and pragmatic attitudes and policies, and hence to the peaceful resolution of international conflicts. For convenience I label these theories the doctrines of economic convergence, political convergence, and peace through plenty. This paper will first discuss these three doctrines, and then will examine their applicability specifically to Communist China.

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he distinguished Dutch economist Jan Tinbergen believes that the Communist and "free" economies are converging in several ways. "On the one hand," he writes, "each system is learning from experience and trying to overcome some of its own weaknesses. On the other hand, the systems begin to influence each other more and more. ."3 In the more advanced Communist economies, realization of the growing need for specialized management, mathematical methods of planning, differential incomes as incentives, rational prices, interest as a cost element, free consumer choice, and improved methods of international trade can be viewed as causing these economies to evolve in the direction of the "free" economies. At the same time, in the "free" economies, the size and role of the public sector and of taxes have been expanded, restraints placed on competition, education made more widely available, market forces eliminated or modified in some unstable markets such as agriculture, more planning introduced, and some form of price and wage controls instituted as an antiinflationary tool. While the differences between the two systems remain large, Professor Tinbergen believes that they are diminishing.

The Danish economist Knud Svendson, however, takes issues with Tin

3 Jan Tinbergen, "Do Communist and Free Economies Show A Converging Pattern?", Soviet Studies, April 1961, pp. 333-41.

bergen. Svendson argues that the growing similarities emphasized by Tinbergen are not as meaningful as the persisting dissimilarities between the two systems, notably in respect to property ownership and the peculiar role of the Communist Party in the Soviet economy. He further holds that while the Soviet economy may be run more and more by managers, the role which they play is not the same as in a market economy. In his view, collective ownership of the means of production and "the Soviet organization and planning model" provide "greater possibilities for flexibility" in organizational and technological innovation "than an oligopolic structure based on private ownership." Many economists, of course, would question the superiority of the Soviet economic system or of Soviet enterprises, but would agree with Svendson that the incentives and pressures for, and the resistances to, innovation, and therefore the capacities of the respective economies for innovation, continue to differ in the two systems.5

Even if the two systems were to converge not only in terms of the organization and operation of firms but also of government bureaucracies, of markets for labor and other inputs, and of markets for output, it does not follow that the Communist regimes would use their increasing economic capacity for producing more borsht rather than bullets, or parks rather than prisons. On the contrary, the promotion of revolutionary struggles abroad, the conquest of space, and the maintenance of a strong military posture (which becomes increasingly expensive as technological change ac

4 Knud Erik Svendson, "Are the Two Systems Converging?," Ost-Okonomi (Oslo), No. 31, Dec. 1962, pp. 195-209.

5 See, e.g., Gregory Grossman, "Soviet Growth: Routine, Inertia, and Pressure," The American Economic Review, Vol. L, No. 2 (May 1960), pp. 62-72; and his "Innovation and Information in the Soviet Economy," ibid., Vol. LVI, No. 2 (May 1966), pp. 118-130.

celerates the obsolescence of weapon systems) may place increasing demands on economic resources, for there is little reason to believe that the logic of economic growth leads of itself to the relegation of these goals. to a secondary position. In a command society, the goals and aspirations of the commanders can be expected to dominate the goals and aspirations of the commanded-i.e., the consumers. And even if economic goals were to be given top priority, the "input-input system," in which more steel is produced to make machines that will produce more coal, iron ore, water and electricity, which again are used to produce more steel and mining equipment, still could go on endlessly.

I

't is nevertheless reasonable to argue that economic growth is likely to improve the lot of the consumer sooner or later. Social and political priorities, as reflected in the relative shares of resources allocated to the attainment of different ends, could remain unaltered; yet the increasing size of the national pie would eventually mean a bigger bite for the consumer, even if his proportionate share of the pie did not increase. What counts, in this view, is the reduction of absolute poverty, hunger and deprivation.

Interestingly enough, people who take this line often turn around and ascribe the increasing militancy of the poor in the United States and the underdeveloped countries to the increasing relative deprivation of this stratum of the population, even though its absolute standards of liv ing have in general been rising. Be this as it may, betterment of the consumer's lot can at best mean that the mass of people will tend to become more satisfied and therefore, perhaps, more placid, which in turn might conceivably have some influence on social goals. In totalitarian societies, however, social goals are likely to

change only if the leadership chooses

in the first place to produce and share increased consumer goods with the party cadres, if this higher consumption corrodes revolutionary values, and if the party ignores or encourages this spiritual corrosion. A puritanical and ascetic leadership may choose to keep the production of consumer goods to a minimum even in an economy of plenty; or, like Plato's guardians, it may elect to deny itself and the party functionaries the comforts made available to the common man. The leadership may also mount an all-out campaign to combat tendencies towards ideological softening. The greater the danger to revolu tionary ideology resulting from af fluence (or increasing communications with free societies), the more resources the regime will need to pour into the struggle. However, if the leadership fears that consumption will prove stronger than indoctrination, it can cut back consumption. Indeed, it may even sacrifice growth of over-all production, and not just of consumer goods output, for the sake of political goals it considers more important. Mao's China, as we shall see, seems to illustrate this situation.

