CHAPTER 11

Forging the Future
/T IS ONLT A STEP FROM SPECULATION TO PLANNING— BUT A very big one. For while the speculator is a small-time planner without any influence on the objects of his speculation, the real planner tries to bring these objects into existence by his own actions — to realise the conditions which will make his predictions come true.
Every language has often confused the two concepts, mis- taking the "planner" for the mere "schemer". Thus, in ancient Rome, planus meant adventurer, vagabond, juggler, or charlatan, and in the 17th and 18th centuries, people who travelled about propagating a plan were derogatorily called "project-makers", though it was due to them that such important institutions as the Bank of England were born, and though the world would have been very much poorer without them.
Nevertheless, there are good reasons why planners have always been disliked. Not only did so many of their plans prove so many expensive illusions, but they have always taken the future much too much for granted. Ordinary people much prefer to plan the future in small doses, while most planners want to take it by storm. All plans must therefore overcome the initial inertia of the masses, which explains why they are most popular when the masses are most unsettled, for instance during the great depression.
Rearmament plans
Inertia can only be overcome by force, and not surprisingly, therefore, the first great plans were plans of war. Before declaring war, a country had to be armed and, at a time when there were no standing armies, military campaigns involved making far more radical inroads into the nation's economy and
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way of life than they do today. Building and equipping a navy, for instance, had far greater economic repercussions than the building of atom bombs in our time. Entire forests had to be cut down, thousands of people were press-ganged into arms production, produce was requisitioned — in short, the whole economy was stood on its head according to an official master plan.
The feudal system lent itself most readily to the speedy execution of such plans, since serfs were used to doing what they were told. However, since it fell to different feudal lords to supply fully equipped contingents of troops, it was never quite certain how big the total striking force would be. Even the first standing armies, which were formed during the Renaissance, were too weak to deal with external foes and had to be supple- mented by auxiliaries during emergencies. As the state was unable to solve this problem by itself, individuals took over the task of recruiting. Such men were known as condottieri, profes- sional military captains, and they raised troops for princes-at-war right up to the 17th century. Their most famous German representative was Wallenstein, a great general but an even greater businessman and planner.
When governments began to fear the political dangers in- volved, they introduced a slight change: henceforth they would make the recruitment and equipment plan themselves, and leave only its execution in the hands of private entrepreneurs, of munitionnaires generaux, as the first big-business men of all time were called. Only after the Napoleonic wars was a stop put to even this form of activity. Governments now did their own recruiting and equipping and gave their orders direct to the arms industry.
The state could only do this, after it had subjected its own finances to a very strict plan. No longer was it possible to tax the people only when the coffers were empty. Large-scale military expenditure — the greatest drain on the state's resources — forced governments to estimate next year's military programme in advance, even in peacetime. Thus, in England, the Chancellor of the Exchequer has presented Parliament with an annual budget ever since 1799, though his early budgets were more in the nature of a review of past events than of a plan for the future.
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Planning the nation's economy
The original idea of a budget of next year's revenue and expenditure came from France. Its originator was the Baron Joseph-Dominique Louis (1755-1837) who managed to cure France's financial troubles after the Napoleonic wars. Like his protector Talleyrand, Louis was a former priest. Though a convinced liberal, Baron Louis felt that the state had a right to tax the people according to its future needs. Since France had an annual expenditure of nearly 1000 million gold francs — an astronomical amount in those days — his was a gigantic task.
The Baron's first problem was to find a method of assessing the nation — a very ticklish business, particularly when the effects of changes in taxation were not known, and all the experts were at loggerheads. In the end. President Villele decreed that the known figures from the year before were to be the basis for next year's budget. Despite the fact that, in the intervening year the entire economic position might have changed radically, Villele's rather primitive "penultimate year method" proved so successful — and not in France alone — that it remained common practice for a hundred years.
The secret of its success was due to its inherent error, for, as it turned out, the national revenue increased from year to year, except during severe crises. Revenue was therefore under- estimated, and expenditure kept correspondingly low, with the result that the coffers grew fuller and fuller. No wonder then that the French method was considered to be a sign of great political wisdom. When one of France's most brilliant Ministers of Finance, Leon Say, tried to change this system in the 1880s by taking into account annual increases in revenue based on average increases during the past five years, the only result was that Parliament voted more generous sums for various projects. After Say's retirement, France quickly returned to her old and tested principle of deliberate self-deception.
It was only during the inflation which followed in the wake of the First World War that the orthodox penultimate year method, together with the Say system and its variations, suffered serious shipwreck throughout the world. Inflation had made nonsense of all estimates based on previous revenue and expenditure. The value of money changed from day to day and
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whatever estimates government statisticians produced, were always one step behind the times. Although this appeared at first sight to benefit the taxpayers, the resulting deficit merely pro- duced ever greater inflation — and the vicious circle continued. The bitter lesson of that confiised period is that all provisions for the future involve the existence of a stable standard. In financial terms, this standard is the purchasing value of money, and once that value fluctuates too violently, objective predictions are no longer possible and wild speculation takes their place.
Budgeting
The great crisis of the 1930s also showed that government economic plans cannot be made outside the context of the general economic situation. On that occasion, though the value of money rose, the expected revenue nevertheless fell off because industry and commerce had become paralysed. It became clear that it was not enough merely to plan government revenue and expenditure and that comprehensive national estimates, of which government budget was only a part, had also to be prepared from year to year. The national economy was, as it were, the vascular system, while the government economy was only the lymph system of the body politic. This, in any event, is how financial experts imagined things to be, and their diagrams showed from which sectors of the economy and through which channels the state obtained its finances, how state finance was ploughed back into the national economy, and how individual enterprises used this finance. These diagrams looked very impressive, since, with a few strokes of the pen, they presented a comprehensive anatom- ical and physiological analysis of the national economy as a whole.
The only question was whether the analysis did, in fact, foot the bill. Difficult enough as it was to anticipate next year's state income and expenditure correctly, how could one anticipate the much more complex changes in the national income, depending as they do on wage levels, raw material deliveries, and a host of other variables.? And, as it turned out, the general economic estimates presented simultaneously with the national budgets in
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the United States, Britain, France, the Scandinavian countries, and in Holland (where they were worked out extremely skil- fully) were generally full of flaws. Thus errors of 3-5% were thought to be most reasonable, despite the fact that total changes in the annual national income rarely exceed 10%.
On the other hand, modern techniques of economic analysis have made the budget itself a fairly reliable instrument. More- over, the state, unlike private industry, can always take steps to fit the facts to the figures, by increasing or relaxing controls, so much so that, particularly in Britain and France, errors have been reduced to less than 1%.^ In hardly any other sphere has the art of prediction reached so high a degree of perfection.
The classical annual budget of most countries does, however, produce its own problems. Most government expenditure is earmarked for such long-term projects as harbour installations, road construction, irrigation, and drainage. In young countries, the state must also set aside funds for establishing new indus- tries, and while total costs are distributed over the requisite number of years, the longer the plans, the greater the number of annual revisions. For one thing, prices are more likely to fluctuate in the long run, and the experts are therefore forced to look further ahead than they can reasonably be expected to do.
To get over this difficulty, governments usually budget an annual sum towards these long-term projects. However, this procedure has serious drawbacks, since the suppliers and executors of these long-term plans cannot invest money in plans that are subject to annual revision. They therefore insist on long-term contracts, and governments have often been forced to comply, and thus to enter the ranks of long-term planners.
Planning by persuasion
So far we have spoken of special government plans and not of wholly planned economies. In capitalist countries, private pro- perty is respected, and the authority of entrepreneurs only restricted when it clashes with the interests of the state. Under ^ Maurice Duverger: Institutions financiires (Paris 1956), p. 323.
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socialism, on the other hand, private enterprise is not only subordinated to the state, but abolished.
Modern economic plans usually aim at increasing production, though some plans, e.g. some American farm schemes and some international trust agreements, aim at preventing gluts.
The success of any economic plan depends primarily on its financial and practical feasibility. Not even governments can work miracles. It also depends on a less obvious factor: political agree- ment. Many a recent economic plan has been so thwarted or de- formed by political opposition, that all its predictions were upset.
A good example is the famous French Monnet plan, or as it was officially known: he premier plan de modernisation et equipement. This plan which was worked out immediately after the war by Jean Monnet, an American-trained industrial expert, with the blessings of the Socialist statesman Leon Blum, was one of the most far-reaching plans ever presented in Europe. It was meant to cover the entire French economy, private and nation- alised sectors — coal, electricity, and transport — alike, and to increase total production by modernising equipment and efficiency.
