CA PROPAGANDA PERSPECTIVES THE THEORY OF 'CONVERGENCE' AND/OR 'FUTUROLOGY'

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP79-01194A000400140001-7
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: S
• Document Page Count: 37
• Document Creation Date: November 11, 2016
• Document Release Date: July 9, 1998
• Sequence Number: 1
• Publication Date: February 6, 1970
• Content Type: REPORT

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February 1970
THE THEORY OF "CONVERGENCE" AND/OR "FUTUROLOGY"
The theory of "convergence" postulates that the split between the world
systems of "capitalism" and "socialism" will necessarily disappear as the
imperatives of modern technology force all highly industrialized countries
into more or less the same mold. Within the capitalist system, the possi-
bilities of such a convergence have been talked and written about for a long
time. In the USSR and most other East European countries, discussion of
such an evolution has until recently been restricted to private conversations
or uncirculated manuscripts.
The paper and its attachments are a compilation of the most recent evi-
dence of a bitter controversy developing in the USSR because of a growing
preoccupation with "convergence" among many Soviet scientists, economists,
and philosophers. As indicative of what may be the trend throughout Eastern
Europe, brief mention is also made of some Czechoslovak views on the subject.
Soviet propaganda reaction to western discussion of "convergence" (seen
as a clever device invented by anti-Communists to subvert the Soviet Union)
and to domestic attitudes that smack of "convergence" (seen as evidence of
falling prey to "futurology" or '!ota sikism") pinpoints what most preoccupies
the present Soviet leadership: its inability to condone even a modicum of
the intellectual liberalism that."convergence" would ordain.
The Sakharov Memorandum
The first tangible sign that the theory of "convergence" was a matter
of serious consideration in the Soviet Union came almost two years ago when
the eminent Soviet physicist Andrey Sakharov wrote a memorandum about his
"thoughts on progress, peaceful coexistence and intellectual freedom." Most
of Sakharov's general concerns are universal: the threat to mankind in the
possible use of nuclear weapons, the hunger that threatens millions in Asia
and elsewhere, the destructive impact of man on his environment through pol-
lution of the atmosphere and water, and so on. In an even-handed castigation
of both East and West, Sakharov wrote that as long as "every country is con-
centrating on causing maximum unpleasantness to opposing forces with no con-
sideration for common welfare," mankind cannot cope with the world's problems.
He preached seeking solutions through a cooperative coexistence between
East and West, a collaboration which would be possible only if both sides
dropped their ideological dogmatism and accepted the idea of convergence.
He speculated that both systems would inevitably converge as a result of a
spread of government and cooperative ownership in the capitalist system and
the development of democratic trends in Soviet socialism. He rejected the
standard Soviet dogmatic critique of capitalism and concluded that "both
capitalism and socialism are capable of long-term development, borrowing
positive elements from each other, and coming closer to each other...."
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Sakharov was strongly critical of the restrictive features of the
Soviet regime and devoted a large part of his memorandum to expressing his
opposition. Concomitantly he called on his western counterparts to examine
the deficiencies within their systems. Among Sakharov's appeals to the
Soviet leadership were calls for:
"deepening and broadening the strategy for peaceful coexist-
ence and cooperation; evolving scientific methods and principles
of foreign policy, based on scientific prediction; adopting a new
law concerning press and information policies, with the aim. of
liquidating irresponsible ideological censorship and stimulating
the self-study of our society in the spirit of fearless discus-
sion and search for truth; carrying de-Stalinization to the end
and minimizing the influence of neo-Stalinists in political life;
and deepening the economic reform by broadening the area of ex-
perimentation."
Writing before the Soviet-led occupation of Czechoslovakia, Sakharov
voiced the support of many Soviet intellectuals for the Czech experiment and
the recognition of its relevance for the USSR: "The key to a progressive
restructuring of the system of government in the interests of mankind lies
in intellectual freedom. This has been understood in particular by the
Czechoslovaks and there can be no doubt that we should support their bold
initiative, which is so valuable for the future of socialism and. all mankind."
Copies of the Sakharov memorandum were smuggled out of the USSR and on
22 July 1968 The New York Times was the first western newspaper to publish
the complete translation; it was almost immediately emulated by most large
and small free world presses. Western reaction was overwhelmingly enthu-
siastic. The writing and circulation of the memorandum in the Soviet Union
was in itself taken as an important sign of progress and a stimulant to fur-
ther progress.
American physicist Eugene Rabinowitch, in the Bulletin of Atomic Scien-
tists, November 1968, noted that it was "easy to find weaknesses and inconsis-
tencies in Sakharov's pamphlet; it is even easier to mock his 'naive optimism'
in respect to the likelihood of evolution of the ruling groups in both systems,
but particularly in his own, toward greater rationality and tolerance. The
occupation of Czechoslovakia suggests no such evolution...." Rabinowitch con-
cluded that although Sakharov's "straight line" forecasts may be too optimistic,
"he is right in stating that the scientific revolution leaves mankind no alter-
native way, and that the only hope for survival lies in following this path
long enough to reach safe ground."
James Critchlow, a recognized authority on Soviet affairs, in Commonweal,
September 1968, described Sakharov's "iconoclastic memorandum" as an offer of
"genuine East-West partnership, a plan aimed at eradicating the world's major
ills by the year 2000. It marks the first time that a high-ranking Soviet
citizen has extended the hand of friendship publicly without the competitive
'we'll bury you' formulas of Marxism-Leninism."
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Italian Communist Giuseppe Boffa, writing in the party newspaper L'Unita,
28 September 1968, in part refuted and in part applauded the Sakharov memoran-
dum which he said "reflects ideas we believe have been circulating among a not
unimportant section of the Soviet intelligentsia." While Boffa dismissed out-
right Sakharov's views about the convergence of capitalism and socialism as
"rubbish, obviously," he gave eager support to the "request for free politi-
cal debate in the USSR and other socialist countries." Boffa concluded his
critique with this plea: "These ideas, however disputable, must not be ig-
nored, obscured, or deformed by polemics. Instead, they must be debated freely
because they are also a part of the political reality. Only in this way can
these ideas be overcome. When freedom of debate is lacking, one of the worst
consequences is the decline of political discussion and of political ideas,
which need to clash and mature."
Sakharov himself anticipated the polemics: "I can just hear the outcries
about revisionism and blunting of the class approach to these issues." He
did not have to wait long. On 11 August 1968, orthodox Soviet economist
Viktor A. Cheprakov published in Izvestiya an affirmation of the standard
position that socialism and capitalism, far from converging, are growing ever
further apart and that only socialism can solve the problems raised by science
and technology.*
Cheprakov's article, entitled "Problems of the Last Third of the Century,"
was presumably intended as the official refutation of Sakharov's ideas, al-
though the Soviet scientist is not mentioned by name. Since, officially,
the Sakharov memorandum does not exist, its author has not been publicly
chastized. Cheprakov summarily dismissed Sakharov and his ilk, describing
them as "the liberal high priests of futurology who avoid social analysis
and deny the need for a revolutionary transformation of the world ... inef-
fectual in the prognostications despite their boundless imagination and their
disarming faith in the natural sciences."
The Czechoslovak Treatment
The first and only explicit commentary on the Sakharov memorandum known
to have appeared in Eastern Europe is found in a courageous article published
8 February 1969 in Czechoslovakia. Jan Spelena wrote for the Czechoslovak
youth newspaper, Mlada Fronta, an article entitled "Enfant Terrible of So-
viet Physics, Enfant Terrible of Soviet Society," in which he included ex-
tracts from the Sakharov memorandum and referred to additional excerpts that
had been published in another Czechoslovak journal. Spelena's plaudits for
Andrey Sakharov had to be carefully couched. For example, he included bio-
*In February 1968 the same Viktor A. Cheprakov adopted a "proper class ap-
proach" in dismissing the western exponents of convergence in a review of
John Kenneth Galbraith's The New Industrial State which appeared in the So-
viet journal Problems of Economics.(Voprosy Ekonomiki). (Copy attached)
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graphical data on the Soviet scientist which was presented in glowing, lauda-
tory phrases. Spelena described Soviet citizens, "particularly scientists
and graduate students," as busily reading and copying the text of Sakharov's
treatise.
The enthusiasm with which the appearance of the Sakharov memorandum was
greeted in Czechoslovakia has been confirmed by refugees from that country.
Also, Czechoslovakia has her own exponents of a convergence theory. Under
the direction of the internationally respected Czechoslovak philosopher,
Radovan Richta, an inter-disciplinary group undertook, at the Czechoslovak
Academy of Sciences, a formal review of the prospects for society in the
scientific-technical revolution.
The final report of the Richta study group was first published in book
form in Prague in 1967 and entitled Civilization at the Crossroads (Civilizace
Na Razcesti). The following quotations leave no doubt about the authors'
conclusions concerning the progression of "convergence" (although the word
itself is not used):
"The foundation of our century, the ground on which the
most progressive part of our world is moving, is unquestionably
the industrial civilization.... Industrial civilization is de-
veloping into a civilization process of a new type.
"New values of human life constitute the basic elements of
the scientific technical revolution.... Analogous to the tenden-
cies in socialism, the development into the new type of civiliza-
tion has also begun in the imperialist countries.... Socialism
and capitalism are equally moving toward a post-industrial soo1ety."
East Germany was tasked with correcting the ideological errors expressed
by Radovan Richta and his fellow scientists. (Many of these "errors" have
been republished and favorably reviewed in Western theoretical Journals.)
In August 1969, propagandist Dieter Klein, writing in East Berlin's Forum
magazine, castigated Dr. Richta and all his colleagues for developing their
views from "the futurological bourgeois theories of the industrial society."
He claimed the Richta group's heresy failed "to consider our epoch in the
light of the dispute between capitalism and socialism," implied that "an
order of humanistic relations between people cannot be found in present day
socialism," and totally lacked "any analysis of class structure."
Soviet Officialdom Castigates Theory
As long as "convergence" remained ostensibly a western concept, Soviet
propaganda could dismiss it by equating it to "perfidious bridge-building,"
a tactic allegedly designed to spread subversive thoughts among the ideologi-
cally pure. However, after the Sakharov treatise had been so widely publi-
cized in the West and portions of it reissued in Czechoslovakia, the Soviet
propagandists had to devise some new tactics (and refurbish some old ones).
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To help the program along, a new catch-all was invented: "futurology"
or "the science of fuzzy social forecasting." Theories that smack of con-
vergence, or any arguments that could evolve into support for the theory,
are now classified as "futurology." In the most recent exposes of such
"futurological thinking" in Soviet journals the critics have returned to
that popular Stalin-era pastime of slander-by-name.
The Controversy Continues
Nevertheless, a handful of articles published during 1968 and 1969 in
the Soviet Union have reflected "futurological thinking." They, in turn,
have provoked hard-hitting, propagandistic rebuttals. Beyond the cacophony
of propaganda are sounds of potential controversy developing in quarters out-
side the scientific community -- among military theorists, foreign affairs
specialists,and economists.
