Nature,
Society, and Thought, vol. 13, no. 4 (2000), 457-511
Flight from History? The
Communist
Movement between Self-Criticism
and
Self-Contempt
We present here an article by Domenico Losurdo,
“Flight from History? The Communist Movement between Self-Criticism and
Self-Contempt,” addressing the question of anti-Communism on the Italian Left.
Domenico
Losurdo is a professor of philosophy at Urbano University. Together with Hans
Heinz Holz, he edits the Marxist journal Topos: Internationale Beiträge zur
dialektischen Theorie. He also serves as president of the Hegel-Marx Society.
Readers
are invited to send in comments on this article.
In
1818, in the middle of the Restoration and just at that time when the collapse
of the French Revolution seemed obvious to all, some of those who had initially
welcomed the events of 1789 now placed them at arms length; for them it had
become a colossal misunderstanding or, even worse, a despicable betrayal of
noble ideals. It was in this sense that Byron sang: “Yet France was drunken
with blood and spat out crimes. Its Saturnalia were deadly for the cause of
freedom in every epoch in every country.” Must we make these grave doubts our
own today, if we were to substitute 1917 for 1789 and the cause of socialism
for the “cause of freedom”? Must Communists be ashamed of their history?
In the history of
persecuted ethnic and religious groups, we find something quite remarkable. At
a certain point even the victims tend to assimilate the worldview of the
oppressor, and on this account begin to loathe and hate themselves. This
self-contempt has been studied above all with regard to the Jews, who for
millennia have been subjected to systematic campaigns of discrimination and
defamation. Something similar and equally tragic occurred in the history of
blacks, who were robbed of their identity as they were deported from their
homelands, enslaved, and oppressed. At a certain point, African American women,
even those of
extraordinary beauty, began to dream and yearn to be white, or at least to
lighten the darkness of their skin. Such is the extent to which victims may be
subjugated to the values of their oppressors.
This
phenomenon of self-contempt does not affect only ethnic and religious groups.
It can also arise among social classes and political parties that have suffered
a particularly profound defeat, especially when the victors, standing in the
background or setting aside their usual weapons, intensify their attacks, today
utilizing the profound firepower of the multiple media. Among the many problems
with which the Communist movement must struggle, that of self-contempt is
certainly not the least important. Let us not even talk about the former
leaders and spokespersons for the Communist Party of Italy (PCI), who as it
turns out now assert that they may have been Party members in the past without
ever really being Communists. It is no accident that these people today look at
a figure like Clinton—who could say at his re-election that he thanked God that
he was allowed to come into the world as an American—with wonder and perhaps
even envy. An admittedly very subtle form of self-contempt may ensnare anyone
who has not had the good fortune to belong to an elect or a privileged people,
especially to that people which considers itself predestined to carry to every
corner of the world and by every means available ideas and goods “Made in
USA.”
Thus, as I have
said, let us set aside those ex-Communists who today bewail the misfortune that
they were not born Anglo-Saxons and liberals and lived so far from the sacred
heart of the true culture. Sadly this self-contempt has also taken hold within
the ranks of those who continue to identify themselves as Communists, yet who
resist any notion that they had anything to do with the past that both they and
their political opponents regard as synonymous with ruination. The inflated
narcissism of the victors, who religiously transfigure their own history, has
its counterpart in the conquered who are holding themselves hostage.
To me it is clear
that the battle against this onerous self-contempt will be just that much more
effective the more our critical analysis of the momentous and fascinating
period beginning with the October Revolution becomes really radical and free
from preconceptions. Despite any seeming parallel, self-critique and self-contempt are contradictory attitudes.
Self-criticism, with all of its sharpness and particularly its radicalism,
expresses a consciousness of the necessity to examine one's own history;
self-contempt represents a cowardly running away from this history and away
from the ideological and cultural struggle that is expressed in this history.
If the foundation of self-criticism is the revival of Communist identity, then
self-contempt is another word for capitulation and the denial of an autonomous
identity.
Such is the
general outline of the analysis I have published in a series of articles in Ernesto:
Mensile comunista. I present here revised versions of these texts, and I
would like to thank the journal for its consent to do so.
I. At a fork in
the road: Religion or politics?
An analysis of
the ideas, attitudes, and moods of the contemporary Left today requires that we
delve deeply into the past.
1. An
enlightening event, almost 2000 years ago
In the year 70 A.D. the Jewish national revolution
against Roman imperialism was forced to capitulate. The capitulation was
preceded by an unforgiving siege that not only sentenced Jerusalem to
starvation, but also destroyed all social relationships: “Sons ripped bread
from their father's mouths, and, what was the very worst, the mothers were
taken from the children.” If the siege itself was horrendous, so too were the
measures taken to contend with it. Traitors and deserters, real or imagined,
were killed without exception. Suspicion had become pathologically widespread,
and often rested on false accusations that were brought forth by individuals
having private and vicious motives. Even the elderly and the young were
suspected of hiding food and were tortured. Yet none of this occurred without
reason: the triumph of the Romans not only brought death to the national
revolution's leaders and fighters, it brought exile and dispersion to an entire
people.
These
events are described by a Jewish author who was himself a resistance fighter
there for a period of time, but who changed sides and praised the profound
courage and invincibility of the victors. Out of Joseph—as he was
called—emerged Josephus Flavius; he assimilated this name from that breed of
soldier that had destroyed Jerusalem. More important than this shifting of
camps was what he knew and could disclose about the Christians. Originally an
integral part of the Jewish community, they nonetheless felt the need to
declare that they had nothing to do with the uprising that had just been
suppressed. They continued to rely on the Holy Book, sacred also to the
defeated revolutionaries, but this latter group was then accused of falsifying
and betraying the sacred scripture.
This
dialectic can be traced especially clearly in the Gospel according to Mark,
which was written immediately preceding the destruction of Jerusalem. This was
a catastrophe that Jesus had foreseen: “Not one stone will remain upon
another.” And the arrival of Jesus, the Messiah, had already been prophesied by
Isaiah. According to this, the tragedy that had just befallen the Jews was not
ultimately attributable to Roman imperialism: it was, on the one hand, an
original component of the divine plan of redemption, and on the other, a result
of the progressive deterioration of the Jewish community. The revolutionaries
had improperly interpreted the messianic prophecy in a worldly and political
way, instead of in an inwardly spiritual manner: horror and catastrophe were
the inevitable outcomes of this falsification and betrayal. Determined to
distance themselves from the Jewish national revolution, the Christians also
resolutely distanced themselves from all historical and political action.
2.
A history of subaltern classes and religious movements
Gramsci
has made it clear that, in the contemporary world, various more or less
explicitly religious perspectives may also appear in the context of liberation
movements. Just look at the dialectic that developed in the wake of the
collapse of “real, existing socialism.”1 Set aside those individuals
who hurriedly swung aboard the victors' train. Let us concentrate instead on
the destruction, the intellectual and political devastation, that followed this
collapse within segments of the Communist movement. Just as with the Christians
in the Gospel according to Mark, who turned to the Roman conquerors and
proclaimed, as the situation seemed to require, that they had absolutely
nothing to do with the national uprising, so too in our own time not a few
Communists are doing likewise. They passionately deny the accusation that they
are in any way connected to the history of “real, existing socialism.” At the
same time they reduce this history to a simple series of horrors in the hope
that this will lend them credibility especially in the eyes of the liberal
bourgeoisie.
