Time Will Run Back

Chapter 26

LIENA BOLSHEKOV is here, Your Highness.” “Show her in, Sergei.”

She had called for the appointment a few days before. What could she want of him? Peter had never met her to speak to, and his mind went back to his first night in Moscow when he had seen her at the opera. Her black hair and lovely legs were still vivid in his memory.

He was not disappointed. She was as striking off the stage as on. Her black Protector’s uniform was very trim; the trousers fitted just snugly enough to bring out the shapeliness of her hips and thighs. Her dark eyes were inviting.

“It’s so good of you to see me,” she began. “I’ve always been a tremendous admirer of yours, Your Highness—of your statesmanship and courage—but I didn’t realize till now how young and handsome you are!”

Peter blushed. He had been a great admirer of hers, he said.

“I’ve come to ask you,” she continued, “if we could possibly get you to act as a patron—the chief patron, of course—of our new pageant on The Growth of Civilization. It will depict the whole history of feudalism, capitalism, the class struggle, the final triumph of communism—”

“I’d be delighted,” said Peter. “You could have put my name down as a matter of course, or just telephoned me—” “But I wanted to see you, and I wanted to enlist your active interest. I do wish you could see what we are planning. Wouldn’t you like to see the sketches for the costumes and floats? I would so much appreciate your suggestions and ideas.” “I really know nothing about these matters,” Peter said. “But of course if you would really like me to—”

“That is wonderful of you, Your Highness. The sketches are at my apartment. There are too many of them to carry around. Do you think you could come up some night and look at them?”

“Well, if you wish.”

“Oh, that’s really wonderful. How about tomorrow night? Or how about tonight? That’s terribly short notice, I know, particularly for a man as busy and important as you are. But I’m so eager to get started.”

Peter made a pretense of consulting his desk calendar. He already knew that he had no engagement. It was Leninsday, and Leninsday evening was now almost invariably kept clear for his piano practice. But he wanted to give himself time to decide. He was tempted; but he realized that the very reasons that tempted him were the reasons why he should not go. She was a lure. She had certainly been asked to do this by her father.

“I’m terribly sorry,” he said finally (and as he really was, he sounded sincere). “I’m terribly sorry but I have a meeting with the Central Planning Board tonight—”

“Tomorrow, then?”

“I’m jammed up for the rest of the week.” He disconsolately thumbed the calendar pages. “Next week?” He turned the pages. “Sunday... Monday... Marxday...

Leninsday... Prolesday... Engelsday... Stalinsday... every one of them crowded. I tell you... I’ll try to break one of these engagements and let you know.”

She concealed her disappointment. “Oh, that’s so nice of you. Here is my address.” She wrote it on a card. “I’m afraid it’s not at all in the best neighborhood. It’s a little hideaway that I have all to myself—even father doesn’t know about it. But I simply must have a little place alone where I can work.”

Peter said he understood.

“I have a tiny favor to ask you,” she went on, “I don’t want too many people to know where my private apartment is.... And then besides, if people knew you called, there would be all sorts of gossip linking our names.... You know how people are. So, would you mind terribly parking your car a couple of blocks away somewhere... and walking the rest? When you can come, I won’t be asking anyone else.”

Peter was now sure that the whole thing was a trap. He felt a little sad about it, promised that she would hear from him in a few days, and gave a last glance at her hips as she left the room.

The free exchange of ration tickets, and the free market for consumers’ goods, had constituted, even before the return of the cigarette coupons to parity, a great personal triumph for Peter Uldanov. The army was still almost solidly behind Bolshekov, but civilian opinion was now mainly behind Peter. The people had had their first breath of freedom.

Practically everyone was now happier. A man could now get commodities, to the extent that they were available, at the times and in the proportions that he himself wanted them, rather than in the procrustean ratios in which they were originally doled out by the planning commissars.

And many people seemed to value the new freedom to exchange as much as the exchanges themselves. With the same overall production more wants were satisfied. Peter began to sense that this was equivalent to a great increase in production itself. For “production,” as he began to see more clearly than he had before, was not something to be measured by tonnages or volume, but only by the satisfaction of human wants. A thousand tons of something a man couldn’t use was not worth an ounce of something on which his life might depend. A factory “producing” the wrong things could hardly be said to be producing at all.

