The Thinking Reed

lofty forms of abstract thought, of which are capable only men who stand in devastated places that have just been cleared of floods and who are discussing sagely: is it or is it not possible to assume, from theoretical starting points, that there could be cases of flooding in this place? It will be bad for the inhabitants of the place in question if it turns out that, theoretically, operations by the elements cannot happen there. As for the facts, meaning the broken branches of trees scattered here and there, the ruined crops, the demolished houses, and so on, well, what of it, this sort of theoretician replies, so much the worse for the facts.24

In opposition to the abstractions of the official political economy the new economists created their theory on the basis of reality, using the experience of NEP, of Yugoslavia and of the West and interpreting critically the experience of their own country. Their general conclusions can be summarized as: socialist enterprises can function successfully in a market-economy setting;25 effective planning is impossible in the absence of such a checking and regulating device as the market; the action of elemental market forces can be kept under control by the framework of the plan; transition to market socialism necessitates rejection of directive planning by means of indices and enlargement of the independence of enterprises — new methods of planning are needed: through taxes, price control, investment policy, defining the ‘macroeconomic limits’ of the development of an enterprise, and so forth. By decentralizing the management of the individual enterprises, ‘the central organizations would be able to concentrate on the overall problems which are really theirs.. ’26 Only given these conditions can a plan’s influence ‘become real and not imaginary’.27

Transformations like these would have brought about marked changes in the social situation, but it must be admitted that Soviet dissidents underestimated the importance of the struggle being waged, and often failed to understand it. Bukovsky, for example, admits: ‘we didn’t notice’ the polemics around the reforms, and writes with disdain of ‘the so-called economists’, adding that ‘they had no special theories.’28 The fighters for ‘intellectual independence’ did not appreciate the anti-bureaucratic implications of the idea of market socialism and did not realize that without economic reforms they would not ‘see the age of freedom’, for these reforms aimed at a democratic transformation of society. The new economic ideas won more and more supporters, but this happened more slowly than their authors would have wished. At the same time it became clear that apart from the idea of economic reforms, the oppositionists had no constructive social ideas. But it is impossible not only to build but also to destroy anything in society unless one has a positive programme. On the whole, the true significance of the new economic theory was understood only later. Meanwhile, the ruling statocracy very quickly understood how the proposed changes threatened it.

The statocracy was not, of course, united and there were groups in it which advocated reform. But these were mainly ‘underprivileged’ groups, with insufficient powers and rights. It was for this very reason that they supported reform, hoping thereby to win more power, but they could not get the better of their more conservative ‘class brothers’. Those who wanted changes lacked sufficient power (which was why they wanted them), while those who did not want changes had power (which was why they did not want them). Those with more power had more chances of success. This situation could change only in circumstances of crisis, when the usual bureaucratic game was no longer capable of settling anything. Such a crisis occurred in 1968 in Czechoslovakia, but not in the USSR.

The necessary changes were not made. Reform got bogged down in the initial phase, blocked by the bureaucratic apparatus. As the reforming tendencies failed, so the technocratic tendencies gained strength. The technocrats’ illusion that the existing system could be rationalized, without any changes in principle, was closely connected with hopes set upon cybernetic methods of management.