Two articles can be taken as indicative of sharp differences of opinion
among the faculty at the Soviet Ministry of Defense's highly "proper" Lenin
Military-Political Academy; one author is a civilian and the other, a Major
General. The lead article in the March 1968 issue of Problems of Philosophy
(Voprosy Filosofii), entitled "October and the Strategy of Peace," was written
by A.I. Krylov, a civilian associate and lecturer on dialectical and historical
materialism at the Military-Political Academy. (Excerpts attached.) Comrade
Krylov's ideas have much in common with those expressed by Andrey Sakharov,
although Krylov is more moderate and he does stop short of openly advocating
any theory of "convergence." Because nuclear war would be "catastrophic in
consequences not only for the warring powers but for all mankind," Krylov
calls for bold and open investigation of all sociological aspects of the
strategy of peace in the nuclear age, for realistic evaluation of "the mili-
tary-strategic concepts of the bourgeois ideologists of the imperialist camp;"
and demands that a more respectful attitude be taken toward scientific fore-
casting.
A rebuttal was not long in coming. Sometime in July or early August
1968, Krylov's heresy and by inference that of Problems of Philosophy for
having published it, were "properly" scored by Major-General Konstantin
Bochkarev, also associated with the Lenin Military-Political Academy and
often a spokesman for Soviet military theory and ideology.'" In a critique
of "October and the Strategy of Peace," Bochkarev accused Krylov of harbor-
ing dangerously uncritical attitudes about bourgeois ideologists whose
military-political concepts are designed to deceive the masses and to under-
mine the morale of Soviet soldiers. Even more serious is Bochkarev's accu-
sation that Krylov had deviated from the correct principle of class analysis
of questions of war and peace,
*Other than its appearance in the Sakharov text, the word "convergence" is
never used in Soviet publications except by propagandists and then only in
referring to it as a western concept.
** As, for example, Bochkarev's article in defence of the Brezhnev doctrine
that appeared in Red Star (Krasnaya Zvezda) 14 February 1969..
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Possibly in an effort to restrict knowledge about the existence of any
conflict of ideas, Bochkarev's blast was delivered as a behind-the-scenes
critique. His article was published in what has been described as the "au-
thoritative theoretical journal of the Soviet General Staff," Military Thought
(Voennaya Mysl'), which is normally circulated only among the upper echelons
of the Warsaw Pact forces. Knowledge of the contents of this particular arti-
cle came from a high-level officer formerly with one of the East European armed
forces.
Last summer a western correspondent reported attending a public lecture
in the Soviet Union given by an official of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
The lecturer reiterated all the hackneyed justifications for what had hap-
pened in Czechoslovakia, which was described as a typical victim of the trap
into which smaller socialist countries fall when they get entangled with
large imperialist powers. In this connection, he mentioned the "reactionary
bourgeois theory of convergence" and emphasized that the essence of Russian-
American relations lay in the "struggle between two systems of organized
society -- capitalism and socialism." He added, however, a personal comment
that western thoughts about "convergence" were the only ones describing
American-Russian relations that provided for a peaceful outcome. For this
reason alone, he said, perhaps "our press ought not to dismiss the theory
too readily."
A similar note of caution was sounded by Soviet Foreign Minister Andrey
Gromyko's son, Anatoliy, in an October 1969 review (copy attached) of a
newly published compilation of essays on western foreign policy by Soviet
writers. The younger Gromyko emphasizes that changes in western policy are
happening not "because imperialism is becoming less aggressive," but because
certain moderates are beginning to take a sober view of the balance of forces
between East and West. This latest plea for a more tempered evaluation of
western thinking echoes both Sakharov and A.I. Krylov.
A recent article by a defender of the present order in Soviet economic
management poses some new threats for the advocates of a more liberal Soviet
economic reform, a reform that would take some lessons from the capitalist
approach to rapid translation of scientific and technical ideas into practical
use (and the implementation of which would seem to threaten to bring "con-
vergence" a step closer). The article, published in the November 1969 theo-
retical journal the Planned Economy (Planovpye Khozyaistvo) and written by
the conservative economist Alexander Bachurin, invoked Stalin to justify
present methods of Soviet planning and management and maligned the mathematical
economists (whose theories, if implemented, would certainly limit the preroga-
tives of political authorities such as Bachurin).*
*At the heart of current Soviet debates about economic reform is the leader-
ship's indecision about whether or not new technology can be absorbed at the
rate required to overcome the USSR's technological lag while individual enter-
prises remain subject to the dictates of centralized planning. Just how far
down the "capitalist path" do they have to go in granting concessions to
individual initiative and profit motives before risking an outbreak of "eco-
nomic liberalization"?
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Bachurin specifically slandered the liberal mathematical economist
Nikolay Fedorenko by comparing him with the Czechoslovakian reformer Ota
Sik. In the Soviet lexicon, Ota Sik'a name now symbolizes all the evils
of "revisionist economics" because of Sik's efforts to liberalize the Czecho--
alovak economy (along what the Soviets called "capitalist lines") and Bachurin
has just added "ota sikism" to "futurology" and other derogatory terms used
to denigrate the theory of "convergence."
Bachurin's is not just a propagandist's blast, however; he speaks with
some authority, being both deputy head of the Soviet Central Planning Com-
mittee and in charge of a commission tasked with implementing economic re-
forms. The fellow economist whom he attacked is head of the Central Mathe-
matical-Economic Institute, brain center for the planning and incentive re-
form program that seeks to use mathematics to get the optimal solutions to
problems that in the west are solved by markets. Both are men of stature in
the economic hierarchy.
"Convergence," under various names, can be seen to be an idea which is
cropping up in several areas of Soviet life: scientific, military, economic,
and foreign affairs. "Convergence" can be viewed as an idea which seeks a
path into the future to solve what many thinking Soviets realize to be their
problems resulting from a system dedicated to the proposition of stagnation.
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TIME,
12 January 1970
Convergence:
The Uncertain Meeting of East and West
The only choice is either bourgeois
or socialist ideology. There is no mid-
dle course.
SHOIJLD Lenin be taken at his word?
Some Western political theorists
and even.a few Russians think not, and
in defense of their belief they have prop-
agated what has become known as the
convergence theory. In essence, the the-
ory proposes that capitalism and Com-
munism-driven by the irresistible sci-
entific and technological forces that con-
trol modern industrial states-will even-
tually coalesce into a new form of
society, blending the personal freedom
and profit motive of Western democ-
racies with the Communist system's gov-
ernment control of the economy.
Convergence prophets argue that the
theory has universal application, but con
tend that it applies particularly to the
United States and Russia. Despite their
manifest differences, both nations are
post-industrial powers grappling with the,
problems of advanced technology. Ac-
cording to the convergence theory, Mos-
cow and Washington should meet some
day at the omega point somewhere on
the outskirts of Belgrade, the capital of
a nation that has-so far, successfully
-introduced elements of capitalism into
a doctrinally Marxist society.
Perhaps; the most dramatic endorse-
ment of the convergence theory has
come from behind the Iron Curtain. In
a 10,000-word essay that was widely
but illicitly circulated in Russia before
being smuggled out to the West in 1968,
the distinguished Soviet physicist Andrei
Sakharov held that the only hope for
world peace was a rapprochement be-
tween the socialist and capitalist sys-
tems. Suggesting that Sakharov's clan-
destine ideas still have a certain appeal:
for Russian intellectuals, another Soviet
physicist, Pyotr Kapitsa, gave an oblique
endorsement to convergence while on a
tour last fall of U.S. universities. "There
should not be one multiplication table
for Russians and another for Amer-
icans," he told a Washington press con-
ference. "I believe that a bringing to-
gether of the two systems is correct."
Major Heresy
Kapitsa's approval of the Sakharov
thesis was a trifle ambiguous, and with
good reason: convergence is regarded
by Soviet ideologues as a major her-
esy. In essence, the theory is a vari-
ation on a Marxist theme-namely, that
economic developments govern political
and social evolution. But it challenges
the conviction of Soviet orthodoxy that
Communism alone is the road to hu-
man development. After publication of
his essay in the West, Sakharov was dis-
missed as chief consultant to the state
committee for nuclear energy, and hard
ly a month goes by without a denun
ciation of convergence appearing in the
Soviet press.
The convergence theory has only re-
cently become the hope of a few Rus-
sian thinkers; the idea if not the term
has been a persistent but chimerical
dream in the West for decades. During
World War II, when the Soviet Union
was cast as an ally of Western de-
mocracies, convergence was widely
CPYRGHT
propagated by a pair of emigre Rus-
sian sociologists, Nikolai Timashefl' of
Fordham and the late Pitirim Sorokin
of Harvard. Both professors theorized
that the Soviet Union would eventually
develop into a less repressive and more
democratic society as it progressed
economically.
More recently, convergence has been
taken up with considerable enthusiasm
by economists-notably the Dutch No-
bel prizewinner Jan Tinbergen and Ilar-
yard's John Kenneth Galbraith. In The
New Industrial State, Galbraith states
with his customary elan that technology
has an imperative all its own. On the
Russian side, advanced industrialization
will inevitably lead to greater intellectual
curiosity and freedom; in the U.S., it
will inexorably lead to more planning
and centralized economic controls.
Industrialization v. Ideology
The convergence theory rests on three
basic assumptions. One is that indus-
trialization by necessity leads to ur-
banization and a common culture with
uniformities in skills, techniques, or-
ganizations and even problems-like the
alienation of factory workers from jobs
and machines. Because workers and
managers in Gary, Ind., and Magni-
togorsk perform similar tasks, the ar-
gument goes, they tend to develop sim-
ilar ways of life. The second premise is
that industrialization leads to increased
diversity and complexity in a society
-to a pluralistic condition that over
rides all ideologies. The third is that
industrialization creates affluence, which
undermines political discipline and ideo-
logical conformity.
In some areas, especially economics,
there is evidence that the U.S. and Rus-
sia have a great deal more in common
today than they did a generation ago.
America now accepts a degree of "so-
cialism," bureaucratic regulation and
welfare statism that would have been
considered unthinkable not so long ago.
The large corporations that dominate
the U.S. economy often resemble
branches of government far more than
they do textbook examples of free-en-
terprise capitalism.
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Since Stalin, Russia has been sub-
jected to a rising tide of consumer ex-
pectations, which party planners have
periodically had to acknowledge by mod-
ifying priorities. In order to make its
economy work better, the Soviet gov-
ernment has reluctantly undertaken cer-
tain quasi-capitalist reforms. Russia's
current five-year plan, for example, pro-
vides some managerial incentives and
gives individual factories greater free-
dom from centralized planning.
Despite the surface similarities of Rus-
sia and the U.S., critics of convergence
answer that economic factors have nev-
er played a dominant role in the evo-
lution of societies. Recent history sug-
gests that industrialization and economic
progress are compatible with liberty or
tyranny, and do not necessarily override
cultural or political differences between
nations. Witness, for example, parlia-
mentary Britain and autocratic Germany
at the turn of the century, or Detroit
in the Roosevelt era and Essen under
Hitler. The postwar economic progress
of Japan has undoubtedly contributed
to the viability of its democratic polit-
ical system; but East Germany, the most
technologically advanced of any Eastern
European nation, has achieved economic
success under the most rigid and doc-,
trinaire of Communist tyrannies.
