The Russian origin of the term “samizdat,” and its subsequent revival in the Soviet Union, perhaps suggests that it is a local phenomenon limited to that particular country and political climate. If we introduce a distinction between political and economic samizdat, however, the term obtains a new and wider interpretation. To wit, whatever falls between the publishing markets in America must either perish or resort to samizdat. The latter possibility is fortunately feasible due to the very low and declining cost of mechanical reproduction. The documentary evidence that follows, including primarily short excerpts from my correspondence, provides a first approximation of the gradual development of my own idea of samizdat. This account is no doubt tedious, but it is nevertheless quite instructive.

1. To the Editor, Telos, May 17, 1977 (under pseudonym: Hop Jan):

I am submitting a few of my notes for your consideration. Most of the notes deal with social, that is, societal planning. As a planner I am concerned mostly with the Hegelian problem of finding a modus vivendi between rational order and freedom. Most of the ambiguities of my notes reflect the ambiguities inherent in the Hegelian project itself.

If you find these notes interesting, I would only ask you two things. First, publish the whole collection in its entirety (because I believe these notes do form a whole). And second, publish them in their chronological order. […] If you are not interested in these notes, however, please do not send them back to me […].

2. To the Editor, Telos, August 6, 1978 (under pseudonym: Hop Jan):

Thank you for publishing my notes in Telos 33, 1977. […] I am enclosing another collection of notes. This time I will leave it up to you to decide which notes deserve to be printed. Like the first time, however, I plead that the notes be published in chronological order.

3. To the Editor, Telos, September 11, 1979:

At last I am writing to you under my own name. Thus far I have been writing to you under a pseudonym: Hop Jan. I returned to the United States a few days ago, and I have just seen that you published the second batch of notes I sent to you in 1978. Thank you very much.[…]

I have decided to come out of the closet because I believe that by doing so my notes may have a greater impact in Yugoslavia, where I intend to return to work in a few years. Thus I am sending you a collection of my notes written while I was working as a planner in Ljubljana, Slovenia. I would like the whole collection to be published as a book, and I hope that you can help me with this. The fact that you published the two batches of notes that I sent to you previously tells me that you are not entirely unsympathetic to my endeavors. Thus I am approaching you first.

4. From Paul Piccone, Editor, Telos, September 26, 1979:

I am glad that you have finally chosen to identify yourself. It was with a great deal of apprehension that we published your notes, without having the least idea of your identity. The notes, of course, were excellent and deserved publication on their own merits. Yet, we usually prefer to communicate more directly with our contributors—even when they choose to remain anonymous.

Although we sympathize very much with your perspective, we do not have the (re)sources to publish your notes in a book form. We are presently committed to publishing four books that we will have problems with. Even if we were able to consider your work as a book, it would be unlikely that we could print it within the next two years. Consequently, I would like to suggest two things: first, select out a set of them that could stand as a self-contained group, and we will try to publish them in Telos; and second, submit your manuscript to another publisher who would be able to consider it seriously […].

At any rate, I am glad that you have returned to the States and I hope you will continue collaborating with us. […] We definitely like your work and share many of your positions. Consequently, we would like you to work with us closely in the future.

5. To Paul Piccone, Editor, Telos, October 25, 1979:

Thank you for your warm letter. This is usually a lonely business, and I have rarely found someone who thought that my writings made much sense.

I have recently been in contact with Paul Breines, who shares your encouragement. He has promised to help me in finding a suitable publisher. We will start with Seabury Press. I hope something will come of this.

Following your suggestion, I am enclosing a proposal concerning the publication of yet another collection of my notes. […] Concerning my name, for the time being I propose that the third batch be published under my real name, but without any explanation on my part. I leave that to the editorial introduction written by you or someone from the staff. […] I will write an explanatory introduction for the book, if it ever sees the light of day.

6. From Paul Piccone, Editor, Telos, October 30, 1979:

I have just received your new set of notes and, as usual, they look OK. […] I’ll try to print them in the next (Winter 1979) issue […].

7. From Justus George Lawler, Editor-in-Chief, The Seabury Press, November 29, 1979:

I am sorry I was unable to get to your notes until now, and equally sorry to say that I don’t think this will work with us. Usually this kind of idiosyncratic format will be saleable if it is written by someone very well known. The general reader is simply not interested in penseés, no matter how insightful.

