The Dark Lessons of Utopia; A. Kozinksi

Having left the popular vision of Utopia-a country whose government attempted to solve everyone's problems-only a few years earlier, I found this naive, or worse. And I said so, often and forcefully,to the dismay of my colleagues and professors who thought I was much too smart to hold such troglodyte views. When I confronted them with the hard reality of what life was like behind the Iron Curtain, I received various eva sive or glib answers: "You have to give collec tivism a chance to work," or "there are different forms of collectivism," or "Romania and the oth er eastern bloc countries would do better if they were more like Sweden." "You're exaggerating," Judge Kozinski, who sits on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, left Romania in 1961 at age 11. An earlier version of this article appeared in The University of Chicago Law Review, vol. 58 (Spring 1991). Copyright © 1991 by Alex Kozinski.

still others would argue, "at least they don't have crime, racism, pollution, and huge disparities in wealth, the way we do." And so on. In the years I spent at UCLA, I doubt I managed to wean even three people away from the sweet morphia of col lectivism. Faith in the power of benevolent gov ernment is very difficult to shake. Events in Eastern Europe over the last few years should prove an embarrassment to many. People in this country should be reconsidering their fundamental assumptions about what gov ernment can and should do, and what it should not. Surprisingly,this has not happened. Government at all levels grows bigger and more powerful; it absorbs more of our productive resources than ever before; and its involvement in our ~aily lives increases unabated. Even as the peoples of East ern Europe strive to establish free market economies, implement private property rights, and diminish the role of government, the United States continues on a path headed in the opposite direction. We have been so busy gloating over the triumph of our system, and so anxious to offer the Eastern Europeans adviceon how to run their new lives,that we have hardly paused to consider what.

we might learn from their bitter experience. In all likelihood, the people of Eastern Europe will do just fine, despite some of the bad advice that may come from the West. Having lived through the dreary hopelessness of collectivism, they will eventually and unavoidably turn to free markets and private property. The transition to capitalism may take time, it may be painful, but it is inexorable.

The more pressing question is: How about us? Are we to learn anything at all from the disaster that befell hundreds of millions of people for so many decades? I posed this question to a friend of mine, a committed statist. Her answer was sim ple and not particularly encouraging: "What we have learned from the experience of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union," she told me, "is that you need capitalism to make socialism work." In other words, capitalism must produce what socialism is to distribute. That, in essence, is the lesson many of our policymakers draw from the cracking of the Iron Curtain and the waste land we have discovered behind it: So long as you leave production in private hands, more or less, you can let the government do whatever med dling it cares to. The idea that things may be improved by decreasing government involve ment in the economy-and in every other aspect of our livesis still viewed as a quaint eccentric ity, a pre-New Deal anachronism.

It is tempting to say that I am describing a phe nomenon limited to a tiny liberal elite-a view popular only inside the Washington Beltway, in a few state capitals, and on college campuses. It's tempting, but it's not true. We, no less than any other nation, have the government we deserve. The fact is, the vocabulary of political dialogue in the United States is undergirded by a variety of statist assumptions: Solutions to social problems begin with government appropriations and the establishment of blue-ribbon government task forces, new agencies are needed to handle new problems or oversee new industries, and budgets of existing agencies cannot be cut without jeopar dizing their missions. Based on these assumptions, we believe that a successful President is one who gets most of his legislative program passed, a successful legislator is one who authors bills that reach the statute books, and a landmark Congress is one that passes a lot of laws. No one gets elected on a promise to do nothing; few incumbents campaign by listing laws they have managed to get repealed. When a problem arises-whether economic dislocation, a natural disaster, a dreaded disease, an infestation of rodents, or a water shortage-politicians fall all over themselves to get on television and explain how they plan to spend taxpayers' money to solve it. I can't remember a single time when a journalist or constituent asked a public officialabout a prob59 lem, no matter how trivial, and the politician answered that it wasn't any of his business.

