Time Will Run Back

by Henry Hazlitt

  “And then we got to the books!... Our ancestors thought it was more fun not to burn them all at once. Cat-and-mouse tactics, you know. Assurances of moderation, so as not to raise opposition even within our own camp at the start. The leaders of our ancestors decided to begin merely on all the capitalist economic books. No one could object to that! So on one fine May Day we burned the whole of capitalist economics, the whole rotten system of direct apologetics.... I don’t think we have yet begun to realize the progress the world made on that day! Naturally we had to burn most of the answers to capitalist apologetics, too, so that nobody would be able to reconstruct from them an idea of what capitalist economics was like.

  “Well then, of course, we started on what they called their literature! And here too our ancestral leaders were very clever. About two weeks after the burning of capitalist economics, they announced that the whole of religious literature would have to be destroyed, but that this would end the program for the present. So on May 17—another great day—they burned every extant copy of a book called the Bible, perhaps the book that had done more than any other to hold up the spread of communism and dialectical materialism. Of course all other religious literature, including prayer books and mountains of sermons that probably no one read anyhow—but our ancestors had to play safe—was burned along with the Bibles.

  “A few months later our ancestors announced that the new Wonworld regime was unfortunately not yet safe, and would not be so long as bourgeois philosophy and ethical theories and logic were allowed to exist. So these were consigned to the flames.”

  “Did that mean, Your Highness, all the then existing philosophy?”

  “Certainly—all of it except Marxist philosophy, for whatever was not Marxist was of course either unnecessary or pernicious.

  “Well, then our ancestors burned all the books on politics and sociology. These of course were the worst of all. They used the words ‘liberty’ and ‘democracy’ in the capitalist and bourgeois sense instead of in the communist and proletarian sense, and created endless confusion. By liberty they meant liberty to starve, liberty even to criticize the State—can you imagine? And by democracy they meant secret elections, in which you couldn’t even tell who or what a man had voted for. How could you ever detect disloyalty under such a system? By democracy, in fact, they even meant the power openly to organize a recognized opposition to the existing government! Well, thank Marx, our ancestors took care of that!

  “The next big bonfire was that of history and biography. All these bonfires took place at intervals of a few months, and of course the next step was never announced until the Protectors got to it. The one thing to be said in favor of ‘gradualism’ is that it lulls and divides the opposition. You tell them always that the step you are taking completes your program, that it isn’t a precedent for anything else; that they are foolish to talk of the ‘principle’ involved in a new step when every step is taken purely on its individual merits; and that they are downright hysterical to oppose what hasn’t even yet been suggested.

  “Well, bourgeois history, of course, was the worst of all. It would sometimes openly contradict dialectical materialism. It would even try to twist facts so as to lead people to think, for example, that every struggle had not been a class struggle. These historians not only pretended that the world had actually grown richer under capitalism; they talked as if the poor themselves, in America, for example, had constantly become better off—whereas, in fact, they were dying off miserably like flies.”

  “But how,” Peter began, “did the population grow to be—?”

  Bolshekov rebuked him. “You’d better keep your questions until after I’ve finished.... Well, next our ancestors burned the essays and encyclopedias—they only needed to declare a half-holiday for that—and then they made mighty bonfires of all the poetry and drama and fiction—all of it, of course, riddled throughout with bourgeois ideology—”

  “Didn’t they have any great poets or dramatists, like ourselves?”

  “How could they have had, when these poets and dramatists either understood nothing, or were hired lickspittles trying to curry favor with the rich and powerful?”

  “But didn’t any of their fiction attack capitalism?”

  “Oh, most of it did—but incompetently. In any case, it had served its purpose. It had divided, confused, undermined and disintegrated the opposition to communism. But now that the opposition was totally destroyed, what further need was there for such literature? Moreover, though most of these novelists ridiculed and hammered away at some cornerstone, or one or two of the pillars supporting capitalism, they always seemed to want to preserve some other pillar, some bourgeois or capitalist value, like ‘liberty,’ ‘freedom of speech,’ ‘freedom of conscience,’ or some other pernicious doctrine. They hadn’t the slightest realization of how or why the capitalist values hung together.

  “Then our ancestral leaders turned-to music, and ordered all existing score sheets burned—with, of course, the exception of the International, and a few revolutionary compositions—”

  “But what was wrong, Your Highness, with the existing music?”

  “What was wrong with it? Ask me what was right about it! Of course there were not lacking people—and one or two of them were on the Politburo itself—who argued that bourgeois music was harmless. They thought that with the exception of an enormous number of bourgeois love songs, full of claptrap about sexual faithfulness, and songs about mother and home and liberty, and patriotic songs—and all this trash of course nobody defended—they thought that with these exceptions the rest might be left, on the ground that it didn’t actually say anything. Fortunately they were overruled, on the solid ground that bourgeois music necessarily reflected and might perpetuate all sorts of sticky bourgeois sentiments and emotions and ways of feeling—”

  “But what harm,” Peter broke in, “could a pure pattern of sound—”

  “What harm? Look at a music scale! The very symbol of bourgeois inequality, with some notes higher than other notes—”

  “But don’t we have inequality in our own social system? Don’t we divide people into Protectors, Proletarians—”

  “That is not inequality; that is merely difference in function. Let’s not bring up these matters until we get to them. In any case, there is no resemblance whatever between the bourgeois inequality and class divisions reflected in the musical scale—they even had ‘major’ keys for the employers’ songs and ‘minor’ keys for the workers’ songs—and the necessary differences of function in a communist society. Do you know that bourgeois music even had self-confessed dissonances? Proletarian music can contain only the purest harmony, to reflect the unadulterated and uninterrupted harmony of the communist society!”