The convergence theory, in the words
of Kremlinologist Bertram Wolfe, is'
"vulgar Marxism." It posits a funda-
mentalist belief in economic determin-
ism that Marx himself would probably
have disavowed. It ignores or underrates
the role played by traditions, value sys-
tems and even national characteristics
in deciding the future of societies. The
concepts that people have of national
characteristics, of course, are often mere
caricatures, but they generally contain
some truth, of a subtler variety than
meets the eye. The American devotion
to individualism and freedom can be ex-
aggerated; yet the Lockean principles`
of individual liberty and ordered free-
dom that underlie the U.S. Constitution
and indeed U.S. society are related to
th6 American character and the Amer-
ican ideal. The line leading from the
czars to Stalin to the Kremlin's pres.
ent rulers is by no means straight. Still.
it is no accident that the Russians-for
whom a ruling father-figure rather than
the individual is the central symbol in
the national mystique-have a history
of autocracy.
In the limited sense that capitalist so-
cieties are heading; inexorably for more
state planning and control and that so-
cialist ones must inevitably allow for
more decentralization, the convergence
theory is true. It may well be that both
Russia and the'U.S. will come still clos-
er to sharing a common economic model.
But broad, perhaps unbridgeable dif-
ferences will remain, particularly over
the philosophic questions of the dreams
and goals of the two societies.
Orthodoxy in Tatters
Especially among the young there is
always a tendency to extol opposites.
Just as many American youths seem to
yearn for the collective, non-materialistic
life, many young people in Communist
countries seem. to admire some (but by
no means all) of the individualism and
the material benefits of Western so-
ciety. Today, Communism is splintered,
Marxian orthodoxy in tatters. Never-
theless, the Communist view of man
still has a powerful and self-perpetuating
hold in those societies where it has be-
come part of the culture-and it is still
a vast distance removed from anything
that American society would accept in
the foreseeable future. The definitions
of "bourgeois" and "socialist" ideologies
have changed over the years--and no
doubt will continue to change--but in
the long run Lenin may well prove to
be right.
The future is always problematical,
but the weight of evidence suggests that
Communist and non-Communist soci-
eties will continue to develop on sep-
arate but parallel tracks. Fortunately,
though, basic differences no longer im-
ply the inevitability of a cataclysmic
showdown. The pragmatics of survival
may well be the one respect in which
the U.S. and Soviet Russia are really
meeting. That may be a more helpful
and hopeful prospect than the euphoric
vision of convergence.
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PROBLEMS OF ECONOMICS'(VORPROSY EKONOMIKI)
no. 2, February 1968
CONVERGENCE: THEORY AND REALITY. (By V. Cheprakov.)
CPYRGHT
The
'convergence theory"-the idea that the capitalist and socialist eco-
omic systems are developing toward similarity-is the creature of
beat bourgeois ideologists. It provides them with a defense of
aonopoly capitalism and an attack on socialism more refined than the
heories of reactionary bourgeois economists. Its equivalent in world
olitics is the slogan of "building bridges" to the East; in ideology its
quivalent is the "subversive slogan of peaceful coexistence of ideol-
gies."
Exponents of the convergence theory include Walt W. Rostow, the
,Vest German economist H. Lilienstern, S. Kuznets, M. Bornstein and
he Dutch economist Jan Tinbergen. They "see only what lies on the
urface, passing off the appearance of phenomena as substance. They
lo this all the more readily because this appearance enables them to
amouflage the deep-seated processes occurring in economic develop-
ment. They identify revolution in the field of science and technology
ith social revolution, ignoring social relations, the class structure of
society and the form and nature of acquisition. Marxists establish a.
fundamental distinction where convergence theorists seek similarity,
they see divergence where the anti-Marxists perceive convergence."
According to John Kenneth Galbraith ("The New Industrial State,"
Boston, 1967), convergence is a consequence of the development in
both the capitalist and the socialist societies of decision-making groups,
consisting largely of management and engineering personnel, as self-
governing and independent forces. Galbraith calls these entities the
"technostructure." As far as Galbraith's observations in the West are
concerned, they are not a discovery but a belated acknowledgement of
what the Marxists showed long ago-the evolution from the capitalism
of free competition to monopoly capitalism. Unlike the Marxists,
however, Galbraith sees monopoly capitalism not as a condition of
intensified class antagonisms but as a corporate form suited for
economic planning.
Convergence theorists equate capitalist monopolies with socialist
production associations. The former, they say, are governed by
dccision-making groups that become steadily less susceptible to the
nfluence of capitalist owners. They then depict the granting of a degree
of operational autonomy to Soviet enterprises under the present reforgi
as equivalent to the power of the monopolies in a capitalist society.
They forget to say that under capitalism the means of production are in
the hands of a financial oligarchy.
Galbraith's conclusions about the exceptional role of collective
,-cision making are interesting and worth studying, but he is mistaken
',9 aassr.ming that the "technostructure" has taken the place of capi-
talism and that it is now or ever will be inherent in socialism.
Convergence theorists see the development of programming under
capitalism and the improvement of planning methods in the socialist
countries as another area of rapprochement. Their reasoning: "In the
economically developed Western countries the tendency toward plan-
ning, toward centrally adopted decisions on macro-economic interrela-
tions, is gaining strength, as a result of which their economies are
becoming more and more organized; and in the socialist, countries the
former extremely centralized methods of planning are being renounced,
and as a consequence they are moving in the direction of the capitalist
countries."
Actually, capitalist programming consists of forecasting combined
with economic measures to regulate the national economy by influ-
encing the level and size of monopolistic profits and has nothing in
common with socialist planning. As for decentralization in the Soviet
Union, it describes only new forms and methods of planning within the
context of a unified state policy for planning economic development,
technical progress, investments, prices, etc., for the whole country.
Official economic doctrine in the capitalist countries holds the view,
antedating the convergence theory, that socialism is developing toward
a market economy. Galbraith says the decentralization in the socialist
economies is not a return to a market economy but "a marked and very
important convergence of both economic systems toward a common
type of planning in the conditions of a growing role of production
enterprises....
"No doubt there is much in common in economic instrumentalities,
and in the field of the micro-economy (to use the terminology of
foreign economists) our economy should borrow certain methods from
the managers of large trusts and concerns and from the economists who
study the organization of production, especially now, when our
economic reform has reached the very point of creating trusts, of
combining a high degree of organization of production and material
interest. But all this by no means indicates a similarity of systems, any
more than it indicates the use of identical techniques in the area of
science and technology."
Galbraith contends that while capitalism no longer can ensure
proper control over the economy, neither can socialism, and for the
same reason: The complexity of technology, planning and the size of
production operations take power away from the owner, whether a
private entrepreneur or the public, and place it in the hands of the
"technostructure." He is right where capitalist monopolies are con-
cerned, and this is an argument for socialism, not against it.
"The scientific-technical revolution, by concentrating the means of
production and socializing the process of labor at capitalist enterprises?
creates a material possibility for the replacement of capitalist pro-
duction relations with socialist, and the fusion of the state and the
monopolies attests that the mechanism of public economic manag:
ment, highly organized technically in the conditions of capitalism., is
ripe, and that 'all' that remains to be done is to free it from those who
stand above the working people....
"No doubt historical development engenders and will engender
differences in ways and tempos of the revolutionary process and a
diversity of forms of socialism under construction, but the one
common factor is always and will invariably remain the fact that.
socialism comes in the place of capitalism, that from socialism the road
leads to communism."
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Excerpts from:
ICPYRGHT
OCTOBER AND THE STRATEGY OF PEACE
Source: Voprosy Filosofii [Problems of Philosophy], March1968, pages 3-13.
[Note: Underlining added.]
"... We must help people to get involved in the
problems of war and peace." (V.I. Lenin. Re-
port on Peace of 8 November 1917.)
..Chairman A. N. Kos in of the USSR Council of Ministers stated the
following on 9 February w he was in Great Britain: "We consider
that nuclear weapons are unnecessary for the human race, if it wants to'
continue to exist" Pravda, 11 February 1967).
In order to solve the acute problem of war and peace in the age of
rockets and nuclear weapons, it is necessary to have effective and organized
actions not only of individual parties, nations and states, but, literally,
of all peoples of our planet. A new upsurge of peace movement is required.
However, for the masses to participate actively in the worldwide movement
against the nuclear danger and imperialism, they must be able to understand
the problems of politics and strategy on whose solution the fate of the world
depends.
The more sober-minded people will take an active part in the discussions
and analyses of the problem of war and peace under the present conditions,
the more successful will be our struggle against the imperialist nuclear
maniacs. The mission of philosophers and sociologists is extremely important
to this noble cause when they cooperate with the representatives of natural
sciences and engineering, as well as that of politicians and strategists who
realize their responsibilities to the people. Academician'K. Malek, a promi-
nent Czechoslovakian scientist, stated: "The role of science in the life of
society is steadily growing, and, depending on the route of its development,
mankind will either attain a universal prosperity or will be completely an-
nihilated" (Mir Nauki [The World of Science], 1964, No. 2, page 30).
In this connection, the appeal for developing and discussing the socio-
logical aspects of the peace strategy in the nuclear age deserves great at-
tention. It was expressed in the article by P. N. Fedoseyev Problems of
Peace in Modern Sociology" (Voprosy Filosofii [Problems of Philosophy], 1967,
No. 1) and reflected the urgent goal of the international workers' movement
to prevent a worldwide nuclear catastrophe. It was said in this article:
"In the course of many centuries, strategies and tactics of military activi-
ties have been thoroughly developed. Much less attention has been given to
the development of a strategy for peace" (p.3).
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However, in order to fulfill at least some of our obligations in con-
ection with a thorough study and understanding of the sociological aspecta
of the peace strategy, it is necessary to acquire and develop that daring
spirit of searching and creativity which constitutes the living soul of the
.Great October Revolution and the subsequent struggle for the realization o.t'
its vital ideas. In the problems of peace and war, it means that the in-
Vestigators must react flexibly to the appearance of new phenomena, study
;hem thoroughly, creatively develop the ideas of the revolutionary humanism
of the October Revolution under the new concrete historical conditions,axz3
reject the extremes of dogmatism and revisionism....
...Militarism, which grew on the basis of the exploiting structure, was
always interested in creating the most powerful destructive weapons, in the
strictest army centralization, and in developing a mobile, offensive-oriented
military engineering apparatus. Imperialism received all this in the form
of a nuclear rocket military arsenal. But having received the so-called
"absolute weapons," the supermurder weapons (see the book by a progressive
American physicist, Ralph Lepp, Ubiystvo i Sverkhubiystvo [Murder and Super-
nurder], Moscow, 196+), the theoreticians of militarism were compelled to
admit that global nuclear weapons are capable to annihilate or destroy any
objects on our planet and, therefore, they cannot ensure a real military
victory in a thereto-nuclear world war. As Pal'miro Tol'yatti said, "nuclear
war-means suicide for both parties' (Izbrannyye Stat'i i Rechi Selected
Articles and Speeches], Vol. II, Moscow, 1965, p. 765 ??o.