In a society that prides itself on individualism, self-reliance, personal initiative, and indepen dence, we consistently elect officialswhose instinct is to solve our problems through government pro grams. Few people, it seems, have seen a connec tion between what's happening in Eastern Europe and what's going on here. Perhaps it's time to state the obvious. Collectivismand Freedom: NaturalEnemies The liftingof the Iron Curtain has revealed soci eties that are the very antithesis of what Marxist ideology and its American apologists had predict ed. The theory of collectivism, in one of its many variants, posits that people are naturally hard working and productive, regardless of economic reward. If the government assures that people receive a decent living and if it allows them total freedom to choose their vocations, everything will get done through volunteer labor and, as the slo gan goes, the fruits of production will go "from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs."

In light of recent events-or even simple com mon sense-it is difficult to understand how edu cated, supposedly intelligent human beings could clingto this notion. Youdon't need clairvoyance to realize that a system of total free choice divorced from economic incentives would produce a vast overabundance of restaurant critics, movie stars, and surfing instructors, but a drastic shortage of rendering-plant workers, highway-button layers, and septic-tank cleaners. On the consumption side, one would expect people to eat filet mignon instead of Spam, to drive Cadillacs instead of rid ing buses, and to shop at I. Magnin instead of K Mart. Without a price system to allocate resources and create incentives, there is no way to match up sup ply and demand, talent and job requirements. One of the most serious problems facing Eastern Euro pean policymakers may be grasping the funda mental role of the pricing system in spurring sup ply and tempering demand.

Just how little they understand the workings of the invisible hand was demonstrated to me in a conversation I had with an economist during my 60 THE FREEMAN • FEBRUARY 1992 visit to post-revolutionary Romania. I suggested that the most important thing would be for the government to get resources into private hands by sale, gift, or lottery-the initial allocation mecha nisms mattered little. He agreed in theory, but was concerned over what would happen if all the land were in the hands of private farmers and one year they happened to grow too much rice and too little wheat to sustain the population. He concluded that this was a risk Romania could not take. Even if one assumes a central authority with the efficiency of a computer and a superhuman ability to perceive everyone's abilities and prefer ences, there is no way to make it all work because things just can't be matched up. And, of course, they weren't. The Fabian notion that the state would wither away as everyone went about doing what they were supposed to and consumed no more than what they "needed" gave way in col lectivist economies to perpetual shortages, mandatory 50-, 60-, or 70-hour work weeks, appalling medical care, and a police state of mon strous proportions. Massive resource misalloca tions, shoddy workmanship, and allocation of goods by favoritism, graft, and queueing became the hallmarks of the collectivist state. Collectivist agriculture was a disaster due to chronic labor and capital equipment shortages. And while the government officials attempted to control all aspects of the economy, they neglected the harm that industry and agriculture inflicted on the environment.

But, in the words of Joe E. Brown, nobody's perfect. Even if collectivist economies did not perform up to par, the tradeoff might have been acceptable if they had achieved some of social ism's other goals. Collectivism, after all, promised brotherhood first and abundance only second. All might have been forgiven if collectivism had brought about a happier, more tranquil, less har ried existence. It is better to be poor and happy than rich and miserable, although admittedly it's a close call. But it is precisely in this respect that collectivism had its most stunning failures. By every conceivable standard, collectivist states fell short of their expectations, failing to provide even a minimally acceptable quality of life to their citizens. Consider the promise of equality. Collectivist theory teaches that differences in wealth and pow er must be leveled so that everyone stands on an equal footing: the janitor and the company presi dent, the peasant and the commissar, the septic tank cleaner and the Secretary General. All citi zens would call each other comrade because they would each be considered equally important in carrying out the glorious mission of the collectivist state.