When and if increasing output in Communist economies makes it possible to improve consumer welfare, moreover, any such improvement is likely to take the form of an increase in collective rather than private consumption. Just as the social and political consequences of collective ownership and production have been radically different from those of private ownership and production, so the social, economic, cultural and political effects of collective affluence may differ greatly from those of pri

6 For one discussion along these lines, see Jan S. Prybyla, "The Convergence of Western and Communist Economic Systems: A Critical Estimate," The Russian Review, January 1964, pp. 3-17. Also Peter Wiles, "Will Capitalism and Communism Spontaneously Converge," Encounter, (London), June 1963, pp. 84-90.

vate affluence. Two cars in every garage and a house in the suburbs do not create the same social and cultural milieu as do cities of huge cultural milieu as do cities of huge publicly-owned apartments and office buildings served by subways and mass transit systems. Nor will New York, Moscow, and Peking produce similar cultures and attitudes simply because, over time, they may come to share more and more economic, physical, technical, and occupational characteristics. Cities in the nonCommunist world with their dense agglomerations and diverse populations, multitudinous property owners, employers, and governmental authorities, can produce heterogeneity, liveliness, crime, freedom, spontaneity, anonymity, creativity, and anomie. But where the landlord, employer, judge, policeman, jailor and priest are all one and the same, cities are more likely to become efficient, neat, clean, orderly, drab and homogenized centers of totalitarian tyranny.

hus, even if consumer goods were to become abundantly available for private consumption in Communist societies, the political and social consequences of this process would still be unpredictable. And this unpredictability is heightened by such phenomena as charismatic leadership and inter-personal rivalry for power, as well as by unforeseen events such as accidents and natural calamities. Uncertainty resulting from such causes is not entirely peculiar to Communist economies, but its magnitude may be greater in these economies because of the greater unpredictability of changes in political leadership, the greater possibility of drastic shifts in economic and other policies, and the greater impact of policy changes on the economy and society. High or rising standards of living are no insurance against the emergence of charismatic leaders dedicated to aggressive evangelism.

The general proposition that prosperity breeds peace is, moreover, a tenuous one. Many of those who believe that rich Communists are likely to be more peaceful than poor ones also believe that rich capitalists are bullies and warmongers. Unfortunately for the proponents of either theory, wealth has not always produced peaceful societies; nor has poverty always bred aggression.

Even if economic convergence did produce political convergence and similar behavior patterns, the result could be more rather than less conflict. Economic growth, by giving the poorer Communist nations a foretaste of power and wealth and thus making them more aware of their relative poverty, might produce more aggressive behavior. In fact, more revolutions, riots and civil wars seem to have occurred where the condition of the poor had already started improving and the downtrodden had consequently become more conscious of their relative deprivation. Similarly, shared cultural and political values often enhance rather than diminish conflict. People who are very close to each other in many ways can become very intolerant of each other on the few things that do divide them, as illustrated by the animosity between Jews and Arabs, Indians and Pakistanis, Catholics and Protestants, Trotskyites and Stalinists.

The increasing tendency of Communist economies to adopt certain features of market economies, and of market economies to adopt a measure of planning, may have the effect of strengthening both systems, with the possible result that competition and conflict between the two may become more intense as the field of differences narrows to primarily political and philosophical issues. Coexistence could then become more precarious

7 See Robert L. Heilbroner, The Making of Economic Society, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, Prentice-Hall, 1962, pp. 229231.

as the resources for competition and conflict become more plentiful within the rival systems. This points to the conclusion that if the prospects for peaceful coexistence are to improve, statesmen will have to make conscious decisions to that end. Rather than the logic of economic and political "convergence," the logic of nuclear and biochemical warfare dictates that such decisions be taken if man is to survive. But even this powerful logic does not guarantee that the two systems will coexist, and mankind destruction.

escape

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n close scrutiny, then, the attractive doctrines of economic and political convergence and peace through plenty lose much of their plausibility. But they have still another weakness beyond those pointed out thus far: they ignore the dangerous possibility that history may not always repeat itself, and that even if these theories were to prove valid with respect to the evolution of the Soviet and East European Communist systems, they might not necessarily prove correct in China.

The Chinese Communists in 1949 took over a country which was economically much more backward than the Russia of 1917, or than most of the East European countries at the time these came under Communist rule. The Marxist economist Paul Baran has argued that Stalinism in Russia was a product of "the drive to develop at breakneck speed a backward country threatened by foreign aggression and in the face of internal resistance," and that "socialism in backward and underdeveloped countries has a powerful tendency to become a backward and underdeveloped socialism." "998

This same reasoning would lead one to expect China's greater back

8 Paul A. Baran, The Political Economy of Growth, New York, 1957, p. viii.

wardness relative to the Soviet Union at the start of their respective revolutionary careers to lead to an even greater despotism than Stalin's. Moreover, China's lower economic level and much higher rate of population growth necessarily mean a lower capacity to save and invest, suggesting that China may take even longer than Russia to become a reasonably affluent society. Taking an optimistic view, the USSR a half-century after the Bolshevik revolution may be considered to have become a society inclined toward world peace. By the same token, if the economic determinists are correct, it seems likely that more than fifty years must elapse before China can be expected to behave like a mature USSR-and that the life span of despotism in China will also be much longer. Considering the fact that the Chinese Communist regime rules no less than one quarter of all mankind, the implications for world peace are hardly encouraging.