Marx
summed up the idea and method of historical materialism with the statement
about human beings making our own history, yet not under conditions of our own
choosing. When someone today modestly attempts to direct attention to the
permanently exceptional situation that characterized developments since the
October Revolution—when someone wants to research concretely the objective
“conditions” within which the project of building a postcapitalist society
occurred—just bet that the “Communist” imitators of the early Christian
assembly will cry out that this is but a scandalous, indecent attempt at
rationalization. To understand this attitude look to the Gospel of Mark rather
than to the German Ideology or the Manifesto of the Communist Party.
In the eyes of these “Communists,” the imperialist encirclement of “real,
existing socialism” and the socialist revolution are simply as irrelevant as
the Roman siege of Jerusalem and the Jewish national revolution were for the
assembly of Jewish early Christians. From this perspective every effort to
analyze the concrete historical conditions is a distraction and immoral; the
only thing that really matters is the authenticity and the purity of the gospel
of salvation. Distanced too far away to perceive the conquest by the Romans as
painful, the fall and destruction of Jerusalem actually seemed to please the
Jewish-Christian believers; this had been foreseen by Jesus, and in any case
from now on it was possible to proclaim the Gospel without the falsifications
and deviations that politics was said to require. In like manner there are not
a few Communists who declare that they have a sense of relief and “liberation”
since the collapse of “real, existing socialism.” Now it is possible to return
to the “authentic” Marx and to the idea of Communism and to proclaim these
without the nasty encrustations that history and politics have deposited upon
them.
3.
“Back to Marx” and the formalistic cult of martyrs
In
this way the slogan “Back to Marx” has come to pass. Yet it can be rather
easily shown that Marx is the most resolute critic of all “back to”
philosophies. In his own time he made fun of those who, in their disputes with
Hegel, wanted to go back to Kant and even back to Aristotle. One of the
fundamentals of historical materialism is the conclusion that theory develops
along with history and the concrete process of change. This great revolutionary
thinker did not hesitate to acknowledge that he stood in debt even to the short-lived
experience of the Paris Commune. Nowadays, however, decade upon decade of
incredibly rich historical experience (from the October Revolution to the
Chinese and Cuban revolutions) is declared to be meaningless and unimportant in
comparison to the “authentic” Gospel announced once and for all in the sacred
texts. These need simply to be rediscovered and religiously rethought.
At
the same time those who proclaim the slogan “Back to Marx” are the first not to
take it really seriously. How else can anyone explain that they devote such
attention to Gramsci and to Che Guevara? These are certainly individuals whose
thought and action is predicated upon the Bolshevik Revolution and the
development of the international Communist movement, and who thus understood
important decades of world history since Marx's death—history that took
place under conditions that Marx did not foresee, nor could he have foreseen
them. In which text from Marx, pray tell, is it prognosticated that we will
find socialism on a small island like Cuba or a guerrilla in Bolivia fighting
for a socialist type of revolution? And as far as Gramsci is concerned, it is
known how he greeted the October Revolution as The Revolution against Das
Kapital. It was the Mensheviks who at that time used the phrase “Back to
Marx” and understood it in a mechanistic way. The greatness of Gramsci is to be
found specifically in his opposition to them.
“Back
to Marx” is clearly a religious phrase. Just as the early-Christian assembly
wanted to have nothing to do with the Jewish national revolution, and thereby
opposed Isaiah and Jesus, so too today certain “Communists” oppose themselves
and Marx to the historical developments begun with the October Revolution. The
appeals to Gramsci and Che Guevara also carry with them quite remarkable
tendencies. Neither can be conceived of apart from the teachings of Lenin, yet
this must be carefully hushed up. Different as they are, they share the fate of
having been in a certain way defeated. They never were able to participate in
the exercise of power gained through revolution; instead they had to endure the
coercive force of the old sociopolitical order. People esteem the martyrdom of
both of these outstanding representatives of the international Communist
movement, but not their thinking or their political activity, which belongs to
a resolutely repressed history.
4.
Recovering the capacity for political thought and action
The
results of this ultimately religious attitude weigh very heavily. I will limit
myself to two examples. The Italian publications Il Manifesto and Liberazione2 correctly judged the embargoes
against Iraq and Cuba to be genocide or attempted genocide, and then criticized
the United States for granting permanent normal trade relationships to China,
because this implicates it in repression of “dissidents.” A country said to be
guilty of genocide is called upon to defend and respect human rights; on the
one hand it is found guilty for its political embargoes, then on the other hand
guilty for refusing to take any steps toward embargo. This is clearly bereft of
any logic. Yet one will search in vain for even the faintest traces of logic in
the discourse of a religious mind that shifts about in a realm of fantasy
constantly concerned to proclaim its own rejection of evil wherever this evil
may occur, such as embargoes against the people of Iraq and Cuba or as
repression of “dissidents” in China.
One
needs to have done only the slightest political or historical research to
realize that the anti-Chinese campaign of that period was a “more or less
foregone conclusion from the events of Tiananmen Square” (Jean 1995, 205). In
reality the United States is disturbed about “China as the last great region
beyond the influence of U.S. politics, the as yet unconquered last frontier”
(Valladao 1996, 241). But for the religious mind, which is only concerned to
declare (and savor) its own purported purity, no kind of historical and
political analysis counts. Why be bothered that the demand for a Chinese
embargo at the expense of the Chinese people would indirectly legitimate the
already practiced embargoes of Iraq or Cuba? The conquest of this “last
frontier” by the United States would mean the dismemberment of China (following
upon that of the USSR and Yugoslavia) and a catastrophe for the Chinese people.
Making a debacle of this great Asian country would tremendously strengthen the
military and political ability of U.S. imperialism to carry out its strategy of
embargo and the genocidal strangulation of the peoples of Iraq and Cuba. Yet
such thoughts are but superficial considerations in the religious primitivism
of certain “Communists.”
Another
example. In Liberazione one could read articles that quite correctly
compared the radical wing of the secessionist movement in Italy with the Nazis
(Caldiron 1977). But just a little while later this same publication undertook
a polemic against those who demanded the intervention of the courts to halt the
Lega Nord's propagation of race hatred among secessionists as well as its
preparations for a counterrevolutionary civil war. It seems that these comrades
have not posed a very fundamental question: just how appropriate is it for
Communists to demand that the Nazi groups not be penalized? Once again, every
effort to seek a logic here other than a primitive religious mentality proves
futile. Coercion is condemned absolutely. Who cares if this condemnation of law
enforcement and judicial intervention powerfully invigorates the violence of
the Lega supporters and the Nazis? No matter what, one's own soul has been
saved. We have a paradoxical situation here. The Vatican emphasizes again and
again the danger of legalistic plans, and calls for government institutions to
oppose quite decisively the danger of rebellion and counterrevolutionary civil
war. Jesus, who emerged from the disastrous failure of the Jewish national
revolution, openly declared: “My realm is not of this world.” The “Communists”
have appropriated this slogan today, making it theirs even more than the
Christians.
I
have compared the perspective of certain “Communists” with that of the
Jewish-Christian believers. But this needs to be made more precise. The
withdrawal of these believers into their own inwardness also contains a
positive element: the distancing from a national revolution also contributes to
the emergence of universalistic thinking. But the contemporary withdrawal into
inwardness and the distancing from a revolution and a historical development
that is proclaimed today in explicitly universalistic terms quite simply means
an involution and a regression. We do not need to get all worked up about it.