StratifiedSocieties To articulate the proposition, however, is to ridicule it. Few modern societies have been as stratified as those under collectivist rule. In the Eastern European countries that were under such rule, the same people controlled both the political and the economic power. This powerful elite demanded and enjoyed a high standard of living for themselves, leaving the rest of society with a standard of livingthat was appallingly low. In the Soviet Union, for example, members of the party elite were and continue to be entitled to a variety of privileges, including better food, schools, and housing, in addition to the use of ser vants, cars, and party-owned vacation homes. They shop in special stores that stock higher quality food, scarce consumer goods, and luxury items. The higher the official's rank, the higher quality special store he can enter. The Soviet model is a typical arrangement in collectivist economies.

No less striking were the inequities perpetrated on the basis of immutable characteristics such as ethnicity, religion, and gender. Stories about the official Romanian persecution of ethnic Hungari ans are now commonplace. Less welldocumented, but far more pervasive, was the harassment by straw bosses at all levels against employees under their control. An individual's job in a collectivist economy is often that person's only opportunity for earning a livelihood. Because a state-controlled economy does not allow for competition among enterprises in the same industry, an employee cannot just switch to working the same job for a competitor; a job change often requires a change in industry and the acquisition of new job skills.Because employ ees were largely immobile under the collectivist regimes, they were at the mercy of their supervi sors' demands, reasonable or unreasonable. In most cases, the collectivist state reinforced the boss's tyrannical authority by making unemployment an economic crime against the state, often labeled "parasitism," which carried significant penalties. While employees had a right to fair treatment, at least in theory, the universal practice was to the contrary. Ethnic and religious discrimi nation was a well-known reality; sexual harass ment a fact of life.

I recall vividly how I first learned the extent of this problem. During a trip back to Romania in the early '70s, I struck up a conversation with a man in a small town near Timisoara. He had two grown children, a son and a daughter. I asked whether they were going to the university. He said yes as to the daughter, but no as to the son. I asked whether his daughter was a lot smarter than his son. He said no, but added that it's far better to step with your boot into cow manure than to take off your boot and fill it with manure. I must have looked baffled because he explained: The son would take care of himself, but the daughter, unless she was armed with a superior education, would be constantly harassed for sexual favors by her superiors. I asked him how he knew. He responded that he was him self a supervisor. Freedom:An IndivisibleConcept Collectivist societies, as we are now well aware, largely obliterated the liberties and privileges we consider essential in a civilized society: speech, religion, assembly, access to the courts, privacy of body and place of abode. This all-encompassing repression was a direct consequence of the collec tivist economic systems. The governments gained complete and pervasive control over their citizens largely because they controlled all production pro cesses, all channels of commerce, and all means of transportation. Every citizen knew that his job, food, home, medical care, and means of trans portation-everything he needed to survive were provided, and could be cut off, by the govern ment. These societies perfectly illustrated the idea that freedom is an indivisible concept: Economic freedom is intimately related to, and is a prerequi site for, other types of freedom. Political and intel lectual freedom cannot be achieved without eco nomic freedom.

In Romania, for example, the economic system made it virtually impossible for an individual to publish or broadcast his views.Private citizens did not have access to printing presses and could not THE DARK LESSONS OF UTOPIA 61 obtain sufficient paper or ink. The government even outlawed private ownership of photocopiers and required registration of typewriters. And indi viduals certainly did not have access to broadcast ing facilities. Similarly,the Romanian people could not prac tice their religions-even clandestinely-because the government made sure they lacked the neces sary texts and ceremonial articles. A further impediment to any semblance of religious life was the lack of leisure time. Between long work hours and the time spent scrambling for the rudiments of survival, laboring for the state on weekends, and attending political rallies, Romanians rarely had time for anything else.

