AThe Philadelphia Inquirer Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Wednesday, July 12, 1972 - Page 26
Money-Grubber or No, Fischer Is a Chess Genius by J.A. Livingston, Inquirer Economics Columnist
“Product of a money-grubbing society.”
That's how a Soviet editor characterized Bobby Fischer for his failure to appear on time for his chess match with Boris Spassky.
Inference: ([Soviet-Bolshevism]) “Communism(TM)” is beautiful, capitalism is degrading— it destroys human beings.
But does it?
True, Bobby Fischer is a product of American society, as are Richard M. Nixon, Joe Frazier, Muhammad Ali, James A. Michener, Gloria Steinem, Martha Mitchell, George McGovern, James Baldwin, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, and Portnoy's Complaint.
But Bobby, like Portnoy, is not an American prototype. He's an adolescent at 29. Perhaps that's why he's usually referred to as Bobby.
IN THE UNITED STATES, he has been accepted because of his chess genius. But in Moscow, Theodore Shabad of the New York Times was told that “Russian public opinion would never stand” for his behavior.
That's the difference between diversity and authoritarianism. Between capitalism with its multiplicity of employers and ([Soviet-Bolshevik])“Communism(TM)” with a single employer — the ruling few from whom all dachas flow.
In the Soviet Union, if you aspire to a comfortable home with private kitchen and bath and emoluments such as an automobile, it's well to be a member of the ([Soviet-Bolshevik]) party.
But the party is not open to all. Men (11,300,000) are preferred over women (3,300,000); city dwellers over farmers; white-collar workers over blue-collar workers. Only about 14,600,000 adults have made it out of 160,000,000.
If you don't happen to be one of the chosen, then you'd better be an extraordinary person — a brilliant bureaucrat, a musician, a scientist, a nuclear physicist, a prominent journalist, a factory executive, a famous athlete. Only recently was Spassky awarded better living quarters.
Yet, an exceptional person can't be too exceptional. He must adhere to the Party line. Because Alexander Solzhenitsyn writes about the hardships of Soviet life instead of glorifying Leninism-Marxism-([BOLSHEVISM])Communism([TM]), he has been read out of the Writers' Union and criticized for winning the Nobel prize. He lives as an excommunicant — a genius denied publication in his own country.
THAT'S THE TRAGEDY of a single-entry system — The State Over Everybody. Big Brother controls all jobs. And deviation from Big Brother's rules begets the blacklist.
The French political commentator, Jean-Francois Revel, in his book “Without Marx or Jesus — The New American Revolution Has Begun,” defends the United States, thus:
“I am unable to explain why Europe, and not America, has been blessed with Hitler, Mussolini, the Moscow Trials, concentration camps, Petainism,Francoism, racial persecution, the Gestapo, the G.P.U.…Why is it that the United States has always been able to preserve its democratic institutions and avoid fascism? And why is it that totalitarian regimes … occupy most of European territory today?”
The answer is that a money-grubbing society gives people mobility, choice, and economic latitude. It's a double-entry system. A man or woman can make a livelihood in government as an elected official or as a federal, state, or local government employee.
Or he can bustle in the private economy as a doctor, lawyer, professor, or as an employee among millions of employers—small stores, large stores, little factories, big factories, foundations, banks, insurance companies, colleges, publishing houses, and so on — each independent in its own way.
In America, businessmen would decide whether to publish or let Solhenitsyn perish. Their rivalry for profits and prestige would override ideology and government protests, if any.
This doesn't exculpate Bobby Fischer for misbehavior ([and why should Bobby Fischer need exculpating when he was reacting to Soviet misbehavior, the capitalist newspapers failed for whatever strange reason to give national news-worthy coverage; earlier months on, the many, finicky, overbearing demands and complaints of European/Soviet organizers who refused for months to sort out the arrangements, before match. Refusing to confer with Fischer, man to man. Soviet-orchestrated-Belgrade Chess organizers' ILLEGAL demand of $35,000 USD “guarantee” rebuffed by USCF! Australia's LEGAL $225,000 bid snubbed by the Soviet USSR, threatening FIDE, the Soviet champion “would not play” if Euwe kept his word and gave the first half of matches to Australia or Mexico, coming in with its bid at $175,000! USSR selection of the notoriously Anti-American, Racist Iceland which restricted entry of persons of color, and due to lack of modern satellite-communications technology, restricted world news coverage for the match. Schemes underfoot by what Ken Smith referred to as “old hands” in Reykjavik/Belgrade to maneuver the means to disqualify Fischer and replace with a Soviet, namely, Petrosian, et cetera, etc.]) It's not a plea for “money-grubbing.” It is a description of the socio-economic tolerance of capitalistic diversity. And if that's called money-grubbing, we should make more of it.
Money-Grubber or No, Fischer Is a Chess Genius 12 Jul 1972, Wed The Philadelphia Inquirer (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) Newspapers.com