It was estimated that the implementation of the plan would take four years, but in 1947, by the time preparations and dis- cussions had delayed it for years, political conditions had changed so radically, that all the French government could do was to set a productive norm instead, and to persuade private enterprise to act according to its general directives. Mixed committees con- sisting of government officials and private employers were meant to determine the details of the plan for their particular industry, but there was no coercion to see that their suggestions were adopted. The Monnet plan, as far as it affected private industry was, therefore, no more than a means of information and propaganda.
Nor were its effects on the public sector very much more drastic. The big government construction programme that had been suggested by the planners, was never officially approved by Parliament. All the government could therefore do was to make annual and piecemeal budget concessions to the planners. The plan as such had no legal standing which, in a country like France, did little to enhance it or the status of the planners. No wonder that so many things kept going wrong with it. The
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original plan, which was meant to run until the end of 1950, was replaced by a new four-year plan as early as 1st January 1949. The four-year plan thus became a five-year plan, and, when it was extended further in 1953, it turned into a seven-year plan.
It would have needed a miracle for the plan to be imple- mented in these circumstances. True, the plan contributed to France's modernisation, but that modernisation would have come about in any event. Discrepancies of 10-20% from the planned norms were the rule, and while some industries in- creased their output, others did the precise opposite.
Though there was little public interest left by the time the Monnet plan had run its full term, a new four-year "modernisa- tion and equipment plan" was launched in 1954. The new plan had fairly modest aims, and its annual target of a 4% increase in industrial output was, in fact, surpassed by far. In order to synchronise the second plan with the new Parliament's term of office, it was precipitately cut short, and a new plan began in 1957. France's third plan is now in operation and is meant to run on until 1961.
Planning will by then have become a venerable French institution. In 1956, the French planning authorities published a memorandum in which, using impressive arguments and figures, they painted a glowing picture of the French economy in a.d. 1965. Industrial production would be 77% and agricultural production 25% above the 1954 level. Possibly, the memoran- dum argued, these increases will be no more than 59% and 18% respectively, for progress is sometimes slower than expected. If neither norm is fulfilled, it will not be the planners' fault for: "If men must submit to the future it is only because thay have failed to prepare it. The future can only be fashioned if we tackle it with full awareness of the advances to be made, the resistances which have to be overcome, and the aims which have to be reached."^
Water and land
One of the main errors of the French planners was clearly their
1 Commissariat G6n6ral au Plan: Perspectives de rEconomie frangaise 1965 (Paris 1956), p. 6.
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failure to offer private enterprise adequate incentives. American planners rely far less on the art of persuasion than on tangible rewards.
True, United States planners have to face far greater opposi- tion than their European colleagues, since the American Consti- tution, suffused as it is with the spirit of 18th century liberalism, is in principle opposed to every limitation of individual freedom and hence to every kind of centralisation. All plans run the risk of being condemned as unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, and many have in fact fallen by the wayside for this very reason.
One of the few economic plans to meet with the Supreme Court's approval was that of the Tennessee Valley Authority (T.V.A.).
The Tennessee valley was an impoverished region in the south, where periodic floods added to the people's other mis- fortunes. To improve the lot of two-and-a-half million people living there, Franklin D. Roosevelt established the T.V.A. in 1933, and instructed it to rehabilitate the area. Even so, many Democrats and Republicans questioned the government's right to produce electricity, to set up farms, and to do many other things that had always been the preserves of private enterprise. What was even worse, the director was to be paid a fixed annual salary of 10,000 dollars, intead of being offered a share in the profits.^ This step was not only unheard of but outraged common sense — ^no one could be expected to do his best if he had no direct financial stake in the outcome.
But the miracle happened. The T.V.A. proved so excellent a planner that in the course of one year, 14,000 farmers were set up in business and 2^ million acres were reclaimed for agricul- tural use. Hundreds of thousands of people were offered cheap electricity, and private businesses in seven States derived direct benefits from the plan.
Roosevelt was less successful in his efforts to take the entire U.S. economy out of the doldrums. It was his basic intention to adapt production to consumption, using radical legislation that practically amounted to complete state control of' industrial output. It is difficult to say how far Roosevelt might not have gone with his plans, had not his National Industrial Recovery Act (N.I.R.A.) been declared unconstitutional in May 1935, and * F. Zweig: Tbe Planning of Free Societies (London 1942), p. 114.
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his Agricultural Adjustment Act (A. A. A.) in January 1936, the latter after a petition to the Supreme Court by a poultry dealer.
Nevertheless, government legislation managed to salvage essential agricultural measures, and these remnants from the Roosevelt area continue to be the most important and effective plans ever laid in the western world. Five of the staple crops whose cultivation takes up roughly 50% of the arable area of the United States: wheat, maize, rice, tobacco, and cotton, are produced according to government plan. The moment the crops have been harvested, the Department of Agriculture, after care- ful consideration of available supplies and the international market conditions, suggests what crops are to be planted next year. The suggestions are then submitted to the farmers, and if more than one-third of them object, the Department must revise its plans. The revised plan is, however, final and binding.
This does not mean that farmers are fined if they do not comply, but simply that they are not allowed to market their surpluses. Compliance, on the other hand, is rewarded by guaranteed government subsidies of from 75-90% of the market price, in the form of government purchases and credits. These subsidies cost the U.S.A. more than 2000 million dollars a year.
Although the details of the plan are formally adjusted from year to year, the American plan for agriculture is nevertheless a permanent institution. While it has not so far managed to keep prices absolutely stable or to adapt production fully to con- sumption, the gaps have been greatly reduced and severe agricultural crises avoided.
In any case, a complete solution to this problem will not be possible until harvests as such can be controlled, and harvests, even from the same soil worked with the same equipment, still fluctuate by an annual 20-30%, and occasionally by as much as 50%. Until we manage to make very precise weather forecasts for a whole year in advance, or else cultivate crops that are completely insensitive to the weather, there is no possibility of stabilising farm prices by other than restrictive economic practices.
The only slight advance in harvest forecasts is that we now have more accurate means of estimating harvests while the crops are growing. Unfortunately random sampling, as used in Gallup polls, have proved inadequate, for there is no such thing as a
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typical field — weather conditions change from place to place. On the other hand, aerial surveys can give one a fair idea of the state of the crops over wide regions, and an aerial check is, in fact, kept over 25% of America's growing crops. Still, no survey of this or any other kind can foresee weather changes, so that estimates have constantly to be revised. Differences of 10% within a few weeks are by no means unusual, and often frustrate the entire purpose of the survey.
Recalcitrant coffee
Plans for annual crops were not, however, the first agricultural plans. Every afforestation scheme is a planned economic opera- tion in which the time of felling can be predicted with great accuracy, and in which new trees are planted years before their timber is used. Since the big forests of most countries are government property, planning usually proceeds smoothly, and even where private property is in control, the state generally claims the right of preventing the excesses of greedy profiteers.
Since the beginning of the 20th century, governments have also begun to take an interest in fruit-bearing trees and plants. In Brazil, in particular, a leading industrialist from Sao Paulo, one Alexandre Siciliano, led a movement to relieve individual coffee planters of their marketing problems and to fix inter- national prices by strict control of production.
This was the beginning of the notorious coffee valorisation scheme, which was meant to keep rigid control of the world's coffee supplies by stockpiling, vast financial transactions, and above all by keeping a check on over-production. At first a tax was levied on all new trees, and later, as stocks piled up, the planting of new trees was forbidden altogether, a practice observed to this day by many coffee-producing countries. Since a coffee tree takes from four to six years to bear fruit, the effects are not felt immediately, though the market begins to rise the moment shortages are anticipated. Conversely, the world market begins to drop the moment news gets abroad that coffee trees are being planted in Brazil. Now, all these fluctuations are based on the assumption that the harvests will otherwise be
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normal, whereas, in fact, coffee is the most contrary of all crops. Not uncommonly, the same plot will produce twice as much coffee as it did the year before, and one exceptional harvest, is, of course, sufficient to invalidate the whole scheme. In 1929, when a bumper crop went hand in hand with an international economic crisis, Brazil was left holding enough coffee to supply the entire world for three years, and 78 million sacks of coffee were burnt, in order to prevent prices from hitting rock bottom. Thus ended another badly devised economic plan.
"Projections"
Planning seems much easier in industry. Any manufacturer with sufficient financial and technical resources can work out on paper the precise industrial capacity of a new plant. Unfortunately there is often a great discrepancy between capacity and actual output, for output depends largely on demand, and demand is very much more difficult to predict.
Nevertheless every industrialist wishing to extend or to modernise his factory, is forced to plan, not so much his new buildings and plant (that he usually leaves to his architects and engineers) as his finances. To obtain credit for his building projects, he must be able to convince his bankers or the public whom he invites to take up his shares of the profitability of his enterprise.
