274
DANIEL
BELL
After the war, he had been imprisoned by the regime. "My crime,"
he said smilingly, "was to belong to a study circle that was inter–
ested in' praxiology!" Ironically, if there was ever a subject that was
at the furthest remove from politics it is praxiology, a branch of ab–
stract logic, elaborated by the great Polish logician Kotarbinsky,
which .deals with the nature of rational choice.
If
one took, I sup–
pose, the elements of utility theory, von Neumann game theory,
and the mathematical models-of-organization theory, and tried to'
find some general class of logical thought that subsumed all three,
one might have some notion of the abstract reaches of praxiology.
Yet the very idea of studying logic and rational choice could
be
considered threatening, especially to a regime built on absurdity.
After October, Q. came out of isolation, and was able to obtain
a small research job. He was not active politically, although he at–
tended meetings at the Krzywe Kolo (the Crooked Circle), a dis–
cussion group organized by people who had met privately for poli–
tical discussion during the Stalinist period and which later merged
with the group at
Po Prostu,
the Communist youth newspaper,
which had taken the initiative in spreading the idea of workers'
councils.
Q.
felt that although Krzywe Kolo had once exerted con–
siderable intellectual force, it was now impotent, and that the
regime permitted it to continue in part as a means of "letting off
steam" and in part as a means of keeping watch on dissident intel–
lectuals. A wide range of topics was discussed at the Krzywe Kolo,
from abstract art to foreign policy. The only time the government
had openly interfered was when the club had scheduled a discussion
on prewar Fascist tendencies in Poland, for this meant, as everyone
knew, a public expose of Boleslaw Piasecki and PAX, the controlled
"Catholic" organization the regime sponsored as a rival to the
Church. Piasecki, a leader of the prewar Falanga, a 'Polish Fascist
organization, had been installed by the Communist regime as head
of a government-controlled publishing house called PAX, and Pia–
secki had become a powerful political figure
in
Poland, running a
whole series of enterprises from PAX. It was permitted to talk about
Stalinism at the KrZywe Kolo, but not about Fascism. No wonder
that a crooked circle was the only straight line in Poland.
Q.
considered himself a Social Democrat, and was proud of the
fact. He commented wryly, but without a trace of bitterness, that
