BUDAPEST LETTER
455
mainly from older or miseducated people, and thus it was no more
than a temporary phenomenon.
Fortunately, party members don't altogether share his serenity.
In fact, one of the most refreshing things I found in talking to them
was what I'd call a measure ,of healthy pessimism. "We used to
be–
lieve that people could be changed overnight," an old stalwart told
me, "that they'd work for 'an idea like the community or the future,
if we just explained it to them, that peasants would take their newly–
given lands into kolkhozes in a few years, and workers let us raise
the norms, because it was in their own interests. Of course we were
wrong. People don't change just like that, it's much more difficult.
But, as the joke goes, only the first three hundred years will be
painful." In periodicals, films and books, the cultural scene reproduces
this feeling of doubt, and remorse at murderous mistakes, and a
skepticism about human nature from which the once sacrosanct na–
tional character itself is no longer exempt. Such doubt and pessimism,
purchased through the horrible lesson of 1956 and the soul-searching
that followed, is healthy because among other
things
it prevents a
belief in taboos and an infallible party and thus the totalitarian
impatience whose machinery in the fifties eliminated people for as
little as a difference of opinion. One of the results of this change of
feeling has been the promotion of expertise over sheer party allegiance
in managerial positions throughout the economy, though of course
the Old Guard fights tooth and nail against removal.
Differences, too, are now voiced. Not only in private and semi–
private--such as in the street, in cafes, even in a crowded train–
but also at party meetings, where for instance the furor created by the
unfairness of the new wage and price scales in January, 1966, caused
changes in government decisions. A friend of mine, lecturer in auto–
mation at the University of Budapest, and as such steeped in cyber–
netics, put it this way: "They throw out an idea, then alter it ac–
cording to the reactions of the people. That's feedback." This
is
S9me–
thing new, as cybernetics itself is relatively new to Marxism.
It
in–
dicates a more pragmatic approach, now in the process of general
adoption.
Signs of this are mainly visible in the economy, where that ques–
tion about free enterprise is being asked. They're at last facing the
paralyzing effects of absolute centralization, together with the somber
fact that there's as yet no substitute for the profit motive, without
which managerial outfits have turned into indifferent bureaucracies