But even companies which can finance new projects from their own reserves, usually make these projects known to the public, if only for propaganda reasons. The secretiveness of former times has given way to the prestige publicity of today. In America all big enterprises and even some that are not so big will gladly show you their development plans. These plans often look so far into the future and involve so many billions of dollars that they would make even a multi-millionaire stagger. Lesser people only marvel at the shrewdness and confidence of their revered industrial leaders, and put aside all thoughts of impending crises. How can there be crises in the face of so much foresight, and what, after all, were crises if not the result of lack of confidence, lack of investments, and lack of planning?
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However, neither the economic experts who design these development plans, nor the company directors who approve them and publish them, are pledged to complete them. After all, no one demands or even expects that they should swim against the tide. If the economic situation should deteriorate, or if other reasons should persuade the directors to drop or to change a given development plan, no one could reproach them on that account, or claim damages because they had failed to predict the future correctly. Development plans are admittedly predictions and, beyond that, declared intentions, but intentions often lead to unexpected results. While any plan is admittedly better than no plan at all, bad plans which turn out to be unworkable must clearly be abandoned.
A new American — and to a lesser extent European — favourite goes by the name of "projection", a kind of forecast that can be changed ad lib.
Very shrewd industrialists will "project" not only the future of their own enterprise but of an entire industry. Thus the President of General Motors "projected" on the eve of 1957 that the United States would produce 6,400,000 new cars that year — considerably more than in 1956. In May, 1957, he informed his company and the public that his projection would have to be revised, and that a mere 5,880,000 cars were to be expected in 1957 — a difference of 8% compared with his previous projection. This meant a large drop in earnings not only for the motor industry, but for countless workers as well.
It seems obvious that this new method, while not improving prognostic techniques, makes them very much simpler. Hence a spate of projections has lately been assailing the public ear. Civil servants and other leading lights, who were previously afraid to express anything to which even the least doubt might have clung, will now pour out figures at you at the slightest provocation. A prediction in the old sense of the word can be wrong, a plan can fail, but a projection is always as safe as the Bank of England. It is a non-predictive prediction, an unplanned plan. Unfortunately errors in projection may often be very costly. For instance, projections for the motor industry usually involve adjusting factories to certain production levels, and if the projection was false, much money, time, and labour is wasted. Moreover, raw materials may have been ordered in too large or
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too small quantities, with additional losses, or at the wrong price.
Planless planning
The plans we have discussed so far differ characteristically from the economic plans of the Soviet Union and other Com- munist countries. While the capitalist and communist systems have many factors in common, e.g. the West is increasingly adopting government controls, and Russia has learnt to make individual factories balance their accounts, Russia's planned economy nevertheless represents a very special system, in which predictions have a different and much greater significance than they have in the West.
Oddly enough, the moment the practical problem of socialisa- tion first arose in Russia after the October Revolution, no practical means of solving it had been worked out. During the fifty years that had passed since Karl Marx wrote his Das Kapital, no one had bothered to supply a blue print of the new economic society, or to make any specific proposals.
This was no accident, for Karl Marx, the founder of modern socialism, had warned time after time that detailed plans for a future socialist society were futile and dangerous. All that was known with certainty was that the capitalist system would collapse one day and, while socialists ought to do their utmost to hasten its demise, any plans beyond that would simply com- promise the socialist idea. For that reason, Marx was violently opposed to those socialists who drew up detailed political and economic blue prints of the future society. All such men were nothing but Utopian cranks whose practical contribution was nil.
Marx's disciples took their master's advice very much to heart. Those who, like August Bebel, felt impelled to mention man's happy lot in the socialist society for propaganda purposes, generally restricted themselves to vague promises of a shorter working day, or to such topical issues as the redistribution of landed estates among smallholders.
The resulting confusion can best be appreciated from the first measures which the Bolsheviks were forced to take after they
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seized power. The Supreme Economic Council, founded in December 1917, could think of nothing better than to give urgent instructions to the Academy of Science to set up a number of expert commissions for suggesting preliminary "laws" of industrial reorganisation and economic development. Thus the Academy of Science became the organiser of the great socialist plan — which to the reader may seem more Utopian an idea than any of Thomas More's. In fact, the activities of the Academy were strictly circumscribed, and few of the sub-committee's suggestions were applied in practice. The only tangible result was the emergence of an institute whose task it was to predict future economic developments.
It was only in February 1920, that Lenin instructed the economic institute to turn planner. No longer were the experts merely expected to make predictions or to point out short- comings in various sectors of industry — they were instructed to formulate programmes instead. During the next congress of the Communist Party, Lenin's instructions were endorsed and elaborated: "The basis of economic rehabilitation is undeviating adherence to a consolidated economic plan for the next historical epoch. "1.
Marx would have shuddered at the thought of a total economic plan for an entire historical epoch, and, in fact, the grandiose plan became a restricted plan for electrification rather than for total reorganisation. However, the "Goelro Plan", as it became known, was said to be only a beginning, the handle for cranking the entire economic machine. Or, as Lenin put it: "Soviets +electrification=socialism."
A more ambitious scheme was started in February 1921, when the civil war had ended. It was the so-called "Gosplan", which was not so much a plan as a series of government commit- tees entrusted with planning. Two years were to pass before some partial plans for the metal and transport industry emerged from that body. Meanwhile, taking "two steps forward and one step back", Lenin had ushered in the age of the NEP (New Economic Policy) which made concessions to peasants, private enterprise, and consumers, and re-introduced a small measure of capitalism.
1 A. Kurski: Die Planung der Volkswirtschaft in der UdSSR (Moscow 1949), p. S5.
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Critics of the Five-year Plan
But even when the NEP phase was over and the state once more resumed strict control, planning techniques were still not per- fected. One innovation — which was, in fact, a return to capitalist budget methods — was the introduction in 1925-1926 of annual plans for individual industries within the framework of a larger plan. Every industry was expected to reach a fixed norm of production, often on pain of death to those in charge, many of whom were, in fact, shot as saboteurs.
Stalin, who had meanwhile come to power, was anything but an enthusiastic planner. On the occasion of a debate on wheat shortage (1928), he declared that, though it would be wrong to underestimate the role and importance of planning, it would be even more mistaken to exaggerate its importance and to assume that the Soviet Union had reached a stage of develop- ment where it is possible to plan and control every last detail of every process.^
Two years later, when the first five-year plan was already on its way, Stalin still felt doubtful about the possibilities of a care- fully planned economy: "The five-year plan is neither final nor immutable. For us, the five-year plan, like any other plan, is only a first approximation that must be adapted, re-modelled, and improved on the basis of practical experience. No five-year plan can foresee all the potentialities of our society, as they are un- folded in the course of our work, during the implementation of the plan in the factory, in the workshop, in the collective farm, in the district, etc."^
Still, the five-year plan proved more effective than Stalin had believed. While the original plan was slightly modified from time to time and from place to place, it was implemented much in the way the commission had envisaged it would be. In 1931 the annual norms were significantly renamed "economic plans", and while non-fulfilment of norms had been a crime, non-fulfil- ment of economic plans was rank treason.
All in all, it took Russia 10 years to prepare her first plan or, if we consider 1931 as the beginning of planning proper, even 13 years. From makeshift and often mistaken improvisations, ^ J. Stalin: Problems of Leninism (Moscow 1947). * Jean Romeuf: L' Economie planifiie (Paris 1955), pp. 17-18.
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Russia progressed first to partial plans and finally to a total plan. Actually, the total plan — if we use plan to mean correct foresight — was a "failure", for its target was exceeded by far. (93-7% of the total target and 108% of the heavy industrial target were reached by the end of the fourth year of the first five-year plan. ) Still, the planners did not mind. By her plans, Russia had raised her stricken economy to incredible heights. Within a few years, an agrarian country had been transformed into an industrial giant — albeit with threats and persecutions. Industry now accounted for 78% of total production. There is no doubt that the plan was a great practical success, despite the fact that it was a predictive failure.
The correct proportions
However, the most difficult problem of a planned economy, viz. the adaptation of production to demand, had not been solved. Now, socialists had always reproached capitalists with being too greedy for profits to bother about the people's real needs. Socialists, unlike capitalists, would strive single-mindedly to provide mankind with all its necessities. But now it appeared that things were not quite as straightforward as that — at least not in practice. Though the profit motive had been abolished in the Soviet Union, there seemed to be no way of assessing, let alone of fulfilling, popular demand.
