Socialism, Politics and Toilet Paper
There seems to be an ineluctable connection between socialist politics and toilet paper.
When I worked in China, one of the most important items to take with you each morning into the Purple Mountain Observatory in Nanjing was a roll of toilet paper.
Without this you were in trouble - you could not ask to 'borrow' the toilet paper of another.
For one thing it was expensive.
For another, communication was not always easy and sign language in this case might have been misunderstood.
In Rostock, in the socialist Deutche Demokratische Republik days, in an institute where my father visited and I with him, the toilet was locked for fear that the toilet paper be stolen.
The key had to be obtained from the political commissar or similar; you had definitely to think ahead.
In Cuba today, you purchase toilet paper sheet by sheet before you enter a public lavatory.
In the old Czechoslovakia they had a positive fixation about toilet paper.
One of my fellow scientists, a Slovak, has told me how, at Christmas, his uncle would each year arrive with a whole big box of toilet paper.
No-one ever found out where he got it, for no-one got a straight answer if the subject was raised.
But it was considered a terrific present to come with and greatly treasured.
There were moreover attempts to take used toilet paper to the dry cleaners according to reliable sources.
Indeed in Czechoslovakia under the Soviets they had a special sort of apparatchik toilet paper.
This was revealed when a Czech friend of mine many years ago overheard the following conversation in Wenceslaus Square in Prague: 'Do you know why here in Czechoslavkia we have double-sided toilet paper?' 'No, I don't.
' 'Ah! Because a copy of everything must be sent to Moscow,' came the reply.
Be that as it may, why is it that (nominally) socialist countries have or had such an undeniable and remarkable fixation about toilet paper? Can we learn something about socialism, or at least its misguided implementation, from this? Could there be the basis for a theory that this fixation led to the downfall of, at least, Soviet style socialism? Such a theory would be along the lines of those theories which attribute the decline and fall of the Roman Empire to the use by the Romans of lead pipes for drinking water or associate the defeat of Napoleon in Russia with the disintegration of the soldiers' tin trouser buttons at freezing temperatures and the accompanying demoralization of his troops.
It is of course tempting to associate a fixation with toilet paper with an anal fixation.
This is itself associated with a compulsive desire that everything be meticulously organised.
Very often the organisation may be defined by a set of arbitrary rules.
If these rules are infringed, then the anally fixated subject becomes uneasy, upset and prone to anxiety and ultimately neurosis.
This analysis of the significance of toilet paper under socialism goes some way to explaining the rigours of life under the repressive political regime for example in Czechoslovakia.
The reduction of complex political questions to physiology, mental or physical, may be appealing in its simplicity but it is ultimately unsatisfactory.
For example, it is true that the Pope may have had haemorrhoids when approached on the subject of the divorce of Catherine of Aragon from Henry VIIIth.
However while this may have influenced the manner of his judgement on the issue at the time, it probably had little effect on the substance.
Put another way, an anal fixation can barely be considered a more reasonable analysis for a basis for government than the ability to draw a sword from a stone, the mooted foundation of King Arthur's power and ultimately the British Empire.
An alternative and equally simple argument is that some little squit of an apparatchik was given the task of calculating, within a five year plan, the quantity of toilet paper that would be used by the Czech population.
The story goes, according to Czech folklore, that this particular cog in the wheel of the administration suffered from chronic constipation and therefore had a quite misconceived idea of the consumption of toilet paper that was appropriate.
This lead to an equally chronic shortage in the command economy.
However this explanation suffers from a lack of generality.
It is, after all, difficult to conceive of why the decision to calculate the consumption of toilet paper was given in Czechoslovakia, Cuba and the DDR only to constipated apparatchiks in all three countries.
Thus the issue remains something of a mystery, the solution of which may cast new light on the rise and fall of socialism - or it may not.
Certainly within the European context the problem of toilet paper, or what to use when paper was a scarce commodity, is an old one.
Rabelais writing nearly 500 years ago devoted a considerable passage in Pantagruel and Gargantua to just this topic, opting, I seem to remember, for a goose's neck.
He would surely have been the political commentator of choice to discuss the issues raised here but for the time being you, the reader, will have to do with myself and this somewhat febrile contribution to what remains a fascinating problem.