...Thorough studies on the immediate and remote after-effects of every
isolated experimental nuclear explosions led scientists to the idea that
any continuation of such explosions in the biosphere of the earth is abso-
lutely inadmissible, regardless of reasons and motives. Taking into con-
sideration the results of study by scientists on the possible after-effects
of a nuclear war, the World Federation of Scientists, which includes Soviet
scientists,. formulated the following,in regard to the nuclear problem at the
General Assembly in September 1965: "Resolution No. 1 ... A general nuclear
'war would mean death to hundreds of millions of people, and the after-effects
of radioactive fallouts would threaten the very existence of the human race""
'see supplement to the journal Mir Nauki. WFSW. Bulletin 1966. The Buda-
pest Symposium and VIII General Assembly. Scientific World, London, 1966,
No. 2, Suppl., p. 7).
These conclusions of scientists were, in essence, the main reason for
concluding the Moscow Treaty prohibiting nuclear tests in three spheres of
the earth, as well as for the desire-to conclude other international agree-
ments (regarding prohibition of nuclear weapons in cosmic space, control of
spreading nuclear weapons, prohibition of their use, etc.)....
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...The foreign policy of the Soviet Union, as was stressed at the CPSU
23rd Congress, has as its goal to ensure, together with other socialist
countries, favorable international conditions for the building of socialism
and communism; to solidify the unity and solidarity of socialist countries;
to support national liberation movements and cooperate in every possible
way with young developing countries; to uphold consistently the principle of -
peaceful coexistence of countries with various social structures, to repulse
resolutely the aggressive forces of imperialism, and to save mankind from a
new world war.
Of course, it is possible to save mankind from a global war by harness-
ing the aggressive forces of imperialism only if all revolutionary libera-
tion forces of our time are united and a solid progress in the realization
.of peaceful principles in the relations between all countries of the world
is achieved. On the other hand all of the manifold goals of the foreign
policy of the socialist state can be achieved only if the universal thermo-
nuclear catastrophe is prevented. One of the important means of struggle
for these goals is the Soviet strategy of peace....
...Again we stress that in order to prevent an existing danger it is
necessary, first of all to realize it and not to pretend that it does not
exist. The attempts of some bourgeois, particularly American, political
leaders and military specialists to convince the common man that nuclear
danger is not as great as scientists say, is nothing but an attempt to
anesthetize the public opinion. Our goal is to prove that ignorance and
illusions in this respect are very dangerous, and knowledge of the truth
about the nuclear danger makes the masses understand how criminal and
completely hopeless the nuclear world war is. Also there is no doubt that
scientific data on possible after-effects of a global nuclear war produce
a psychological shock in people who have imagination and foresight....
...Military readiness of socialist countries to repulse the aggressor'
means that peace strategy is not a pacifist doctrine. Responding to mili-
tary threat from imperialism by strengthening its defense potential, the
socialist state is also compelled to solve military strategy problems. We
must be strong and vigilant, must develop military equipment and weapons
for strategical and tactical purposes, and be able to use them. skillfully
in order to be prepared to confront any aggressor, if necessary, and to
defeat him in any war.
Thus, the significance of the problem of increasing the quality or the
level of our defensive capacity, as we can see it, does not decrease when
we realize the destructive nature of a thermonuclear conflict; on the con-
trary, it increases. The fear that the conclusion about the hopelessness
of a global rocket and nuclear war does not stimulate the morale of the
army is unfounded. It is just the opposite....
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...An important aspect in the development of the strategy of peace, just
as a military strategy is a thorough development of a strategy for preventing
"limited" wars and a complete elimination of the possibility of a global thermo-
nuclear war which is still potentially possible. In this connection, there is
an urgent task of a thorough study of the sociological aspects of the peace
str`g. First of all, it is necessary: to analyze social reasons and sources
of the military danger in the nuclear age; to study social conditions and forces-
in the world which are capable of preventing a global war and eliminate local
aggressions; to analyze and compare various theoretical and practical approaches
to the problem of international security which exist in the modern world-wide
movement against nuclear danger. Sociologists engaged in the peace strategy
are interested in studying the essence of certain military strategic concepts
which "predetermine" to a considerable degree the appearance of military con-
flicts. Their duty is to analyze and reveal all the sophisms which, in one
way or another justify aggressions and nuclear wars as a means for achieving
political ends.
Apart from developing measures for a timely prevention and stopping of
wars unleashed by imperialists, the goal of the peace strategy, evidently
includes the problem of developing theoretical aspects of the development of
scientific, tech nolo ical economic, and cultural ties between states of
various social systems (creation of common power systems, construction of
gas lines, oil lines, etc. , those vital ties which make it difficult to
start wars between countries and make a war between them senseless also from
an economic point of view....
...In its social trend, the socialist peace strategy expresses vital
interests of mankind and is radically different from the bourgeois "peace
strategy" which was announced by President J. Kennedy. J. Kennedy's stra-
tegy was directed against the world revolutionary liberation process and
was aimed at removing a thermonuclear catastrophe from the USA and mankind
in order to preserve for capitalism its position, to divide the world into
"spheres of influence" between capitalism and socialism, and then, through
partial agreements, to arrive at a stable "status quo." It should be said
that it still created a possibility of attaining sensible compromises be-
tween capitalism and socialism and prevention of a world nuclear war, be-
cause there was a rather wide-spread conviction among the bourgeois politi-
cians at that time that a peace policy is more profitable than a war. How-
ever, the goal of the socialist peace strategy is to prevent a world nuclear
catastrophe and to achieve a solid democratic peace and international securi-
ty not by dividing the planet into "spheres of influence," but by carrying
out the principles of peaceful coexistence of countries with various social
structures, acomplete ensurance of national and social self-determination
of all peoples and a gradual (by stages) complete and general disarmament....
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KNIZHNOYE OBOZRENIYE, Moscow
No. 43,-24 October 1969
"Iron Fist in a Velvet Glove"
(JTaats ar Q k-)
CPYRGHT
(First paragraph is an editorial foreword.)
The book "The Diplomacy of Modern Imperialism, People, Problems and Methods"
has appeared on readers' and library shelves. The monograph was prepared by a large
collective of Soviet international scholars who studied the goals and methods of
diplomacy of the principal imperialist powers. Among the authors were: Doctors of
Historical Sciences Yu. V. Borisov, G. A. Deborin, V. L. Israelyan, V. P. Nikhamin,
"and others. The monograph "The Diplomacy of Modern Imperialism" was published by the
International Relations" publishing house. At the request of the newspaperls editorship,
the book is reviewed by its responsible editor, Candidate of Historical Sciences Anatoliy
Andreyevich Gromyko.
The problems of foreign politics and diplomacy are attracting at the present time the
ever-growing attention of a very wide circle of people.
V. I. Lenin, as we know, emphasized the importance for Communists to be proficient in
the art of diplomacy. The leader of the international proletariat felt that it was
necessary to combine the "wisest diplomacy" with "firm and decisive policies." He
also pointed out that "to revise (and create a new) diplomacy is a difficult matter."
and set forth the task of "studying-diplomacy." Karl Marx in his time also gave the
summons to "master the secrets of international politics and to keep up with diplomatic
activity."
Socialist diplomacy in the international arena is opposed by imperialist diplomacy.
The course of modern world development is making more and more difficult for bourgeois
diplomats the cause of defending the positions of the ruling classes of the capitalist
states. While on the defensive, imperialist diplomacy nevertheless continues to seek
more and more refined methods of implementing the imperialist foreign policy.
In the postwar period, imperialist diplomacy preferred to operate for a long time by
means of a "build up" or a "show of force." Such a tactic can be characterized as an
attempt to operate through the use of an "iron fist" in a "velvet glove." The "velvet
glove," put on the "iron fist" of policy from the "position of strength," of course,
was able to deceive few people. Moreover, the "iron fist" itself did not achieve the
desired goal. The reason for this consists, in particular, in the following.
Today imperialist diplomacy is operating in conditions which limit its negative influence
on the political situation. Besides the change in the correlation of forces in the
international arena in favor of the forces of peace and social progress, the factors
of the aggravation of the internal political struggle in the capitalist countries,
including the United States, are of great significance. It is becoming more and more
difficult for international importiliaii ;;o achieve its goals by means of the diplomacy
of "power pressure." This is forcing an ever greater number of those directing foreign
policy in the leading imperialist states, as well as bourgeois diplomats, to seek new
ways and methods of implementing foreign policy; Numerous prescriptions e6r "curing"
imperialist diplomacy have appeared in the West; the most varied bourgeois specialists
in the field of political soie.nce'are vying with one another in writing them out. The
newest computer equipment is even being called on to tielp imperialist diplomacy.
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Shoots of realism in the foreign policy and diplomacy of imperialist states
are appearing, of course, not because imperialism is becoming less aggressive in
its nature than formerly, but because the moderate wing of politicians and
diplomats in the West is beginning to make a sufficiently sober evaluation of the
balanaa or rarcee between soo 611am and okgltalism and of the present ntornation,1
situation. From this there appears at times the aspiration to seek mutually
acceptable ways of resolving controversial international problems.
In our day definite differences between representatives of extremely aggressive
circles in the West and this moderate wing comprise one of the characteristic
features of the foreign policy and diplomacy of bourgeois states. In certain
of the capitalist states, for example France, realism in foreign policy is
manifested more actively than in others, for example, West Germany. As for the
.U.S., at present there is such a tight tangle of social and political con-
,tradietions there, and the disagreements as to ways of further pursuing the
policy and diplomacy of that country are so acute that from the government of that
country there can be expected shifts both to the left and to the right, both
reasonable steps as well as, conversely, a dangerous zigzag course in the
international arena.
In summing up the results of what has been stated above it can be noted that under
the influence of a number of factors of the third stage of the general crisis of
capitalism and the strengthening of the forces of socialism in the world arena,
among the circle of executors of.foreign policy and diplomacy there is taking
place a definite process of stratification of ardent advocates of the fully
discredited aggressive forms of diplomacy and of adherents of more flexible and at
times even sound courses. Additionally, in different imperialist countries this
tendency is being manifested to various degrees: in some more, and in others
less.
The book ''iT1ae~I~iplomaoy.:of.ModeY~: Imperial3am'.'..:is .fte oted td'-the afl3lysis ot'.a11
these and many other complex phenomena of tixe-present day international diplomatic
panorama of which imperialist diplomacy is a o onponent part.
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Excerpts from An Ideology in Power:
Reflections on the Russian Revolution,
Bertram D. Wolfe,
Stein & Day, New York, 1969
1H. TIM CONVERGENCE
THEORY IN. HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE*
CPYRGHT
Recently, when John Kenneth Galbraith departed for a trip to the
Soviet Union, he sent a message to his friend, Sidney Hook, "Tell Sidney
not to worry, I won't come back a Communist." To which Hook retorted,
"I'm not worried that he'll come back a Communist; I'm afraid he'll
come back saying that they aren't Communists." Galbraith returned to
add the weight of some four hundred pages of his wit and learning to
the already. fashionable convergence theory. This is fortunate for the
present writer since it excuses me from trying to expound in my own
words a theory to which I would find it difficult to do justice. Indeed,
Galbraith also supplied a timely five-hundred-word resume of his view-
point in the 'course of an interview with The New York Times's crack
reporter, Anthony Lewis, who tape-recorded it and published it in full in
the magazine section of Sunday, December 18, 1966. The interview con-
cluded with the following exchange:
GALBRAiTH: The nature of technology-the nature of the large organization
that sustains technology, and the nature of the planning that technology
requires-has an imperative of its own, and this is causing a convergence in
all industrial societies. In the Eastern European societies it's leading to a
decentralization of power from the state to the firm; in the Western Euro-
pcan [and American] industrial societies it's leading to ad hoc planning. In
fewer years than we imagine this will produce .a rather indistinguishable
melange of planning and market influences.