8. From Roger L. Conover, Acquisitions Editor, the MIT Press, December 12, 1979:

I can react with a good deal of personal interest to your notes […], but editorially I have to say no.

9. To Joanne Wyckoff, Assistant Editor, Beacon Press, December 13, 1979:

Enclosed please find my notes […]. Mr. Paul Breines, the Review Editor of Telos, has encouraged me to send the notes to the Beacon Press. He has also spoken about this to Ms. MaryAnn Lash. […]

Let me add that the idiosyncratic form of my writing is a part of what I am trying to convey at present: the emancipatory thought associated with Critical Theory can progress only to the extent that the present confusion and lack of purpose are freely admitted and expressed from within. Inconsistency is the first sign of salutary self-criticism. In other words, I do not believe that systematic form can accomplish this task. It can only endanger it.

10. From Joanne Wyckoff, Assistant Editor, Beacon Press, February 5, 1980:

MaryAnn Lash and I have both had an opportunity to read your manuscript. While we both like it and wish we could say yes, the manuscript does not seem like one we could publish successfully.

11. To Richard Martin, Editor, University of Massachusetts Press, February 5, 1980:

Let me add that, as my wife expressed it, I have thus far received the best rejections one could hope for. I am enclosing the five letters I have received from various publishers. I hope this collection will illustrate my present position quite well.

12. From Paul Piccone, Editor, Telos, February 6, 1980:

[…] I have both good as well as potentially bad news for you. As I think I mentioned in my last letter, we did publish your last bunch of notes in Telos 42, scheduled to appear sometimes next month. Given some space problems, however, we had to cut some of the notes out. […] They go together very well and I think you will like the way the whole thing turned out. As for the publication of your book, I am sorry to hear about the rejections from Seabury and MIT.

13. From Professor Noam Chomsky, February 8, 1980:

I can appreciate your difficulties in having this material published. My own first book was delayed twenty years, for reasons similar to those you report: “idiosyncratic form was reserved only for famous people.” I hope that your experience will be better.

14. To David R. Godine, Publisher, February 13, 1980:

I have been trying to find a publisher because I believe that it is time for the notes to be read in their entirety. The situation in Yugoslavia is quite uncertain, and there is a real danger of a further shift away from democratic forms of social life. I believe that my notes may make a small contribution in preserving the intellectual climate that has managed to survive the last ten years of a relatively tough policy towards the intelligentsia. […] Thus far my attempts to attract a publisher have been unsuccessful, however. Here I am free to write and publish, but there is a new obstacle: salability. […] Indeed, I have not been writing for the general reader, but for the few who could benefit from an inside perspective of the intellectual scene in Eastern Europe.

15. From Steven Cramer, Editorial Assistant, David R. Godine, Publisher, February 28, 1980:

I did find your book quite fascinating and challenging. […] I am familiar with some of the works of the Frankfurt School, and can see how your work would be of vital interest to those who have followed the evolution of Critical Theory. And that is the reason why most commercial trade publishers would never touch this book. It is a book for specialists and academics who are familiar with the vocabulary of Critical Theory as well as for advanced students who have digested their Marcuse and Adorno. In short, it is a book for a university press, or a press that specializes in scholarly/political books and supports, like Telos, a leftist intellectual orientation. Needless to say, such presses are rare in this country.

16. To Richard Martin, Editor, University of Massachusetts Press, March 14, 1980:

I am deeply convinced that my notes have a great emancipatory potential. I am sure that a serious reader would experience a significant transformation of his or her first impression upon reading the entire collection. The individual fragments do form a whole, however difficult it may be to define it at present. The whole is associated primarily with my total life experience in a socialist country, which cannot be immaterial today, when many thinkers are hopelessly searching for a new paradigm in view of the numerous monstrosities of the socialist project. I believe that various attempts to resurrect Marx’s system are ultimately bound to fail. We do not need a new system, but an open search for emancipatory endeavors that may produce a new understanding of the social world only after a long period of time. The uncertainty characteristic of our times must be endured. The rush to order must be controlled, for the underlying drive has a quasi-religious origin. Only those who dare make blunders may provide us with the fragments of a new perspective. Greater ambitions than this are both misguided and misguiding. Every premature attempt to interconnect these fragments is extremely dangerous.

