“All these are questions of detail,” said Bolshekov impatiently. “My subordinates have mathematical formulae to deal with all these problems.”
Peter was not convinced, but decided to shift the subject. “Let’s assume, then, that you solve your production problem. How do you solve your distribution problem?”
“Simplicity itself. We issue ration tickets for everything we produce. People apply to the RTB—Ration Ticket Bureau—for ration books or individual coupons. And that’s that.”
“But suppose—”
“Suppose it’s suits or shoes. Each number is entitled to a new suit of clothes or a new pair of shoes every three years. He applies for and presents his ration ticket and gets outfitted.”
“But suppose a person—a number—tears or wears out his suit before the end of three years?”
“That’s his lookout. But in shoes he is entitled to one resoling a year—provided he can prove that the soles were worn out in the course of his regular work and not by abuse.”
“Why is proof necessary?”
“Why? The resoling is done for him at public expense; it’s a drain on collective resources. The shoes are merely a form of public property that he holds in trust, and—”
“What about food?”
“Food is handled the same way. In the ration books there are bread coupons, margarine coupons, potato coupons, bean coupons, and lamb or chicken coupons. In spite of Wonworld crop conditions, due to the worst drought in history, every number in Moscow still gets either lamb or chicken once a week.” There was a touch of pride in this announcement.
“What about coffee? Or cigarettes?” asked Peter.
“Coffee or cigarette coupons have to be applied for separately. Every proletarian adult is entitled to a package of cigarettes a month.”
“And if he doesn’t smoke?”
“He doesn’t apply.”
“If he doesn’t smoke cigarettes, can he get something else instead?”
“Why should he? He’s entitled to the cigarettes. If he doesn’t apply for them, Wonworld saves just that much diversion of productive resources.”
“What’s to prevent him from applying for cigarette coupons and exchanging these for, say, somebody else’s lamb coupons?”
“Only the concentration camp.” Bolshekov smiled grimly. “I’m astonished to learn that you didn’t know this. Every ration coupon has stamped upon it not only the number of the coupon itself but the number of the male or female to whom it is issued. Undetected exchanges are impossible.”
“But what would be the harm, say, in allowing one man to exchange his cigarette coupons for another’s margarine coupons?”
“All sorts of harm. One number would consume double the number of cigarettes he really needed. The other would consume twice as much margarine as he really needed. It would force us to increase production both of cigarettes and of margarine. It would create speculation in ration tickets. It would throw all our productive plans out of kilter. As it is, if X doesn’t smoke cigarettes, he doesn’t apply for ration tickets and we don’t have to make cigarettes for him. But if those tickets had an exchange value he would apply for them. We would have to make the additional cigarettes. And then he would exchange his cigarette ticket for a ticket for the coffee that Y didn’t drink. So we would have to make more coffee too and—”
“How do you decide how many cigarette coupons to print?”
“We base it on the last five years’ demand.”
“Suppose you make more cigarettes or grow more beans than are applied for?”
“That seldom happens. First of all, we usually issue just a few more ration coupons than the amount of goods we produce.”
“But then some persons must find that their ration coupons are no good!”
“True—but it’s better than having an unused surplus of something, which is sheer waste. However, the real problem is not surpluses; the real problem is always not having enough to go round. If we are to be able to give ‘to each according to his needs,’ there must be enough to go round. We can’t produce enough to go round unless each produces according to his ability.”
“What’s your system, No. 2, for insuring that each person does that?”
“First of all, he is taught from his earliest childhood that it’s his duty to do it. Every year, month, week, day—one might almost say every hour of his life—he has dinned into his ears this one message: Work! Work! WORK! Production! Production! PRODUCTION! He hears it in every speech. He hears it on every radio program. He reads it in every issue of the New Truth. He finds it in every novel and play. And he sees it on every billboard. WORK! THIS MEANS YOU! PRODUCTION DEPENDS UPON YOU! And there is a picture of Stalenin—or me—or even a picture of a pretty girl worker—with his, my or her finger pointing right at him!”
“And the net result?”
“Appallingly disappointing!” confessed Bolshekov. “No, we cannot depend upon exhortation alone. That is why we have to use threats and force. That is why we have to have enormous concentration camps, and why I have to have so many people hung, guillotined or shot. You don’t think I like to order people shot, do you?”
Peter was eloquently silent.
“And yet I can’t understand it,” Bolshekov went on. “I don’t know which baffles me most—the masses’ lack of mass consciousness or their lack of intelligence. With all the conditioning our people get from their earliest years, with all the exhortation, all the propaganda, you would think everybody without exception would want to produce to the peak of his ability. They no longer have any capitalist masters! The fruits of their labor are no longer expropriated by somebody else! They now collectively own everything! Won world and everything in it is their collective property! You would think they would want to increase this property. Everybody is now working for everybody else! And yet everybody complains about the bad quality of goods and about how little he gets! Why can’t he understand that it’s his shoddy work that makes goods bad, that it’s his lack of production that leaves so few goods to go around? Why can’t everybody understand that whether or not there is a great aggregate production to be distributed depends upon his contribution to that aggregate?”