Peter took care to exploit the political value of this, his first real success. It went against his temperament, but he had decided that not merely his ability to stay in power, but his very life now depended in large part on showmanship. So he conferred more medals on himself, ostensibly in the name of Stalenin; held more air circuses; had himself amply photographed so that his face and figure would become familiar; gave dinners to the high Air Force officers; ordered long editorials written about the benefits that his free exchange system had introduced into Wonworld. Privately he still felt halfashamed. But as he looked forward to the coming showdown between himself and Bolshekov, between his world ideal and Bolshekov’s kind of world, he became a little less fastidious concerning his choice of means.

The free market continued to fascinate him. He learned new lessons from it every day. It had now ceased to quote anything in terms of cigarette coupons; everything was quoted in terms of actual cigarettes. The “price” of anything now meant its price in terms of packages of cigarettes. These became known, in turn, simply as “packs.” Thus when somebody asked “40 packs” for a chair coupon, nobody needed to ask “packs of what?” On the Big Board the quotation would be merely “40.” As there were twenty cigarettes in a package, when people wanted to make a more exact price they would specify, say, 40 packs and 8 cigarettes, or “40 and 8.” The Big Board would simply report this as 40/8.

Peter studied the relation of the Moscow market to the market in other cities and places. These markets were local, both because ration tickets were good for presentation only within a given district, and because people were still forbidden, without passports and specified reasons, to cross the boundary lines of these districts. He found that though there was practically an exact correspondence between prices in the different markets within Moscow, this did not apply to a market in a different district. In such an outside market, permanent differences seemed to exist in the relationship of one price to another, as compared with the relationships in the Moscow markets.

Adams also reluctantly learned lessons from the free market.

“Take this, for instance,” he said to Peter. “You would think that once people had decided what a fair price was, they would stick to it. In yesterday’s market, shirts were selling at 9 and 5; this morning they were 9 and 7; and this afternoon they’re 10 packs flat. Why these ceaseless ups and downs? Why can’t people make up their minds? If 10 packs is a fair price for a shirt, it ought to be that always.”

“Well, Adams, I suppose people’s ideas change of what their wants are. Or maybe new and different people enter the market. A man who has been holding a shirt coupon with every intention of turning it in for a shirt, suddenly decides that he would like more cigarettes instead, either for their own sake or to buy something else. So when he comes to the market the supply of shirts offered is that much bigger. This means that shirts are less scarce and therefore less valuable. At the same time there is a still further demand for cigarettes, which means that people who have cigarettes can get more for them.”

“I don’t quite understand what you mean by these phrases, chief. I notice that you have been using the words ‘supply’ and ‘demand’ lately in senses I don’t believe I ever heard before. Take this word ‘supply.’ It means simply the existing stock of anything, doesn’t it?”

“Well, no... not exactly. In the sense in which I think of it, it means just that part of the existing supply that people are eager or willing to sell at a specified price.”

“And ‘demand’?”

“And in the same way, Adams, the ‘demand’ for anything is not simply the amount of it that people desire, which might be almost unlimited, but the amount that they are willing to take at a particular price.”

“Then both ‘supply’ and ‘demand,’ chief, seem to me rather complicated concepts. Does each mean the goods that people are willing to exchange at certain given ratios for other goods?”

“Precisely,” said Peter. “There’s no use talking about my ‘demand’ for a shirt unless you find out how many packages of cigarettes I’m willing to give up in exchange for one. And if you’re trying to get cigarettes from me, there’s no use talking about my available ‘supply’ of them except in terms of the things for which—and the ratios at which—I am willing to surrender them.”

“Whew!” said Adams. “Then one man’s ‘supply’ is another man’s ‘demand,’ and vice versa? My ‘supply’ means what I’ve got to offer, and my ‘demand’ means what I want in exchange for it, while your ‘supply’ means what you’ve got, which may be what I demand, and your ‘demand’ may be—”

“Right.”

