278
DANIEL BELL
ment benefits the particular capitalist enterprises, which want to
beat down wages; here, unemployment would become a social bene–
fit." Besides, he continued, one cannot use any overt coercion
against the workers; no one can go back to .the Stalinist period. Nor
does the regime have enough consumer goods to use as incentives.
As a practical fact, a measure of unemployment might have to
serve as a coercive device. His answer was a highly sophi!;ticated
one. It was, in fact, the answer of every ruling class that tries to
justify economic growth through "primitive accumulation."
The economic situation, he continued, led directly to ideology.
An increase in economic pressure was bound to create resistance
and grumbling, and one had to take steps beforehand to minimize
criticism, or at least constrict the areas of free discussion. "This .is
a Communist country," he said, "but only fifteen per cent of the
professors are Communists; eighty-five per cent are non-Marxist.
The government knows this, and cannot let it go on." There would
be no retaliations. Even' during the
severes~
repressions, he said,
only fifteen professors had not been allowed to teach, and they had
continued to receive their university salaries throughout that entire
period. But no one was killed. "In the Univers·ities today," Schaff
said, "a student can study sociology for five years and never read
Marx. This will now change."
I told Urban that I was not as much of a Marxist as he, and
that the Polish experience itself seemed to be the best particular
disproof of Marxism. The intellectuals had accepted the economic
foundations of Socialist society, I pointed out, but what repelled
them was the "superstructure." Wasn't it precisely the difference in
cultural taste-especially the unwillingness to accept Russian paint–
ing, literature and architecture-that produced the sense of revolt?
Furthermore, Gomulka had missed a wonderful tactical advantage
when he was trying to defend Poland's special solution against the
Russians: after all, I pointed out, there is excellent historical prece–
dent for upholding the idea of "Socialism in a single country." To
these tongue-in-cheek paradoxes, Urban replied with a
mot:
The
Yugoslavs say they are different from the Russians, but are the
same; the Poles say they are the same as the Russians, but are dif–
ferent.
We returned to the library for coffee and brandy. Urban's