Sometimes miscalculations assumed grotesque forms. Thus, on a trip through the Soviet Union, I came across a Ukrainian lemon-squeezer factory that had fulfilled its norm admirably. Unfortunately there was no demand for its products since, as a result of a bad harvest, there were no lemons to be squeezed for love or money. True, lemon squeezers are not perishable, and can be stored for future use, but, during a time of acute shortages, material and labour could surely have been employed more usefully elsewhere. While statistics reflected a great upsurge of production, the nation continued to go about in rags and tatters. Targets might be fulfilled, but until they bore some relation to actual needs, the people tended to remember the failures rather than the triumphs.
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By the second five-year-old plan (1933-1937) the planners had learned from experience to gauge the balance of supply and demand more accurately. Moreover, at a time when capitalism was in the throes of its worst crisis and production in the West completely paralysed, Russia had made up her mind to double industrial production. Incredible though it sounded, this aim was, in fact, realised, or rather exceeded, for industrial production rose by 17-1% annually instead of the planned 16-5%.
This welcome discrepancy between predictions and actual results increased with the years. Thus, during the fourth five- year plan (1947-1950) industrial production was said to have risen by 73% and not by the planned 48%. Once again, the result was a triumph for industry, but a failure of planning as such. Russia's plans might be minimum targets, but they were never plans in the literal sense of the word.
Errors were also committed in assessing the relative rate of expansion of the main pillars of Russia's economy — heavy industry, light industry, and agriculture. Heavy industry always made greater advances than the two other sectors, possibly because of rearmament, but in any case much to the consumers' distress. During the fifth five-year plan ( 1951-1955) an attempt was made to remedy this, as well. As a result, the targets for heavy industry were fixed below the level of leading capital countries, and industry as a whole was planned to have an annual expansion of only 12%.
This time, the results were more in accordance with the predictions. After all, Russia's giant strides were not entirely the results of planning alone: young countries, like young men, always grow very quickly, to consolidate rather than grow further when maturity is reached.
Planning ahead— for how long}
One of the fundamental questions of rational planning is how far one can hope to look into the future. In such partial plans as the construction of power stations, the time involved can easily be computed from the availability of materials and manpower.
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and all the planner need do is to gauge the demand for elec- tricity correctly and to build accordingly.
Large economic plans pose entirely different problems. Even if there is no shortage of materials and manpower, long-range plans introduce so many uncertainty factors, that an arbitrary time limit has to be imposed upon them. Russia has made the five-year term so popular that it has assumed an almost magical quality. In fact, five years was determined neither by the stars, nor yet by Marx, Lenin or Stalin. It was simply the result of a compromise between the opinions of planners, some of whom preferred 10-15 year plans — the intended duration of the Goelro Plan — while others, usually more conservative party members, preferred to plan for a maximum of two years.
The main argument of the conservative group was that it was unreasonable to expect a permanent expansion of production. In industrialisation, as in agriculture, there was a law of diminishing returns — once the optimum had been reached, further expansion would lead to increasing costs and wasteful investment. A planned economy was said to move in ellipses rather than straight lines — a decreasing rate of expansion and investment were inevitable. And, in the long run, these staid economists were, in fact, proved right, for the original industrial expansion of 22% per annum has now dropped to less than half that figure. On the other hand, had they had their will, and had timid two- year plans in fact been allowed to replace the five-year plans, Russia's economy might well have made far shorter strides than it did.
In April 1929, when the XVIth congress of the Communist party finally sanctioned the first five-year plan, five years became a sacrosanct period, and anyone challenging it was branded as a Trotsky ist or capitalist saboteur. Within the given five years, original plans might well be refashioned, but the time-span of the plan was unassailable. There was no law against completing the plan in, say, four years — as happened during the first plan — but the plan had to run its full term, not least because a new plan took a long time to prepare, and because the sooner the target was fulfilled the greater the propaganda triumph.
Still, many Soviet planners continued to hanker after an even longer plan, of which the individual five-year plans were mere
298 CHAPTER 11
sub-divisions. Thus the idea of the fifteen-year plan was bom, and once again the choice of 15 years was purely arbitrary — there were no specific projects that lasted for precisely that period. Still 15 =3x5, and if 5 was a magic number, 15 was triply so.
Thus, at the beginning of 1941, a few months before German troops invaded Russia, a Party Congress demanded that the Soviet Union outstrip the industrial production and the standard of living of the United States within — 15 years. When the government gave its blessing to the project, the planners set to work, ignoring the fact that half of Europe was already in flames, and blissfully oblivious of Hitler's next move.
Though the plan died a premature death, a new 15-year "perspective" plan was initiated the moment the war was won. Its details were never published, for the plan was looked upon as an internal programme that could be changed at any moment, and that would merely help to tell the planners what to aim for when each five-year plan was over.
The revolt of the body
As it turned out, the "perspective" was blurred by an entirely unsuspected event: the revolt of the body against its head. Centralisation and Moscow's leading role in the Soviet economy had apparently been pushed too far. In the spring of 1957, Nikita Khrushchev, all-powerful secretary of the all-powerful Central Committee of the Communist Party, proclaimed to the world that centralised planning had led to a plague of useless bureaucrats, to national dissatisfaction, and to industrial break- downs. From now on, things were going to be quite different: decentralisation, and regional plans would replace Moscow's autocracy once and for all. True, even before Khrushchev, Moscow had left many problems in the hands of local authorities. Side by side with the federal Gosplan there had always been regional Gosplans, regional planning commissions (Oblplans), area planning commissions (Raiplans) and urban planning commissions ( Gorplans ) all with a certain measure of indepen- dence. Still, the last word and above all the final control had always been with Moscow.
FORGING THE FUTURE 299
While centralisation had never been pleasant for the people, it had seemed logical and unavoidable. If every local authority had been allowed to plan in its own way, there would have been no plan at all. Planning must always proceed from the centre outwards and not the other way round. If planning were as simple as building a house, if stresses and strains could be looked up in tables, decentralised planning might be feasible, but no such tables have as yet been set up. Thus, if thousands of independent authorities develop their own plans, a large propor- tion of these plans will either overlap or clash. While this may not be a disadvantage to the population, this type of "planning" would have all the disadvantages of private enterprise and of bureaucracy. And Khrushchev's decentralisation did, in fact, lead to immediate difficulties. Regional authorities failed to surrender their surpluses, thus impeding the plans not only of neighbouring regions but of the country as a whole. The rate of total industrial expansion fell for the first time, and by as much as 7%.
In view of this failure, Khrushchev changed the party line in September 1957. Since political considerations alone made it inadvisable to return to full-scale centralisation, he simply called a halt to the sixth five-year plan, which had another three years to run. Until the end of 1958, the current work would be continued provisionally, and in 1959 a new great seven-year plan would be initiated, with a radically different approach.
Nor had orthodox Soviet planning run into hot water in Russia alone. Long before Khrushchev launched his bombshell attack on Stalin, it had become quite plain that Moscow's plan- ning system was not a ready-made export article. In satellite countries, the planning authorities, assisted by experts from Moscow, realised to their horror that what was meat for the Soviet Union was poison for their own socialist system. There was a lack of statistical information, of an efficient state machinery, and of industrial leaders — in short many of the essential cogs of the great wheel were missing.
Above all, the people seemed more opposed to planning than their Soviet neighbours ever had been. When planning was first begun, private capital had not yet been completely liquid- ated nor war-damage made good. Adding a new economic
300 CHAPTER 11
system to all their other troubles was more than most men were prepared to shoulder.
No wonder then, that the first satellite plans, despite their sonorous words and impressive programmes, were concerned with simple reconstruction rather than with the building of the new society. They were most successful in Czechoslovakia, which had suffered relatively little war damage and which had a fairly large number of skilled technicians. Moreover Prague stepped far more gingerly than other satellite capitals, and even drew freely on the French Monnet Plan. The total plan was con- fided to a committee of 15 economists, supported by 14 technical sub-committees. The politicians wisely sat back and left the job to those best qualified to tackle it.
However, as the satellite countries became more and more dependent on Moscow, their plans had to be increasingly geared to Russia's economy. It seemed pointless to draw up indepen- dent plans, and to work towards great increases in production, when it was uncertain whether Russia would be able to supply the required machinery and raw materials. At the beginning of 1949, a first attempt was therefore made to co-ordinate the economic plans of the entire Communist bloc under the C.O.M.E.C.O.N. (Council for Mutual Economic Aid) but that attempt proved premature and abortive.
A fresh start was made in 1955, when it was resolved that the beginning of the sixth Russian five-year plan in 1956 would coincide with the start of co-ordinated five-year plans in all the People's Democracies — which meant that 300 million people in eight countries would henceforth collaborate in forging a common destiny, Alas, Russia's internal economic difficulties, Poland's economic crisis which forced her to call for American help, the events in Hungary, and other set-backs thwarted the implementation of this stupendous plan. Once again, Stalin's words seem to have been confirmed: "Even the five-year plan is only a first approximation".
