YAKOV KROTOV

EAST AS PLAN VS. WEST AS LAW

Two extremes exist and cannot come together like East and West: plan and law. If this book be written in Russian and for Russians, it will be necessary to explain in details what the law actually is, and the same must be done for China, or Iraque. Certainly, there are plenty of countries in the East which lives knows what the law is and live according to the law. Moreover, the Law came from the East just as the Sun do everyday, whether we think about the Divine Law of Moses, the Penal Code of Hammurabi, or the Chinese Law of Sky Harmony. Still, nowadays China is the land of Communism, where rules the will of the Commust Party, embodied in a massive set of all-emracing plans, and the laws are of the monor importance and can be any moment changed to help for the realisation of the plan. "The plan is the law," states the old Marxist slogan. The land of Hammurabi now are the lands of the Saddam Husein and hairs of Homeini, where rules not the law, but the will of the state dictator or of religious leaders. It is hard to explain for the people in Russia, China, Iraque why it is more important to live according to the laws, without violating them in order to fulfill this or that plan.

In the United States it is just the opposite. Americans know pretty well why freedom and responsibility are inseparable from the law. The obidience to law is so natural and inborn for them, that they can afford to themselves to hate lawers, to mock the inertia of trials. It is like joking about mother-in-law, whom you like and appreciate, and wish her many years of life. The law is strong enough to stand any mockering in the West.

As concerns plans, it is just the opposite. Americans certainly are aquainted with planning on the personal level, sometimes they are overburdened by schedules, diaries, appointments. But they are badly aquainted with central planning, and it seems to many of them to have a great value. In the last hundred years nearly all spheres of the American life became to be part of the governmental plans to some extent. Regulations are numerous and seems to be profitable for everybody, from farmers to alone mothers. Now in Russia the former Communists, who still held all prominent offices defend central planning and the dictatorship of the government (which still exist) pointing at the United States as an example of the fruitful central planning. If you beleive them, free market means freedom for the government to plan production, consumption, social help, everything. Certainly, they exaggerate.

Central planning is not in all cases the planning from the governmental center. Ane planning touching the future not only of a planner but of some other person or persons is central. You plan future for someone else. You become to some extent fate-maker for someone else. The result for you is that you become proud of yourself. And the result for others?

***

Acton institute provided me Bradley visiting scholarship. October of 1994 I spent in U.S. 30 fascinating days, full of discoveries and miracles, a race from San Diego to New York. Oh no! Only 29 days count. One day was spent absolutely senseless: I was caught in the Boston airport without opportunity to leave it, to have a sleep, obliged to check each two hours in order to leave. I was caught because I've got a voucher of the lowest level, I was stand by, and the flights were all full, not a single place for me.

The brilliant schedule which Acton institute prepared for me has been broken. One important lecture was missed. Why? I am sure, that the fluid of passengers was not unnatural on this Sunday evening and Monday morning. It was natural. People returned from week-end on planes just as Muscovites return in over-crowded electrical rains from their "dachas." When I am in Russia, I always remember about this avoid any traveling on Sunday evenings.

The ultimate reason of my staying in Boston airport was central planning because my brilliant schedule was an example of central planning. Its author didn't know -- because he is not from Boston -- or didn't bother to know that on the weekend it is very hard to leave Boston stand by. For a men who made the schedule it can be very big difference: whether he couldn't receive information because he was not attentive enough, or whether information was out of reach. For this man boss it can be very important question, whether it is a concrete person to be blamed, or the forces of nature. For me it was of no difference. There I was, in this airport, thrown out of life, with heavy head, resentful and looking at Delta's employees as my personal enemies. I didn�t blame a man who central-planned this adventure, because this man was as innocent victim of central planning as myself.

Certainly, Americans don�t know planning centralized to such high degree as in Communist Russia. But they do know what planning is and any planning is centralized to some extent. Even if I plan something to myself I include others in the schedule. It�s inevitable. The responsibility is making self a center for planning someone�s fate.