It is quite natural that a disastrous failure of historical proportions gives
rise to perspectives of a religious type. Yet it would be catastrophic to be
stuck in this position. Communists, if they do not want to sentence themselves
to powerlessness and subalternity, must recover the capacity to think and act
in political terms, even when this politics is carried along by momentous
ideational tension.
II.
The collapse of the “socialist camp”:
Implosion
or Third World War?
1.
“Implosion”: A myth in defense of imperialism
How
did U.S. imperialism succeed in gobbling up Nicaragua? It subjected the country
to an economic and military blockade, to surveillance and destabilization by
the CIA, to mined harbors, and to a secretly waged undeclared, bloody, and
dirty war, making a mockery of international law. Faced with all of this, the
Sandinista government felt compelled to undertake limited defensive measures
against external aggression and internal reaction. Incredibly, the U.S.
administration swung itself into the role of defender of human rights against
totalitarian repression, and directed the fire of its entire multimedia
machinery against the Sandinista government. This campaign was supported in the
main by the Catholic hierarchy, yet some of the beautiful souls on the “Left”
played right along. Ortega's ability to counteract the aggression was
increasingly limited and destroyed. While ideological crusades and economic
strangulation undermined the social support for the Sandinista government,
military power and the terrorism of the Contras (supported by Washington)
weakened the will and ability to resist. The result was elections in which the
extraordinary financial and multimedia power of imperialism was allowed full
play. Already bloodied and impoverished, with the knife closer to their throats
than ever before, the Nicaraguan people “freely” chose to give in to the
aggressors.
The
strategy used against Cuba is just the same. Here one may well pose the
question: was the collapse of the Sandinista government the result of an
“implosion”? Could the overthrow of Fidel Castro and Cuban socialism, sought
for decades by U.S. imperialism, be described as an “implosion” or “collapse”?
Immediately visible here is the mystifying character of the concepts used by
imperialism to portray a social crisis or catastrophe as a purely spontaneous
and internal process, though in reality it can not be separated from the
momentous stress that imperialism applied at every juncture.
The
concept “implosion” is not any more persuasive when it is applied in this
manner beyond the cases of Cuba and Nicaragua to the “socialist camp” in
general. George Kennan emphasized as early as 1947, as he was formulating the
politics of containment, that it would be necessary to influence “the internal
developments, both within Russia and throughout the international Communist
movement.” This should take place not just by means of the “informational
activity” of the covert agencies, though the most influential advisors to the
U.S. consulate in Moscow and within the U.S. administration of course
underscored this especially. But articulated more generally and more
ambitiously, the aim was “to increase enormously the strains under which Soviet
policy must operate,” in order to “promote tendencies which must eventually
find their outlet in either the breakup or the gradual mellowing of Soviet
power.” What is usually expressed with the remarkable euphemism “implosion” is
here more precisely defined as a “breakup,” which would be so little
spontaneous that it was foretold by roughly forty years, planned, and actively
sought. At the international level, the economic, political, and military power
relationships were to be such that—and this is still Kennan—the West would
exercise a kind of “power of life and death over the Communist movement” and
the Soviet Union (Hofstadter and Hofstadter 1982, 418f).
2.
On the sources of the Cold War
The
collapse of the “socialist camp” must therefore be seen in the context of an
unremitting exercise of power, which was the so-called Cold War. This stretched
across the entire globe and lasted for decades. At the beginning of the 1950s,
its conditions were described as follows by General Jimmy Doolittle:
There are no rules in such a
game. Hitherto acceptable norms of human conduct do not apply. . . . We must .
. . learn to subvert, sabotage, and destroy our enemies by more clever, more
sophisticated, and more effective methods than those used against us. (Ambrose
1991, 377)
Eisenhower
came to the same conclusions. He, of course, shifted from the office of supreme
military commander in Europe to that of U.S. president by no mere accident. We
are talking about the assaying of enormous power, which on both sides utilized
any means necessary (espionage, subversion, dirty tricks, etc.) and became real
war in various areas of the globe—for example, in Korea. Apparently seeking to
overcome a lull in military operations in January 1952, Truman dallied with a radical
idea. As he makes clear in his diary, one could confront the USSR and the
People's Republic of China with an ultimatum and make clear that if it were
disregarded, “Moscow, Leningrad, Mukden, Vladivostock, Peking, Shanghai, Port
Arthur, Darien, Odessa, Stalingrad and every other manufacturing plant in China
and the Soviet Union will be eliminated” (Sherry 1995, 182). What is going on
here is not simply some private rumination. During the Korean War, the use of
atomic weaponry against the People's Republic of China was seriously
contemplated, and this threat was made all the more horrendous given the recent
memories of Nagasaki and Hiroshima.
Without
a doubt the Cold War aimed at the dissolution—more accurately the breakup—of
the USSR. But when did it begin? It was already underway as the Second World
War raged. Nagasaki and Hiroshima were destroyed even as it was clear that
Japan was ready to capitulate. Above and beyond using the bomb against this
already defeated country, the United States aimed this threat at the USSR. This
is the conclusion of prestigious U.S. historians based upon irrefutable
evidence. The new and terrible weapon was not only to be tested over desert
areas for demonstration purposes; it was to be dropped immediately on two large
cities. In this manner the Soviets would come to realize, unmistakably and
thoroughly, what the real nature of power relationships now was—as well as the
U.S. resolution to shrink from nothing. And in fact Churchill declared his
approval of “eliminating all the Russian centres of industry” if it were
necessary. At the same time U.S. Secretary of State Henry L. Stimson was
prepared “to force the Soviet Union to abandon or radically alter its entire
system of government.”
Paradoxically,
it was the military leaders who reacted negatively and registered opposition to
these plans for bombardment. They called the new weapons “barbarous” because
they would indiscriminately kill “women and children.” These were viewed as no
better than the “bacteriological weapons” and “poison gas” that were prohibited
under the Geneva accords. Beyond all this, Japan was “already defeated and
prepared to capitulate.” These military officers did not even know that the
atomic weapons were really aimed at the Soviet Union, the one country that was
prepared to oppose Truman's policy to make the United States into “the world's marshal and sheriff” (as
explicitly formulated at a cabinet meeting on 7 September 1945). The horrible
destruction of Nagasaki and Hiroshima disturbed public opinion in the United
States to a degree that could even be called an outcry. For this reason Stimson
intervened with an article that was played up by all the media. It spread the
deceitful fable that these two cruel massacres were necessary to save the lives
of millions of people. In reality, however, as the U.S. historian cited here
emphasizes, it was about stopping the wave of criticism and getting public
opinion used to the idea that the employment of nuclear weapons would now be
absolutely normal (as well as renewing a warning to the USSR (Alperovitz 1995,
316–330, 252, 260f).3
In
Japan another situation was unfolding that is also helpful in understanding the
Cold War. In its aggression against China, the imperial army of Japan had
committed gruesome crimes. Numbers of captives had been used as guinea pigs for
dissection and other experiments, and bacteriological weapons were used against
the civilian population. Yet those persons responsible for this and the members
of the notorious Unit 731 were guaranteed immunity by the United States in
exchange for the delivery of all the data collected through these war crimes.
In the Cold War that was just getting started, not only nuclear bombs but also
bacteriological weapons were put into place (Meirion and Harries 1987, 39).
