Arthur Koestler

Until this stage was reached, politics would remain bloody dilettantism, mere superstition and black magic. .

They will shoot me, thought Rubashov. My motives will be of no interest to them. He leaned his forehead on the window pane. The yard lay white and still.

All our principles were right, but our results were wrong. This is a diseased century.

Certainly,” said Rubashov. “A mathematician once said that algebra was the science for lazy people—one does not work out x, but operates with it as if one knew it. In our case, x stands for the anonymous masses, the people. Politics mean operating with this x without worrying about its actual nature. Making history is to recognize x for what it stands for in the equation.”

Do you really want me to believe that you sacrificed Arlova and denied those”—he jerked his chin towards the light patch on the wall— “only in order to save your own head?”

“I have already thought it over,” said Rubashov. “I reject your proposition. Logically, you may be right. But I have had enough of this kind of logic. I am tired and I don’t want to play this game any more. Be kind enough to have me taken back to my cell.”

“The fact is: I no longer believe in my infallibility. That is why I am lost.”

Rubashov tried to study this newly discovered entity very thoroughly during his wanderings through the cell; with the shyness of emphasizing the first person singular customary in the Party, he had christened it the “grammatical fiction”.

At the next meeting of the Party cell Arlova was dismissed from her post as librarian because of political untrustworthiness, on the motion of the First Secretary. No comment was made and there was no discussion. Rubashov, who was suffering from almost intolerable toothache, had excused himself from attending the meeting. A few days afterwards Arlova and another member of the staff were recalled. Their names were never mentioned by their former colleagues; but, during the months he remained in the Legation before he was himself recalled, the sisterly scent of her large, lazy body clung to the walls of his room and never left them.

The maturity of the masses lies in the capacity to recognize their own interests. This, however, presupposes a certain understanding of the process of production and distribution of goods. A people’s capacity to govern itself democratically is thus proportionate to the degree of its understanding of the structure and functioning of the whole social body.