  Peter felt that on this point, at least, he ought to be the instructor and Bolshekov the pupil. He suspected that Bolshekov did not know the difference between a dominant seventh and a hole in the ground. He longed to tell him how necessary discords and their resolution were to harmony. Instead, he asked mildly: “Is Mozart a communist composer?”

  “Mozart? Great Marx, no! He was the worst type of bourgeois! He composed all that rubbish on commission from archbishops and emperors and such, and even from the church! So you can imagine what kind of trash it must have been.” Bolshekov suddenly looked at him shrewdly. “How do you know about Mozart? Do you play Mozart?”

  Peter admitted that he had. Bolshekov threw up his hands in a gesture of resignation and despair.

  “Well, this proves that my feeling about it has always been right. I’ve always contended that on this point of music our ancestral communist leaders weakened in their resolution, that they failed to be thorough, and we are suffering from that mistake to this day.

  “Here is what happened. They ordered all the music of the Dark Ages burned; and it was burned. But there was one thing they didn’t count on—people’s memories.”

  “Memories of the bonfires?”

  “No! Memories of the music! Th
e musicians remembered the music! They remembered nearly all of it! Do you know that there were orchestra conductors who remembered whole symphonies, even when these were written for scores of instruments? It was found that among them the living musicians carried in their memories the whole of bourgeois composers like Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, Bach, Haydn! And of course the pianists remembered all the piano music; and so on.”

  “I am not surprised to learn that,” said Peter; “but what could have been done about it?”

  “They could have wiped out the melodies by wiping out everyone who remembered the melodies! They could at least have forbidden anyone to play or sing or hum them, on penalty of death, and gradually the memory would have died out.... But on this one point our communist ancestors were lax and weak. They compromised. They allowed people to rewrite the old scores, and even the tunes of the old songs, provided the words were left out or proletarian words substituted. They provided merely that none of these things could ever be played except by chosen members of the Steel Frame in the hearing only of other members of the Steel Frame.”

  “Oh, that’s why His Supremacy allowed me to learn Mozart! And that’s why I couldn’t get at the scores in the library without a special card and key!”

  “His Supremacy can never do anything wrong.” Bolshekov made the sign of the S on his breast, and then looked significantly into space.

  “Well, to continue. The biggest split in the Politburo itself came on the question of science. Bourgeois biology was nonsense. Bourgeois astronomy was unnecessary, except for navigation. But bourgeois medicine had cured even communists.... And bourgeois physics and chemistry and mathematics had helped to direct artillery fire and were necessary for the industry and engineering that are necessary for wars.... Moreover, all the important discoveries of so-called bourgeois science or mathematics had in any case been made by Russians—”

  “I’ve often wondered,” said Peter, “who discovered the differential calculus.”

  “I’ve forgotten myself,” said Bolshekov, “whether it was Tchaikovsky or Lenin.... In any case, there was lengthy debate about the whole matter, and our ancestors finally decided on a selective purge of the sciences. They burned all the old books, but not until they had copied what they wanted out of them and rewritten them from a Marxist point of view.”

  “Supposing somebody did not turn in all his books for the bonfires when they were demanded?”

  “Our ancestors simply prescribed the death penalty for anyone in whose possession any of these books was found. If they were found in any house, every member of the family in that house—and everybody in the house on either side of it—was sentenced to death. This naturally made everyone alert to see that all the books were destroyed.”

  “People were encouraged to spy on each other and to betray each other?”

  “How else could a really thorough job have been done?”

  Peter was silent. His thoughts went back to the peasant family in the May Day parade. “But what happened,” he resumed, “when people had memorized poetry as they had music—or parts in plays—or stories or novels or old sayings?”

  “Ah,” answered Bolshekov, “here we come to the most brilliant stroke of our communist ancestors—the invention of Marxanto!”

  “Didn’t people always speak Marxanto?”5

  “Not until after the former capitalist world had been wholly conquered! Our ancestors saw precisely the problem you have just raised. They saw that people might remember these stories and verses and pass them down from generation to generation word of mouth. And then they thought of a device that solved not one, but nearly all of their problems at a single stroke!”

  Bolshekov paused dramatically.

  “They invented a new language—Marxanto, and forced everybody to learn it!

