more potatoes. But because they are entitled by their ration tickets to the entire supply of
both,
and because their need for goods exceeds the entire supply of goods, they will end by consuming the entire supply of spinach as well as of potatoes.”

“But if people consume all of one product before they turn to another,” asked Peter, “don’t we know that we are producing too little of the first or too much of the second?”

“Usually we do, chief. But we can’t know from that just
how much
more of the first we should have produced and
how much
less of the second.”

“Can’t we tell from the preceding
rate
at which the two products have been consumed?”

“No. Because if people begin to think that soap is going to run short before salt, they will all scramble for soap. Therefore soap will run short in the state commissaries sooner than otherwise. The relative rate at which soap is taken by consumers while it lasts will be faster than if people thought that both soap and salt were going to last them throughout the consuming year.”

“But can’t we keep making readjustments in the relative amounts produced, Adams, based on this experience, until we get consumption of soap and salt and everything else to come out even?”

“That’s what we are always trying to do, chief. But I still haven’t got to some of the real problems. The trouble is that very few things are consumed evenly throughout the year even if we should get the relative production of each thing exactly right. People don’t burn coal evenly throughout the year, but only in winter. And if they have the storage room, they ask for the entire supply they are entitled to as soon as the ration ticket permits it. Yet the fact that three-quarters of the whole supply of coal is asked for in the first week of the consuming year doesn’t necessarily mean that the coal supply is short or is going to run short. Again, ice is consumed mainly during the summer, and all sorts of other things are wanted only seasonally. The only reason people turn in their coupons for new clothes evenly each month throughout the year is that we stagger the validity dates on the clothes coupons in the first place so only one-twelfth become due each month.... And still again, some things, like vegetables and fruits, are consumed entirely within a few months of the year for the simple reason that that’s when they come on the market, and they won’t keep. In short, trying to figure relative shortages and surpluses by relative rates of consumption throughout the year is a tough problem. In most cases we who direct the economy have to solve it by pure guesswork.”

“Couldn’t we figure it out by mathematics?” asked Peter.

Adams grinned and shrugged his shoulders. “How are you going to find the mathematical formula for somebody’s wayward desires? How are you going to find the equation for when I want a cocktail—or whether I want a Marxattan or a Stalini?... And I haven’t even mentioned one problem. Suppose there is some product, or some potential product, which is not produced but which, if it were invented or discovered or produced, people would want in great quantities? How are you going to find by mathematics that people would want such a product
if
it existed? Or even that such a product is missing?”

Peter sighed. “It’s all pretty discouraging. We seem to be reduced to the conclusion that under our socialist system we can’t have freedom in choice of work or occupation and we can’t permit freedom of choice for consumers. Is that right?”

“People are free to use or not to use their ration tickets,” answered Adams.

“In other words,” said Peter, “they are free to consume what we tell them they can consume. They are free to consume what we, the rulers, have decided to produce.”

“Right, chief.”

There was a long pause.

“Well, I can think of one more kind of freedom,” Peter said, “and I am determined to create it. That is the freedom to criticize the government.”

Adams started. He seemed to waver between incredulity and alarm. “You mean that you would permit people to criticize the actions of the government, and perhaps even denounce the government, and go unpunished?”

“Exactly!”

“Why, chief, you and I would be destroyed in a few weeks! If we allowed people to criticize us with impunity they would lose all fear of us—all respect for us. There would be an explosion of criticism that would blow us out of our seats—out of Wonworld. And what would we accomplish? Our successors would, of course, immediately suppress criticism again, for their own survival. If we are going to make reforms, let’s find out for ourselves what’s wrong. Let’s make our reforms quietly, not under pressure....”

But Peter concluded that Adams was wedded to the status quo and would argue against any innovation whatever. He was determined to go ahead with at least this one great reform.

He issued a proclamation inviting criticism of the government. It promised that there would be no punishment if this criticism was constructive, truthful and responsible. The proclamation was published in all the government newspapers, broadcast on the radio, even published on billboards.