That means that planning in itself is suspicious to those who love freedom and creativity. Plans, schedules, programs since Romanticism seem to be contrary to inspiration. One of the most stubborn myths of the modern psychology is that inspiration means improvisation, and planning kills its. Just a casual example from an essay of bright Christian author Eugene Petersone:

"What has program got to do with spirituality, with creativity? Programs are fine for Euclidean minds and spirits, I suppose. And they are always useful for peripheral matters. But at the center?"

(Eugene H. Peterson, Fyodor Dostoevsky; God and Passion. In: Reality and the Vision: 18 contemporary writers tell who they read and why. Word Publishing. 1990. P. 22.)

Such attitude is fed by two fears: a fear of bourgoisity, as opposed to artistism, and a fear of communism. Actually, it is one and the same fear. Capitalists are afraid of the Communism and Marxism absolutely on the same grounds on which artists are afraid of capitalism. Communism seems a death to creative freedom which is present in market enterprise, just as enterprising seems a death to poetry or piety. When capitalist manager reads about the horrors of Russian central planning he feels himself a poet of industry who reads about attempts to make industry a bureaucratic prose.

In order to understand the real danger of central planning it is necessary to reject the imaginary dangers. The condemnation of the central planning as such is very widespread, and it is useful as far as it stops the spreading of central planning. But it is intellectually wrong and sooner or later this can turn against the defenders of freedom. So we must understand that central planning is bad not because it is bad, but because it is too good for this world.

Planning � and central planning is the ultimate and "ideal" planning � is a great blessing, unspeakable from the blessing of human reason, logic, intellect. Whether planning is good only for peripheral areas of human existence? Jesus definitely stated the opposite:

"Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple. Which of you wishing to construct a tower does not first sit down and calculate the cost to see if there is enough for its completion? Otherwise, after laying the foundation and finding himself unable to finish the work the onlookers should laugh at him and say, 'This one began to build but did not have the resources to finish. . . . In the same way, everyone of you who does not renounce all his possessions cannot be my disciple."

The world is the result of the most central planning imaginable. "God�s will" can be translated for the "modern man" as "the most central planning." The most prosaic word plan can live in the most poetic work of Emily Dicinson:

We never know how high we are

Till we are asked to rise

And them if we are true to plan

Our statures touch the skies �

God give a man the ability not only to understand His own plans but to plan. Moreover, the commandment "to dress and to keep" the creation is the commandment to be a center for planning all creation�s fate. Any gardener is a central planner for the garden, and a mankind is no exeption. Planning can be and must be as God-inspired as improvisation, it must be applied not only to periphery but also to the central areas of human existence. It is impious (and unwise, which also matters) to counterpose planning and inspiration. You can only oppose chaos and planning. Poetry (taken as a symbol of artistism and inspiration) can be even more "planned" phenomena than poetry, because rhythm and rhyme are certainly symptom of planning, connection of inspiration with figures, all-human psychological appropriateness. The Paradise itself seems to be a very "central-planned" reality, with Christ as the Center. And a hell will be the most non-planned happening in the history of universe. Dante was wrong. No circles, no order, only chaos and horror of chaos.

Central planning is an attribute of power. And on the heaven the famous motto of Lord Acton doesn�t work. Really absolute power doesn�t corrupt, because absolute power belongs to incorruptible God. Power heals, power creates, power loves. Power corrupts only when it is separating from the Absolute Power. The problem is, that in this world any power is to some extent separated from the Absolute Power, and any planning is separated from the only Center which makes planning a blessing.

Central planning is a generous utopia like one language and one speech for all people. The building of Gosplan � "The State Committee for Central Planning" � in Moscow, opposite Kremlin, is the Babylonian Tower of modernity. Central planning is another name for imperialism, because it looks for the center, tries to create the center in the world where center is absent. God is absent in this world, and therefore any attempt to be like God is doomed. Between our calling to be the center of planning for the world and the present state of the world is the Fall, a revolt against the only one Center.