In this way the beginnings of the Cold War and the final phases of the Second World War are interrelated. In fact it is not even necessary to wait until 1945 to see these connections. It is enlightening to look at the declaration that Truman made immediately after the Nazi invasion of the USSR. At this point the United States was not officially a participant in the war, though in fact an ally of Great Britain. It is understandable that the future U.S. president would make clear that he “doesn't want to see Hitler victorious under any circumstances.” Yet on the other hand he does not shy away from announcing: “If we see that Germany is winning, we ought to help Russia, and if Russia is winning, we ought to help Germany and that way let them kill as many as possible.” In this fashion Truman made known—despite the given alliance with Great Britain and thereby indirect alliance with the USSR—that he was decidedly interested in seeing the country that arose with the October Revolution bleed to death. At the same time the British minister Lord Brabazon made similar sentiments known. He was forced to step down, yet the fact remains that influential circles in Great Britain continued to see the USSR, with whom they were formally allied, as their mortal enemy (Thomas 1988, 187).
In 1944, Vice President Truman (who in a year would be president) became engaged in altering the policy set in the summer of 1941. One should add that Franklin Delano Roosevelt (who not accidentally had Truman as vice president for a year) did not seem to have been unacquainted with the intention of weakening the Soviet Union or bleeding it dry. Toward the end of the war, it was becoming clear that the Soviet Union and not Great Britain would emerge from it as “the most important opponent of a global `Pax Americana,'” and Roosevelt radically altered his military strategy. According to an observation of a German historian:
The consequence of this, letting the USSR carry on the main effort toward the defeat of Germany, resulted from the decision to put into place only 89 of the 215 divisions originally called for in the “Victory Plan;” the chief military might of the U.S. was shifted to the navy and the air force to secure superior strength in the air and at sea. (Hillgruber 1988, 295 n. 71)
Perhaps
it is necessary to delve back even further. Andre Fontaine begins his Geschichte
des kalten Krieges [History of the Cold War] in a very telling way with the
October Revolution, which was, of course, really contested both with hot and
cold war. In the period between October 1917 and 1953 (Stalin's death), we see
Germany and the Anglo-Saxon powers combating the USSR relay style, so to speak,
passing the baton to relieve one another. The aggression of Wilhelmanian
Germany (continuing until the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk) was followed first by
that of the Entente, then that of
Hitler's Germany, and finally the Cold War in the narrow sense, whose
beginnings were visible decades before and even connected to the two world
wars.
3.
A deadly combination: The new face of war
In
the struggle against the Soviet Union and the “socialist camp,” the U.S.
administration used the same deadly combination of economic, ideological, and
military pressures that it had successfully utilized to bring down the
Sandinista government and which it hoped would lead to the breakdown of the
social and political system in Cuba. This was the same mixture that it also
deployed against other nations such as Iraq, Iran, Libya, and from time to time
against China.
This
new, more subtle, and highly developed type of warfare was worked out in the
course of the prolonged battle against the social formation that emerged from
the October Revolution. Herbert Hoover, himself a high-level representative of
the U.S. administration and later president, emphasized that sending soldiers
against Soviet Russia was sending them to prevent “infection with Bolshevik
ideas.” In his estimation it would be still better to utilize an economic
blockade in a struggle against the enemy and against those nations who let
themselves be seduced by Moscow, because the threat of an economic blockade and
the perils of starvation would get them to come to their senses. The French
premier, Georges Clemenceau, was immediately fascinated by Hoover's
suggestions. He acknowledged that this would be a “really effective weapon”
that offered “greater chances for success than military intervention.” Gramsci,
in contrast, was incensed by the imperialistic formula, “Your money or your
life! Bourgeois rule or starvation.”4
Since the start of the Cold War (narrowly defined), yet another weapon has also been introduced. As early as November 1945, the U.S. ambassador to Moscow, Averill Harriman, recommended opening up an ideological and propaganda front against the USSR. One could certainly begin this with the dissemination of newspapers and journals, yet “the printed word” was in his estimation “fundamentally unsatisfactory.” Still better would be to utilize strong radio broadcasts in all of the various languages of the Soviet Union. The penetrating power of stations such as these was repeatedly recommended and praised (Thomas 1988, 223). Thus radio became the newest weapon in the gigantic confrontation that was now beginning. Radio, which had served the Nazi regime in the solidification of its social consensus, was now utilized to destroy the social consensus of the Soviet state.
In
combination with this new weaponry, the old standard weapons continued to be
directly or indirectly employed. The epoch beginning in 1945–46 has been
characterized by Eric Hobsbawm as “a Third World War, though a very peculiar
one” (1994, 226). It is particularly inappropriate to call a war “cold” that
begins with Nagasaki and Hiroshima. What we had here was a war that not only
heated up repeatedly in various places around the globe, but periodically
threatened to become, almost in the blink of an eye, so hot that the whole (or
nearly the whole) planet would go up in flames. In terms of the confrontation
between the chief antagonists, one must never lose sight of the fact that this
represented a probing and experimentation with terrible military might, though
most of the public fronts were in political, diplomatic, economic, and
propaganda battles. Even if there were never to be a direct and total clash,
these forces nonetheless had serious consequences. This assaying and estimation
of power in the end had effects on the economy and politics of the enemy
nation, its entire system of internal relations. This was the aim, and it
succeeded, as we have seen, in destroying the alliances, the “camp” of the
enemy.
At
this juncture the concept “implosion” is revealed to be but a myth in defense
of the systems of capitalism and imperialism. These systems are celebrating
their own presumed advantages in comparison exclusively with what are
considered to be the built-in disadvantages, crises, and difficulties of the
social systems in Moscow, in the Caribbean, and in Latin America. The concept
of implosion or collapse serves primarily to crown the winner. Yet it has found
a friendly acceptance within the Left and among Communists, especially among
those who present themselves as
ultra-Communists and ultra-revolutionaries. This is but renewed evidence
of their ideological and political subalternity.
A
refusal to use the concept “implosion” does not mean a refusal to engage in an
unflinching historical examination of “real, existing socialism” and the
international Communist movement. Far from it: this kind of examination is only
possible when one explicitly reflects on the reality of the “Third World War.”
Because this unremitting examination must never be mistaken for capitulation,
it is necessary also to carry out fully the critique of subalternity and
religious primitivism as these have taken hold in the Communist movement in the
wake of defeat.
III.
A Communist movement with limited sovereignty?
We
have shown that the concept “implosion” is completely inappropriate as an
explanation for the collapse of “real, existing socialism.” It is far more
reasonable to speak of a “Third World War,” a world war in which a multimedia
and ideological barrage has played a central role. This aspect also accounts
for the disorientation of the vanquished. It is as if an ideological Hiroshima
has destroyed the ability of the international Communist movement to think in
its own behalf.
1.
Normality and the exceptional circumstance
“Sovereign
are they who get to decide the exceptional circumstance.” This aphorism
formulated by the ultrareactionary and ingenious legal scholar Carl Schmidt can
aid us in understanding not only the concrete way in which a constitutional
system operates, but also in understanding the vitality of a political movement
and its actual degree of autonomy. An example: In Algeria in 1991 a coup
annulled the election that would have brought the Islamic Reform Front into
power. A military dictatorship was set up using the rationalization that the
reform movement represented an immense danger to the country and its prospects
for modernization. The generals pointed to the exceptional circumstance, and
showed themselves to be the real holders of political power. As Mao Zedong made
clear: “Political power comes out of the barrel of a gun.” And sovereign are
those who decide when the guns speak. At least this much can be said about the realities
of power within the realm of a government.
