Red Plenty

by Francis Spufford

  ‘Emil! Good to see you.’

  ‘I was wondering: would you introduce me to –’ and he nodded forwards, very charming, very confident his interest would be welcome, with a little lift of his pointed chin.

  Now there was a perplexing combination on the face of it: Emil Arslanovich, sitting pretty in the apparat, hard at work on the favoured Kremlin project of standardising wage rates, but spontaneously educating himself in mathematics, to the point where, it was rumoured, he was thinking seriously about shifting sideways into academia; and Leonid Vitalevich, who had invented a large part of what Emil was excitedly learning, yet whose idea of a political manoeuvre was to write a letter of terrifying frankness to the most powerful person he could think of. In fact, thought Nemchinov, it might not be a bad combination at all, since by all accounts and by his own observation, Emil had the connections and the worldly wisdom but lacked the true lizard-brained coldness of those on their way to the very top, those for whom ideas and people were only ever useful. He suspected Emil, beneath the urbanity, of being secretly in earnest.

  ‘Surely, surely,’ he whispered back. ‘If you wait after the session, we’ll walk together.’

  ‘Wonderful. And how’s it going?’

  ‘Well – I think the bombardment is about to start …’

  ‘Let me give a simple demonstration’, Leonid Vitalevich was saying, ‘of how much it matters which variant is chosen in the national plans, and therefore, how much it matters that a method should exist for selecting the better variant. After all, for every individual decision there may exist two, three or four possibilities that look equally plausible, making, altogether, when they are multiplied, innumerable billions of possible plans. Suppose, then, that we wish to produce two products, A and B, in equal proportions, and must split the production among three different factories, each of which has its own level of efficiency at producing A and at producing B. It may be, that by simply sharing the production equally between the factories, we would obtain an output of 7,600 of A, 7,400 of B. Almost the same number, certainly close enough to count as successful plan-fulfilment under the present system. Yet it may also be that another plan can result in output of 8,400 A, plus 8,400 B, with just the same outlay of labour, materials and factory time. Simply by organising production differently, we obtain perfect fulfilment of the requirement for equal output of the two products – and 13% more production. Where has the 13% come from? “Out of nothing”, “out of mathematics”; or, more accurately, out of the optimising of the system of production as it already exists. This is – yes?’

  Nemchinov leaned forward. A hand had gone up; not a hand belonging to one of the big names in old-fashioned political economy, since they had declined to come to Nemchinov’s conference, perhaps judging that in this new time their appeals to philosophical authority might sound a little like calls for the police. The doubts of the old guard were being represented by middle-rankers. Disapproval from them didn’t carry the same force, didn’t convey quite the same weight of conclusive judgement. This was Boyarskii the statistician.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Professor, you’re effectively quoting from your own book, aren’t you? The much-criticised Best Use of Economic Resources. Condemned by reviewer after reviewer for the same fault, your naive flirtation with theories familiar to us from the works of bourgeois apologists …’

  Boyarskii hesitated. Ah yes, thought Nemchinov, you’re waiting for the sky to fall, as it always used to do if anyone spoke words like that; and instead there’s only this silence. You’re actually going to have to make the argument, I’m afraid.

  ‘Naturally,’ Boyarskii continued with awkward politeness, ‘I don’t say a word against the strictly mathematical part of your work. I’m sure we’re all aware that a greater degree of quantitative analysis is essential to the refinement of our planning; and you have provided tools which, in limited areas, can clearly be of great assistance. In the same way, it’s a matter of pride for all of us, I’m sure, that you should have independently originated the principles of, of –’

  ‘– linear programming –’