The economic deprivation and lack of free mar kets under the collective regimes also interfered with personal privacy in ways that would shock Americans. In our society, individuals demand their own space and consider their homes to be their castles. But how much can personal privacy mean in Romania and other Eastern European countries, where several families often live in one apartment and share one toilet (which mayor may not work)? In Romania under Ceausescu, the cit izens never really knew when their phone lines were tapped, whether their workplaces and homes were bugged, or whether their mail had been read by government officials. I learned the extent of this type of intrusion when I corresponded with friends in Romania dur ing the early '70s. One day I received a letter writ ten in Romania but postmarked in Germany. Not signed, the letter directed me to discontinue writ ing to friends in Romania because the correspon dence was placing them in dat;lger.I was baffled by the request because it did not specifywhich friends I should stop writing to. It was not until some years later, when I next visited Romania, that I learned what had happened: Each person I had been writ ing to had been questioned by the police about the correspondence. One friend became so concerned that he gave my address to people who were plan ning to visit Germany so they could tell me to stop writing. Even though the letter was to be sent from outside of Romania, he was reluctant to give his name.

Similarly, fundamental decisions regarding reproduction and sexuality couldn't be matters of individual choice because modern means of con traception were unavailable, even where permit62 THE FREEMAN • FEBRUARY 1992 ted by law. In short, state control permeated virtu ally every aspect of personal, family, and commu nity life. Far worse than the individual effects of these measures was the total loss of dignity visited upon the population. Life in a collectivist economy was one long struggle for survival. For the multitudes who were not members of the ruling elite, day-to day existence meant long hours of menial work at low pay, followed by more long hours waiting in lines for such luxuries as bread, fresh meat, and toi let paper. Weekends were often spent doing "vol unteer" work, repairing roads or clearing corn fields for the government. At every turn, the individual was confronted with powerful, mean-spirited representatives of the state who threatened abuse if they weren't paid off in money or black market luxuries, such as coffee or Western cigarettes. Medical care, which was supposedly everybody's right, often could not be obtained at all, and never without greasing the palm of the dispensing physician or paramedic. SUCIl power could only be wielded because all channels of authority originated in the state. There were no private alternatives, no way to circumvent the state-established and maintained power structure.

Another of the monumental failures of the col lectivist system was education. While, in theory, collectivism assured everyone the right to pursue whatever career their talents warranted, the reality was much different. As part of the central planning process, the state determined each year how many doctors, lawyers,engineers, mathemati cians, and architects would be needed. The num ber was usually far less than the number of young people wishing to enter the field. The choke point for a young person's career hopes usually came in the summer following graduation from high school. Those students hoping for a college education applied for the few available university positions; admission deci sions were ostensibly made by use of standard ized test scores. In practice, many university slots, like everything else, were allocated to those whose parents had connections or were willing and able to bribe university officials with large sums of money or exotic luxuries. The few remaining spots went to the very ablest of the large groups of applicants.

The government denied the multitude who were not lucky enough to get into the university any opportunity to work in their chosen field. For them, all possibility of professional development was cut off; they were relegated to life on an assembly line or some other unskilled or semi skilled work. Every summer, tens of thousands of aspiring high school graduates saw their lives liter ally crumble before their eyes, any hope for a ful fillingcareer and economic improvement snatched away from them forever. Examples of major and minor ways in which collectivist society frustrated individual develop ment could easily fill several volumes. The degree of frustration, personal humiliation, and economic deprivation suffered by the many millions of peo ple imprisoned behind the Iron Curtain is difficult to comprehend by those who have never lived under that system. Suffice to say that the reality of the system in operation crushed with a vengeance any idealistic aspirations collectivist planners may have had in establishing and promoting centrally planned societies.

It Couldn'tHappen Here Or Could It? In surveying the rubble left by decades of collec tivist rule in Eastern Europe, it is easy to forget that the system relied on a high-minded and ideal istic premise, namely, that by placing power in the hands of the state and taking it away from individ uals, one would achieve a more just, more prosper 0us' better-ordered society. Going at least as far back as Thomas More, there has been a pervasive and hardy notion that wht!ltindividuals can do sep arately, by pursuing their own individual interests, the state could do much better if only it had the resources and the authority to make the same deci sions in a centralized fashion. Many of the individ uals who supported collectivism in Eastern Europe, and who worked and fought for its imple mentation, were firmly convinced that they were helping to found Utopia. How, then, did things go so wrong so quickly?