I am aware that the publication of such a manuscript is a risky affair. Naturally, I am willing to take this risk myself, and I am convinced that I will find a publisher who will be willing to take this risk. Sooner or later it will become obvious that a book like this one will reach the general reader, but an educated general reader.

As I mentioned to you on the phone, at the time only Godine and South End Press were “competing” with you (to use your term). Meanwhile I was rejected by Godine […]. I am still waiting for a response from the South End Press.

17. To the Editor, University of Texas Press, March 16, 1980:

As you will see from my notes, I am a planner. Unsatisfied by the bareness of my professional work and aware of its wide social consequences, I started writing notes that range from literature to philosophy. Many of these notes have already been published semi-publicly in Yugoslavia and under a pseudonym in the United States. As many of these notes have been written in a spirit which is not acceptable in Yugoslavia, I have published a few sets of notes in Telos (Nos. 33, 37, and 42), where many Eastern European dissidents, as the term goes, have an opportunity to publish. I share with Telos a generally Left-Hegelian orientation, and an intellectual association with the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory. While in Yugoslavia I was thus a member of a prominent study group, “Man and System,” which grew out of the banned journal Praxis.

18. From Richard Martin, Editor, University of Massachusetts Press, April 17, 1980:

From my own publishing experience, I do not feel you are likely to find a house willing to take the project on in its present form. Again, perhaps I’m wrong, but I would be deleterious in my duties as an editor if I did not report my honest judgment. The appearance of a number of the “notes” in Telos certainly does not surprise me, both because they are excellent and intellectually provocative, and also because journal publication lends itself more appropriately to such brief statements. A book is a different matter and requires a more sustained voice and argument. Any house with experience will immediately recognize the limited marketing potential of this type of work. This does not stem from the work’s being “off-beat” (publishers do genuinely look for creative works), but from its nature as a collection. As a whole, the manuscript reads very much as a prelude to a book—as a series of insights, observations, reflections (often fascinating and occasionally formidable, I will also add, in terms of insight).

19. From Scott Lubeck, Social Science Editor, University of Texas Press, April 18, 1980:

I am sorry to say that we will not be able to give your manuscript consideration for publication. Our press does not have an established list in European studies. […][…]I fully sympathize with concerns about the difficulty of getting important material into print in this country. The way things are going these days, we will probably all be publishing cookbooks and do-it-yourself manuals before long.

20. Preface to Residua, Vol. I (1976), June 5, 1980:

Because I abhor the “general reader” equally as much as I abhor “success,” I have decided to bypass the marketplace. This collection of short pieces written in 1976 is intended for friends only. Let the marketers indulge in their bestsellers—cookbooks and manuals.

have always insisted that chronological order is the only order conceivable to me. This, together with the addenda that I continue to write, makes reading difficult, to say the least. Reading is not supposed to be an easy task, however. I therefore reject all philistine arguments on this score beforehand.

With all the arrogance I can muster at present, I can declare that I do not understand the short pieces presented here. I do not know why I write them, and I do not know why anyone should read them. Nevertheless, because I am compelled to write them, I believe that there are some people who will be compelled to read them. And this is all.

21. From Barbara Beltrand, South End Press, June 13, 1980:

Several of us here in the collective read your manuscript and decided not to pursue publication. Though we thought well of your integrity in pursuing your own writing method, it did make reading difficult. We are trying to publish a range of books including academic books, but our primary focus is publishing books for everyday readers. Others thought that you may turn out to be the brilliant writer of the 70s and 80s, but that was not enough to sway us. […]

So you did cause me to think and explore ideas in my own mind, but finally we as a group and I personally decided that the writing was just too inaccessible.22. To Paul Piccone, Editor, Telos, October 24, 1980:Here is another collection of my notes. I propose the following title: “Planning, Uncertainty, and Nonidentity.” I hope you will publish it in Telos.

23. From Paul Piccone, Editor, Telos, February 23, 1981:

I am sorry about not having gotten back to you earlier, but our editors did not return copies of your manuscript soon enough. At any rate, I now have most of the comments and I am afraid they are not too positive.