“Well then, does the word ‘supply’ refer as you use it, chief, to an actual physical quantity of something, or does it refer only to something that is determined by the different scales of valuation of different people?”

“Well, we needn’t get into all these subtleties just now,” said Peter,, who was not quite sure what his answer to this should be. “The point I started to make in reply to your original question is really a simple one. You asked why prices change all the time. My answer is that these prices depend on the relations of supply and demand, and supply and demand are volatile things, constantly in flux.”

“It seems to me that you have been shifting your ground a little, chief. It wasn’t so long ago that I was quoting Marx to you, and his theory that the value of commodities depended on the relative working time embodied in them. And we both finally agreed that though the relative amount of working time had something to do with the answer, it was at best grossly oversimplified—because you had to consider the enormous difference in the skills of different workers, and the enormous contribution of land and machinery to the value of the total product. But now you are shifting the base entirely. Now you tell me that the value of different commodities has nothing to do with all the labor and sacrifice embodied in them but is determined simply by the relation of supply and demand.”

“That is right,” said Peter; “and that is the very problem that is now troubling me. I have a hunch that if we could reconcile those two conclusions we would be on the track of something really big.” “I confess I haven’t the slightest idea of what you’re talking about.”

“Adams, try to be a little patient with me for a moment. The worst part of it is not only that I haven’t the answer to the problem, but that I’m not even sure I can formulate the problem itself. I suspect that once we could make the problem clear, we would be halfway on the road to its solution. Let’s try....

“We have now established, in consumers’ commodities,” he went on, “what I have called a free market. Now as a result of that, as a result of allowing everybody to express his wishes freely—by allowing people to exchange whatever they have for whatever they want at ratios that are mutually agreeable to them—we have established certain freely arrived at market ratios, rates or prices. We have found, for example, that a shirt exchanges for approximately 10 packages of cigarettes and a chair for approximately 40, which means that directly or indirectly a chair exchanges for about 4 shirts.... Now then, perhaps we are on the verge of formulating the problem that is troubling me. The fact that a chair exchanges for 4 shirts means that people considered collectively value a chair at four times as much as a shirt. Why?”

“Because it’s harder to get chairs than shirts, chief.” “Correct,” agreed Peter. “Because chairs are scarcer than shirts. But why are they scarcer?” “Because that’s the way the Central Planning Board planned it,” said Adams.

“Yes and no,” replied Peter. “The Central Planning Board did in fact schedule the production of fewer chairs than shirts. But it didn’t say, ‘We shall create a greater scarcity of chairs than shirts in order to make chairs four times as valuable as shirts,’”

“It scheduled fewer chairs than shirts, chief, because people need fewer chairs than shirts. Shirts wear out, get dirty, and have to be changed sooner and more often than chairs. Hence fewer chairs are made than shirts and hence chairs are scarcer than shirts.” For answer Peter picked up a glass ash tray on his desk. “How many shirts do these things change for?”

Adams looked up the market table. “They sell for one pack.”

“That means that they sell for a tenth of a shirt,” said Peter. “Yet they don’t wear out and don’t have to be changed. How many do we produce of them?”

Adams telephoned the Central Planning Board. He learned that all the ash trays came from a single factory, and that fewer of them were turned out each year than chairs.

“So you see?” said Peter. “Yes, chief, but these things take very little labor to produce—”

“So we are back to our problem,” said Peter. “But we get at least to this conclusion. Things are not valued merely in relation to their scarcity. They are valued in relation to how much they are wanted in relation to their scarcity.”

Adams held his head in mock despair of taking in an idea so complex.

“So this leads us closer to the heart of the problem, Adams. And the problem is this: Are we making things in such relation to the wants of the people as to satisfy those wants to the maximum extent possible with the land, labor and machinery at our disposal? In other words, are we creating the maximum value in relation to our existing means of production?”

Adams stared at the ceiling. He seemed to be trying to take in the problem.

“Let me put it this way,” continued Peter, trying to help not only Adams but himself. “Are we wasting, are we misapplying, are we misdirecting, labor, land or machinery in making some things or in making certain quantities of those things, when we might be using the labor, land and machinery better in making other things, or greater quantities of other things, that would meet more wants?”

