TOWARD OPEN SOCIETIES

Iron Curtains Bestow Advantages, But So Does Freedom

The Anglo-American relies upon personal interest to accomplish his ends, and gives free scope to the unguided strength and common sense of the people; the Russian centers all the authority of society in a single arm. The principal instrument of the former is freedom; of the latter, servitude.

--De Tocqueville, Democracy in America, 1835

DURING the turbulent fortnight preceding President Eisenhower's declaration that "a world of open societies" is a major U.S. goal, many voices in the West bemoaned the strategic disadvantages of an open society in competition with a closed, authoritarian society. In justifying the null need to send U25 flying over Russia, U.S. spokesmen repeatedly pointed to the great advantage of secrecy that Iron Curtains bestow7--almost as if Iron Curtains were something to envy. Temporarily forgotten was the balancing fact that closed societies have their competitive disadvantages, too--and open societies their competitive advantages.

President Eisenhower himself articulated some of the competitive disadvantages of the open society. "Here in our country," he said in last week's televised speech to the nation, "anyone can buy maps and aerial photographs showing our cities, our dams, our plants, our highways--indeed, our whole industrial and economic complex. We know Soviet attaches regularly collect this information. Last fall Chairman Khrushchev's train passed no more than a few hundred feet from an operational ICBM. in plain view from his window." But openness also has its advantages. It fosters self-scrutiny and public criticism and free speech--more effective restraints against corruption, inefficiency and injustice than any secret police.

The closed society surfers from the absence of these restraints. Ruthless, singleminded concentration of men and treasure on a single project may lead to spectacular results (example: Sputnik). But the monolithic closed society lacks the flexibility to improvise and change its plans. "It is not prepared to go off into new, unplanned fields." says University of Chicago Historian Daniel Boorstin. "But the open society is a world where everything can be tried." Adds Bishop Gerald Kennedy, president of the Methodist Council of Bishops: "The overwhelmingly important strength of a free society is the individual--the lonely man. whether he be in a laboratory, in a church, in his home, who gropes for and finds ideas and then expresses them. This is creativity. This is what a closed society does not permit."

The classic example of the closed society--and all its follies--was Nazi Germany. Its supreme leader felt himself to be infallible, his country invincible--and few underlings dared contradict him. Hitler promoted incompetents to high positions to reward their loyalty to him. With supreme confidence he declared war on all the other major Western powers, but did not put Germany's defense planes on round-the-clock shifts until the war was beyond winning. Closed off from true reports on his adversaries, he grossly miscalculated their will and power to fight back (much as Nikita Khrushchev miscalculated how the world would respond to his ranting at the summit). Closed off from outside thought, Hitler scoffed at the idea of atomic energy as "Jewish wizardry." Tolerating no dissenters or eccentrics, he forced out of their countries many of the independent thinkers who later built the U.S. atomic bomb. Under Hitler, Germany never approached anything like the free-market prosperity of today's West Germany--though the Republic is truncated and has to support 13 million Eastern refugees.

The greatest competitive advantages of the closed society are secrecy and military surprise--as the U.S. learned at Pearl Harbor. In conflicts throughout history, closed societies have often scored early victories. But closed societies tend to lack staying power. Their people are stirred to great efforts only by compulsion and propaganda; they have no creative incentive--only the negative incentive of escaping punishment or harassment. The first crack in the monolith destroys the myth of popular loyalty, as the Communists learned during the rebellions in East Germany in 1953, and in Poland and Hungary in 1956. The first close, hard look at the overstaffed factories and economic-control bureaus de stroys the myth of economic efficiency.

Even the advantage of secrecy is slipping away from the closed society in the age of high flights and space shoots. Last week's orbiting of a prototype Midas satellite (see SCIENCE) was a meaningful advance toward a world of open societies. It brought nearer the day when scores of reconnaissance satellites will spin over all the closed lands, their electronic eyes guarding the world outside against surprise attack. "Modern technology gives us the methods of surveillance." says M.I.T. Professor Wait Whitman Rostow. "Closed societies are doomed."

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