The overwhelming fact is that if you have to have a massive technical coin
plex, and there will be a certain similarity in the organization, and in the
related social organization, whether that steel complex is in Novosibirsk or in
Nova Huta, Poland, or in Gary, Ind.
LEwrs: Are you suggesting that as the two societies converge, the Communist
society will necessarily introduce greater political and cultural freedom?
GALBRAiTH: I'm saying precisely "that. The requirements of deep scientific
perception and deep technical specialization cannot be reconciled with intd-
Wiestpublished in jealy +066 VJ...., IJ..ai mid a Cnrfemfnrarv World.
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lcctual regimentation. They inevitably lead to intellectual curiosity and to a
measure of intellectual liberalism.
And on our side the requirements of large organization impose a measure of
discipline, a measure of subordination of the individual to the organization,
which is very much less than the individualism that has been popularly
identified with the Wostwm econemy.t
There are fashions in theories as in clothes. Just now it is tle fashion
among many political scientists, sociologists, sovietologists, and economists
to speak of convergence when they write about the Sovietf Union or
discuss relations between the Russian government and the American.
Though it has only now attained to high fashion, in one form or another
the theory has been around for some time. Thus in the diary of Lady
Kennet of the Deane, made available to me while living in Lord Kennet's
home in London, I found this entry for a date in late May 1921: "Nan-
sen was here to tea and gave me the reassuring news that our troubles
with Russia arc over. Lenin is introducing a New Economic Policy which
restores a free market and represents a return to capitalist exchange of
goods in Russia." Such wishful thinking is one of the perennial springs
that has fed the current of the convergence theory.
In 1932 and 1933 there was a spate of books on technocracy, all assur-
ing us that the United States and the Soviet Union were converging
toward a common industrial and political system in which technologists
or technocrats would determine policy and set the basic standards for
social and economic life. In 1941, James Burnham published his Man-
agerial Revolution, extrapolating one of the complex curves in modern
industrial life in a tangent into outer space. His book was, a confident
prophecy that in all advanced industrial lands:
Institutions and beliefs arc undergoing a process of rapid transformation. The
conclusion of this period of transformation, to be expected in the compara-
tively near future, will find society organized through a quite different set
of major economic, social, and p'blitical institutions and exhibiting quite
different major social beliefs or ideologies. Within the new social structure a
different.social group or class-the managers-will be the dominant or ruling
"class. [These changes] will constitute the transformation of society to a
managerial structure. . . . The theory of the managerial revolution is not
merely predicting what may happen in a hypothetical future but is an inter-
pretation of what already has happened and is now happening. Its prediction
is that the process which has started and which has already gone a great
distance will continue and reach completion 2
1. Emphasis here, as in all quoted passages, is in the original.
2. James Burnham, The Alanagerial . RevolWrloN, pp. 74.75. Mr. Burnham has long
since abandoned the prophecy, but the notion that managers and technocrats are
running, or will soon run, both societies is still a key element in the convergence theory
and central to John Kenneth Galbraith's The New Industrial Stale. From Burnham
to Galbraith, economic determinists and economists generally have found it hard to
believe that politicians and governments keep such specialists on tap, but not on top.
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When Hitler "perfidiously," as the Russian textbooks say, double-
crossed his ally, Stalin, during World War II forcing him into the camp
of the democracies, the convergence theory took on somewhat different
forms. There were two new variants, one a popular view, the other a
product of the wishful thinking of homesick exiled Russian intellectuals
who in the twenties had found refuge in America and made a place for
themselves in our academic life.
The popular variant sprang from the naive crusading nature of Amcri-
can wars with our ingrained tendency to envision our enemies as devils
and our allies as knights in shining armor. Hitler's deeds gave plenty of
material to justify the devil theory, but we tended to extend it throughout
the history of Germany, to every living German, and to generations yet
unborn, while we seemed to regard the Japanese people, their leaders, and
their sovereigns as villains rather than monsters. The Russian armies fought
valiantly as they suffered the brunt of German attack and invasion, which
gave us a sense of moral debt, a feeling that was promptly put to use by
Stalin and his apologists to obscure the moral issues of the peace. 'T'his
popular version of the convergence theory said: ,"The Russians are much
like people everywhere and want what we want. [The people of Germany
and Japan seemed to be subhuman exceptions, but for various reasons,
we were more indulgent toward the Italians]. Since people everywhere
want the same things, it will be easy to build 'one world' with a sobered
and friendly Joseph Stalin after the war is over. He now knows the value
of democracy, who his friends are, and how destructive war is, so the
Grand Alliance will continue into the peace; together we will build a
world in which the peace-loving countries will become steadily more like
.each other and come ever closer together." 3
A more sophisticated theory came from the Russian intellectuals who
had been' exiled or had fled from Russia in .the twenties and become im-
portant writers and teachers in sociology or political science in the
United States, always retaining a deep emotional' attachment to the land
of their birth, such men, for instance, as N. S. Timashcv and Pitirim
Sorokin. Professor Timashcv delivered a series of war-time lectures on this
theme, then published them as The Great Retreat in 1946. Profcssor
Sorokin toured the country lecturing on the convergence theory in 1942
and 1943 and in January 1944 published a book in which all his knowl-
edge of the two lands was brought into play along with his favorite
3. These words in quotation marks are quoted from no one in particular but
recurred in a thousand editorials and addresses, and with slight variations were to he
heard almost everywhere. I heard them from many platforms on which I debated with
Frederick Schuman, Henry Pratt Fairchild, Louis Dollivet, Joseph Barnes, Corliss
Lamont, Isaac Deutscher, Vera Micheles Dean, Kirby Page, Sir Bernard Pares, and a
wide range of other speakers. It is not my intention to lump these diverse people
with diverse motives together in any way beyond the fact that they all advanced in
mote or less similar language the view expressed in this synthetic, generalized quotation.
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sociological, cultural, and ethical generalizations. His America and Russia
proved enormously popular, running through a number of printings in the
first year of its publication, and was reprinted in revised form as(late as
1950.
Joseph Stalin did not make things easy for his thesis, for within the
next few years, every land that his troops occupied alone was.)endowcd
with a "people's democracy" and a purge of democrats, liberals, conserva-
tives, national patriots, and "national Communists" while lands like Ger-
many and Austria that underwent dual or tripartite occupation had a line
cut right across them wherever the Russian troops held sway. This seizure
of "liberated" lands was followed by the rejection of Marshall Plan aid;'
the Zhdanov attack on "kowtowing to the West" and "rootless cosmo-
politanism" in the arts and sciences, along with other despotic barbarities
too blatant to be ignored. But Professor Sorokin was not to be put off in
his hopes and creed, for in 1950 he published his revised edition in which
he took account of the "Cold War" to minimize and explain away the
resultant "incompatibilities." The "seemingly conflicting values [he wrote]
... are so insignificant that their 'incompatibility' amounts to no more
than the 'incompatibility' of the advertisements for this or that brand of
cigarettes, each claiming superiority over all others." S
Professor Sorokin's study is of special interest because of the broad scope
of his analysis of the "spiritual, historical, and socio-cultural compatibili-
ties" of the two nations, because of his influential position as a Professor
of Sociology first in Saint Petersburg and then at Harvard, because he is
the acknowledged or unacknowledged source of many of the more limited
variants of the convergence theory, and because of his deep attachment to
both America and Russia and his singular Russian talent to suffer and
forgive, and one is tempted to add, to forget.
In Russia Sorokin had been a professor of law and sociology; a secretary
of Kcrcnsky's cabinet, editor of the Socialist Revolutionary daily, Voiya
Naroda,.which Lenin shut down in February 1918; delegate to the Peasant
Soviet, which Lenin submerged in the Soviet of Workers and Soldiers
Deputies; delegate to the Constituent Assembly, which Lenin dispersed
by force after its first session. On November 22, 1922, Sorokin sent a
letter to Pravda in which he renounced all political activity and declared
his intention to limit himself to teaching and scientific work. Lenin wel-
comed his "straightforwardness and sincerity" but, in accordance with
the Leninist tendency to politicize everything, added a warning to
Sorokin that teaching and scientific work could also be "politically. rc-
4. It seems hard for the new coterie of "revisionist" historians to remember how
naive Roosevelt was about Stalin, how swiftly we withdrew our troops from Europe,
and how generous we were in offering massive Marshall Plan aid to Russia and all
her neighbors.
5. Rama fed she Uniled Staler, London, 1950, p.? 176.
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actionary." Shortly thereafter the Professor lost his chair and his right to
teach when he ventured to publish a study of the breakdown of mar-
riage under the influence of war and revolution and the postcard divorce
system. Lenin labeled him a "diplomaed flunkey of clericalism" and
announced the intention to "politely dispatch him," i.e., exile him, to
"some country with a bourgeois democracy, the proper place.' for such
feudalists." 6 That is how Sorokin found his way, alive, to America and
to Harvard. By the time lie wrote America and Russia, Professor Sorokin
had not only forgiven the fact that Lenin stopped him from writing,
teaching, engaging in political activity, and living in the land of his birth,
but he seemed to forget that Stalin, less "polite," would have taken his
life along with his honor. Indeed, Sorokin wrote of the purges as if they
were themselves nothing but a great and historically foreordained step
forward toward convergence:
The cycle of the Russian Revolution is clearly demonstrated by the purges of
Communist leaders. . . . By who n? Not by counter-revolutionists or anti-
Communists. No. They were executed, imprisoned, banished, or excom-
municated by Stalin and the Communist Party itself. To these should be
awarded the first prize for the mortal blow dealt the Communist phase of
the Revolution.... Stalin won because he moved with the current of history
and not against it.... Those who were purged were purged because they
sought to stem the tide of.historical destiny. . . . If in the future Stalin and
his followers should try to revive Communism as it existed in the first stage
of the Revolution, seek to stem the tide of historical destiny, they would be
liquidated as inexorably as Trotsky and his adherents. That is why I do not
worry about what Stalin or any other leader may think or do...
Sorokin found it possible to speak of the period of the purges as one
of the "restoration of law and government by.law," and as the period of
the "new Constitution:"
The profound change which the structure of the central government has
undergone is marked by the new Soviet Constitution of 1936. In all its
essentials the structure of the government under this constitution is ex-
plicitly democratic. . . . To be sure, the new Constitution has remained
largely a theoretical reform; its provisions have been realized only in part,
owing to the short period that has elapsed since its enactment.a
"Its provisions have been realized only in part" is a masterpiece of
understatement. It is hard to believe it could escape Sorokin's notice
6. Lenin, Vol. 33, pp.
208-209.
orokin was first condemned
to
death, but
the
death sentence was then
commuted
on Lenai s order to exile
and
deprivation
of
citizenship.
7. Op. tit., pp. 195.196 and 208.
a. Ibid., pp. 195.96.
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that the great blood purges began precisely at the moment of the adoption
of the new Constitution with all its "guarantees of right" and that one
of the victims was the very author of the document, Nikolai Ivanovich
Bukharin.
