Capitol Ideas/Habernus Vigorbachev

...The only way out of the socialist impasse is decentralization-which also gets you out of socialism itself...

...How revealing, in any event, that it is the circumvention of the Communist system ("corruption"), rather than the system itself, that our media pundits object to...

...The press corps showed a kind of subdued enthusiasm for the idea that the new Soviet despot would be able to crowd Reagan off the airwaves by sheer magnetism...

...Reagan need hardly worry on the image front, of course...

...The word "leader" itself suggests how widespread is the undeclared sympathy for small-c Communism among our patriotism pressies...

...In the Soviet Union, by contrast (let * us not call it Russia, which does not exist, even though there are Russians...

...But what are these people doing...

...Then everything will work wonderfully...

...Socialism does not work and cannot work as planned because it is impossible to get more than a small amount of information into Command Central...

...On the day after the great event, the Washington Post seemed positively festive, triumphantly proclaiming secular liberalism's Habemus Papam: "GORBACHEV BECOMES SOVIET LEADER HOURS AFTER CHER-NENKO DIES AT 73...

...Several thoughts came to mind as I surveyed the media coverage of the latest Kremlin transition...

...Some optimists imagine that this might actually happen because they have persuaded themselves that those who call themselves Communists don't really believe in Communism...

...To widen the bottleneck, and increase the quantity of information reaching the command post, and in particular to put this information in order of precedence (some things are more important than others), the Great Helmsman, or the Man in the Oval Office, could hire a lot of staff...

...But that means depriving enormous numbers of officials of their jobs...

...Now Reagan cannot count on having things his own way on the propaganda level," wrote Newsweek, apparently believing that its Tom Bethell is The American Spectator's Washington correspondent...

...My impression is that Gorbachev already tried such Draconian remedies when he was in charge of agriculture- with disastrous results...

...press...

...As Joseph Sobran pointed out a few days after Chernenko's death, the one thing you couldn't find anywhere in the media coverage was a word of criticism of the socialist ideology, which gives shape, energy, and direction to the Soviet "government...

...A lot of money is spent in Washington trying to solve this intriguing problem...

...Obviously, there are potentially a billion times more messages than he can ever absorb...

...Gorbachev will soon be seen for what he is-the cai di capi of the Kremlin Crime Syndicate...

...For Kaiser the bureaucracy is "entrenched" and Gorbachev (he has "youth" and "human appeal," let us not forget) will be able to "confront and conquer" the bureaucrats' "parochial interests...

...Pretty soon you would have, what...

...Nevertheless, this information must get there if the Great Helmsmen are to know what commands they have to give to make everything work properly...

...Also, decentralizing decision-making goes against the tenets of Communist ideology, which is to say socialist ideology...

...Well, of course, he could make things far worse than they already are...

...Moreover, he will bring in "younger men" who will be "more effective administrators" because they will be "products of an entirely different background," Kaiser assures us...

...In somewhat smaller type, the New York Times suggested that socialism's latest Pope was already hard at work: "New Leader, 54, Loses No Time to Announce His Own Program...

...Now he tells us...

...In the Kremlin this has been the case since 1977, Kaiser says...

...This point is at least understood by those Washingtonians who have given some thought to the following problem: How do you get a message to the man in the Oval Office...

...To understand this, three concepts have to be borne in mind: bottlenecks, bureaucracy, and corruption...

...The frail, white-thatched, out-of-breath Chernenko came across as about.as harmless a Kremlin figure as we are likely to find...

...Kaiser in much of what he writes conveys a sense of bitter resentment of America, and I notice that he at the same time urges us to adopt measures that would increase the power wielded by Washington over the rest of the country...

...They are breaking the law...

...That was Yuri Andropov's solution: crackdown...

...No one mentions this, of course, but there is in the first place an amazing amount of power-worship among our senior media patriots...

...He believes in force, obviously, and the Western media will be urging him on...

...Closing off these bypass operations could prove fatal...

...But now (oh happy day) . . . Habemus Helmsman...

...A have a horrible feeling that I have said this before, and I do know for sure that it will not make the tiniest impression on true believers, but I will say it again as simply as possible (and doff my cap once again to Von Mises and Friedrich Hayek...

...And that must be stopped if the system is to work as it was designed to work by Comrade Marx and Comrade Lenin...

...And there was more than a hint of relish in Mary McGrory's observation that the "focused" and "plausible" Gorbachev had "enormous potential as a wedge-driver in the West...

...The "leader" of a country whose subjects must be prevented from running away by barbed wire, walls, and guards might more appropriately be called a dictator or a despot...

...So in order to stop corruption you crack the whip, shoot a few people- and restore the bottlenecks...

...Both have the same defining traits: hostility to property, family, and religion, and an endless struggle to atomize the citizenry and make each interchangeable person equally dependent on the state...

...Too much bureaucracy...

...Its leaders have been infirm...

...And believe me, Kaiser greatly admires Andropov's "campaign against sloth and corruption," conducted when he was a mere shadow of his former self, an "old, worn out man...