“I’m just beginning to see the problem,” confessed Adams. “But I would have to see the problem itself in a much sharper focus before I would have any notion of the answer.”

“Well, let’s see whether we can’t get it into a sharper focus,” said Peter. “Marx assumed that the only thing required to produce commodities was labor-time—or at least that everything required to produce commodities could be resolved into simplelabor-time or stated in terms of simple-labor-time-—”

“And we have decided that that was a gross oversimplification,” said Adams.

“Precisely,” agreed Peter. “But we also decided that the comparative labor-time involved in producing different commodities had at least something to do with their relative scarcity and hence with their relative value. We decided that labortime was at least one of the factors that determined this relative scarcity. Now precisely because Marx’s answer was a gross oversimplification, it may help us with our present problem: we often have to simplify problems even to find out what they are. All right, then. Let’s assume for the sake of simplification that Marx was right in contending that all the sacrifices made in producing goods could be reduced to ‘simple average labor time.’ Very well. We find out that, in a free exchange market, people value a chair at four times as much as a shirt. Now if it took just four times as many labor-hours to produce a chair as a shirt, then we would be making equal sacrifices to produce equal satisfactions, equal values, and we would not be misdirecting or wasting labor. But if, on the contrary, it should turn out that it took the same number of labor-hours to produce a shirt that it did to produce a chair, then we would be obviously wasting hours of labor-time in producing shirts, for those labor hours would be producing far more value—in fact, four times as much value—if they were used in producing chairs instead.”

“But we have to have shirts,” protested Adams.

“So we do,” agreed Peter; “but the real question is, how many shirts is it economical to produce compared with how many chairs? For if it took the same number of labor hours to produce a shirt as a chair, then we ought to continue to take labor away from making shirts and put it into making chairs, until chairs become relatively so plentiful, and shirts relatively so scarce, that they exchange in the market at exactly the same price—that is, at a ratio of 1:1.”

“But suppose it actually does take four times as many labor-hours, chief, to produce a chair as a shirt?”

“Then labor is not being wasted,” agreed Peter. “But if it took only four times as many labor-hours to produce a chair as a shirt, and 6 shirts instead of 4 should begin to exchange in the market for a chair, it would mean that we were then wasting labor in producing shirts instead of chairs.”

“I see the problem more clearly,” said Adams; “but I am troubled by something. We had already agreed that Marx was grossly oversimplifying when he contended that ‘simple average labor time’ is the only thing that produces commodities or values.”

“Right,” agreed Peter. “And therefore our answer must be modified. But suppose we take ‘simple average labor time’ symbolically, to stand for all the costs and sacrifices that have gone into production, then it will help to give us the ans—”

He paused, struck by a new approach. “I think we are now in a position to state the problem clearly, Adams. Let me try. On the market we find hundreds of different kinds of consumption goods exchanging at various ratios with each other. At any given moment the ratio of exchange between one kind of goods and another is the same for everybody in the same market. If that market ratio changes, it changes for everybody. These ratios therefore measure the relative values that the consumers, considered collectively, put on these goods.”

“And these ‘collective’ valuations, chief, are, so to speak, the net resultant of individual valuations?”

“Right. Perhaps, also, the collective valuations in turn influence the individual valuations, so that there is a sort of reciprocal determination.... But we don’t need to go into all these complications now. The point is, that if we are not to waste or misdirect labor, land and machinery, we must fulfill several requirements. In the first place, taking any one commodity in isolation, the sacrifices we put into producing it must at least be more than offset by the satisfactions it yields—otherwise at least a part of those sacrifices have been unnecessary; they have been wasted.”

“In other words,” said Adams, “the value of every commodity we make should be greater than the cost of producing it?”

“Exactly,” said Peter; “provided we agree on just what we mean by ‘cost.’ At bottom, costs are subjective. Costs are equal to the value we attach to the satisfactions we have to forego in order to attain the satisfactions we are creating. The cost of production of commodity X, for example, is equal to the value of the product or products that we can’t produce because the labor, time, land, raw materials and so on necessary for their production are used up in producing X.”

Adams seemed to need time to take this in.