From arguments for convergence in the fields of spiritual, historical,
and socio-cultural "compatabitities," Sorokin proceeds to his final Vlinclier,
the sphere of economic convergence:
In the economic field we observe the decline of the Communist system [he
wrote in 1943]. Regardless of the personal predilections of the Communists
and capitalists, there is no impassable gulf between the present economy of
Soviet Russia and the United States. Each has evolved a similar system of
so-called "planned economy" with supreme control vested in the government,
and with a managerial corporation bureaucracy, that is progressively driving
out the old-fashioned capitalist owners. A like change has taken place in
virtually all the other highly industrialized countries. Actually, economically
and politically, the two nations have been steadily converging toward a
similar type of social organization and economy.9
In this thesis it is impossible not to notice the line that leads from the
technocrats through Burnham to Galbraith. Sorokin's' theory, is much
wider including all aspects of the life of the two peoples, geopolitics,
history, traditions, culture, "socio-cultural creativeness," the life of the
spirit and the spirit of life, all of which arc presented as having elements
of fundamental identity and as converging toward a common character
and fate. Hence Sorokin's may be, termed the general theory of con-
vergcncc while the others follow only.one line of his thought and may be
regarded as special cases of varieties of economic determinism.
Thus Galbraith, the most sophisticated proponent of convergence de-
termined by economic forces, writes:
To consider the future of [our] industrial system would be to fix attention on
where it has already arrived. Among the least enchanting words in the
business lexicon arc planning, government control, state support, and so-
cialism. To consider the likelihood of these in the future would be to drive
]ionic the appalling extent to which they arc already a fact . . . to emphasize
the convergent tendencies of industrial societies, however different their
popular or ideological billing . . . Convergence begins with modern, large..
scale production, with heavy requirements of capital, sophisticated technology,
and elaborate organization. These require control of prices and, so far as
possible, of what is bought at those prices. This is to say that planning must
replace the market. In the Soviet type economics, the control of prices .. .
and the management of demand ... is a function of the state. With us this
management is accomplished less formally by the corporations, their advertising
agencies, salesmen, dealers, and retailers. But these obviously are differences
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in method rather than purpose. Large-scale industrialism requires, in both
cases, that the market and consumer sovereignty be extensively superseded.
Large-scale organization also requires autonomy. The intrusion of an external
and uninformed will is damaging. In the non-Soviet system this means exclud-
ing the capitalist from effective power. But the same imperative operates in
the socialist economy . . . to minimize or exclude control by the bureaucracy.
Nothing in our time Is more interesting than that the erstwhile Capitalist
corporation and the erstwhile Communist firm should, under thc&impcratives
of organization, come together as oligarchies of their own members. Ideology
is not the relevant force.'
Nowhere does Galbraith indicate any awareness of the role played by
public opinion, which he portrays as manipulated by the "technostructure"
for its purposes, of the role of consumers' choice, which he also portrays
as manipulated by the technostructure, of nongovernmental organizations,
of a free press, the separation of powers into legislative, executive, and
judicial, government regulation, which is also portrayed as an arrangement
of the technostructure, of the multiparty system, or any other of the
institutional arrangements by which a free society preserves its freedom.
He makes one exception to his crude picture of the predominance of the
technostructure over every aspect of modem life, and that exception is
the "class" to which he belongs and to which he appeals to follow his
lead in exposing and reducing this evil dominion, namely, the intellectuals.
The industrial system, it seems, needs, demands, and "brings into exist-
ence" great numbers of intellectuals. If they listen to him, they can free
themselves from the superstitious belief in the. system which it inculcates
in them, and then they can cut their progenitor down to size. This is his
one exception to the assertion that all our institutions and traditions arc
hollow, outmoded, and manipulated. After all, he is happily aware that
he can write this book and get it published, that he can say what he
pleases and, if he says it strikingly enough, get -it quoted. He is.ablc to
criticize the President and strive to prevent his re-election, to oppose the
foreign policy of the administration, to make his critique of the tcchno-
structure. "None may minimize," he concedes at this point, "the differ-
ence made by the First Amendment." But if all this amounts to is a pious
declaration made in one or a dozen amendments called the Bill of Rights,
wherein arc. we any better off than intellectuals in Russia? The Soviet
Constitution has many more "guaranteed rights" than ours, but since there
is no pluralism, no separation of powers, since there are no nongovern-
mental organizations, no independent press, no parties, in short, no insti-
tutional arrangements to guarantee a First or a Tenth Amendment,
writers at this moment are being expelled by "their" writers' union, im-
prisoned, sent to concentration camps in the Arctic circle, committed to
10. Op: cit., concluding chapter 'The Future of the Industrial System," pp. 289-90.
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insane asylums, denied publication or a chance to state their case;` for the
crime of taking seriously the rights "guaranteed" under their equivalent
of the First Amendment and the other amendments that make up our
Bill of Rights.
This appeal to the intellectuals who are created by the 'industrial
system constitutes the one hope Galbraith offers his readers. ? it is suc-
cinctly stated in the final paragraph (three short sentences) of the final
chapter of his book. "Our chance for salvation lies," he writes, "in the
fact that the industrial system is intellectually demanding. It brings into
existence, to serve its intellectual and scientific needs, the community that,
hopefully, will reject its monopoly of social purpose."
But it is the essence of his theory of the convergence of the two new
industrial states that this self-same type of intellectual community is de-
manded and required by the intellectual and scientific needs of the Soviet
State, for it too is one of The New Industrial States that give his book
its title. Indeed, this is what his convergence theory and his book are
about, and it is toward precisely this that "hopefully" the two great indus-
trial societies are converging. Hence, when Anthony Lewis asks him the
crucial question, "Are you suggesting that as the two societies converge,
the Communist society will necessarily introduce greater political and
cultural freedom?" with no ifs and no buts Galbraith answers, "I'm saying
precisely that.".
Joseph- Stalin once charged this writer with being "an American cx-
ceptionalist." The more I considered his curious charge, the more con-
vinced I became that I was guiltier than his indictment suggested, for I
realized that I was an "exceptionalist" not only for America, about which
we were then arguing, but for all the lands on- earth. I thought, for in-.
stance, of India and China and wondered how -one could be content to
lump them together under the single rubric of "Asiatic lands" without
losing all sense of difference in their spiritual and intellectual life, their
social structures, literatures, arts, philosophies, faiths, dreams, all the quali-
ties of life that made these two Asiatic lands more different from each'
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other than England from France or Germany. During that wide-ranging
debate with Joseph Stalin I became aware of what I had long sensed, that
every land moves toward its future in terms of its own past,` its own
institutions and traditions. To abstract from those differences}as Marx
sought to as Lenin did, and as Stalin was trying to persuade inc 'to do,
was to miss the essence of each country's life and history, In that moment
of challenge to simplifying abstractions, I think a historian vas born.
Latterly a new generation of simplifiers has appeared. It cm' ploys, per-
haps unwittingly, a grossly vulgarized Marxist concept to the effect that
economics .determines politics and culture, that economics is "the foun-
dation" and all the rest is a "superstructure" that reflects and is deter-
mined by the "foundation," or is just "ideology" in the sense of "false
consciousness," "cultural lag," or "official myth." This vulgar Marxism I
fancy would have made Marx wince and repeat his famous epigram, "if
that be Marxism, then I. myself am no Marxist:'
It is terribly easy to forget that technology is neutral as regards free-
dom, that it may be used either to liberate or to enslave, to inform or
to brainwash.
That was what troubled Alexander Herzen when he contemplated
Russia's constant drives for industrialization and "modernization" from
above, always "modernizing" Russia's technology and industry for the
purposes of power and war, but not permitting development of an
autonomous public life. In an open letter to Alexander II Hcrzcar wrote:
If all our progress is to be accomplished only through the government, we.
should be giving the world a hitherto unheard of example of autocratic rule,
armed with everything that freedom has discovered; servility and force sup-
ported by everything that science has invented. This would be something in
the nature of Genghis Khan with the telegraph, the steamship, the railroad,
with Carnot and Monge in the general staff, with Minie weapons and Con-
grcvc rockets, under the command of hatu 2?
"Some day," Herzen wrote in fear, "Genghis Khan will return with the
telegraph." "Hurrah!" cry our convergence theorists, "then he will cease
to be Genghis Khan." Can we so soon forget that it was the technologi-
cally most advanced country in Europe, with the earliest and best social
welfare laws, the highest degree of literacy, the. model universities and
greatest number of Ph.D.'s, that developed first one of the most ex-
treme forms of militarism and then one of the most rabid forms of
totalitarianism?
Arc we to believe that when every man can read, it will no longer
matter whether lie lives under a system that gives him freedom to choose
what he will read or under a system that gives him no such choice but
21. The Bell, No. 4, London, Oct. 1, 1857.
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determines what shall be printed and prescribes that he shall read only
a single officially prescribed version of each subject and event, and shall
read, sec, sand hear the same slogan at the same moment in the same
controlled press, radio, television, and wall-space in every corner of the
land? i
Arc we `(to believe that because there arc mass circulation jqurnals, a
television set in ccvry home, and a loudspeaker in every public place, that
it no longer matters whether there are many parties or one; rival' programs
or one incessant iteration of unassailable and unquestionable dogma; rival
candidates to choose from or no choice at all; a chance to instruct, rebuke,
tame, turn out one's rulers, or no such chance?
Is the presence of heavy industry supposed to make us forget that the
central problem of politics is not Who rules over us?, but How do we
choose our rulers? and How do the tame them? and How do we keep some
ultimate control over them in our hands?
Suppose it were true that there is no difference between the way the
Russians run a railroad and the Americans; suppose airplanes were just
as open to the people of Russia as to the "new class" and any one could
ride or fly from one end of Russia to the other. without a komandirovka.
or internal passport. There would still be a simple human difference that
technological similarities would leave untouched. Here is the difference
as stated by two young Russian intellectuals, "B" and "T," interviewed
by John Morgan of BBC for the television program This Week (one of
them consented only to be interviewed in a. moving auto with his face
covered but both expressed substantially the same thought on the tech-
nology and politics of freedom of movement):
-WVho are the privileged classes?
B: The people who arc allowed to go abroad... .
-Arc you proud of being a Russian?
B. Yes, I'm happy to be a Russian. ,If I had to die for my Russia, I would
easily do it, like two uncles of mine....
-Would you prefer to live somewhere else than in Russia?
B. Yes, of course. I wouldn't even choose a country if you just offered nu:
one, as long as it wasn't a communist-run country, I would willingly go there.
T: In England you may be faced with a hundred political problems, in Russia
one single one. "Is it possible to get out of Russia?" No, it is not possible.
You cannot imagine what that means. In England you can either solve your
problems or not solve them, and leave the country, and say "No" to England.