Now
let us apply the same methodological criterion to an investigation of the
relations between the different political camps. The coup in Algeria was
accepted at that time by the West and defended with the argument that it
avoided the establishment of an Islamic—and obscurantist—government that would
have brought an end to all freedom of expression and horrible retrogression,
especially where women were concerned. In a similar manner a few years earlier,
the USSR had tried to defend its intervention in Afghanistan and supported a
government embarked on an ambitious modernization program. It thereby battled
the rabid resistance of Islamic fundamentalists. In this instance the West
displayed not only its disapproval, but also armed to the teeth the same sort
of “freedom fighters” who in Algeria are branded as common criminals and
bloodthirsty murderers. Thus we see that appealing to exceptional circumstances
in one instance is not regarded as valid in another. Sometimes breaking the
rules is legitimated and sanctified, and on other occasions regarded as heresy
to be condemned.
It
should not surprise us that the United States or France inconsistently judge
controversial cases according to changing geopolitical and economic conditions.
It is much more interesting to inquire into the attitudes of the Left and
especially the Communists. All in all they seem to plug into the established
ideology: they view the coup in Algeria as if it were something almost natural
and noncontroversial, though they never tire of condemning the Soviet use of
force in Afghanistan. The exceptional circumstances, which call for the
suspension of the usual rules of the game, are the exclusive prerogative of the
liberal, capitalist, and imperialist West to decide. And thus arises the
regrettable condition of a Communist movement without sovereignty, or at best
with limited sovereignty. If that person is sovereign who decides about
exceptional circumstances, then the sovereign par excellence sits in
Washington. Washington's sovereignty is
complete to the degree that it is able to limit and sometimes entirely cast
aside the power of independent thinking of those very groups, journals,
newspapers, and movements that consider themselves to be Communist.
2.
Bobbio and the exceptional circumstance
What
has been said above is not all that may be said in defense of the thesis
presented here. In August of 1991 a curious putsch occurred in Moscow, which
Yeltsin kept from being really understood. Instead, he provided it with a
colossal propaganda trial, which became the precondition of its ultimate
success. A certain amount of suspicion is legitimate here. The editorial in Expresso
on the 1 September of that year carried the famous headline: “Yeltsin, or
rather Bush, made the real putsch.” But this is not what interests us just now.
Those who initiated the “putsch” made assurances that they wanted to oppose a
dramatic threat to the unity and independence of the USSR, and that they were
relying on the special use of force that was foreseen in the constitution in
case of exceptional circumstances. Now, who does not remember the massive
international disarmament campaign at that time that also drew in, or overran,
the Communists?
Two
years later it was Yeltsin who, as the protagonist of a putsch, dissolved the
parliament that had been freely elected by the people and allowed it to be
fired upon. This time the machinery of repression was well oiled and promptly
put into service. It did not content itself with empty threats. The
constitutional system was liquidated with utter brutality, yet this did not
prevent the “democrat” Clinton or the “socialist” Mitterrand from expressing
their approval. And the Communists? Above all a moving sensibility was
displayed by Il Manifesto, which looks toward Turin in order to follow
the convolutions of the grand theoretician of the absolute inviolability of
rules and regulations. When asked to articulate his position, Bobbio6 proclaimed: “I defend
government by rule of law and will always defend it. Yet in the Russian
instance I ask myself: do conditions still exist there for a law-governed
state?” (La Stampa, 24 September 1993). Too bad that this question did
not occur to the illustrious
philosopher two years earlier, in August 1991. Nonetheless, his
consideration here is simple and rational, just a matter of distinguishing
exceptional circumstances from normality. This is a consideration from which
Communists also have much to learn, yet they refuse to distinguish such things and
leave it to the sovereign sitting in Washington, or more modestly in Turin, to
decide whether exceptional circumstances exist.
It
is enlightening to look at the subaltern dependency of the Left especially with
regard to the campaign that the U.S. administration has undertaken against the
People's Republic of China. A whole series of disclosures has recently shed new
light on the events of Tiananmen Square. Banned students and intellectuals, who
were exiled to the United States, are today criticizing the “radical” exponents
of the movement back then for seeking to impede reconciliation with officials
in Beijing at any cost. Thus we see the real goal pursued by certain circles
(in China and outside it) after the disturbances of 1989. This is made clear in
an article in Foreign Affairs (a journal close to the State Department)
where it is gleefully forecast that China will fall apart after the death of
Deng Xiaoping. It is also noted in passing that this was exactly the result
sought in 1989, the year when the collapse of Communism was observed “in a
dozen countries” (Waldron 1995, 149). From this we can see that the same
circles that today want to pillory the leadership in Beijing were ready at a
moment's notice to rationalize the canon barrage that might have been fired by
a Chinese Yeltsin.
3.
The struggle for hegemony
Yet
none of this seems to evoke any real analytical effort on the part of some on
the Left, though they are so full of praise for Gramsci. They seem to forget
that one of the fundamental aspects of his work is the battle against hegemony.
Categories, judgments, historical comparisons—one could say that all of these
are today ultimately extracted by this Left from the dominant ideology. The
thirtieth anniversary of the Hungarian uprising became a platform for a
recollection of the 1956 Soviet
invasion of Hungary. And, in accordance with logic and duty, the
Communists busied themselves with profound and pitiless self-critique. Toward
the end of 1997, however, nobody took the opportunity to remember the
repressive measures taken by Chiang Kai-shek on Taiwan fifty years earlier. A
pretty insignificant event? From official Hungarian sources we know that the
tragic events of 1956 claimed the lives of 2500 people. At the beginning of
1947, nine years before, 10,000 people died as a result of the USA-sponsored
Kuomintang repression (Lutzker 1987. 178).
Every
year there is a renewed memorialization of Tiananmen Square, but who remembers
the hundreds or perhaps thousands of people who died during the U.S.
intervention in Panama (bombing thickly populated areas without any declaration
of war) in the same year, 1989? There are so many reasons to assert that the
Left, including numerous Communists, is operating with but limited sovereignty,
especially in terms of its own historical understanding and historical
perspective.
This
lack of autonomy is all the more evident when we look at how certain concepts
are used. I shall limit myself to one especially obvious example. Whenever did
the leftist press and the Communist press not join the bourgeois press in
referring to the opposition against Yeltsin (including the Russian Communists)
as “nationalists?” It might as well suffice just to read the pronouncements of
U.S. leaders to get ourselves a good grounding in the facts. From his point of
view, Bush expressed himself at the time quite clearly:
I see America as the leader—a unique nation with a special role in the world. And this has been called the American century, because in it we were the dominant force for good in the world. We saved Europe, cured polio, went to the moon, and lit the world with our culture. And now we are on the verge of a new century, and what country's name will it bear? I say it will be another American century. Our work is not done, our force is not spent. (1989, 125)
Let
us listen to Bill Clinton more recently: America “must come to lead the
world”—“our mission is timeless” (1994). And finally let us listen to the
pragmatist Kissinger: “World leadership is inherent in America's power and values”
(1994, 834). We see here the regrettable mythology of the chosen people taking
shape once again. The chauvinism that characterizes it is unmistakable. Yet
those who dare to oppose this chosen people are branded as nationalists.