“Maybe because it isn’t so,” Peter suggested.
“What!”
Bolshekov’s eyes seemed to flash green fire.
“Well, of course,” Peter continued, “everything you say is perfectly true when you look at the problem collectively, as you do. But it isn’t true for the individual (if I may coin a word), when he looks at it from his point of view. You say that everybody is now working for everybody else. Isn’t that just the trouble—that nobody is now working for himself?’’
“For daring to express one tenth of such heresy, any other man would be sent to a concentration camp,” warned Bolshekov. “Does No. 1 know that you hold such views?”
“Just bear with me a moment. I am trying to help you solve a problem that you admit baffles you,” said Peter with conscious courage. “The individual is told that if he increases his output he will, other things being equal, increase total output. Mathematically, of course, he must recognize that this is so. But mathematically he senses, also, that his own contribution can have only an infinitesimal relationship to his own welfare. He knows that even if he personally worked like a galley slave, and nobody else worked, he would still starve. And he knows also, on the other hand, that if everybody else worked like a galley slave, and he did nothing, or only made the motions of working when somebody was watching him, he would live like a commissar—I mean, like a king.... I have been reading about kings in the histories you recommended.”
“But he knows, No. 13, that if everybody stopped working he would starve. He knows that if everybody only made the motions of working, and then only when being watched, there would be universal starvation, while if everybody worked, even when no one was egging him on, there would be plenty to be shared among all.”
“I know all that, No. 2,” persisted
Peter. “And he knows all that—as an abstract proposition, or when he looks at it from your standpoint as Commissar of Production—or when he looks at it collectively. And apparently some people do. But not, I fear—from what I have observed—the majority. When we consider the majority, I’m afraid, each person tends to look at the matter most of the time from his own standpoint. Maybe he can make occasional sacrifices for the good of the whole for brief intervals. But year in and year out? Well, let’s figure it.
What is the population of Wonworld?”
“About a billion.”
“A billion. Then say I am a worker and by back-breaking work I double my production. If my previous production was average, I have increased Won-world’s total production by only one billionth. This means that I personally, assuming equal distribution, get only one billionth more to eat, in spite of my terrific effort. I could never even notice such an increase. On the other hand, suppose, without getting caught, I don’t work at all. Then I get only one billionth less to eat. The deprivation is so infinitesimal that again I would be unable to notice it. But think of all the work I would save!”
A tiny cloud of doubt seemed to drift across Bolshekov’s brow.
“This talk of billionths is unreal,” he said finally. “It assumes that we could make a mathematically exact distribution of goods throughout Wonworld.”
“Then let’s reduce it to a smaller scale,” said Peter. “Suppose you had an isolated collective farm with 100 workers. You assigned each worker a particular segment of land to work on, and they raised an average of 100 potatoes per man per year. They would then collectively produce 10,000 potatoes a year, and each worker would receive a ration of 100 potatoes a year regardless of his particular production. That wouldn’t be enough to live on; so they would all urge each other to work twice as hard and raise twice as much. Now suppose conditions are such that there is no constant or effective way of supervising a particular man’s work or measuring his particular contribution to the total output. And suppose each man knows that his particular contribution cannot be calculated or checked by a supervisor? Yet suppose one worker—let’s call him A—because of his social conscience doubles his number of hours or intensity of work and increases his own production from the 100 potatoes previously raised to 200 potatoes. The others, however, let us say, raise the same 100 potatoes as before. At the end of the year there are now 10,100 potatoes to distribute—equally—‘according to need.’ So instead of getting 100 potatoes, A, as a result of doubling his own output, now gets 101 potatoes—just one more potato.”
“You assume an impossible situation in which only one man in a hundred has any mass consciousness.”
“All right. Let’s reverse the situation. Suppose everybody else, through mass consciousness, doubles his output of potatoes but that A, realizing that the others are going to do this, can loaf undetected and produce no potatoes at all. Then the total number of potatoes produced on the farm is 19,800. And when these are equally distributed, ‘according to need,’ A—who has now produced nothing—none the less gets 198 potatoes, or almost twice as many as when he was working.”
“And your conclusion?”
“My conclusion is that under these conditions a man’s output, or the intensity of his effort, will be determined not by some abstract, overall, collectivist consideration but mainly by his assumption regarding what everybody else is doing or is going to do. He will be willing ‘to do his share’; but he’ll be hanged before he’ll break his back to produce while others are loafing, because he knows it will get him nowhere. And he is prone to be a little generous in measuring how hard he himself is working and a little cynical in estimating how hard everybody else is working. He is apt to cite the very worst among his co-workers as typical of what ‘others’ do while he slaves. All this may be why your exhortations based on collectivist considerations are so ineffective.”