A Russian doesn't have such an opportunity open to him. He is force..
fully kept inside this country. It is forbidden to leave it. You arc locked in
here. Therefore all politics is governed by this simple basic rule. A Russian
and an Englishman work from different political axioms. In your conditions-
parallel lines don't cross, but with us all 'our lines cross at one point. It is
difficult for us to understand each other in this matter. It is a basic condition
of being a prisoner, of being surrounded., ... The whole place is a prison....
pprovea i-or Keiease
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P: In spite of the huge territory, everyone here realises that he has 11,000
kilometers one way, and 4,000 kilometers the other, and beyond that just
barbed wire.22
All the technological similarities imaginable and all the Bills of Rights
that paper , will, put up with will not alter tho intellectual barbed wire
represented, by absolute `monopoly of the means of communication and
of all the devices, paper, presses, meeting halls, publishing houses, re-
views, reviewers, formulations, even vocabularies, by which men com-
municate with each other and know each other and themselves. The
rulers own and control the journals and organizations that might criticize
their mistakes, their stupidities, and cruelties. Harvard professor Galbraith
could not be a professor in a Soviet. University, A.D.A. leader Galbraith
could not be a political leader, author Galbraith could not get a book
published if it maintained that the two systems are getting to be indis-
tinguishable. If he could steal a bit of paper and use an off-hour mimeo-.
graph machine to set down his views, he would be hauled into court for
anti-Soviet propaganda, tried by a judge who knew in advance what the
verdict was to be and how to make the crime fit the punishment. The
courtroom would be packed with secret police masquerading as intellec-
tuals and workingmen, who would testify that his views were intolerable
to them, corrupted their children, endangered the public safety. He could
not get friends, relatives, or admirers of his wit into the courtroom. The
"audience" would drown the words of.the accused and his witnesses with
jeers and clamor for punishment. If he persisted he would run the danger
of going to a sanitarium for the mentally deranged as has been .the case
with Ycssinin-Volpin, Bukovsky, Tarsis, Batashev, Vishnevskaya, and
General Grigorcnko, whose madness has consisted in taking seriously the
Soviet Constitution and its Bill of Rights and trying to act on the basis ,
of the rights guaranteed therein 23
To sum up: the convergence theory will not stand up to examination
in the light of history nor to an actual examination of the two countries
that are supposed to be converging. The likelihood is that they will con-
tinue to move each toward its own future under the influence of its own
22. Encounter, London, Feb. 1968, pp. 68-75. "P" is a third interviewee.,
23. From dependable sources (which will have to be accepted or rejected on
faith since I cannot name them), I have learned that there are now two lunatic asylums,
one on the outskirts of Moscow and another near Leningrad, given over to -political
lunatics" and a third of increasingly political character. In the whole ,history of Tsarism
there was one tsar, Nicholas I, who declared one philosopher, Peter Chaadaicv, insane
for critical remarks on Russia's cultural sterility, but he was not committed to an
asylum, merely somewhat restricted in his freedom of movement and compelled to
accept the indignity of daily visits from a doctor for one year, after which he apparently
recovered his sanity. There were no political or literary or philosophical lunatics
under Lenin or Stalin but an epidemic of such madness since Khrushchev at the begin-
ning of the sixties declared: "We have no more political criminals in the USSR. The
only ones who oppose our system today are madmen:' Yet the terms remain intet-
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heritage, its traditions, and its institutions, a heritage that will be both
conserved and altered more by the actions of men than by the weight
of things. Even the technical devices they borrow from each other they
will use differently as they assimilate them into their differing ways.
Finally, there arc two special matters that carry us beyond the usual
framework of academic discussion of a tentatively advanccd1llypothesis.
'i71c first ,concerns the inner health of American life. If our #free institu-
tions, our pluralism, multiparty system, right of dissent, complex of non-
governmental organizations, independent press and publishing houses,
independent scholarship, freedom of literary and artistic creation, freedom
of movement, of dissent, freedom of choice in the market place and the
forum, have really been hollowed out and emptied of their meaning by
manipulation by the technostructure, or if we are persuaded to this by
technocrats, managerial revolutionists, and teclinostructural determinists,
then we lose our perspective on what is worth defending in our society.
Conversely, the advocates of the convergence theory are presuming to
speak for the silent in Russia, assuring us, and those struggling for freedom,
that technological progress at a certain point brings freedom in its train
and the human effort to secure such freedom is pointless or at best an
unconscious reflection and epiphenomenon. The words of "B" and "T"
to John Morgan, the perils faced by Pavel Litvinov, Yessinin-Volpin,
Bukovsky, Chukovskaya, Solzhcnitsyn, Sinyavsky, Daniel, Brodsky, and
countless other unsung heroes to be true to their vision, to awaken the
conscience of the -outside world and bring it to bear. on their plight, arc
the best commentary on the notion that freedom comes out of the
machine and the requirements of ,the technostructure and not out of the
struggles of men longing to be free. Thus, it seems to me, there is mis-
chief as well as error in the convergence theory,
changeable. Yessinin-Volpin, for example, has spent four years in camps and two in
asylums. and in February he was again declared insane for his activity on behalf
of Sinyavsky and Daniel and his insistence that the Constitution's Bill of Rights be
taken seriously by censors, courts, and police. His madness is evidenced in the
appropriate fields of philosophy, mathematics, cybernetics, -and concern with poetry
and freedom. His Lea/ of Spring was published in English in 1961. The President of.'
the Academy of Sciences. Kaldysh, has more than once secured his release from jail
or asylum by insisting on his importance in cybernetics and mathematics. I suppose
set
the use of a madhouse instead of a bullet in the base of the brain may be
down as liberalism, or relaxation, or thaw.
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Excerpts from "Trade and Peace,"
Peter J. D. Wiles
Comparative Communism, July/October 1968
Note: The following abbreviations are used in the article text:
ACC: Advanced capitalist countries
ME : Market economy q
STE: Soviet-type economy
UDC: Underdeveloped countries
Is's
,Peaceful international relations, of the various types here de-
scribed, are the result not the cause of good feeling. Indeed, good
feeling is sometimes thus "corrected," as it were, by a feedback:
it brings about so many contacts that relations deteriorate. The
-notion that the more relations there are the better relations will
be is derived from no observed facts but from the eighteenth-
century assumption that men are naturally good; it is on a par
with the notion that prosperity makes people peaceful. But that
too rests, as we have seen, on no observed fact-unless the con-
trasting cases of the U.S.S.R., China, and Albania in the early-
1960s be accepted as a basis for a theory of human history. In
fact, life is more complicated. Many people are naturally bad,
and natural badness helps one in a political career. Many whole
nations or states are bad; ignorance of them and isolation from
them might be excellent if at all practicable., . -
Realism demands, however, that one optimistic note be struck.
Trade between ACCs and STEs is conducted in conditions of
mutual respect that do little harm to personal relations. Indeed,
so absurd have been the views of the other party commonly en-
tertained on each side that at least in this case personal acquaint-
ance has usually improved attitudes. But more than that, such
trade tends to deform and "bourgeoisify" Soviet-type institutions,
whereas hitherto its effect on the institutions of ACCs has been
transitory.t r a n s i t o r y . , , .. ,
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? --It i primarily through foreign trade that economic rationality
has entered the STE. The first practical step is to rationalize the
choice of customer and price for exports already produced and
imports already decided upon. The last stage is when every
imported input and every exported output are rationally decided
upon, which, of course, entails the rationalization of all inputs
and outputs in the whole economy. Poland has passed through.
the first, stage, and her thirty enterprises are an intermediate
point. That the large output categories and the very identities of
the enterprises should be decided by the center is not necessarily
irrational, but in Poland in the 1960s it is so in fact, for in the
current state of the arts the only way to rationality is as yet via
the free market.
At least, however, this scheme leaves the sortament more or
less to the market-clearly in the hope of rationalization without
too great disturbance. If the Polish government continues to be
illogical it can in fact stop at this point. Occasional interference
with the sortament, an: incapacity to supply the exact inputs re-
quired, and a refusal to increase the number of enterprises under
the scheme, all present an untidy picture. But the economic gain
is real, while the basically Stalinist structure of contemporary
Polish planning is hardly touched.
The malaise that this kind of thing produces in the Soviet-type
mind is very great. For direct contact between the exporting en-
terprise and the foreign buyer violates the sacred Leninist princi-
ple of the government's foreign-trade monopoly. Forgetting that
all their enterprises are now "socialist," and that Lenin asserted
his principle as part of the "capture of the commanding heights"
in a mixed economy, the orthodox react like frightened rabbits."
Thus Jaruzelski (op. cit.) tries to reassure them that the Hun-
garian scheme does not "undermine the state's trade monopoly"
-but it does, and that is just why it is good. For today, now that
all the uncommanding heights are also in safe hands, the govern-
ment's foreign-trade monopoly is simply a bureaucratic nuisance.
In particular, while Lenin lived the U.S.S.R. made very few
sophisticated or custom-made exports, to which the process of
fabrication necessarily gave individuality. An intervening whole-
saler or bureaucrat does little harm to a product by nature per-
fectly competitive; not so to one by necessity heterogeneous, such
as a machine. In such a case there should be not only free con-
tact but even free contract between the producer and the foreign
client.
34Even in Yugoslavia eighty percent of foreign trade went through the state's
regular foreign-trade organizations Until the reforms of 1965-66 (Prtvrednt
Pregkd, Belgrade, October 4, 1965).
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Bad organization, then, is not the least cause of the failure of
Soviet-type machinery exports. Administratively speaking, the
result of the government's foreign-trade monopoly is that the
foreign buyer sees the trade agreement with the STE, but not the
STE's production plan. The agreement specifies the quantities,
and is public; the plan specifies the enterprises producing, and is
private. Genuine adaptation to foreign importers' demands
weakens the plan.
Convergence, then, is helped along by foreign trade.;' More-
over, like most of the internal convergence that has 'hitherto
occurred, it has mainly affected STEs, not ACCs. Where Finland
has fallen back into her pattern the U.S.S.R. continues to move
out of hers. Not suprisingly, too, foreign-trade-induced con-
vergence affects small STEs more than big ones, and particularly
those that export heterogeneous goods. That North Korea, North
Vietnam, Mongolia, Cuba and Albania seem not to be converg-
ing has many better explanations. But at least they would be in
serious difficulty if they exported machines.
It is worth repeating the warning that the convergence of the
economic models of ACCS and STEs will not inevitably make
them friends. Similarity of economic institutions has not in the
past prevented states from tearing each other apart." In this
case, however, there is the special feature that dissimilarity of
economic models has been a cause of the fundamental hostility.
When necessity dictates a rapprochement there is a loss of con-
fidence in Leninist dogma that can only be good.
Even so, it is perhaps of greater importance that ACC/STE
trade weakens the accursed political solidarity of both sides. The
diplomatic wanderings of France and Rumania surely count for
more than the Polish deviations from the Soviet model.
:l8
It is not, however, only goods, people and ideas that move.
The migration of capital is the only side of this subject which has
been at all seriously studied, doubtless because Marxists are in-
terested in it. After all, the Marxist has the virtue that he is not
afraid of large and serious subjects. We do not have to agree,
however, with what he says. No detailed refutation need be
attempted here, since many admirable empirical studies have
already provided it. The basic truth is that the migration of
private capital invariably exacerbates the relations between labor
and capital and government and capital; but not between coun-
tries unless the capitalist receives support from his own govern-
ment. For without that support the migration does not bring
about an interstate relation of any sort. Extremely often, par-
ticularly before the 1880s, the government did not intervene.