Dictating and planning
It would be quite wrong to conclude, however, that Communist planning is a mere hit and miss affair. Russia, for one, has bene-
FORGING THE FUTURE 301
fited greatly from it. But benefits apart, to what extent is it possible to make plans agree precisely with the predictions on which they are based?
Soviet plans do not help us to answer this question. During their implementation, too many of the original ideas were changed too radically for much of the original plans to have remained. The aims of the plan, i.e. increases of industrial potential, improvements in the standard of living, may have been fulfilled, but not the original predictions on which these plans were made.
To a certain extent this may be due to political factors. The West has always argued that totalitarian planning depends on the whims of dictators, and such whims are singularly unpre- dictable. Thus Caesar, Napoleon, and Hitler believed in destiny or in the stars and left many of their plans to "fate". Stalin, who seemed less cranky in this respect, was content to be proclaimed the spiritual father and patron saint of the five-year plan, without worrying overmuch about its details.
This attitude is easily explained. A dictator whose only task it is to initiate a plan every five years, thereafter to let the experts take over, would be surrendering most of his power. A real dictator must be free to impose his will at any time, to revoke decisions, or to change his mind whenever he so chooses. Economic plans under an absolute dictator are therefore variable plans, not so much as a result of changes in external conditions as of the dictator's unpredictable whims.
It is quite possible that under a less autocratic regime, economic plans would keep more closely to the original targets. But even in that case, the planners will not simply be able to fold their hands and, confident in their own infallible foresight, leave the rest to a well-oiled machine. They will have to watch very carefully for necessary changes, though they will never make changes simply to assert their will. On the contrary, it would be their primary concern to see that the original plan is imple- mented as closely as possible, thus confirming their predictions. Moreover, democratic plans have no need to be minimum plans whose targets must be exceeded to prove the excellence of the regime. Though democratic plans may therefore lose much of the momentum so characteristic of Stalin's plans, they are far more likely to fulfil their promise precisely.
302 CHAPTER 11
Self-regulation
While Communists are convinced that men must be coerced into fulfilling or outstripping their own targets, the West has recently developed a theory for correlating intentions and results very precisely. Cybernetics, though not literally a science of planning, is closely linked to it. Like econometrics, it is a mathematical technique developed by engineers. Though its present applications are restricted to the construction of com- puters and other machines, its real scope is very much wider. According to its founder, the American mathematician Norbert Wiener, cybernetics is the study of "control and communication in the animal and the machine". ^ That definition, too, is not wide enough. Cybernetics is derived from the Greek Kybemetes — steersman — ^from which our own word "governor" was originally coined, and cybernetics is, in fact, the science of steering a straight course.
According to cybemeticists, all organic units tend towards automatic self-regulation, and hence towards equilibrium. The task of the new discipline is to study this phenomenon, and to apply the results not only to technology but also to the social life.
Now, what has been lacking in all economic plans so far is precisely what cybernetics is trying to establish, viz. a sensitive apparatus that would automatically react to outside disturbances and correct them without stopping the whole machinery. Planning, both the Eastern and the Western variety, has been far too eclectic, and has always lacked a proper theory of its own. For that very reason the execution of all plans has always been far too greatly governed by the personal qualities of the indivi- dual planners.
This does not mean that cybernetics intends to demote men to mere cogs in a machine. After all, electrical engineers have not surrendered one iota of their human dignity by working according to the laws of Ampere, Maxwell and Hertz. No matter how sweeping a theory, men will always be able to prove their worth within it.
A better theory simply means better planning, i.e. more
^ Norbert Wiener: Cybernetics or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine (N.Y. — Paris, 1949), p. 19. (See also: L. de Broglie: Cybernetics in New Perspectives in Micropbysics (N.Y. 1960).
FORGING THE FUTURE SOS
accurate predictions. Only when we know what we can achieve, can we decide what we should achieve. Now, our capacity for achievement depends largely on conditions that we can create at will, and on others that we can take into account. The more we allow for such variables, the greater the chances of our plans' success.
True, not even the best-laid plan can be like a machine that runs automatically, and in which everything is self-regulated. Economic plans involve millions of heads and hands who use tools for the purpose for which they were designed. Only by assuming that men will act reasonably, can we rely on their automatic insight and foresight. In that way, even the word "automatism" loses its horror. Automatic reactions, be they acquired or instinctive, are matters of pride rather than shame — as any good driver will tell you. They are part and parcel of self-regulation, and hence a basic element of all human plans worth making.
ENVOI
The Future of Prediction
THIS BOOK BEGAN WITH A FANFARE AND ENDS fVITH the muffled beat of a drum. The introductory remark that every man must constantly look into the future or perish is true beyond all doubt. But can men ever hope to prophesy correctly.-* How often do they err.-" Have they become better prophets or worse?
The reader, as he has followed our quest, must surely have decided that, in some respects at least, man's skill in probing the future is no greater than it was in ancient Babylon, whose prophets consulted the liver. Unless a man is already in the throes of death, no one can tell how long he will live and whether he will die of natural causes or in an accident. To this day, no one can predict where and when the next flood will strike, or even whether it will be raining in eight days' time. The further we delve into the even more complex problems of our cultural, economic, and political future, the more uncertain our grounds of prophecy become. The best laid plans of the best-intentioned men have always had a tendency to gang agley.
Such is the truth, but fortunately it is not the whole truth. As scientific knowledge has grown, so have the possibilities of applying that knowledge to technological problems, and hence to technological predictions. Only this process has not been uninterrupted for, at times, the entire framework had to be demolished to make way for an entirely new edifice. But such is the nature of progress in all fields — only by scrapping the old can the new be bom at all. What is decisive is not the number of changes that have to be made, but the durable residue, and of that the art of prediction has its full measure.
In at least three respects, we can look more fully and clearly into the future than our ancestors did. We know more about causal connections, about the prediction of aggregate pheno- mena, and about eliminating chance by deliberate planning.
S04
THE FUTURE OF PREDICTION 305
Specialisation without "specialists"
The first of these three advances is the direct result of speciali- sation. Ancient prophets believed that the entire future could be predicted from a single prophetic source: the stars, the intestines of animals, or dreams. Modem prognosis, on the other hand, assumes that only the specific effects of specific causes can reasonably be predicted, and has made the connection between cause and effect the subject of specialist study. While a country doctor may well be a great amateur meteorologist, and while he may forecast weather changes from some of his patients' symptoms, he would be a fool to conclude that all diseases are caused by barometric fluctuations.
Modern predictions rightly abhor all precipitate generalisa- tions, and are based on empiricial proof instead. Only experi- ments which can be repeated under equal conditions are considered to be reliable evidence — all the rest is doubtful. In practice, these standards are often found to be a little too strict. Thus some large scale phenomena cannot be tested in the laboratory for fear of blowing it up, and similarly, while vast mountainous areas could perhaps be levelled by atomic explosion, no reasonable man or conscientious government will allow itself to put this contention to the test. Predictions about the effects of atomic destruction are not based on full-scale experiments but rather on mathematical considerations which assume that an increase in fissionable material will cause a proportionate increase in destructive effect.
Such purely arithmetical deductions are characteristic of our mathematical age, but may not be entirely legitimate. The assumption that large-scale processes do not differ qualitatively from analogous small-scale processes is just another imper- missible generalisation. Thus scientists have become commend- ably reluctant to establish general laws from an inadequate number of particular instances, with the result that, in medicine for instance, prediction has become much more difficult but — much more certain. On the other hand, there is a great need that scientists shed their reluctance to say anything at all about the future, for they, more than anyone else, are trained prognosti- cians. Their modesty merely opens the back door to all sorts of charlatans, and there is no reason why scholars should withhold from the world what prognoses they can legitimately make.
306 ENVOI
Collective predictions
The second field in which great advances have been made is the field of aggregate predictions of such phenomena as, for instance, the mortality rate of a given country. Aggregate predictions are usually the projections of statistical averages into the future, on the basis of probability theory. If external factors suddenly change conditions so radically, that past statistical averages no longer apply, then the whole basis of statistical predictions is of course undermined. We have seen that this is precisely what happened with predictions about declining birth and mortality rates.
Only a few decades ago, it seemed that methods of aggregate prediction were as perfect as they could be. Life insurance and later social insurance had helped to turn this method of predic- tion into one of the basic pillars of all mathematical prognoses, and governments used it to predict, for instance, how many schools and how many hospitals had to be built to absorb future generations, how many recruits would be available for conscrip- tion, and so on. Since then, the revolution in physics has opened up even greater statistical horizons and provided even more efficient mathematical tools. Simultaneously the old notion of historical and economic cycles has increasingly been challenged.