The general consensus is that it does not make much sense for us to publish material in this form, even though there are many interesting ideas in your aphorisms. They, and I agree, suggest that you take most of the ideas and work them out in a regular discursive fashion—especially since they have to do with a coherent set of themes.

The aphoristic style—typical of Nietzsche and Adorno, among others—is appropriate for a situation when either the logic of predominant discourse has collapsed so much that it no longer allows normal modes of presentation, or the writing is being done under such conditions of repression that the message can only be conveyed in a disguised fashion. Neither of the two conditions pertain in your case, so that it is not unreasonable to ask that you put a little more effort into your work and come up with a regular article.

At any rate, the aphoristic style more often than not turns out to be an excuse for laziness, i.e., avoiding confronting the existing literature and participating in normal discourse on the subject being dealt with.

I hope that this does not sound too negative, since I like a lot most of your ideas. I am only suggesting, along with the rest of the editors who have read your work, that your ideas could be more effectively communicated in the normal essay style. Needless to say, we would be more than glad to reconsider the material that you sent under the title “Planning, Uncertainty, and Nonidentity” were you to rework it in an acceptable essay form.

24. Note to myself, April 4, 1981:

To publish Residua as yearbooks, from year to year… Modus: samizdat. Problems: money, circulation, etc. To publish also selections from Residua […] so I would have my “papers” and maybe even “books,” and yet I would not have abandoned the ideal of writing one book… One lifetime—one book. No more, no less. One confusing, silly, frivolous, true, pathetic book. The cost of mechanical reproduction is likely to continue going down. Thus my samizdat solution is likely to become increasingly viable in financial terms. It is crucial that I do not give in to the market forces. That is crucial.

25. To Paul Piccone, Editor, Telos, April 20, 1981:

Enclosed please find a copy of Residua, Vol. V (1980). This is not for publication, however.

26. From Professor Steven Spitzer to Professor Jim Thomas, June 23, 1981:

It was good speaking to you last week and learning of the progress of the book. I am enclosing a copy of “Notes on Planning, Uncertainty, and Nonidentity” by my friend Ranko Bon. […] As you can see, his interest in critical theory comes out of considerable direct experience with social panning and its “discontents.” Ranko’s perspective in the “Notes” may be summarized as follows:

i. He is very willing to delete segments of the material or add material that he has written on these topics and related themes. The enclosed selection is only that, a selection of his much more extensive writings related to social planning, socialist theory, critical method, mathematical interpretation, and other topics. He does insist, however, that each of the dated “fragments” be judged on its own merits; that it either be retained or dropped but not modified in any important respect.

ii. Ranko insists on a preservation of the chronological ordering of his writings. He will be very happy to excise or insert writings that form part of this ordering but feels he must preserve the overall temporal sequence of these reflections so that the reader can trace the development of ideas and contradictions within the work.

iii. The preface is purely provisional. Ranko is prepared to provide a more developed précis to the “Notes,” but his development of such an orientation will depend on their final content and articulation with the project (excuse the expression) “as a whole.”

Ranko is very eager to receive your reaction to these writings and learn more about the prospects for their publication. He also wants you to know that his “inflexibility” grows out of two goals: first, the avoidance of premature “solutions” and false unities; and second, the ruthless pursuit of genuine rather than spurious alternatives. Whatever purity he insists upon follows from these goals, and not from any intellectual arrogance or fetishistic worship of his own work.

27. From Professor Jim Thomas, July 11, 1981:

I have received from Steven Spitzer your manuscript “Notes on Planning, Uncertainty, and Nonidentity” for consideration for our project on dialectics. Steven said that you were hoping to have some idea of the probability of acceptance, but at this point it is too early to tell. The final decision rests, of course, with the publisher. We have been negotiating with University of Chicago Press, who has given a provisional acceptance, and now awaits some idea of the possible contributors as well as a few examples of the contents before making their final decision. […] I suspect that most readers might find your “note” style rather difficult, but I personally have no objections to it, and in fact feel it is quite effective, in that it demands that the reader actively participate more so than in conventional styles of discourse. I also like the content, and feel your discussion of planning is exceptionally strong. […] Should it be felt that your manuscript is appropriate, I would recommend a more limited focus and a reduction to about thirty-five pages. I would also strongly defend your style, which, as I mentioned, seems quite in the spirit of dialectical discourse and conveys a rather subtle ironic tint. Your manuscript does seem to fit perfectly with our goals for the volume, for what that’s worth.

