"Marx attempted to reduce society to it's component forces. For Newton, the forces that described the universe were basically gravity, motion and inertia. Marx's major forces were economic. He thought that an analysis of economic relationships would explain the movement of history. And when he had analyzed these relationships he could extrapolate to predict the way society would move in the future." I tap on the board. "This is his analysis."
Some nods. I notice the flicker of highlighters. "I would appreciate it you didn't take this down," I say softly. "You will not be tested on any of this."
The young man who calls me laoshi grins and leans back.
"Marx assumed that either things were predictable or they were random. Things are either predictable or random, aren't they?" It is a trick question, these are engineering students. Engineering tends to work with things we can solve. Things we can solve are usually predictable. "What are the two kinds of predictable equations?" After I ask it I realize they may not know.
A young man, "Linear or periodic."
"Right. Linear. If I drop this book you can calculate the speed of the book as it falls. Correct? Linear or periodic?"
"Linear," he says.
I tap the blackboard behind me. "Linear or periodic?"
"It's not an equation," says the woman who said our Feudal period was in Europe.
"Ah, but it looks like a graph, would the equation be linear or periodic?"
"Linear," a couple of people say. Obviously. It's a line, from primitive to the communist utopia.
"Give me an example of periodic?"
The laoshi young man. "The seasons."
"Right, spring, summer, fall, winter, spring, summer, fall, winter. Capitalism assumed that an economy cycles in a boom and bust cycle. Expansion, adjustment, expansion, adjustment. After all, economics is not unpredictable, is it? The law of supply and demand holds true, reduce the supply and demand will force prices higher. A system that's predictable isn't random.
"So which was right, Marx with his linear view of history, or capitalism with it's cyclical view? Obviously not capitalism, because history didn't repeat. We did progress from primitive society to feudalism, to capitalism. Unless the cycle is just longer than we realize and we are all going to drop back to primitive and start the climb all over again."
"But a periodic equation is a loop," the feudalism woman says, "it has to repeat exactly."
"We're using mathamatics as metaphors," I explain. "Science filters into the general public as metaphors that describe out world, our history. For Marx, there were only two possibilities, that history was either predictable or it was random. If it was random, then it should have behaved in a random fashion, but Newton had described the universe as governed by natural laws. Marx's genius was in determining that social history was also governed by recognizable factors. He set out to systematically define those factors-the basic ones economic-and then, once he thought he had, he did for society what Newton's system did for planetary motion, he predicted the future."
I should stop. But it would sound ridiculous if I stopped. And there's something exciting about standing up here, thinking all this, saying all this.
"That is what you have been taught, and that's the prevailing social view. It's basically a Newtonian view. Since Newton we've had a number of major revolutions in the way we think the universe works, three of them in the twentieth century. The first was Relativity, the second was Quantum Mechanics, the third was Chaos. What is chaos?"
Laoshi says, "The study of complex, non-linear systems."
"Good. What's the Butterfly effect?"
"Laoshi, Pardon me?"
"Any of you interested in Physics?" I ask. "Can someone describe 'sensitive dependence on initial conditions'?"
The young woman who said American feudalism occurred in Europe says, "Sensitive dependence on initial conditions' refers to the way small factors affect non-linear systems." The definition is textbook, the voice is Brooklyn. She and the ABC, I like them.
"Right," I say, "The most classic example is weather, which is not random-for example thunderstorms occur at the leading edge of low pressure system. But weather is not cyclic, if it rained on August the ninth last year that doesn't tell you what it will do this year. The mean average temperature for this year is not the mean average temperature for last year, nor this century for last century. In fact, the climate of the earth has changed radically, through ice ages and warm periods, and no one has ever been able to identify a pattern that repeats itself.
"If I am trying to predict weather, I can feed huge quantities of information into a system; temperature and wind direction and humidity for places all over the globe, the effect of the earth's rotation, land masses, mountain elevations, oceans, and get a fairly reasonable representation of weather. But if I change one temperature in one location by one-tenth of a degree, pretty soon my model's weather will start to diverge from actual weather conditions. In a few months, the system and the real world won't resemble each other at all. Weather shows sensitive dependence on initial conditions. It is so sensitive to variables that the movement of air by a butterfly's wings in New York eventually has an effect on dust storms in Beijing.
Stop now, the conclusion is obvious. I pause. But they are waiting, thirty people willing me to finish. And I want to, I am proud of my theory, I don't want to be careful ths one time.
"History is also a complex system. It is not random, but it is non-linear. Marx's predictions were based on the assumption that history is a linear system, and using those assumptions he predicted the future. But if weather is a complex system, it seems reasonable to assume that history is also a complex system. History is sensitive dependent on initial conditions. You cannot predict the future."
There is a sigh in the classroom. I have said what everybody knows but no one says. It is in the room, hanging.
Marx was wrong.
"For class on Thursday please read the first chapter and prepare problems two, six and seven," I say. "I know we haven't discussed how to do the problems, but I want to see how you tackle engineering problems using systems. That's it, I'll see you Thursday if I'm still a teacher."
They sit for a moment. I check the time, it is a little over an hour. I am wringing wet under my black suit, exhilarated, more than a little scared. Suddenly they all start getting up and six or seven people are standing around my desk asking to be admitted to the class.
Apparently nobody says anything, because come Thursday, I am still teaching. Nobody that is except Alexi Dormov, who leaves me his usual list of questions and a note. "If you keep this up, you're going to end up here. Hope you like goats."
Comrade Cecily Hester from the Office of Occupational Resources calls me. I can feel see her excitement. "I've been reviewing the responses I'm getting, I think you had better come talk to my supervisor," she says. "I think you're rather out of my league. Congratulations. How about today?" she says.
Today is fine. Around ten.
I get dressed in my Chinese suit and go downtown where I meet with Comrade Cecily Hester's superior, Comrade Huang. Comrade Huang is ABC. As one goes further up in any hierarchy, one meets more and more ethnically Chinese. We discuss what kinds of things the companies will offer me, what should be important to me. Comrade Huang talks about the difference between paid salary and the value of benefits. "When you enter a big multinational," he says, "you are entering a community. You should be aware of the kinds of environments the managerial philosophies create."
Whatever that means.
"If I decide on a company, can there be a three month trial?" I ask. "Can we set something up so that either I can get out of the company or they can let me go if I'm not comfortable or right for their environment?" He says it's possible.