One could dismiss the entire collectivist experi ment as a poor job of implementation, a good idea badly carried out. To do so, however,is to sell short the idealism and goodwillwith which many collec tivist societies were founded, and to shut one's eyes to what happened once the state took it upon itself to run every aspect of the social order.

THE DARK LESSONS OF UTOPIA 63 The problem lay not with the implementation of collectivism, but with its central premise. Quite simply,the state cannot take on the job of making all, or even a substantial number, of the important decisions in a society.The government can make and enforce laws, it can police, it can adjudicate, but it cannot decide what is in every body's best interests. People's talents, needs, aspirations, goals, and limitations are too diverse and conflicting for any central authority to take into account. And even if it could, that power would carry the seeds of its own destruction. An essential aspect of life as a human being is the right and the power to make decisions about one's exis tence, to succeed or fail on one's own merits. Utopia carried its own resounding refutation. Even if one shared More's assumptions about what constitutes an ideal society, who would want to live there? A system that does not allow for failure also does not allow for the self-fulfill ment that comes from striving; failure on one's own terms can be far sweeter than bland security.

What purpose is there in living if all essential decisions from cradle to grave are made by someone else? Concentrating power in one central authority carries with it more palpable dangers as well. As should be clear by now, the state cannot repeal the laws of economics; there is no fixed demand for shoes, bread, automobiles, leisure, or any other resource, and no fixed supply of people willing and able to engage in particular occupa tions. The only satisfactory way of matching up supply and demand for goods and services is through a pricing mechanism that allows individ uals to take account of opportunity costs when making decisions that collectivism would assign to the state. Finally, there is grave danger in placing too much power in the hands of a few individuals. Honesty and good will can only go so far in pre venting abuses of power.The sad experience of the collectivist economies proves what should have been obvious all along: Unless a society has com peting sources of power, those in control will take advantage of their authority to promote them selvesand their friends at the expense of everyone else.

These lessons appear remote and irrelevant to our situation because we are a long way from a collectivistsociety.We rely, for the most part, on 64 THE FREEMAN • FEBRUARY 1992 capitalism to furnish goods and provide employ ment; we have a system of limited government, with a Constitution and laws to constrain our pub lic officials; and the government power that does exist is balanced in many respects by the power of private entities, civicand commercial. We seem to be far indeed from the types of societies that we have seen crumbling in Eastern Europe. Unfortunately, however, we appear to be head ed in that general direction. We may be safe for some time and, indeed, our system may have enough safeguards to keep us from ever getting there completely. But to the extent we seem to be adopting some of the operating assumptions of collectivist societies, we risk making some of the same mistakes-mistakes that may cost us dearly in the long run.

PromisesWithoutPremise The architects of collectivismsought to achieve goals that are not all that different from those most people consider desirable. Collectivism promised prosperity and sought to achieve it by avoiding the "chaos" of capitalism and substituting the more orderly-and hence more "efficient"-system of government planning. Collectivism promised greater individual self-fulfillment by freeing per sons of the economic pressures of a market society. Equality in wealth, status, and power among indi viduals is another goal central to a collectivist sys tem; so is the right to be free from hunger, home lessness, or inadequate medical care. While one may reasonably dispute whether all of these goals are the proper objects of government control, few would disagree that they are desirable attributes of a modern society. There is only a very small step, however, between recognizing a goal as desirable and con cluding that it is one that government should pro mote. And it is only a very tiny step further to say that, if the goal is so desirable, perhaps we can shift the cost of achieving it to someone else in society. The two small steps are so simple,and by now so reflexive, that most policymakers hardly bother to articulate them. Yet they are a prescrip tion for a limitless expansion of government authority. There is an endless supply of problems we would love to have solved at the other fellow's expense. And the other fellow,of course, feels the same way.