When I worked in China, one of the most important items to take with you each morning into the Purple Mountain Observatory in Nanjing was a roll of toilet paper.
Without this you were in trouble - you could not ask to 'borrow' the toilet paper of another.
For one thing it was expensive.
For another, communication was not always easy and sign language in this case might have been misunderstood.
In Rostock, in the socialist Deutche Demokratische Republik days, in an institute where my father visited and I with him, the toilet was locked for fear that the toilet paper be stolen.
The key had to be obtained from the political commissar or similar; you had definitely to think ahead.
In Cuba today, you purchase toilet paper sheet by sheet before you enter a public lavatory.
In the old Czechoslovakia they had a positive fixation about toilet paper.
One of my fellow scientists, a Slovak, has told me how, at Christmas, his uncle would each year arrive with a whole big box of toilet paper.
No-one ever found out where he got it, for no-one got a straight answer if the subject was raised.
But it was considered a terrific present to come with and greatly treasured.
There were moreover attempts to take used toilet paper to the dry cleaners according to reliable sources.
Indeed in Czechoslovakia under the Soviets they had a special sort of apparatchik toilet paper.
This was revealed when a Czech friend of mine many years ago overheard the following conversation in Wenceslaus Square in Prague: 'Do you know why here in Czechoslavkia we have double-sided toilet paper?' 'No, I don't.
' 'Ah! Because a copy of everything must be sent to Moscow,' came the reply.
Be that as it may, why is it that (nominally) socialist countries have or had such an undeniable and remarkable fixation about toilet paper? Can we learn something about socialism, or at least its misguided implementation, from this? Could there be the basis for a theory that this fixation led to the downfall of, at least, Soviet style socialism? Such a theory would be along the lines of those theories which attribute the decline and fall of the Roman Empire to the use by the Romans of lead pipes for drinking water or associate the defeat of Napoleon in Russia with the disintegration of the soldiers' tin trouser buttons at freezing temperatures and the accompanying demoralization of his troops.
It is of course tempting to associate a fixation with toilet paper with an anal fixation.
This is itself associated with a compulsive desire that everything be meticulously organised.
Very often the organisation may be defined by a set of arbitrary rules.
If these rules are infringed, then the anally fixated subject becomes uneasy, upset and prone to anxiety and ultimately neurosis.
This analysis of the significance of toilet paper under socialism goes some way to explaining the rigours of life under the repressive political regime for example in Czechoslovakia.
The reduction of complex political questions to physiology, mental or physical, may be appealing in its simplicity but it is ultimately unsatisfactory.
For example, it is true that the Pope may have had haemorrhoids when approached on the subject of the divorce of Catherine of Aragon from Henry VIIIth.
However while this may have influenced the manner of his judgement on the issue at the time, it probably had little effect on the substance.
Put another way, an anal fixation can barely be considered a more reasonable analysis for a basis for government than the ability to draw a sword from a stone, the mooted foundation of King Arthur's power and ultimately the British Empire.
An alternative and equally simple argument is that some little squit of an apparatchik was given the task of calculating, within a five year plan, the quantity of toilet paper that would be used by the Czech population.
The story goes, according to Czech folklore, that this particular cog in the wheel of the administration suffered from chronic constipation and therefore had a quite misconceived idea of the consumption of toilet paper that was appropriate.
This lead to an equally chronic shortage in the command economy.
However this explanation suffers from a lack of generality.
It is, after all, difficult to conceive of why the decision to calculate the consumption of toilet paper was given in Czechoslovakia, Cuba and the DDR only to constipated apparatchiks in all three countries.
Thus the issue remains something of a mystery, the solution of which may cast new light on the rise and fall of socialism - or it may not.
Certainly within the European context the problem of toilet paper, or what to use when paper was a scarce commodity, is an old one.
Rabelais writing nearly 500 years ago devoted a considerable passage in Pantagruel and Gargantua to just this topic, opting, I seem to remember, for a goose's neck.
He would surely have been the political commentator of choice to discuss the issues raised here but for the time being you, the reader, will have to do with myself and this somewhat febrile contribution to what remains a fascinating problem.