“This young idiot will soon hang himself,” Bolshekov confided to Kilashov, when he heard the news. “Maybe it won’t be necessary for us to lift a finger.”

PETER eagerly looked forward to the results of his reform. There weren’t any. None of the things happened that Adams had predicted. On the other hand, none of the consequences followed that Peter had hoped for. There was simply an intensification of the kind of criticism that had already been going on. People in superior positions continued to criticize people in subordinate positions; they continued to put the blame for failure on people who were not in a position to protect themselves; they continued to accuse people in minor positions of being deviationists and wreckers.

This was what had always been known as communist self-criticism.

Peter put out still another proclamation. He ordered a stop to this sort of criticism. For a while it greatly diminished. But still no subordinate criticized his superior, and no one criticized the Politburo, the Party, or the government itself.

“What happened, Adams? Or rather, why didn’t anything happen?”

Adams smiled. “I should have foreseen this, chief. It should have been obvious. All that happened is that nobody trusted your proclamation. They thought it was a trick.”

“A trick?”

“Yes—a trick to smoke them out. A trick to find out who were the enemies of the government, and to liquidate them. Everybody waited for somebody else to stick his neck out, to see what would happen to him. Nobody wanted to be the first. So nobody was.”

“Should we secretly order a few people to start criticizing the government, just to prove to the others that it is safe?”

“You seem to have a will to political suicide, chief. Besides, that would certainly be a trick. Why can’t you leave well enough alone?”

“But why didn’t anything happen?” persisted Peter. “I still can’t understand.”

“The truth is,” said Adams, “that you were protected by the policy of Stalenin and his predecessors. They have quite properly created an atmosphere of terror that is not easily dissolved. Besides, what actually happened—and I should have been bright enough to foresee it—was inherent in the situation.”

“How so?”

“Because you have absolute power, and absolute power includes unlimited power to punish.”

“But I publicly promised, in a self-denying proclamation, not to use that power against honest criticism!”

“That doesn’t matter. You still have the power. And as long as you have the power, people will fear that you are going to use it.”

“But if they find me adhering to my promise?”

“It still won’t matter. You have power over the economic fate of every man in Wonworld. You—or what is the same thing, the economic hierarchy over which you preside—have absolute power to decide what job a man shall have, or whether he shall have any job at all. You can decide whether he shall have a brilliant career, or an obscure one, or a horrible one. You can decide whether or not food ration tickets are issued to him—in other words, whether he can live or die. Now suppose someone publicly criticizes you, and that his criticism is really telling? Pride may prevent you from publicly repealing your own proclamation, or from openly violating it. But are you sure that you won’t be tempted to punish this critic on some other ground—on the ground that he is a negligent workman, or a bad manager, or a saboteur or traitor? And even if you are above such a temptation, are you sure that your critic’s immediate superior, or someone else along the line, won’t punish him on some such ground in the hope of gaining favor either with
his
superior or directly with you? And even suppose that everybody in the hierarchy is so angelic as to be above this temptation? Do you still think anybody would be foolish enough to take the chance? Suppose your critic really were guilty of negligence or incompetence or treachery, and were punished for it? Isn’t it likely that everyone would leap to the conclusion that he was really being punished for criticizing you, and that the actual charge against him was merely a frame-up? Suppose your critic were not promoted and did not deserve promotion? Wouldn’t he be certain none the less to attribute his lack of promotion to his criticism of you? ... To be perfectly candid—and it helps to enforce my point—I’m not sure I’m not taking a big risk myself even in saying these things privately to you.”

He smiled in a way obviously meant to be winning.

“And what is your conclusion from all this?” asked Peter.

“My conclusion, chief, is that control over a man’s livelihood, over his means of support, over his economic career, means in effect control over all his actions and all his speech. To deprive him of economic liberty is to deprive him of all liberty. Where the State is the sole employer, each man must not only refrain from doing or saying anything that will offend his superiors who constitute the State; he must go further, and exert himself to do or say anything and everything calculated to please his superiors who constitute the State. And that is why there has been all this incredible fawning and abject adulation of Stalenin—if you will pardon the liberty of my saying so.”