28. From Professor John Forrester, July 22, 1981:

The residua are outrageous, interesting, often right on the mark (e.g., re Popper), funny in places, and confusing in places, too. They’re obviously not to be read continuously (not to say linearly), but interesting of course. Have you been in touch with John Friedmann at UCLA at all? His Good Society has some affinities with your work (especially regarding utopian thinking and scientism), and he might be someone to send another copy to—tell him I sent you with some guarded caution!

29. To Professor John Friedmann, August 22, 1981:

A couple of years ago, while I was still working in Ljubljana, Yugoslavia, I got in touch with you […]. As far as I remember, I sent you a collection of my notes on planning, and you responded with a supportive letter. One of your books, Retracking America, started me thinking in a particular direction, which I still have not abandoned.

I have recently sent another collection of my notes to John Forrester at Cornell University. We had been corresponding before. He thought that he discerned some affinities between my notes and your Good Society, and he thus suggested that I send a copy to you (more precisely, he wrote: “… tell him I sent you with some guarded caution!”). His caution has to do primarily with my style—disconnected abbreviated prose, and my insistence on preserving the chronological order.

30. From Professor John Friedmann, September 10, 1981:

It’s always a pleasure when you discover a kindred spirit wandering through the world. I would certainly like to see the rest of Residua, if that is possible. It might tell me a bit more about the direction that you are taking.

I do have some difficulties with your text. Let me briefly enumerate them. In following Adorno, you adopt a view of dialectics that is idealistic in the extreme: thought thinking against itself. Ultimately, I think such thinking, so divorced from the material world, is destructive, or shall I perhaps say, onanistic. Of course, I love thinking, but this drift of thought, unguided by real events in the world, seems to me to lead nowhere. It is raising negation to an infinite power, to a way of being in the world.

I suppose it is that mode of being in the world that is not me. I am too much of a positive thinker, and that is why I am in planning and not in philosophy or history or even economics. By positive thinking I mean that my thought tends to search for solutions; it is constructive, and perhaps utopian. (But not utopian in the sense that you dissect in your Notes.) You manage to point out the contradictions in central planning, but you don’t show the way out.

Of course, there is no certain way out. (Hence your residua.) There is, however, another form of dialectics, which sees real forces engaged in struggle and conflict within the world. Not thought battling thought, but social forces clashing with each other. And so one accepts imperfection and moves forward. Imperfection is not negation. It is a way, a Tao, leading into a future for which we are responsible.

As for your style, well … I like it. But as you must have experienced it, and you even mention it in your preface, it’s difficult to get published. I had just given up with the U.S., when I found someone at the MIT Press who was willing to go to bat for me. People like linear thinking … very old-fashioned, Aristotelian. They don’t know how thinking happens. They are too lazy to think (for the most part), or they don’t enjoy it. So, if you want to get published … you know what to do!

31. To Professor John Friedmann, October 3, 1981:

I do agree with your enumeration of problems with my notes. I must admit that most of what I write does not satisfy me either: I would like to think differently. Thought thinking against itself can be understood in this light as well—as self-criticism. This need propels me forward.

The social aspect of negative thought is much more important, however. I believe that it may be difficult for you to understand fully the Eastern European mood reflected in my notes. “Positive thinking” has a special flavor there, where thinking men and women are seldom politically naive. They abhor grand designs pro bono humani generis. Thus Mitya in Yuri Kuper’s Holy Fools in Moscow admonishes his friends by praising them: “The only human trait left in you is the absence of noble ideas directed at saving mankind” […]. Put differently, “onanistic thinking” at least does not contribute to the existing order, while it does not offer or even suggest any new panacea. In this context your choice of words is illuminating because “onanism” can be interpreted positively—as coitus deliberately interrupted to prevent insemination. This paradox is socially determined, and cannot be removed by clever devices and good intentions.