Bolshekov looked troubled. He seemed to have no immediate answer. Peter pursued his advantage: “Let’s say I’m an unusual person, a sort of worker genius, and that if I strained all my faculties I could actually turn out ten times as much production as the average worker. But I turn out only 50 per cent more than the average, and yet get praised for doing it—because I am above average. Why should I be so foolish as to show the authorities what I could really do? I wouldn’t live any better. I wouldn’t get any more ration tickets than the next man. But once I had shown my capacity, my superiors would hold me up to its continuation—on the principle of ‘from each according to his ability.’ Therefore I find it wiser never to reveal my ability. Therefore nobody ever discovers that I am not producing according to my ability. Never having put it to a strain, in fact, I never even find out myself what my real ability is.”
“This is heresy,” said Bolshekov. “I shall turn over as a full-time assignment to one of my subordinates the task of drafting an answer to it. The answer will be, of course, for my and your eyes alone.”
“Why such secrecy?”
“We are never foolish enough to answer criticisms that no one has yet thought of. We merely prepare such answers ready for use.”
“But what of the problem that’s worrying you?” persisted Peter. “Maybe my criticism goes deeper than we started by supposing. Perhaps—perhaps the aim ‘to each according to his needs’ is the very thing that prevents us from ever getting ‘from each according to his abilities?’ “
“But everyone, No. 13, ought to work to the peak of his abilities! It’s his duty to work to the peak of his abilities! Why shouldn’t he? He’s no longer being exploited by a master class!”
“But what he really fears under our present system, No. 2, is that he is being exploited by the slackness or malingering of his fellow workers. And perhaps his suspicions of others arise from his knowledge that he himself is secretly trying to exploit them by his own slackness or malingering—”
“Your subversive arguments prove what I have always contended,” said Bolshekov; “that unless everyone is conditioned to communism from infancy, such skepticism and heresies are bound to arise. It was a dangerous thing No. 1 did when he allowed you to get this miseducation!”
Peter felt it wise to shift the subject again. “There is something that puzzles me about your description of our system of distribution,” he resumed. “You speak of equal distribution. But I haven’t noticed this equality. The Protectorate, for example, to which I now have the honor to belong, gets more—”
“I did speak of equal distribution,” said Bolshekov, “but I also spoke of ‘to each according to his needs! Now wherever there isn’t enough of something to go around, it’s this second principle that governs. We can only turn out a few automobiles, for example, and all of these are needed for the commissars and other members of the Protectorate. They need these to get around; they need these to do their work properly—to fulfill their functions. We may think of these as capital goods rather than consumption goods. They are the tools that we members of the Protectorate need to carry out our functions properly.”
“But since I have been a Protector,” said Peter, “not to speak of conditions since I have been a member of the Politburo—I haven’t been getting just the food stamped on these ration cards. I have been getting much better bread and beans, incomparably better coffee, and-—”
“Except when there is a very severe shortage,” said Bolshekov, “we can try to distribute equally in quantity. But it’s impossible to have equal distribution in quality. Some beans or chickens or what-not will inevitably have a better flavor than others. The Protectors may as well get them.”
“But the Protectors get broccoli and beef and caviar,” said Peter, “and the masses, the Proletarians, never get them at all.”
“We simply can’t produce enough broccoli and beef and caviar for everybody. We can only produce a limited amount. And that amount necessarily has to go just to a small group. We can’t distribute one cubic inch of beef or a single tiny caviar pellet to everybody just to make a fetish of equ
al distribution. So why not reserve it for the Protectors, who need to be kept in full health and vigor and whose morale needs especially to be kept up, so that they can carry out their especially arduous directive functions? For the same reason the Protectors get the best living quarters and more and better suits, of a distinctive color. We must encourage people to want to get into the Protectorate. We must provide...”
“Incentives?” asked Peter shrewdly. “But that’s just what I’m trying to say. Why can’t we provide incentives for everybody? Why can’t we provide graded incentives, so that each man within his own abilities, however high or low in the scale those abilities might be, would have a direct incentive for putting forth his best efforts? Suppose his abilities were such that he could never hope to be a Protector, but that he could hope to be just a little better off if he put forth his best efforts—”
“I think, No. 13,” interrupted Bolshekov sarcastically, “that before suggesting all these reforms of our system you might wait until you have at least learned how the system works. After all, it is the product of our best minds. All our arrangements are passed upon by the Central Planning Board and by the Supreme Economic Council, both of which I head, and by the Congress of Coordinators, over which I also preside. And yet you, who did not even know what the system was a few short months ago-”
Bolshekov’s words were much milder than the threat in his voice.
“I’m sorry,” said Peter humbly. “I will strive to learn.”
Chapter 14
THE pounding on the door grew louder.
Edith woke up, her heart racing. She pulled on her slacks in the darkness, then turned on the light. The pounding was repeated, this time apparently with the butt of a revolver. She opened the door.
Three members of the Security Police stood outside.
Time Will Run Back Page 10