  ‘Thank you, linear programming, here in the Soviet Union, before it was discovered by scientists in the imperialist countries. Yet economics is not a science of quantity alone, is it? It is pre-eminently a science of quality, the science of quality, in which the meaning of economic phenomena, not just their magnitude, is revealed; and revealed how? Of course, by the rigorous application of Marxism–Leninism. It follows that economics is particularly based on partiinost, party-mindedness. Mathematical investigations can only succeed if they proceed from the economic content disclosed by political economy. For example, political economy teaches us that the plans for the development of the socialist economy are an objective expression of socialism’s economic laws. Yet in your book you refer to them as being just “collections of numbers”: an expression, if I may say so, of spectacular disrespect for the socialist system. You have declined to be guided by political economy, and that is why, above all, you have made the error of ascribing to your mathematical discoveries a universal significance which they could only have in the fantasy worlds of those writing apologias for capitalism. I am referring to your so-called “objectively derived valuations” –’

  ‘– objectively determined valuations –’

  ‘Thank you; which you have extended from the modest, useful function you first gave them, until they cease to describe one quantitative aspect of the production process in an individual factory, and become instead a challenge to political economy’s central truth, its great foundation stone: that all value is created by labour. “Shadow prices”, I believe they’re also called – and they are shadowy indeed, are they not? I refer you to your book, to Conclusion Six, where you are arguing that your valuations are “dynamic”. You write, “any increase in the requirements of some article entails a corresponding increase in costs and consequently in its o.d. valuation. A decrease in requirements entails a reduction in its o.d. valuation.” What is this, what can this possibly be, but a suggestion that value is determined by supply and demand? Supply and demand, for heaven’s sake: bourgeois ideology’s most transparent disguise for exploitation! Academician Nemchinov here criticises you on this very point, in his actual introduction to your book –’

  Yes, thought Nemchinov, because nobody would have published the book if I hadn’t, and my making a fool of myself was a price worth paying to get the ideas into circulation.

  ‘“It is impossible to agree with the author’s point of view; it must be rejected.”’

  Another silence.

  ‘Well,’ said Leonid Vitalevich, ‘let me say in passing that I think Vasily Sergeyevich’ – a nod to Nemchinov at the back of the room – ‘is mistaken to think that these are considerations which I am somehow bringing in unnecessarily to the analysis, or thinking up: they are mathematical consequences of the situation.’

  Ah, Lyonya: endlessly patient with your enemies, angry with your friends.

  ‘B should like to answer properly, because this is a vital point. Naturally I do not doubt the great truth that all economic value is created by human labour. This is apparent even to mathematicians. The question is only, how this truth is to be best applied; how it is to be applied in a society where we are not aiming, like Marx, just to diagnose economic relationships, and to criticise them, but must manage them too; where we are obliged to be concrete and detailed in our thinking. For example.’ Leonid Vitalevich pressed his fist to his mouth, and banged it there gently a couple of times, making eye contact with no one in the room. Then he straightened the little finger on that hand, waved it slowly twice in the air, and fixed his gaze again on Boyarskii. ‘For example! Do you see my tie?’

  Nemchinov had seen Leonid Vitalevich do this before, in lectures; turn staccato, and seemingly wander off into disconnected thoughts. In fact, he always made perfect sense, when you reassembled the fragmentary statements you had been given, afterwards, but Nemchinov hoped
that this was going to be one of those occasions when the coherence was obvious at the time.

  ‘Yes?’ said Boyarskii warily.

  ‘Made of rayon. Dyed blue. Cut and sewn at the Mayak works, but the fabric must’ve come from a supplier, first. We agree, then, that the value of the tie is determined by the work that went into it?’

  ‘Of course. That’s elementary.’

  ‘The value is determined by the labour of processing the cellulose, spinning the threads, dying them, weaving them, moving them to Mayak in Moscow, cutting and sewing?’

  ‘Yes! I don’t see –’

  ‘What amount?’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘What amount of labour is in my tie, exactly?’