  “Can’t you see how many problems that solved?” he went on, smiling. “The language we think in determines the very way we think. The words we use come already loaded with the meanings that decide our conclusions. Now all the ancient languages—all of them now dead and fortunately irrecoverable—were loaded almost from the beginning of time with bourgeois and capitalistic connotations, implications, emotions, sentiments, attitudes. We had already seen how much could be done to change all these by describing everything in a new vocabulary. This was the great discovery and the great triumph of our Prophet and Redeemer, Karl Marx. When he had finally maneuvered his opponents into talking in his vocabulary they were already in the linguistic trap. For everyone who used the Marxist terms—capitalism, finance capitalism, bourgeoisie, petty bourgeoisie, proletariat, the masses, the class struggle, class antagonism, capitalist imperialism, historical determinism, dialectic materialism, utopianism, capitalist exploitation—whoever used these terms accepted along with them the concepts that must inevitably lead him to the Marxist conclusions. Why not, then, complete and nail down the intellectual triumph by eradicating every word embodying a bourgeois concept and substituting for it words embodying the Marxist concepts?

  “That is what our revolutionary ancestors did. They called together an assembly of their greatest Marxist dialecticians, linguists, lexicographers, semanticists and propagandists, and ordered them to create an entirely new language. They made a new dictionary, consisting not only of new words, but of new, precise Marxist definitions of each of those words. They replaced the bourgeois grammar of the old languages with a new proletarian grammar for the new language!”

  “But how did they get people to learn the new language and to forget their own?”

  “Ah! They were forced to issue new bilingual dictionaries in each of the scores of existing national languages. The new equivalents were given with the new definitions. Each of these dictionaries was numbered and allowed to be held for only three years. Henceforth only Marxanto was allowed to be taught in the schools. Children and adults both were given three years to learn and use the new language. Then they were forced to turn in all bilingual dictionaries, and all of these were burned. Meanwhile everything that was worth preserving was rewritten and translated into the new language. And thereafter no one could use anything but Marxanto on penalty of death!

  “Now look at all that was accomplished at a single stroke! The old bourgeois languages, words, meanings and connotations were totally destroyed. People were prohibited, on penalty of death, from speaking any poetry or phrase that they remembered from the old languages—and their grandchildren wouldn’t have been able to understand them anyway. Wonworld was cemented together by a single international language! And this language itself was so constructed, and its words so defined, that nobody could henceforth arrive at any but Marxist conclusions!

  “We constructed a new poetry, a new science, a new logic! It meant at last a clean slate, a fresh start, a new dawn in the history of man!”

  An exalted light came into Bolshekov’s eyes.

  “Well, I have talked too long. You are so ignorant, there is so much to tell you, and the excitement of having for the first time a grown man to whom all this wonderful history can be communicated, has carried me far beyond the hour I had set aside. Here: I must give you a list of books.”

  He wrote down some names rapidly on a pad and handed a slip to Peter. “Here are the three best histories—though if you begin with the three volumes of Ordanov you won’t need the other two small volumes: they are merely popular condensations.

  Get these from a State bookstore today. Be here again at ten tomorrow.” “Have you time now, Your Highness, to answer one question?” Peter asked, getting up.

  “What is it?”

  “If all the old histories of the ancient world and the Dark Ages were destroyed, in order to wipe out the very memory of these so-called civilizations, how is it that you yourself know so much about them?”

  “You don’t seem to understand. What I have given you is the present official history of that dead world. It is the history that the Protectors of Wonworld have voted to teach. When they wiped out all the old books, they had to de
cide what history to put in its place. What I have told you is the agreed-upon history.”

  “But did things actually happen that way? Was it actually so?”

  “I will explain all that when we get to neo-Marxian logic. The only question to be raised about a statement is not, Is it so? but What good will it do?”

  “You mean you don’t actually know whether the history you have just recited is true or not?”

  “What do you mean by ‘true’? Truth, as you will see by the Marxanto dictionary, is just an instrument; it is simply whatever belief works satisfactorily. Truth is whatever is good for Communism. But that opens up the whole subject of neo-Marxian logic, and we can’t go into that today. Be here tomorrow at ten.”

  Chapter 8

  STALENIN took up a pad of paper and signed his name on it. He shoved it toward Peter.

  “Imitate that.”

  Peter did his best.

  “Try again.”

  Peter tried.

  “That’s a little better.”

  Stalenin took a clean sheet and signed his name half a dozen times. “Take this. Don’t let anyone know you have it. But keep perfecting my signature.”

  “But what’s the purpose of—”

  Stalenin pointed significantly to his heart, and then rather vaguely to his brain. “We may have less time than I thought.” He looked appraisingly at Peter’s new but ill-fitting Deputy uniform.

  “That’s more becoming.... Here is the address of my personal tailor.” He handed Peter a card. “He will measure you for Protectors’ uniforms, but you are not to wear them until the time is right. And now”—his tone was unexpectedly soft—“is there anything else you want?”

  Peter got up his courage: “Would it be possible, father, for me to have a piano?”

  “In this emergency you can’t afford to waste your time drumming—”

  “But only for an hour a day, in the evening? Even your organized recreation platoons recognize—”