Furthermore, I believe that the intelligentsia does not have a true choice in the period of pervasive class collaboration, to use the orthodox shorthand expression. To neglect the objective character of social thought is to be an idealist. Thus, perhaps via a bit of sophistry, my position is consistently materialist, because I do not believe that it is our task to figure out what is to be done. That smacks of idealism indeed, and especially when all the organizational preconditions for political action are palpably lacking.

32. From Professor Jim Thomas, November 5, 1981:

Dick Peterson and I have completed the initial screening for the proposed volume on dialectical method. We received far more responses than we had anticipated, and were faced with the difficult task of choosing between papers of exceptional quality. Both Dick and I agreed that although your own paper appears inappropriate in its current state, there is a potentially fine paper that could be developed. There were no problems with the general notational style, but you might strengthen the paper in two ways. First, it should be shortened to about 30-35 pages […]. Second, it could use a tighter focus. […]

We have invited about fifteen persons to submit drafts, and after a double review process, we will select eight for the final project.

33. From Professor Jim Thomas, January 13, 1982:

We’ve received your draft […], and will be holding off further decisions until about April, after we have received all the papers. Your paper clearly meets the suggested format, and I personally like it, although neither Dick nor our own readers have seen it yet.

We have just mailed a packet of material (including your own paper) for the second round of review at University of Chicago Press, and although we hope for a speedy reply, the last review took about six months. Much of our own time schedule is contingent upon theirs, but such is the nature of this type of project.

34. From Professor Jim Thomas, February 10, 1982:

We anticipate this process will be completed by the end of May, by which time we hope to have a final decision from University of Chicago Press.

35. Note to myself, June 29, 1982:

The most difficult thing with all my intentions concerning the Residua is to control that stupid urge to get it out soon. What’s the rush? Slowly, only slowly and sparingly, could I ever get to anything.Only through selections will I get the necessary criticism, but without unnecessary exposure. Or is it overexposure? I must not rush. And, as I wrote before, I must not cater to the market. Let it go to hell.A related aspect of this is not to write too much. This creates only bulk. I do not need bulk. […] It is absolutely essential that I do not babble and babble for the sake of going along. I must control the drive to just write. Very few thoughts are actually worth recording and having to deal with later on…

36. To Paul Piccone, Editor, Telos, June 30, 1982:

Enclosed please find a copy of Residua, Vol. VI (1981). This is not for publication, however.

Enough! This tedious account is suffocating, indeed. In short, since April 1980, when I started “publishing” my yearbooks on my own, some thirty copies of Residua, Vols. I-VI, have been “distributed” to some twenty friends and acquaintances. Furthermore, around twenty copies of selected notes on planning, originally sent to Paul Piccone and subsequently to Jim Thomas, have been published and distributed as well. My selection of stories, vignettes, anecdotes, epigrams, etc., is presently being “printed,” and I expect to start with the distribution very shortly. My publishing business is flourishing, and yet I have not spent more than one-hundred dollars, as I have found an exceptionally cheap “press.” Parenthetically, in comparison with Yugoslavia, the United States is a real heaven for samizdat, and not only because of the low cost of mechanical reproduction. Namely, this invention of mine would be considered illegal there, according to the provisions of the Publications Act.

Addendum (June 25, 1990)

Although this account is not worth pursuing any longer, I have an urge to add the latest development in my correspondence with the leadership of Telos. Forward, always forward, from the sublime to the ridiculous!

37. To Paul Piccone, Editor, Telos, December 30, 1989:

This morning I stumbled upon an issue of Telos in a Boston bookstore and was happy to see that you are still at the helm. Touched by a bit of nostalgia, I decided to send you a token of my sentiments.

Under separate cover, I am sending you my Residua, Vols. I-XIII, and Vol. XIV. As you will see, I stubbornly continue my old project. I hope you will find it engaging.

Happy New Year.

38. From Kevin Mattson, Acting Manuscript Editor, Telos Press, June 18, 1990:

Thank you for sending us your latest manuscripts. As usual, they were interesting and provoking. That has not changed. On the other hand, something else has not changed—our opinions on your work and its potential publication in Telos. It was wonderful to read Paul Piccone’s earlier (February 23, 1981) letter to you. And so it goes. If you can write something less aphoristic, then we would be very interested, because your ideas are good and important. We shall wait to see if you send us anything in more of an essay form.

By the way, will this letter get into your next copy of Residua?

Fat chance.