When it intervenes it is because capital happens to be present
and happens to claim diplomatic protection at a time and place
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convenient for its government's imperialistic aims. Cases o
conspiracy, of a government encouraging the capital to go there,
or to lodge complaints when there, are rather rare. The excep-
tion is German capital, which was so encouraged in the early
1900s."
When state capital moves, however, things become wo~se-
much worse. Let the reader consider the latter ends of Disraeli's
? Suez Canal investment, or of Anglo-Iranian Oil. The Panama
Canal and Stalin's mixed companies were obvious examples of
the same genre. It is evident that the movement of state capital is
a diplomatic affair and a very dangerous one. Imperialism, then,
is hardly motivated at all by the original export of private capital,
but it does use its repudiation and default as an excuse; state
capital, however, is its weapon not its motive. Imperialism is
primarily due to the uneven military strength of countries, the
love of power, and the facility of the human mind for inventing
excuses. Beside this fact particularly motives pale into insig-
nificance. Thus mercantilist imperialism was a struggle for
markets and power, to which high industrial imperialism did
indeed add the desire to place its capital profitably. Communist
imperialism on the other hand seeks ideological conversion and
power, though Stalin also sought economic tribute.
Must we not, then, particularly condemn the ever-increasing
export of state capital in the form of public civilian aid? Now
that it is about three times as large as that of private capital, has
it not brought us nearer to war than ever in the nineteenth cen-
tury? In particular does not the open public competition in aid
exacerbate the Cold War? When Soviet-type aid began in late
1953 the United States was still under the spell of McCarthy, and
a panic resulted. Soviet propaganda, with its quarter-truths about
imperialism and its downright mendacity on the economic effects
of capitalist aid, did nothing to help. Other ACCs, however,
always took a more level-headed view, and the United States has
now fallen into line. Soviet, though not Chinese, propaganda
has become slightly more reasonable. Competition in aid has in
fact made strongly for peace: a thing that would have astounded
any intelligent student of international relations up to 1953.
The initial United States panic was not, historically speaking,
absurd; it simply missed the changed climate of opinion. Com-
petition in civilian aid-giving might have led to further strains or
even war. The involvement of the United States and the U.S.S.R.
in one country might have led, indeed sometimes has led, to.
pro-American and pro-Soviet parties inside a given UDC, which
as one or other side wins elections or coups, lead in turn to whole
countries having a particular bias. The mere competition be-
tween the principal aid-givers is likely to worsen their relations,
se'he best general empirical work on this subject is Eugene Staley, War and
the Private Investor (New York, 1935). For the special can of Egypt, see
David Landes, Bankers and Pashas (London, 1958).
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as all competition does. If, Fichte would have said, international
relations are ipso facto bad, why invent a new kind of interna-
tional relation?
But much of this would have happened anyway. Trade, diplo-
matic support, and above all military aid set up innumerable
pressures of this kind. It was the benign features of competition in
civilian aid that showed up more strongly. For one thing it has
simply diverted public funds from military expenditutca, at least
in the countries that give. Private investment would not have
done that.
But the main thing is the changed motivation in the export of
public capital, not merely since Disraeli and Theodore Roosevelt
but also since Stalin, whose death was probably the turning point.
We no longer speak of the migration of capital but of aid: the
publicly professed motive is no longer profit for us but help to
others. As there is no smoke without a fire, so there is no
hypocrisy without genuine feeling. The unprecedented propor-
tion of gifts in all this aid is evidence enough. The British
Voluntary Service Overseas, the international youth brigade in
Yugoslavia, and now the United States Peace Corps are part of
the same tremendous shift of opinion.
With such motivation competition cannot be very deadly.
When German capital went competing in the Near East in the
1900s, no doubt it contributed as much to local economic de-
velopment as does any aid today. But its effect on British and
French capital, and therefore on diplomacy, was infinitely worse
than is, say, that of Soviet capital in India today on United
States capital or diplomacy. For the German projects were meant
to thwart other projects, and to exclude British and French
capital from both power and profit; but the Soviet projects are
meant only to please India. There is, ordinarily, room and -to
spare for them and their rivals.
Nay more, actual cooperation ensues. On a simple level, Con-
gress was shocked to discover in 1962 that some United States
aid materials had been used in Soviet projects, and vice versa.""
On a more complicated and important level, Polish and British
economists have sat on the same Ghanaian planning committee.
If the alleged goal is the same for all parties, and the bare
minimum of hypocrisy can be relied upon, cooperation is in-
evitable.
This leads us to the multiplicity of aid-givers. Aid involves
many other countries than the two cold-war principals, and most
of these have been unable to hope for political influence through
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aid . If the ex-imperial powers have mixed motives, Czecho-
slovakia, West Germany and above all the Scandinavian coun-
tries have been fairly disinterested. The resulting political' com-
plications have been so great as to blur the hard edges of
diplomacy. Even the United States has come to welcome in-
ternational aid-giving authorities; which of course would be the
ideal solution if only nationalism wore not the main part of the
will to contribute.", , .
Convergence)
is even more obviously at work in the new capital transfers
between ACCs and STEs: perhaps the most hopeful and exciting
of all the post-Stalin developments in our field. Let us first repeat
that such transfers are by no means ideologically unorthodox.
They were constantly sought by the U.S.S.R. in 1917-18, before
War Communism, and again during the NEP. Apart from short-
and medium-term credit, some quite complicated transfers, in-
volving technology and land concessions, actually took place."
But if ideology is no bar, detailed central planning surely is.
Domestic enterprises work not for profit but for plan-fulfillment:
how could foreign enterprises act differently? It is no accident
that all concessions came to an end within six years of the begin-
ning of the first FYP; politics cannot, surely, have been the sole
cause. Trade credit and even general intergovernmental "pro-
gram support" remain entirely possible. But ordinary capitalist
long-term investment is difficult to envisage.
Yet it is precisely what is envisaged. The bellwether is as
usual Yugoslavia, which has been experimenting since 1954. But
hers is a market economy, and her inhibitions are ideological
alone: how can "ownership by the whole people" and manage=ment by workers' councils be compatible with foreign equity par-
ticipation? Would not such a thing be the "exploitation of man
by man"?48 Virtually every European STE has by now followed
a"If the STEs have also international bodies (Comecon and the IBEC) and
engage in various ad hoc multilateral schemes through the GKES, it is surely
for technical economic reasons and not in order to ease international tensions.
Note that multilateral aid is an ambiguous term. I use it here to indicate that
more than one nation has deliberately cooperated in giving aid. But it might
also mean that a single aid-giver gave convertible currency, to be spent by the
recipient in any country at its discretion.
42The two most notable were the Red Army's agreement to cooperate with
the Reichswehr on Soviet soil, and the Lena Goldfields Ltd. The Reichswehr
used its agreement to test weapons in violation of the Versailles Treaty; the Red
Army provided the secret sites and the unskilled labor, and shared the knowl-
edge gained. Cooperation began in 1921 and ended on Hitler's advent to power
in 1933. Lena Goldfields Ltd. got its concession in 1925, as compensation for
its expropriation in 1917. Although the concession ran for thirty years, the
terror trials of foreign technicians brought it to a halt in 1934, when the com-
pany accepted #3 mu. to cease business.
"Cl. my article in Lloyds Bank Review, October 1967.
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suit. The easiest and commonest system is merely to buy a
license to imitate some capitalist product, and import technicians.
The. Soviet-type enterprise has then a monopoly of its home
market, and is fully subject to the command economy. As to
exports, its capitalist patron may give it sole rights to sell to par-
ticular countries, notably other STEs; subject to this limitation
it must behave like any other exporting enterprise. The co-
operant capitalist firm sells the initial plant and takes it royalty
in cash, or so many units of output; it does not own anything on
the territory of the STE, and is thus not at all in the same posi-
tion as Lena Goldfields Ltd.
So far as one can see into the rather secret negotiations of
Poland with Fiat and Krupp, and the U.S.S.R. with Fiat, the
agreements" are of this kind; so they violate neither the ideology
nor the institutions. More contrary to both, and reminiscent of
Lena Goldfields Ltd., is direct capitalist investment on the terri-
tory of the STE. Cases of this appear to be exceedingly rare, just
as Haldex, Hungary's direct investment in Poland, has very few
parallels. A genuine example seems to be the new Intercontinen-
tal Hotel in Bucharest, under the management of Pan-American
Airways. But here too the institutional fit is not impossible. A
hotel sells its services to consumers, especially foreign tourists,
who are unplanned anyway. The ration of value-added to bought-
in inputs is particularly great, so the sphere of independence open
to a Soviet-type manager is great, and his dependence on the
central planner unusually small (it will be borne in mind that
labor is hired in a market) . Add that some of this particular
hotel's bought-in inputs will surely be imports financed by its
valuta earnings, and what we have is almost an importing-proc-
essing-and-reexporting business of which the sole Rumanian in-
put is labor.
There are also now similar investments by STEs in ACCs:
Moskvich assembles cars in Belgium and Skoda in Austria.
These enterprises, surprising as they are, involve serious ideo-
logical but no institutional problems. There is precedent for
them in the various communist banks long established on foreign
soil.
It is true that all these transfers of capital are small.4' It is true
that they are less indigestible by Soviet-type institutions than
might be thought, i.e., on the institutional side the move from War
Communism to NEP, which made Lena Goldfields Ltd. possible,
44Signed in December 1965 and June and May 1966 respectively. On the
whole non-Yugoslav side of this matter cf. Michael Gamarnikow in Osteuro-
pdische Rundschau (Munich), 12/1965.
"Thus Italy will receive plant orders of $75 mn. per annum in the first four
ea of the Fiat deal, which is much the biggest (The Times, London, May 23,
,966
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was very much bigger. It is true that the orthodox precedents are
ample. Nevertheless NEP caused little change in ideology or
ultimate intentions, whereas today all is in flux. NEPI'was a
commonsense reaction to a domestic crisis; the Krupp apd Fiat
deals, infinitely smaller though they are u oonorots eV nts, bow
token a changed basic attitude to the enemy. The Moslcoch and
Skoda deals are smaller again, but they are still stronger evidence
of basic change.
22
Communists have always maintained that trade is' good for
peace, though they never explain in detail why this is so. Their
practice is the same as anyone else's: when STEs are at enmity
among each other they reduce trade; when in friendship, they
increase it. But trade in every case is effect and not cause.
Undoubtedly however what communists have in mind when
they make this propaganda is not their internal trade wars.
Rather are they looking outwards at the ACC embargo. But here
again trade is effect, not cause. Political hostility, entirely
mutual, preceded the embargo, and the latter was simply the
weapon of the economically stronger side. The removal of the
embargo would have to be, and indeed its partial removal has
been, preceded by a political improvement. The most we can
say is that governmental actions making for more trade-or less
embargo-are probably good gestures. A detente has to begin
with a concrete expression of goodwill, a concession by one or
both sides. An expansion of trade is one such measure, but this
is very far indeed from proving that peace has some economic
base. Rather the contrary, it is yet another demonstration of the
extent to which the economic relations of states are a political
football.
Similarly, socialists of every hue have always maintained that
world socialism would bring world peace.`6 A not much empha-
sized corollary of this is world free trade. But here the ideology
itself is correct in putting the horse before the cart.
4Silberner op. cit., Elliot R. Goodman, The Soviet Design for a World
State (New VorA, 1960).
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