Mistrust
is more than justified. Even the American news magazine Time admits the
following: “For four months a group of American advisors participated secretly
in the campaign to elect Yeltsin.” An “influential member of the State
Department” had declared so there would be no mistake about it that “a
Communist victory” could under no circumstances be tolerated (Chiesa 1997, 14
and 36). Therefore, whatever the final judgment may be about the putschists of
August 1991, it must be recognized that their conduct was undergirded by a
justifiable concern for the unity and independence of the country! And whatever
the final judgment may be about the way in which the Chinese Communists met the
crisis of 1989, the fact remains that they all have reason to be on guard
against maneuvers designed to destroy the unity and independence of the one
single country today in a position to restrain the definitive triumph of the
American century.
Let
me say something very clearly: the point here is not to justify this or that
position with regard to the tensions between the former CPSU and the CP of
China. Every concrete action of this or that Communist Party (and this means
every party that calls itself Communist) must be examined in a concrete way,
without preconceptions. And this analysis must not be uncritically derived from
those interests and methods that are spread by the dominant ideology. An
approach that is free from preconceptions must be extended to everything, and
have the aim of retrieving independent judgment and historical understanding.
Communists are called upon to liberate themselves once and for all from that
limited sovereignty that the victors of the Cold War (that is to say the “Third World War”) would gladly make
permanent.
IV.
The years of Lenin and Stalin: An initial assessment
1.
Total war and “totalitarianism”
You
cannot separate the history of the USSR from its international context. The
despotism and terror, first of Lenin and then of Stalin, are less related to
the much-maligned Oriental tradition than to the totalitarianism that began to
spread worldwide following the Second Thirty Years War as governments, even in
the liberal countries, expanded their “`legitimate' power over life, death, and
freedom” (Max Weber). Evidence for this is found in the total mobilization for
war, widespread use of military courts, world championship style competition in
executions, and the arbitrary use of force. It is especially revealing to
examine this last phenomenon.
Even
in liberal Italy the top military leadership regularly utilizes this,
discarding the principle of individual accountability. There are lessons to be
learned from how this works in the United States too. After Pearl Harbor,
Franklin D. Roosevelt had U.S. citizens of Japanese ancestry (including women
and children) deported to internment camps. This occurred not on the basis of
any sort of due process, but rather solely on account of their membership in a
distrusted ethnic group. (Here too the principle of individual accountability
was abrogated—a characteristic component of totalitarianism).
In
1950, the McCarran Act was passed, which called for the construction of six
detention camps for political prisoners in various regions of the country.
Among the congressmen approving of this measure were future U.S. presidents
Kennedy, Nixon, and Johnson! Beyond all this, the phenomenon of the personal
abuse of power should also be seen in a comparative perspective. Franklin D.
Roosevelt was ushered into the presidency out of the depths of the Great
Depression and was immediately granted tremendous controls and powers.
Re-elected three times, he died at the
beginning of his fourth term. The Soviet government, building up its power
during a war characterized by the total mobilization and coerced consolidation
of populations (even in countries with secure liberal traditions and relatively
safe geographical positions, surrounded either by oceans or the Mediterranean
Sea), had to contend with permanently exceptional circumstances.
If
we look at the period from 1917 to 1953, the year Stalin died, we see that this
epoch was characterized by at least four or five wars and two revolutions. From
the West, the aggression of Wilhelmanian Germany (until the peace of
Brest-Litovsk) was followed first by that of the Entente and then by that of
Hitler fascism. Ultimately there was also the aggression of the Cold War that
threatened to become a tremendous hot one through the use of atomic weapons.
From the East, Japan (which only after 1922 pulled back from Siberia and after
1925 from Sachalin) became a military threat to the borders of the USSR with
its invasion of Manchuria. This led to larger border skirmishes before the
official start of the Second World War in 1938 and 1939. All of the wars
mentioned here were total wars in the sense that they were either begun without
a declaration of war (whether one looks at the Entente or the Third Reich), or
the invaders had the declared intention of destroying a given regime, as when
Hitler's campaign sought the elimination of the “sub-humans” to the East.
In
addition to these wars, we must add the revolutions. Aside from that of
October, there were the revolutions from above that began to collectivize
agriculture and to industrialize the expansive country. The dictatorships of
Lenin and (for all of the differences) that of Stalin had one essential feature
in common: they were confronted with this total war and with permanently
exceptional circumstances, and the Soviet Union was a backward country without
a liberal tradition.
2.
Gulag and emancipation in the Stalin period
Up
to this point we have said little or nothing about the internal developments in
this country that emerged from Red
October. At the outset let me make clear that the terror is only one
side of the coin (and this is true also for the Stalinist period). The other
side needs to be described with some citations and quotations from impeccable
sources. “The fifth five-year plan for the school system was an organized
attempt to eradicate illiteracy.” Further policies in this area led to the
preparation “of a completely new generation of skilled workers and technicians
and technically skilled managerial personnel.” Between 1927/28 and 1932/33 the
number of college and university students increased markedly from 160,000 to
470,000. The proportion of students in higher education from working-class
families rose from one-fourth to one-half. “New cities were founded and old
cities were reconstructed.” The emergence of gigantic new industrial complexes
went hand in glove with massive upward mobility. This led to “social
advancement for capable and ambitious citizens from working-class and
agricultural backgrounds.” As a consequence of the cruel and extensive
repression of those years, “ten thousand Stakhonovites became factory
managers,” and there occurred a parallel phenomenon of upward mobility in the
armed forces. One understands nothing of the Stalin period if one does not see
it as a combination of barbarism (with an immense Gulag) and social progress.”6
3.
A history we need to be ashamed of?
Members
of the phantom (anti-Marxist) “Back to Marx” movement claim that Communists
above all must acknowledge that the history of the use of power by Lenin and
Stalin is a shameful one. Yet it is not. The epoch-making feature of the
October Revolution and the historical turning-point introduced by Lenin is
described as follows by Stalin in 1924:
Formerly, the national question was usually confined to a narrow circle of questions, concerning, primarily, “civilized” nationalities. The Irish, the Hungarians, the Poles, the Finns, the Serbs, and several other European nationalities—that was the circle of unequal peoples in whose destinies the leaders of the Second International were interested. The scores and hundreds of millions of Asiatic and African peoples who are suffering national oppression in its most savage and cruel form usually remained outside of their field of vision. They hesitated to put white and black, “civilized” and “uncivilized” on the same plane. . . . Leninism laid bare this crying incongruity, broke down the wall between whites and blacks, between Europeans and Asiatics, between the “civilized” and “uncivilized” slaves of imperialism, and thus linked the national question with the question of the colonies. (1965, 70–71)
Was
this just talk? All theory that does not bring immediate profit can be regarded
as nonessential only in the mind of the short-sighted capitalist manager or
provincial shopkeeper. In no case can this be the view of a Communist, who is
supposed to have learned from Lenin that theory is indispensable for the
construction of an emancipatory movement, as well as from Marx that theory
becomes a material force of the utmost importance when it is grasped by the
masses. And this really did happen.