  ‘Obviously, I’m not in a position to know –’

  ‘Then how would you put yourself in a position to know? Are there tables, somewhere, that record standardised quantities of labour for each of the actions involved in creating a necktie? Does a calculus exist for reducing the different kinds of labour involved, the different levels of skill, the duration, intensity, efficiency and so on, to one common denominator of labour-time? No: of course not. It is not surprising you cannot answer,’ said Leonid Vitalevich kindly, ‘because as a society we do not, in fact, handle labour-value quantitatively. Or rather, we do not do so in a direct way. It is always expressed in some synthetic form. We track value through a variety of indicators. Through the production norms given to enterprises, which state that a plant employing such-and-such a number of workers can be expected to turn out such-a-such a number of finished items in such-and-such an amount of time. Or, most obviously, through prices. But prices are acknowledged to be highly imperfect indicators of value, since they are set at such long intervals; and so, I and other economists are arguing, are the enterprise indicators as they exist at present. At present, our system of norms frequently produces perverse results, perverse situations in which a plan that benefits an individual enterprise does not benefit the national economy as a whole; or vice versa. So what, in essence, I am proposing – I and others who are at work in this area – is a new form of indirect indicator for labour value which would allow us to calculate, easily and straightforwardly, plans that are optimal all around. These indicators will be no less synthetic than those we alingy use, but no more synthetic either, and there is no reason to believe that they will not capture the deep truth of labour-value just as well.’

  ‘But what about the evident similarity between your “valuations” and the market prices of a capitalist economy?’ asked Boyarskii, who was sounding rather strained.

  ‘It’s true that there is a formal resemblance,’ said Leonid Vitalevich. ‘But they have a completely different origin, and therefore a completely different meaning. Whereas market prices are formed spontaneously, objective valuations – shadow prices – must be computed on the basis of an optimal plan. As the plan targets change, the valuations change. They are subordinate to the very different production relationships of a socialist society. Yet, yet, the scope for their use is actually bigger under socialism. The capitalists actually agree with you, Dr Boyarskii, that the mathematical methods we’re talking about should only be applied on the small scale, on the level of the individual firm. They have no choice: there is no larger structure, in the economy of West Germany or the United States, in which they can be set to work. They have had some success, I believe. I’m sorry to say that, since George Danzig and Tjalling Koopmans made their discoveries of “linear programming” in America during the war, the techniques have been adopted there far more eagerly, far more quickly, than in the Soviet Union. Linear programmers in the USA calculate routes for airlines, and devise the investment policies of Wall Street corporations. But we still have an opportunity before us which is closed to the capitalists. Capitalism cannot calculate an optimum for a whole economy at once. We can. There is a fundamental harmony between optimal planning and the nature of socialist society.

  ‘We can,’ repeated Leonid Vitalevich, ‘and therefore we must. It is our intellectual responsibility. Academician Nemchinov, when he was introducing me, declared that I should be working out algorithms to manage the national economy. I would say, rather, that that is work for the entire collective of Soviet economists, mathematicians and specialists in computer technology.’

  The applause seemed to shrivel Boyarskii where he sat.

  ‘I will just say one more word, about computers.’

  Good, thought Nemchinov. This coalition we’re building needs the programmers, and the statistical bureaucrats who’ll like the budgets the computers bring.

  ‘In my opinion it is not the lack of them that has held up the development of mathematical methods. There are ways we could have calculated optimal plans by counting on our fingers.’

  Oh.

  ‘But there is no doubt that electronic computers will immeasurably strengthen our ability to handle large and complex problems. And they have, moreover, the great virtue of requiring clarity from us. I’m afraid that the computer cannot digest some of our economists’ scholarly products. Long talks and articles which people think they understand prove impossible to put into logical, into algorithmic, form. It turns out that, once you remove everything that’s said “in general”, once you pour away all the water, there’s nothing left. Well, either nothing … or one biq question mark …’

  ‘Ouch!’ hissed Emil appreciatively to Nemchinov, through the laughter. People began to gather up papers and briefcases. ‘That’s fierce stuff. He must be … quite an operator?’

  ‘Oh no,’ said Nemchinov, looking at him closely. ‘To the contrary. To the absolute contrary.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes, really. Come on, and I’ll tell you outside.’