Cycle theories failed so badly in the post-war age, that many economists have foresworn them once and for all. Perhaps their disappointments have made them a little too rash, for all cycle theories are merely tentative, and few people ever claimed that they were indicative of anything but a given age or condition. There is no reason to suppose that future phenomena will not follow a certain, predictable, rhythm, or that we ought to desist from trying to look for it. Rhythmical phenomena do, after all, exist in many spheres, and remain the basis of many useful predictions, particularly in biology.
Restricting chance
Planning is the third great advance in the field of prediction. The reader may wonder how we can say this after the many critical
THE FUTURE OF PREDICTION 307
remarks we have made about it. However, planning is still in its infancy, and was, moreover, bom under exceptionally difficult conditions. Nevertheless, the idea that a large country should be able to predict its future even half-way correctly five years in advance, would have struck 19th century capitalists and socialists alike as utterly fantastic, as an idle play with figures.
Today no one can doubt that some of even the most far- reaching economic plans can be implemented, and that produc- tion, in particular, can be regulated years in advance. Whether one must accept the restrictions of individual liberty which were associated with the Russian plan is quite a different matter. The practical success of planning as such is beyond any doubt, the only thing that is doubtful is the degree of accuracy with which the original plans correspond with the final outcome, i.e. whether plans must constantly be revised as they were in Russia or whether, under different political conditions, they would require fewer modifications and thus lead to more predictable results.
There is a great deal of evidence that discrepancies of 10% or even of 20% can be avoided with better techniques. But even if this were not the case, we need only reverse the percentage errors of the Russian predictions to realise that errors of 10 or 20% mean a degree of accuracy of 80-90%.
The reader might object that no matter which way we look at the figures, errors of 10 or 20% are considerable and must have tremendous economic repercussions, particularly when we con- sider that changes, let alone errors, of that magnitude are rare in any economic system. Still this objection hardly applies to such revolutionary changes as were wrought by the first Russian five-year plans, and do not, in any case, alter the fact that Russia's plans are proof positive that men can largely if not completely fashion their future when they put their minds to it.
The crux of planning is not so much the accurate fulfilment of a given target as the frontal attack on the age-old oppressive fear that men are the helpless victims of pure chance and fate. While the element of chance cannot be completely eradicated from even the best-laid plans, it can at least be drastically reduced. Planning means reducing pure chance to its minimum, and its results have shown to what great extent this can be done. Much of what was previously considered chance has since proved to be nothing but
308 ENVOI
lack of reasonable human foresight. The moment our minds are made up and we have the will to implement our decision, chance begins to prove a mere illusion.
The limits between chance and choice are not drawn for all time — ^with the help of reason and goodwill, the field of choice can for ever be widened. It would be wider still, if men ceased being as secretive as they are. Much that we consider unpredic- table is nothing but the veil of mystery men have drawn over their plans and intentions. In some fields — ^national finances, foreign policy — ^the veil is slowly being lifted, but in other fields, particularly in technology, it is being pulled tighter all the while.
However, where there are no such restrictions, wherever men have had a common interest in the future, they have been able to fashion it beyond their wildest expectations. Despite their relapses into magic and divination, human beings have at last developed effective methods of prediction. Fantastic pro- phecies have given way to serious prognoses, vague hopes receded before considered plans, and probability has ceased to be mere speculation and has become a respectable scientific term instead.
This, by and large, is the state of prediction today. Much remains to be done, but one thing is beyond all doubt: the sphere of unpredictable events is rapidly contracting. That much, at least, we can predict with absolute certainty.
Index
Roman numerals denote Plates and Jigs, in italics denote Figures in text.
Abu-Maaschar (Albumazar),
76-7 Academy: Moral & Pol. Sci.
(Paris), 148
Mysteries of Naples, 84
New Athenian, 73
Science (Moscow), 293 Adad, 51, 58, 8 Agricultural Adjustment Act
(A.A.A.), 288 Akkad, 53, 59-60 Albategnius (Al-Battan), 77 Alea (Dice), 20, 22-3, 29,
I, 1
Alexander the Great, 67, 178
Alexander Severus, 75
Alexandria, 67
Almanachs, 179-80, 184
Amandry, P., 70fn
American Inst. Pub. Opinion, 170
American Soc. Psych. Re- search, 114
Ammonius, 81
Amon-Ra, 67
Ampere, A-M., 303
Anastasie, A. & J. P. Filey, 232fn
Anticyclones, 191
Apollo, 70-1
Arabs, 73, 76-8, 80, 200
Archontes, 69
Aristotle, 72, 139, 146, 152,
211, 249 Arlington (U.S.A.), 188 Arnoux, A., 84fn Ascheim-Zondek Test, 209 Assurbanipal, 52 Assyria, 52-3, 55-7 Astres, Journal French Order
of Astrologers, 106, 109 Astrology, 38, 49, 51-2, 57-62,
67-8, 73-4, 81, 83-6, 92,
96-118, 143, 158, 177-82,
193, 211, 276, 305 Astronomy, 19, 59, 58-9, 62,
68, 73, 80-3, 96-8, 144-6
German Astronomical Soc,
114 Athens, 69, 72-4, 145-6 Atom Bomb, 27, 94, 120 Attila, 149
Augustine, St., 76, 147 Augustus, 75 Austria, 107, 120-2, 129, 149,
162, 199
309
310
INDEX
Babson, R. W., 35 Babylonia, 51-7, 58, 60-5,
74-5, 145, 147, 149, 178,
314 Balaclava, 185-6 Barometer, 181-2: Business,
270-3, 31 Barr, H. G., 212 Bastiat, C-F., 254 Bateman, F., 130fn, 137fn,
138fn Bateson, Prof., 213 Bebel, A., 292 Bellamy, E., 43-4 Bergen, 186-7 Bergson, Henri, 126, 140 Bernoulli, Jakob, 89, 240, 245 Bernstein, M. E., 228fn Bessel, 39 Bethe, 194