Even
in the darkest years of Stalinism, the international Communist movement played
a progressive role—not only in the colonial areas, but also in the developed
capitalist countries. In the “Third Reich,” the Jewish philologist, Viktor
Klemperer, described in heart-rending terms the degradation and insult that
were connected to wearing the star of David;
A
removal man, whom I have grown fond of from two earlier removals, suddenly
stands before me in the Freiburger Strasse and pumps my hand with his two paws
and whispers so that one must be able to hear it across the Fahrdamm: “Now
Professor, don't let it get you down! Before long they'll be finished, the
bloody brothers.”
The
Jewish philologist was referring with loving irony to the fact that it must be
“decent people who reek strongly of the KPD [German Communist Party]” who were
challenging the regime in this way (Burleigh and Wipperman 1991, 94). Let us
shift from Germany to the United States. There Franklin D. Roosevelt has become
president. But in the South a politics of segregation and lynching is directed
against the African American population. Who is opposing it? The Communists,
who not for nothing were branded as “foreigners” and “n—er-lovers” by those
with the dominant mind-set. An American historian describes the courage that
Communists needed in the United States: “Their challenge to racism and to the
status quo prompted a wave of repression one might think inconceivable in a
democratic country.” To be a Communist really could mean: “to face the
possibility of imprisonment, beatings, kidnapping and even death” (Kelley 1990,
30 and xii).
In
this manner, Communists struggled against anti-Semitic and racist barbarism in
two very different countries, and—as we want to stress—they viewed Stalin's
USSR filled with sympathy and hope.
4.
Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Stalin
Now
let us examine the ideology of the dictator himself, and we shall not liken it
to that of Hitler—such an absurd comparison can be left to the professional
anti-Communists. Instead, let us look at the ideologies of two other leaders of
the antifascist coalition. A few years ago a well-respected English newspaper
disclosed that Churchill was attracted to the idea that groups of vagabonds,
barbarians, derelicts, and criminals—who are not capable of participating in
social life at the level of civilized beings—should be forcibly sterilized
(Ponting 1992).
This
type of thinking was also evident with Franklin D. Roosevelt. He was enamored
of a radical project at least for some length of time after his declaration in
Yalta that he felt “more than ever the need for revenge against the Germans”
due to the crimes they had committed. “We've got to be tough against the
Germans—and I mean the German people, not just the Nazis. We've got to castrate
the German people or at least treat them so that they can never again bring
forth people who will want to act as in the past” (Bacque 1992, chap. 1).7 In spite of the immense losses
and the indescribable suffering that resulted from Hitler fascism, Stalin never
engaged in any kind of comparable wholesale racialization of the Germans. In
August 1942, he asserted:
It
would be ludicrous to equate the clique around Hitler with the German people or
the German government. The lessons of history show that Hitlers come and go,
yet the German people, the German state continue. The strength of the Red Army
rests upon the fact that it can not and does not abide racial hatred against
other peoples, including the German people. (1942)8
In
this case too one could shrug it off as mere theory, mere talk. But one thing
is certain: apart from the barbarism and terror of these years, Marxist theory,
even in Stalin, was superior to the ideas held by even these respected
exponents of the bourgeois world.
5.
Two chapters from the history of subaltern
classes
and oppressed peoples
We
recommend some reflection to the Communists who have joined ranks with the
dominant ideology in demonizing Stalin. They continue to look to Spartacus.
Historians report that Spartacus, in order to avenge and honor the death of his
comrade Crixius, sacrificed three hundred Roman prisoners, and killed others
the night before this battle. Still more violent was the action of the slaves
who dared an insurgency some decades before. According to Diodorus Siculus,
they broke into the home of the rulers, raped the women, and brought about “a
massive blood bath, that did not even spare the infants.” These are certainly
not the types of conduct that Italian Communists want to valorize when they
wave the portrait of Spartacus at their Liberazione festivals or depict
it in the pages of their revolutionary Communist newspaper. They never place
him on the same plane as Crassus, who (after restoring an iron discipline to
the Roman Legion through the exercise of arbitrary power) succeeded in putting
down the insurgents and had four thousand
prisoners crucified along the Appian Way. Crassus was the richest man in
Rome. He wanted to see slavery made permanent and he wanted to deny all dignity
to the “instruments with speech” of the world. Yet one of these talking
instruments had some success, at least for a time, in confronting and deflating
the arrogance of his imperial masters, expressing the protest of his comrades
in work and suffering. Insofar as they honor Spartacus, the Italian Communists
are also reinforcing the fact that his personality and his destiny were (in
spite of the errors) part of a movement that was a liberation movement and
inseparable from the history of subaltern classes.
It
is little different with the Russian Communists and the meaning of their
demonstrations against the use of the portrait of Stalin. They want to avoid
identifying with the Gulag and the systematic liquidation of opponents, just
like the “Liberazione” avoid identification with the brutality against
women and the massacre of prisoners and infants that the insurgent slaves were
guilty of. The simple-minded transfiguration of Spartacus is the other side of
the coin of demonizing Stalin. It makes no sense to flee from reality or to
sanitize it arbitrarily in order to protect our comfort zone. One need not be a
Communist to recognize that “Stalinism,” with all of its horror, is a chapter
in a liberation movement that defeated the Third Reich and that provided the
impetus for anticolonialism and for the struggles against anti-Semitism and
racism; every honest historian knows this.
One
historian observes: It is an error to think “Nazi racism was renounced as early
as the 1930s.” Even the neologism
“racism” with its negative connotations comes into use only later. Before then
racial prejudice was a component of the dominant ideology taken for granted on
both sides of the Atlantic (Barkan 1993, 1–3). Can we even imagine the radical
confrontation and transformation of the concepts “race” and “racism” without
the contributions from Stalin's USSR?
6.
Communists must reappropriate their own history
During
his presidency, Bill Clinton declared that he wanted to model himself on
Theodore Roosevelt. Teddy was not only the
theoretician of the “big stick” needed when dealing with Latin America.
The person of whom Clinton was so enamored was also a proponent of the “eternal
war” without “false sentimentality” against the American Indians. “I don't go
so far as to think that the only good Indians are the dead Indians, but I
believe nine out of every ten are, and I shouldn't like to inquire too closely
about the tenth” (Hofstadter 1967, 209). Of course this is not the Theodore
Roosevelt that Clinton wanted to take as his model. But this should give us
pause to think: a careless reference to a personality that stepped right up to
the threshold of a theoretical justification for genocide. And we should also
think about the silence of others who tirelessly demand that the Left and the
Communists must come to terms with their criminal past.
On
the other hand, there are well-known legal scholars who speak of a “Western
genocide” (or at minimum a massacre that has already cost hundreds of thousands
of lives) with regard to the long-standing embargo against the people of Iraq.
And this massacre did not occur as a result of a horrific and extraordinary
circumstance, but rather in a period of peace. Even the Cold War was over, and
the security and hegemony of the United States were in no way threatened. Upon
what logical basis can one contend that the crimes of Lenin and Stalin are
worse that those of which Clinton is guilty?