...This may not be totally impossible (China seems to be attempting the feat) but it is exceedingly difficult, especially when you realize that those who hold these jobs are members of something called the Communist party (remember that...

...THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MAY 1985 coverage of Reagan has been doting, that of Chernenko and Andropov critical...

...But such ugly labels are reserved exclusively for anti-socialist heads of state, as a check with the Nexis computer retrieval system will show...

...If you have a decrepit pilot you can expect the ship to go off course...

...Bureaucracy, right...

...Corruption" is afoot in the land...

...The cliche now is that the "vigorous" Gorbachev, aided perhaps by his chic wife, will be able to "cut through" it...

...The truth is, it is very difficult to transmit information in a command economy without prices (information-transmitting devices...

...It is only because "corruption"-facilitated activities occur outside official channels that socialism ticks over at all...

...Harrison Salisbury suggested on the "CBS Morning News," quite erroneously, that maybe the new Helmsman will simply sweep the bureaucracy away...

...One day I spotted Washington Post associate editor Robert Kaiser on the "CBS Morning News" doing a growly-voiced imitation of his boss, Ben Bradlee...

...A decline of that magnitude almost certainly suggests a successful campaign against "corruption...

...If liberals believe in Communism, I don't see why Commies wouldn't...

...Carried beyond a certain point decentralization converts a black market into a free market, and state property into private property...

...I think it is the comparative power-lessness of leftist intellectuals that so drives them up the wall when they contemplate America...

...Now think of what Vigorbachev might achieve if he were to follow the Andropov model...

...Now, try to imagine how the U.S...

...A few days later, Kaiser wrote an astonishing article for the paper's "Outlook" section ("Now Russia Will Change") revealing that "our Great Communicator in Washington may finally have a serious rival...

...That Gorbachev's relative youth should excite so much enthusiasm is another indicator of the surreptitious faith in socialism that pervades so much of American intellectual life...

...Make no mistake, that is one of the main reasons why Communism is so tremendously appealing to Western intellectuals...

...But Gorbachev was promoted nonetheless, and he could try it again...

...That indeed is a possible solution to the design flaw in the socialist model...

...Now imagine that as a way of circumventing the bottleneck people start exchanging things and making things without going through authorized channels-without getting permission from the top...

...CAPITOL IDEAS HABEMUS VIGORBACHEV by Tom Bethell When the black smoke emerged from the Kremlin chimney, announcing Mikhail Gorbachev's victory in the latest power struggle, sympathetic vibrations were set up in the U.S...

...Grain production declined from 237 million tons to 170 million tons between 1978-84...

...We will then toil cooperatively for the common good, the granaries will be full, and of course the planners will go to their dachas on the weekends...

...Imagine Reagan alone in the White House, trying to decide which piece of mail to open next...

...I think otherwise...

...Kaiser has been the Fosfs Moscow correspondent, but he shows here and elsewhere that he does not understand why the Soviet system cannot work in practice, why age has nothing to do with the real problem, and why it is almost impossible to change the system in such a way that it can be made to work...

...Now you can see why there are "bottlenecks" in the Soviet economy...

...Decentralization means making formerly "corrupt" activities legal...

...By the sheer vigor of his commands, Gorbachev will set things right again...

...economy would work if no one was allowed to do anything until he got permission from the White House...

...Now do you see why socialism hasn't been working so well lately...

...Socialist ideology is based on the belief that a centrally situated genius, or at any rate a group of such people, can devise and ordain a benign and rational plan of existence for the rest of us...

...Modern liberalism yearns and strives to transform itself into Communism...

...Without bureaucracy it would be totally impossible and the system would come to a complete halt...

...just as there are Palestinians but no Palestine), they really did make a huge effort to get everything under control: to centralize power, to set up a Central Planning authority, and to give the intellectuals their rightful role under the sun, namely, bossing everybody else about...

...And what do our homegrown Kremlinologists think is wrong with the Soviet system...

...There would be a very bad "bottleneck" at the White House...

...So, to make the Communist system work, all Gorbachev would have to do would be to break up the Communist party, deprive its members of jobs, and say farewell to its reigning jdeology...

...And this is a perfectly reasonable excuse if you believe the underlying theory...

...This is not merely a polite refusal to criticize others- to "impose our views"-as fierce and daily denunciations of South Africa tell us...

...It is, rather, a tacit recognition of the strong affinity between contemporary liberalism and Communism itself, which are in reality nothing more than different ontogenetic stages of the same organic whole...

...The impression that he and some other journalists convey is one of utter frustration at the independence conferred by the decentralized American system-resulting in the most frightful ticky-tackies rushing about making millions without so much as having to get permission from Washington first...

...Alas, there are pitfalls: Old age will come to the best of us, even central planners and Great Helmsmen...

...No such permission could be given, of course, until the White House received detailed information from the hinterland, understood all the economic difficulties, and devised plans to solve them...

...And hardly a word is whispered about the incredible brutality of the Soviet system of "government," which obviously is not really a government in the sense that we use the word...