There is also reason to doubt that in China's case the logic of economic growth will necessarily lead to an eventual transformation of the regime's political-ideological aims and international behavior. The Chinese Communists are displaying extreme determination not to let the new generation go "soft" by becoming preoccupied with goals of personal and professional advancement and higher material standards of living and comfort. In spite of the gigantic economic losses brought on by the ideologically motivated Great Leap Forward and Forward and subsequent natural calamities, the regime has not allowed the pursuit of its military and political goals to slacken. The vigorous and relentless drive to achieve a nuclear military capability, pushed forward at a time when the mass of the Chinese people has had to live on a meager

9 See Harrison E. Salisbury, "Mao Efforts to Steel Youth Seen Behind Peking Purge," The New York Times, August 16, 1966, pp. 1, 14.

and often inadequate diet in recent years, suggests that for the Chinese Communists political-ideological objectives may continue to take precedence over economic goals.

T

he so-called “cultural revolution" now sweeping China is yet another indication of the passion of an ascetic leadership for maintaining revolutionary fanaticism through enforced austerity and hard work. The leadership must be aware of the harm the recent purges of teachers and intellectuals are likely to do to the universities and the training and education of Chinese youth. Such measures can only hamper China's efforts at economic and technological modernization; yet the regime continues to impress upon the people that ideology is more potent than technology even than nuclear technology, 10

If these Chinese proclivities continue, a weak Communist China may not be a very placid China, but neither will it be in a position to wage a major international war. The longer China takes to develop her economy to a level capable of sustaining a major aggressive venture, the more time, and therefore the greater the chances, the world will have to work out an international order including China, which appears to be the sole solution really capable of assuring mankind's survival. If the proponents of convergence are right, the growth and modernization of the Chinese economy might in time tend to bring Communist China's system and policies more into line with those of other developed societies, but what if the hypothesis should turn out to be wrong? Are the risks greater in assuming it to be correct and therefore helping China to progress, in assum

10 See, e.g., the reports of Victor Zorza in the Manchester Guardian Weekly, especially the issues of May 19 and June 2, 1966.

ing it to be wrong and hindering her development unless and until she shows a willingness to coexist, or in regarding either belief as too shaky a foundation to build peace on? How one answers this question depends more on one's preference for one kind

of risk as against another, and on one's philosophical and political inclinations, rather than on the logic and evidence at the disposal of history and the social sciences. What evidence there is supports scepticism about a theory which implies that in the long

run economic growth will produce "convergence" and peaceful coexistence between all countries and systems. A theory that assumes there will be a long run is a useless basis for policies designed to assure that there will be a long run.

EDITORS' NOTE: Readers are welcome to comment on matters discussed in this journal. Letters should be addressed to the Editors, Problems of Communism, US Information Agency, 1776 Pennsylvania Ave. NW, Washington, DC, 20547.

Rapid Changes?

TO THE EDITORS: Professor Zbigniew Brzezinski, in the essay in your issue for January-February 1966, with which he opened the discussion on the future of the Soviet political system, raised a great many interesting points. I wonder, though, whether some of these points might be clarified if Professor Brzezinski could be asked to state why his opinions on the subject have changed so drastically since his Ideology and Power in Soviet Politics (New York, Praeger, 1962) and Political Power: USA/USSR (New York, Viking Press, 1964). Compare the following:

rapidly the Soviet Union or Professor Brzezinski's views?

HENK L. VERHAAR University of Amsterdam Amsterdam, Holland

MR. BRZEZINSKI Replies: My views certainly change more rapidly than the glacier-like Soviet Union; I hope that that is true of all my colleagues. More to the point:

1). The Problems of Communism statement described Soviet society as compared to the immediately antecedent period, when powerful political means were used to atomize that society; the other quote is a generalized observation about the problem of change in modern society, as compared to a more traditional one.

2). The point in the article again is a specific contemporary one: the Soviet apparatchiki, in my view, are not making the necessary political adaptations in order to retain the relevance of their ideological-political structure to society. For example, the Yugoslav Communists are trying to do just that.

3). Apart from noting that degeneration is a prolonged and usually stable process, I would also add that on pages 409-411 of Political Power there is an explicit discussion of "potentially disruptive weaknesses," of tensions between the political system and other social forces and institutions" and of "bureaucratic conservatism" in the Soviet Union.

4). Maybe what's really involved is excessively quick reading?