Peter continued: “Or we could put the matter in still another way: For every product the value of the output should be greater than the value of the input—otherwise we are wasting resources.”

He lit a cigarette, to give himself time to collect his thoughts.

“The next requirement we must fulfill, Adams, is a little harder to state. The respective costs of production of the hundreds of different commodities should bear exactly the same relationship to each other as the respective prices of these commodities bear to each other in the market. Wherever there is a discrepancy of any kind in these relationships it is a sign that productive resources have been wasted, that some factors of production have been misdirected.”

“In other words, chief, such a discrepancy means that less labor, land, machinery and raw materials should have been devoted to producing, say, commodity A and more to producing commodity B?”

“Exactly,” said Peter. “And now, I think, we are really closing in on the problem. Not only must the total value of our output exceed the total value of our input, but the value of the output of each product must exceed the value of the resources devoted to producing it. And the solution would not be perfect unless for each product the value of the output exceeded the value of the input by the same percentage as for every other product—otherwise we would know that we were producing too much of products A, B, and C and too little of D, E, and F, etc., and that we were wasting productive resources.

“And therefore the problem we face, Adams, may be stated this way. The ideal productive system would be one that produced the maximum overall satisfactions with the minimum overall sacrifices or cost. The hundreds of different consumption goods must be produced in the relative proportions and by the methods that secure this result. Otherwise we are wasting our sacrifices and our resources or failing to obtain the maximum welfare from them.”

Adams thoughtfully stroked his nose. “And we didn’t even see this problem, chief, we didn’t even know it existed, we certainly didn’t know how to formulate it, until we had developed a market in consumption goods.... The problem seemed simple enough when you and I, as the economic dictators, decided what kinds and ratios of goods and services people ought to have. But the minute we gave them the opportunity to put their own relative valuations on these goods, the result began to open our eyes.”

“And now,” resumed Peter, “we can see still another problem that would never have occurred to us before we permitted freedom of exchange. The problem is not merely how to decide what things to produce, and in what proportions to produce them, but how to decide what is the most economical method of producing each of them. In what proportion, for example, ought we to use labor and machinery for producing shirts? Which would be more economical—hand sewing or machine sewing?”

“Obviously machine sewing, chief, is more efficient.”

“It isn’t really more efficient, Adams, unless it is also more economical. And when we start to figure on that, we have to figure first on the cost and time required to make the machines to do the sewing. And if we have to make the machines before we can start the sewing, then the process of production is obviously more round-about than if we start sewing by hand right away.”

Adams held his head again with his hands. “I don’t find it easy to deal with these abstractions, chief. My brain is beginning to sag. Do you mind if we put off the solution of this problem for another day?”

“Not at all,” said Peter. “We have at least got to the statement of the problem, and as we started out by saying, that is probably half the battle.”

Adams left.

Peter’s brain, too, was tired. He buried his face in his hands. Whenever he found himself alone like this, with no problem of his office absorbing his attention, his thoughts returned to Edith. Where could she be? Was she even still alive? What had he left undone to find her? ...

He heard the timid knock of the waitress on the door.

“Come in!”

He sat up.

She entered with the supper tray, spread the napkin on his desk, set the tray softly on it, and went out again with noiseless steps. He hadn’t much appetite, but slowly and dutifully ate what was put before him.

Shortly after he was finished, she knocked and came in again.

“I’ve brought your dessert separately tonight, Your Highness. It’s ice cream. I didn’t want it to melt before you got it, so I had it kept in the refrig—”

“Ordinarily it would look very tempting, comrade. But I just can’t eat anything more tonight.”

“It seems a shame to waste it, Your Highness.”

“No. Maybe somebody else will like it.”

She put the dish of ice cream on the tray, took the tray out and silently closed the door behind her.

A few minutes later he heard a scream.

He flung open the door. It led into a corridor which in turn opened on the kitchen from which his meals were served. Toward the rear of the corridor was a small serving table against the wall. His tray was on this. On the floor by the table the waitress was writhing in agony.

“The ice cream,” she groaned. “It was poisoned. Oh, a doctor... please...”

When the doctor arrived the woman was dead.

Peter noticed again her thin hands and pinched face.