Central planning is a spiritual vice, it is improper answer for the temptation. The temptation is to return to the sense of human life without repentance, without return to the Creator of human life. Human being feels himself always on the edge in this godless world, always at a risk to die, to be sick, to be isolated from other, to be hated, to have no human response and love, to be not completely human, to lose the gift of personality. Let us sacrifice a small part of ourselves to the common good, let us create some center, which will guarantee that everyone receive a small portion of bread and attention (which is so close to love.) Let us build us a city and a tower! Let us give a part of our independence in order to receive safety. Let everybody sacrifice a part of one�s pride in order to receive some love.

The idea is not bad in itself. The idea is very pious: to exchange pride for love. The idea is so temptative precisely because it is a part of truth, a cartoon truth. It is a sideway to salvation. The problem is that the sideway to salvation leads to the side-salvation, to temporary relief only. Very soon it cames out that even if all people will agree to donate their money and their pride and their intellect to one center, they will not receive consolation, they will construct only a tower, not God, who can be the only and true consolation. Moreover, quite soon people feel (not understand!) that they are fraud: they gave too much and received too little. And, first of all, the central planning gives a lot of material privileges (at least sometimes, in theory, and let us not speak about material impediments on central planning; those who lived under Soviets understand immediately, those who don�t will never believe) but takes as a fee a sense of personality.

Central planning makes man nothing, turns human being into nonhuman nonbeing. Central planning can (theoretically) give a man what he dreamed of but it destroys the very self-conscience. It is always a kind of satanic deal: you receive something but you loose ability to enjoy anything. You receive minimum means for existence, nut you loose the background of existence. It came out that freedom is such a characteristic of existence which cannot be lessened at sacrificed without annihilation of existence.

During my trip across United States I�ve got the impression that those who struggle central planning as a governmental practice often make a tactic mystake. They stress that the help from the government lacks human warmth. The government can give you a voucher (oh, these vouchers!) but it cannot ask you about your life. It can give calories but not warmth and personal consolation.

That is true, but that is exactly why most people prefer central planning and not look with enmity at subsidiary ways of help. People do want to receive consolation from person. But people know too well that any human person cannot give you pure consolation. You always risk to receive with personal contact personal aggression and harassment. The harassment-phobia is absolutely understandable. Only by the Divine Grace a human person can give to other human person love without any touch of pride, of attempt to enslave you a little bit as a reward.

We humans face a choice between two evils. We can save our personality from the aggression of our neighbor by adjusting to the system of the central planning, of the super-personal help and treating. But central planning as a result will destroy the very personality which we tried to save from enslavement. What shall we prefer: enslavement or destroyment? In the most bloody form this dilemma was realized in Russia, when peasants who for centuries have been enslaved, agreed to nationalization of land, to the collectivization and as a result were exterminated and disappeared, so as only "workers of the collective farms" can be found now in Russia: drunken, immoral, without any sense of religion, landless, without any social, political or cultural existence. Certainly, this is only an example. Central planning is a spiritual vice, so it is not inevitable connected with some specific political system. A monarchy, even dictatorship can go without central planning, democracy, even American, can go with it and actually tends to do so.

To choose between enslavement and destroyment is very simple. Certainly, enslavement is preferable. Central planning destroys you, so you cannot struggle with it, you practically have no personal existence. This is the case of all post-Communist countries: it came out that it is quite easy to free the country from the ideology of central planning than from central planning itself. The people get used to it precisely in the same way and of same reasons of which it is so easy to get used to drugs and nearly impossible to be saved from such addiction. Life under central planning puts you in the vicious circle: in order to become a free and responsible person you must free yourself from central planning, but central planning deprives you of any possibility to be free, responsible and a person.