Beveridge, Sir W., 246-8 Bjerknes, V. & J., 186-7 Blanc Bro?., 237 Blenkenship, A. B., 168fn Blum, Leon, 286 Bohr, Niels, 128 Boll, M., 89fn, 90fn. Boltzmann, L., 56-7 Bonaparte, Ch-L, 'Prince of
Canino', 236-7 Bonaparte, Napoleon I, 85, 160-2, 244, 246, 281, 301, XV Borel, Emile, 28, 239fn Borneo, 53 Box, Bart J., 114 Bradford Hill, A., 208fn Brahe, Tycho, 83 Brahmism, 143-4 Brazil 116, 289-90
Breasted, J. H., 67fn
Brit. Inst. Public Opinion,
171-3 Broad, C. D., 141 Broglie, L. de, 140, 302fn Brooks, C. E. P., 197fn Brugsch, T., 199fn Bruckner, E., 195 Brunswig (1547), 18 Budget, National, 281-6 Bugeja, v., 238 Burma, 53 Business Cycle Research, 235,
255, 259, 261, 273-5 German Inst, for, 261-3,
273-5 Buys-Ballot (Ballot Laws),
187
Cabbala, 145, 148-50, 212 Caesar, J., 75, 301 Cagliostro (G. Balsamo), 90 Calendars, 58, 120, 143-4 Capitalism, 43, 154, 253, 258,
284, 292, 294, 307 Caraffa, Cardinal, 96 Cardano, G., 83-5, 88, 19, 20 Carneades, 73 Cards, 50, 91, 139, 242, XIV,
XV Catherine de Medici, 45-7 Cazotte, J., 91 Chaldeans, 57-60, 63, 13-5 Challis, 39 Chance, 23, 26-7, 87-9,
108-10, 238-9, 248, 250,
252 Charles IV, 149
INDEX
311
China, 52, 60-2, 146, 149, 194, 197, 211, 227, 229
Chiromancy, 91, 113
Christianity, 36-7
Choice, 41, 164-9
Chromosomes, 210-1, 213-4
Cicero, 76
Clairvoyance, 91, 128-42
Clark, Colin, 275-6
Cleanthes, 57-8
Cleromancy, 69
Cocco d'Ascoti, 81
Collingwood, R. G., I55fn
Commodity Markets, 261-5, 267-9, 274
Company of Merchant Adven- turers, 243
Comte, A., 152-3, 158
Confucius (Kung-tse), 60-1
Conteneau, G., 53fn, 59fn, 66fn, 70fn
Continuity, 155, 238, 256-7
Copernicus, N., 68, 83
Cornelius, Hispalus, 75
Couderc, P., 52fn, 8lfn, 98fn, lllfn
Cowles, A., 268fn
Croesus, 71
Crum, W. L., 259
Curschmann, H., 199fn
Cybernetics, 302
Cycle Theories, 23, 34-5 see also Business & Rhythms,
Cyclones, 191
Dakin & Dewey, E. R., 261 Darwin, Charles, Darwinism, 33, 39-40, 92, 154, 213
Deduction, 38-9, 41, 50 Delcourt, Marie, 70fn Delhi, 187 Delphi, Delphic Oracles, 70-3,
178, IX, X Delpierre, Mme., 216fn Dessoir, Max 130 Determinism, 25, 27-9, 31,
183 Dewey, Thomas A., 173 Dionysius of Syracuse, 43 Divination, 53, 66, 91-2, 113,
123 Dodona, 70 Domitian, 75 Dom, Dr., 212 Dourdin Inst. (Paris), 176 Dow, Charles, 268 Dreams, 50, 52, 66-7, 90, 1 13,
119-42 Druids, 76
Du Bois-Raymond, 26 Ducroq, A., 194 Dunne, J. W., 131-41 Diirer, Albrecht, II Du verger, M., 284fn
Eclipse, 62
Economics, Economists, 34, 42-3, 248-9, 253-5, 259- 61, 270, 276-7, 282-6, 293-202: Committee for E. Research, 272-3
Eden, Sir A., 105
Edward VI, 83-5, 20
Egypt, 51-2, 65-8, 104, 145, 149, 151, 266
Ehrlich, Paul, 128
Einstein, A., 26, 140
312
INDEX
Eisenhower, Dwight D., 173,
266 Elizabeth I, 157 Elizabeth II, 104-5 Embryo, 76, 102-3, 209-10,
213, 228 Engels, F., 154 Enkidu, 53 Enmeduranki, 53 Entropy, 34 Enzymes, 53
Epidaurus, 90, 133-4, 204. Equilibrium, 31-3, 35-6, 251-5 E.S.P., 130, 136-9, 141-2 Etruria, Etruscans, 74-5 Eudoxus, 73 Eugenics, 213, 230-3 Euripides, 73 Evolution, 39-40, 154-7 Experience, 40-1, 50, 164 Exta, 74 Eysenck, H. J., 169fn
Faroe Is., 191
Fates, Fatalism, 37, 68-70, 78, 235, 258
Fauque, M., 234fn
Feder, E., 267fn
Fermat, P de, 22, 87
Fidler, A., 208fn
Fortune-telling, 50, 91-2, 117
Fossey, Ch., 56fh
Foster, A. A., 138fn
Fourastie, Jean, 237
Foville, A. de, 270-2, 31
France, 106, 111-3, 118, 127, 148, 171, 173, 176,245-6, 266, 270-2, 282-3, 284-6
Freud, S., 121-6, 129fn
Galileo, 22, 88, 181
Galle, J. G., 39
Gallup, George, 169-76, 288
Gal ton. Sir F., 213, 231
Garcia, Thomas, 237
Gauss, C. F., 123, 240
Genetics, 34, 40, 213-6, 228-9,
251 General Motors, 166, 291 Georgel, Gaston, 148 Gerard, John, 192 Germany, 188-9, 199, 222,
224, 243, 260, 267, 273-5 Gibbs, J. W., 26-7 Gibson, 137 Gilgamesh, 52-3 Goldsmith, F. N., 265-6, V Gor- and Gosplans, 293, 298 Graunt, John, 228 Greece, Greeks, 35-6, 46,
51-2, 59-60, 68-74, 78, 81 Gregory XI, 148 Guam, 188 Guillaume, A., 52fn Gurney, E., 132fn Guthrie, Douglas, 200fn, 205 Gypsies, 91, 120
Hadrian, 75
Hale, 194
Hallucination, 50, 90-1, 135-6
Hamilton, W., 268
Hamlet, 183
Hanau, A., 262fn
Harrison, W. H., 92fn
Haruspices, 74-6
Harvard, 1 14, 272-3
Hattus, 55
Hegel, 153
INDEX
313
Heindl, H., 188 Heine, H., 47 Henri H & IV, 85-6 Heisenberg, W., ^5-6, 28 Heliopolis, 61, 145 Hepatosocopy, 53-7, 74-5, 13 Heraclitus, 70, 145 Herodotus, 71 Hertz, 302 Hertzka, T., 44 Hinton, G. H., 140 Hipparchus, 74, 96, 98 Hippocrates, 54, 73, 199, 203 Hitler Regime, 85, 106, 161-2,
222, 224, 231, 301 Hobbes, Thomas, 46 Hofstatter, P. W., 127fn Holstein, F. von, 267 Homer, 67, 71, 151 Horoscopes, 60, 78, 83-5, 92,
100, 102-18, 146, 178-9,
301 Humbaba, 52, 9 Humphreys, W. J., 187fn Huter, C. H., 105 Hypnosis, 89-91, 130
India, 52, 163, 227 Induction, 38, 50, 128 Inflation, 252-3, 276-8, 282-3 Inspiration, 36-7, 46-50, 127,
143 Insurance, 21, 50, 87, 198,
234-5, 242-7 Intestines, Prophecy from,
53-7, 74-5, 10, IV Intuition, 38-41, 48-50, 127,
143
Isidore of Seville, 147 Israel, 36-7, 63-7, 163, 212, 266
James, M. R., 131
Jantat, Leon, 89fn
Jeans, J. H., 26, 28
Jevons, W. S., 194
John of Toledo, 80-1, 178
Joseph, 66-7
Josephus Flavius, 146
Jomal, O., 116fn
Juglar, Clement, 257-60, 276
Julius II, 82
Jung, C. G., 127
Jupiter, see also Planets, 74
Kant, I., 119, 139 Kautsky, Karl, 154fn Kekule, F. A., 128 Kemper, M., 95fn, 128-9 Kepler, J., 83, 104, 26 Keynes, J. M., 249, 253-4,
277 Khrushchev, Nikita, 298-9 Kierkegaard, S., 91 Kinetic Theory, 26 Kinsey, A. C, 175 Kirchoff, 194 Kitchin, J., 259-60, 276 Koerte, G., 75fn Kondratieff, N. D., 260-1, 276 Kubie, L. S., 206fn Kuczinski, R. R., 222fn Kurski, A., 293fn Kuznets, S., 260fn
314
INDEX
Lamarck, J-B., 182-3 Landon, A. M., 170 Landsteiner, K., 213 Lange, F. A., 26fn Laplace, P-S., 182-5, 240 Larousse, P., 92 Lavoisier, A-L., 188 LazarefF, P., 170fn League of Nations, 223-5 Leffler, G., 268fn Leibniz, G. W., XII Lenin, V., 293, 295 Leo X, 82
Leverrier, U-J-J-., 39, 185-7 Lewinsohn, R. (Morus),
210fn, 267fn Lhermitte, Jean, 127fn Literary Digest, The, 169-70 Lithology, 69 Lloyd's, 247 Lo King (Chinese Magic
Disc), 60, VIII London Soc. Psych. Research,
131-4 Lotteries, Gambling, 89, 90,
109, 115, 165-6, 168,
236-9, 241-2, 248 Louis, J-D., 282 Luther, M., 82
