It will be argued that false numbers in working documents, formulae, and business plans are used as temporary or conditional devices to enable rationalization. The social processes of creating formalized practices depend upon activities that are themselves conditional and ephemeral. That is, rather than subvert the ostensible purpose of fixed representation, false numbers make stability and fixity in representation possible. Examples used include business forecasting, property tax assessments, and the introduction of accounting into cooperative agriculture in Stalinist Hungary.

Studies of the agricultural second economy in Hungary have focused on the role of recent state policies. It will be argued here that the specific character of socialist planning and practice cannot be understood without exploring changes in the form of social value over the last hundred years. This process, the commodification of social life, is also analyzed as the basis of anthropological theories of meaning. An alternative view of social process and nonreferential meaning is offered. [meaning, commodification, work, agriculture, socialism, Hungary]

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