Aggression of any man against us is in principle less dangerous than aggression of any inhuman institution. Human is a being equal to you, you can dialogue with him, you can resist him, you can rise above him spiritually. That is why all spiritual dangers implicit in the interpersonal relations, including the relations between those who give help and those he receive are lesser than dangers implicit in the system of central planning, which is actually the system of centralized benefaction, humanitarian aid without humans. It is always frightful to ask for help and to receive it from a man or woman not because they can refuse to help, but because they can agree to help, they can suggest you help, they can bury you under mountains of help together with emotional warmth of such high degree that it is nearly emotionally burn you. But you can resist to this heat. You cannot resist to the absolute cold of the impersonality and inhumanity of central planning.

It is senseless to say that central planning is only a sin and vice from A to Z. It is not. The problem is that there is no such sin and vice which is evil from A to Z, because evil can only develop something good in the undue direction. Some part of good must be even in central planning, distorted, but real. We must find and remember about this partial truth in order to show those who defend central planning that they have a fine starting point and an excellent goal, the problem is only in technical details. Their energy and enthusiasm can be applied properly.

Central planning is not only a distortion of the genuine human desire to common prosperity. Central planning is also the projection of the Law into the spheres where the Freedom and Grace must rule. The Law is a negative plan, and it must be centralized in order to be the genuine Law. Central planning makes a Law positive affirmation, gives to an executioner all executive power and even more. Paradoxically that means that Law looses it sense. When the ideology of Law penetrates all human existence, the laws become senseless. This is vividly seen in Russia where under Communism the legal acts tried to regulate everything, from the production of matches to children upbringing (now it is not much better.) At the same time nowhere in the world the laws and judges have been ever so dispised and humiliated. The will of the establishment, of petty and great officials substituted the law, expressing itself in all-embracing plans. But even these plans have never been fulfilled. The chaos took place instead of the planned Paradise of order.

Central planning is a part of the rationalistic, pragmatic and anti-human humanism which is deaf and blind towards human passions, virtues and vices. Such secular humanism is not a monopoly of the Communism, it is present in the modernity of the Western civilization as its essential part. But the very "essence" of the former Christendom is complicated and includes the Christian humanism. The coexistence and struggle of these two humanisms constitutes the main sense of our time. Everything seems to be against religion, it is deprived of everything. But it cannot be deprived of faith and of God of this faith. God could make a central plan for the salvation of humanity, where everybody will have precise place and obligation. He made better, He relied upon our will, freedom and faith. We must follow Him and in our life know the limits of any planning and the unlimitedness of Grace.

***

Western civilization identified itself with the law since the times of the Roman empire, and the East with the absolute despotism and tyranny. This is a false opposition. It makes West weak in front of the real danger. The Law opposes Plan, not the tyranny. Tyranny is strong because the idea of planning human happiness is string, not because people enjoy suppressing each other. Humans enjoy giving happiness to each other, planning the happiness to each other, and it is impossible to live a life without planning for other something.

The East must be taught the discipline of the Law, both private and international, of the stictly negative borders for human free will and for the will and desires of the huge nations also. The East can do it because the Law in not a Western invention, but because the Law is inherent to the human nature. Moreover, just as the Sun comes from the East, the Law also came from the East, because long before the Roman law in the East there have been the laws of kings and the Divine Law of Moses. The problem of the East not an ignorance of the Law, but an over-knowledge of the Law, when the Law is permitted to become positive, all-embracing structure, the Plan.

The West must be taught the discipline of the Plan, which helps to feed hungry and provide a minimume of the life level to needy. The West must be taught to keep balance between giving help through planning and leaving a person freedom, without which any material help will destroy human dignity and personality itself. Only when the Law and the Plan will take their proper place in our perception of the world we shall be free to understand the uptimate opposition, which is higher that opposition of West and East, of Human Law and Human Plan: the opposition of the Divine Law and Divine Grace, which saves and liberates us under any regime and in any side of the world.

1994