  *

  Outside, a spring afternoon of white and grey was blowing itself out in a wind with a renewed edge of winter frost to it, like a blunt knife resharpened. The snow had gone, though, except for the last few tenacious mounds, blue-black with city dirt, and smoothed by repeated thawing and refreezing until they looked strangely dorsal; as if a pod of whales were swimming up Krasikov Street through the ground, breaching the asphalt here and there with their rounded backs. Emil and Nemchinov waited on the portico of the Academy, two men pulling black overcoats close around them. In fact, two men pulling close exactly the same black overcoat: ‘coat, winter, men’s, part-silk lining, wool worsted tricot, cloth group 29–32’, as the Ministry of Trade’s retail handbook put it. Despite the bite in the air, pigeons on the shoulders of the granite giants holding up the Academy’s facade were throatily crooning, and stepping out shuffling dances, puffed up to soft balls of feather and claw. The taxis passing on Krasikova had their headlamps lit.

  Emil found that Leonid Vitalevich’s final joke was still affecting him, still somehow tickling him internally. He felt giddy, bemused, oddly happy. There seemed to be more open space around him than he had realised; more elbow room for ideas. He shook his head and offered Nemchinov an American cigarette.

  ‘Thank you, I won’t,’ said the Academician. ‘Look, the thing about Leonid Vitalevich is that he argues like that because he believes, he genuinely believes, that it’s argument that settles the issue. He is not scoring political points, or pleasing his friends, or giving shrewd knocks to his enemies. He expects to persuade people. He thinks that scientists are rational beings who respond to logic if you show it to them. Of course, he judges everybody by himself. He makes his mind up according to induction and deduction. Therefore, everyone does.’

  ‘An innocent, then?’ said Emil, intensely curious; curious too that the patron of a cause in academic politics would be willing to talk like this, to a relative stranger, about the person whose reputation was one of his main assets. It seemed to be an invitation to intimacy; but not necessarily with Nemchinov.

  ‘A passionate innocent. Who knows, maybe even a holy innocent. It makes him … a little literal in his dealings with the world. He tends to think that the rules on d
isplay truly are the rules of the game. His book – I don’t know if you know, but he wrote it a long time ago now, it was certainly finished by the end of the war, and ever since he has been lobbying and lobbying, and not always in the most careful way, to get it printed. Well, he probably thought he was being careful. You’ve read Best Use, yes? The text is supposedly aimed at managers, so it’s nice and simple, with lots of demonstrations of how you can do linear programming on your fingers, or at least on an office slide rule. All the implications are in the maths. But it’s still, by definition, an unorthodox book, certainly for the time of the, ah, cult of personality. It’s a piece of unrequested, unsponsored technical thinking, by an outsider, about a subject of, ah, intense political attention, and it’s written in a way that pays almost no notice to the formulas of political economy. So what does our Leonid Vitalevich do, once it’s become clear that, so far as the planners understand them, his ideas are as welcome as shit on a new carpet? He petitions, like a woman whose husband’s been arrested, or a collective-farm worker with a grudge. He writes to Stalin.’

  ‘You’re kidding …’

  ‘No; and more than once too; and his manuscript goes up and down in the world, round and round. It has adventures, this stack of pages. I don’t know all of them, but I heard the story of what happened when it landed on the chairman’s desk at Gosplan. “Better get some advice,” he thinks, and he calls in the head of his prices department. “Read this” – and he hands him the book, which is probably a bit dog-eared by now. Couple of days later, back comes his guy. “So whaddaya think?” says the chairman, “should we be printing this?” “Oh no,” comes the answer. “It’s nothing important, and politically, it’s impossible.” “Oh?” says the chairman. “Well, should we be arresting the fellow, then?” “Hmm,” says his guy. “No, I don’t think so,” he says; “I wouldn’t really call him anti-Soviet. He obviously means well.”’