McCombs, R. P., 205fn McChung, 210 Macbeth, 90 Mackenzie, Sir J., 205 Malthus, T. R. 34, 219-23, 227 Marduk, 59 Martineau, A., 106 Marx, Karl, 43, 153-4, 258-9, 293-7
Mass Tests, 136-8, 167-75
Maxwell, 302
Medicine, 37, 50, 198-216
of Probability, 208 Meissner, B., 56fn Melancthon, 82, 180 Memphis, 67
Mendel, Gregor, 213, 215 Mendeleev, Dimitri, 39 Mendes-France, 106 Mentre, F., I58fn Mer6, Chevalier de, 88 Mersenne, P^re, 88 Mesmer, A., 90 Mesopotamia, 51-5, 6S, 65,
14>, 16, 80 Meteorology, 30, 50, 58, 67,
177-97, 255-6, 288-9 French, 190-1 German, 188 Minkowski, H., 140 Mirarandola, Pico della, 180,
189 Misserand, A., 21lfn Moira, 69 Mollet, Guy, 106 Mongols, 105-6 Monnet, Jean, 285-6, 300 Monte Carlo, 237-9 Moore, H. L., 194 More, Sir T. (Morus), 43,
293 Morgan, J. P., 266 Morgenstern, O., 242fn Morus, see Lewinsohn R. &
More, Sir T. Moscow, 188, 296-300 Moses, 63 Moura, Jean, 87fn Muller, J. H., XIII
INDEX
315
Mycenae, 69
Myers, F. W. H., 129, 132
Naba, 59, 60 Nairobi, 188 Natopa, 61
Necromancy, 50, 65, 85-7 Negro folklore, 95
sex ratio, 228
vote, 172 Nelson, S. A., 268 N.E.P., 293-4 Nergal, 58-9, III Nero, 75
Neumann, J. von, 242fn New Deal, 170, 253 Newton, Sir Isaac, 27, 31, 38, 51, 140, 171
Oracles, 70-6, 92 Orestes, 69 Orwell, George, 44 O.T., 36-7, 63-7, 147, 179 Otho, 75
Palamedes, I
Parapsychology, 131-6, 142
Pareto, V., 251-3
Paris: Astrological Monthly, 106, 109 Mus6e de Costume, 216 Nat. Inst. Statistics, 113
Parke, H. W., 73fn
Pascal, Blaise, 22, 87-9, 181, XI
Paul III, 83
Pepin, E., 188fn
New York, 107, 168, 212, Periods, Theory of, 150, 159,
266, 268 City College, 138 Nicepsos of Sais, 51-2 Nietzsche, F., 147-8 Niniveh, 52 Ninurta, 59 Nostradamus, 82-6, 21 Notestein, 237 Notscher, F., 56fn Numerology, 89-92, 109-10, 116, 145-6
Oberkirch, Baroness, 91 Oblplan, 298 Oedipus, 59 Olympia, 70 Omens, 56-7
161-3, 211, 240, 253-4, 256-7 Persia, 52, 76 Persons, Warren, 194 Petosiris, 52 Petty, Sir W., 87, 218 Picasso, Pablo, 125, 159 Pinder, W., 158 fn Planck, Max, 31, 155 Planets, 34, 57, 60-1, 77-85, 99-110, 115-6, 178, 217 Jupiter, 29, 59, 100, 103,
108-10 Mars, 59, 100, 107 Mercury, 59, 100, 108, 1 10,
23 Moon, 46, 58-9, 62, 76, 97,
183 Neptune, 29, 39, 100, 185
316
INDEX
Planets — continued Pluto, 100 Saturn, 59 y 103, 105, 107,
1 10, 24 Sun, 46, 58, 62, 96-7, 100,
193-5 Uranus, 59, 100, 110 Venus, 59, 100, 109-10 Planning, 22, 41-2, 49-50, 67,
241, 264, 280, 292-303 Plato, 43, 73, 92, 145-6 Pliny the Elder, 76 Plutarch, 70, 73, 92 Poincare, H., 248fn Polo, Marco, 62 Porta, G. della, 84-5 Positivism, 153> 158 Poujadists, 266 Precognition, 30, 50, 130,
134-42 Pregnancy, 98-102, 209-16 Premium Bonds, 241 Princeton, 223-4 Probability, Theory of, 23,
26-30, 50, 87-9, 245-7 Psi-Process, 137 Psycho-analysis, 120-2, 124-9
206 Ptolemy, Claudius, 67-8, 74,
76-7, 96-7, 1 19 Puysegur, Marquis de, 90-1 Pythagoras, 73, 145 Pythia, 70-2
Quantum Theory, 26-8, 31, 155
Raiplan, 298 Raynes, H. E., 246fn
Religion, S6, 46-9, 117, 144-5,
217-8 Renaissance, 82-3, 152, 281 Renan, E., 69 Renouvier, C, 155 Revolution, 31, S3, 156-1, 162,
182, 194, 219, 257, 292 Rhesus (RH) Factor, 213 Rhine, J. B., 130, 136-7 Rhythms, (Cycles), 35, 78-9,
143-6, 148-42, 157-63,
157-63, 193-7, 203, 218,
220, 253-68, 268-78, 301,
306-8 Richet, C, 130 Rio de Janeiro, 116, 188-9 Roll, E., 252fn Romans, Rome, 54, 74-5, 100,
107-8, 145-7, 149, 280 Romeuf, J., 294fn Roosevelt, F. D., 85, 169, 170,
253, 287 Roques, F. W., 209fn Rossby, C-G., 187 Roulette, 235-42 Rowe, J. W. F., 263fn Rugby, 188 Ruttan, M., 53fn
Sainte-Beuve, C-A., 158 Sartre, J-P., 175 Saul, 64-5 Say, Leon, 282 Scaliger, J. C, 147-8 Scheinfeld, A., 215fn Scheucher (1734), 16 Schmeidler, Gertrude, 138 Schnabel, P., 73fn Schonberg, Arnold, 151
INDEX
317
Schopenhauer, A., 91 Schrodinger, 140 Schumpeter, J. A., 260fn Schwabe, S. H., 194 Science, Scientists, 20, 25, 50,
93-4, 107, 122, 132, 182-4 Servien, Pius, 240 Sex, 34, 73, 120-6, 175, 210-3,
220-3, 257 Shamash, the Sun, 58, III Shakespeare, W., 90, 131 Shaw, G. B., 44 Shaw, Sir Napier, 196fn Shipton, Mother, 92 Sibyl of Cumae, 74 Siciliano, A., 289 Sin, 58
Sirius-Cycle, 145, 149 Sismondi, S. de., 236 Smith, Adam, 254 Snyder, L. H., 230 Soal,S. G., 130fn, 137fn. 138fn Socrates, 146 Somnambulism, 90 Sophocles, 69 Sourian, M., 14lfn Spencer, Herbert, 92, 154-5 Spengler, O., 155-7 Spitzbergen, 196 Stalin, J., 294, 297-301 Statistics, 22, 27, 41, 50, 113,
250, 259, 261-2 Stekel, W., 126 Stern, Curt, 229-30 Stetson, H. T., 194fn Stoffler, J., 179-80 Stock Exchange, 35, 1 10, 241-
2, 255, 264, 267, 274 Stockistic models, 278-9 Stoics, 57, 154
Stravinsky, Igor, 151, 159 Sugermann, Dr., 212 Sulla, 75
Sumerians, 53, 58 Sussmilch, J. P., 217-8 Swedenborg, 135 Symbols, 22, 33, 94-6, 120-6 Syria, 52, 63
Talleyrand, 135, 282
Tannehill, 195fn
Telegony, 98
Telepathy, 91, 128-31, 134
Tell-Hariri, 55
Terman, L. M., 232fn
Tetrahiblos ( Ptolemy ) , 67-8 ,
76, 96, 103, 1 19 Theophilus, 200 Thermometer, 181-2 Thiel, R., 62fn, 180fn Thothmes,IV, 66 Tiberius, 75 Tinbergen, Jan, 278 Tonti, Lorenzo, 244-5 Torricelli, E., 181, 55 Toynbee, A. J., 155-6, 160-1,
260 Truman, Harry, 173 Tucker, W., 52fn T.V.A., 287 Tyrell, G. N. M., 137
Uganda, 53 Ulysses, 65 UNESCO, 115 United Nations, 224, 227
318
INDEX
Ur, 53, 58
U.S.A., Ill, 117-8, 157, 166- 76, 195, 206, 222, 226, 228-9, 230-3, 249, 253-5, 258-9, 266-9, 275-7, 287- 92, 298
U.S.S.R., 163, 223-6, 241, 292-303
Vaillant, J. B-P., 185 Valmer, R., 19lfn Vendrey^s, P., 25fn Verne, Jules, 44, 6 Vespasian, 75 Viaut, A., 186fn Vico, G., 150-3, 155 Vieira, A., 147 VillMe, Pres., 282 Villiaud, Paul, 78fn Vimont, Claude, 227 Vinci, Leonardo da, 47-8, 7 Virchow, R., 213 Voltaire, 106, 240 Vladivostock, 188
Wagemann, E., 273-4 Wagner, Richard, 151
Wall Street, 35, 168, 265-6,
268-9, 30 Wall Street Journal, 268 Wallenstein, 104, 281, 25 Walsh, W. H., 155fn Weiss, M., 200fn Wells, H. G., 44 Wharton, L. R., 21lfn Wiener, N., 302 Winckelmann, 152 Windsor, Duchess of, 107 Winter, P. L., 107fn Winterstern, A., 122fn, 134fri Witt, De, 245fn Wolf, J., 22lfn Woytinsky, 237 Wright Bros., 176
Zaripha, 73
Zener-Cards, 136-7, 26
Zeus, 69, 178
Zinner, E., 6lfn, 82fn
Ziqqurat, 58
ZoUner, 194
Zodiac, 58-60, 77, 97, 276,
12, 14, 22, VI Zweig, F.,
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