Sergio
Romano has called the periodic bombings against Iraq a continuation of the
election campaign by other means. Terror bombing as political advertising: this
would have warmed Goebbels' heart, yet it is undertaken by the leading state of
the “democratic” West. And all of this, once again, in a period of peace. The
question must be posed: for what reason should a future historian consider the
U.S. president “more humane” than those who led the USSR during one of the most
tragic periods of world history? Here the attitudes of certain Communists
really become repellent and coarse as they demonize Stalin and view Clinton as
a representative, albeit a moderate one, of the “Left.” Let us examine the
history of colonialism and imperialism. The West eliminated most Indians from
the face of the earth and enslaved the
blacks. Similar fates awaited other colonial peoples at their hands, yet this
did not stop the West from characterizing its expansion as the advancement of
freedom and civilization, thus a cause for celebration. This vision has
culminated in the domination of its victims in such a manner that they have
internalized their defeat and feel entirely dependent on the conqueror. They hope
to sit in the lap of “civilization,” and they have given up their historical
understanding and cultural identity. Today we are witnessing a kind of
colonization of the historical consciousness of Communists. And this is more
than just a metaphor. Historically the Communist movement has come to power in
colonial lands at the periphery of the West. On the other hand, the triumph of
globalization and the Pax Americana, seen from the point of view of the media,
means that everywhere beyond the West becomes just a colony or a province. At
least this is so potentially; from the point of view of the center of empire,
Washington can (and does), day in and day out, strike any spot on the globe
with the concentrated fire-power of its multiple media. To resist this is
difficult, yet without this resistance, there are no Communists.
V.
Why the United States won the “Third World War”
1.
The U.S. diplomatic-military offensive
The
beginning and the end of the “Cold War” were marked explicitly by two military
warnings, two threats, not just of war but of total war and annihilation: the
atomic destruction of Nagasaki and Hiroshima ordered by Truman, and the Star
Wars program initiated by Reagan. But not just for this reason can the period
between 1945 and 1991 be understood as a kind of “Third World War” with its own
unique characteristics. The victors successfully disturbed and transformed the
political-military strategy of their enemies. In 1953, Yugoslavia became a kind
of corresponding member of NATO five years after it broke with the USSR on the
basis of its approval of the “Balkan Pact” with Turkey and Greece, and was thus
integrated into the “defensive position
of the West.”9 Beginning in the 1970s, a kind of “de facto alliance”
against the USSR was built up through the U.S.-China reconciliation process,
though for its part the USSR wanted to win the United States for a
“quasi-alliance against China” (Kissinger 1994, 729).
It
is obvious that the winning diplomatic initiatives of the West were connected
to powerful military pressures. Let us look at the People's Republic of China,
which was politically seeking its own national unity after decades and even
centuries of colonial humiliation, yet caught up in a conflict in which its
major goal was the recovery of Quemoy and Matsu, two islands that, as Churchill
emphasized in a letter to Eisenhower on 15 February 1955, lay “offshore” and
“are legally part of China.” They formed a kind of pistol at its temple. And
this pistol was not to be considered out of bounds by the U.S. administration.
It would not hesitate to threaten to defend the islands with atomic weapons.
Thus, in 1958, when the Quemoy-Matsu crisis broke out anew, the USSR, fully
aware of the military superiority of the United States, gave to China a defense
agreement that limited itself only to the mainland. The great Asiatic power was
thus forced to give up its goal—one that even Churchill saw a legitimate and
“natural.” The assurances were of no use that Khrushchev had given Mao two
years earlier, rebuilding the leadership that the socialist camp required along
with contre-cordon sanitaire. Obedience to the political line of the
USSR no longer appeared as the path that could end colonial degradation or
achieve national unity. In this manner, the threat of using military force
(above all nuclear), if not the actual use of force itself, decisively
influenced the development of the Third World War.
2.
The national question and the decline of the “socialist camp”
None
of this reduces the magnitude of the mistakes, crimes, and guilt of the
socialist camp. Quite the contrary, it makes these clearer. Let us take a look
at the most difficult points of crisis. In 1948, the USSR broke with
Yugoslavia. In 1956, the invasion of Hungary. In 1968, the invasion of
Czechoslovakia. In 1969, bloody border
confrontations between the USSR and China. Though avoided then, war between two
governments calling themselves socialist would become a tragic reality a decade
later: first between Vietnam and Cambodia, then China and Vietnam. In 1981,
martial law in Poland in order to prevent a “comradely” intervention by the
USSR, and to bring under control an oppositional movement that had found
widespread support because it appealed to the national identity that Big
Brother scorned. For a variety of reasons, it is nonetheless common to all of
the crises that the national question played a central role. Not for nothing
did the dissolution of the socialist camp begin at the edges of the “empire,”
in countries that had been dissatisfied for a long time with the limited
sovereignty forced upon them. There were also decisive factors internal to the
USSR. The stirrings in the Baltic republics, which had had socialism “exported”
to them in 1939 and 1940, were key to the ultimate collapse, well before the
obscure “putsch” of August 1991. In definite ways the national question, which
had importantly helped the success of the October Revolution, also sealed the
end of the historical cycle which it began.
The
strengthened vitality of the People's Republic of China (no matter how one
evaluates its political orientation back then) is explicable only because Mao
took to heart historical experiences and understood how to analyze critically
the major difficulties in the USSR caused by its policies in regard to the peasantry
and national minorities (1979, 365f and 372). At least during certain periods
of their history, the Chinese Communists understood to stay on the high ground
represented by Lenin's views of 1916, which stressed that the national question
remains even after Communist and workers' parties come to state power. A
position paper of the Chinese Communist Party in 1956 stressed that within the
socialist camp continuing efforts are necessary to overcome the tendency toward
great nation chauvinism. This is a tendency that by no means disappears
immediately with the conquest of a bourgeois or semifeudal regime, and that may
even be heightened during the “heady” times when revolution is newly
victorious. The position paper states:
[This is a ] phenomenon that is not unique to any particular country. For example, country B can be small and backward compared to country A, yet large and developed with regard to country C. Therefore it can happen that country B, while complaining about the great-nation chauvinism of country A, can simultaneously display characteristics of great-nation chauvinism toward country C. (Ancora a proposito 1956)
I
am treating the problem here very generally, yet is not hard to see that behind
B we could find Yugoslavia complaining about the arrogance and chauvinism of
the USSR (A), yet itself showing hegemonic ambitions toward Albania (C).
Ultimately the Chinese Communists came to denounce the USSR as socialist in
words but imperialist in deeds. They utilized a concept (social imperialism) that
correctly castigated actions like the invasion of Czechoslovakia, but which
nonetheless unfairly erased national conflict from socialist reality and fell
thereby into a utopian perspective on socialism.
Not
so very long ago Fidel Castro attempted to analyze and evaluate these issues
and came to this remarkable conclusion: “We socialists have committed the
following error: we have underestimated the power of nationalism and religion.”
(Here one should remember that religion in particular can form an essential
element of national identity, as in countries like Poland and Ireland. Today we
might also say the same about the Islamic world.) Unable to acknowledge and
respect national peculiarities because of an abstract and aggressive
“internationalism,” Brezhnev's openly chauvinistic and hegemonic theory of the
“international dictatorship of the proletariat” came to pass, which resulted in
limiting the sovereignty of countries officially allied with the USSR. The
breakup and collapse of the socialist camp stems from this, as does also the
ultimate triumph and practice of the “international dictatorship of the
bourgeoisie” worked out by the United States. 3. The economic and
ideological front of the “Third World War”
Above
and beyond the diplomatic/military side of the “Third World War” was the
economic side, the war's second front. A technological embargo had been
declared against the USSR and kept in force, for all practical purposes, until
the final breakdown of the Soviet Union. Nonetheless it would be erroneous to
overestimate the role played by the economy in this process. It will suffice to
relate the views of a few establishment U.S. sources on this matter. Paul
Kennedy viewed the Russia of the 1930s as being on the road to a speedy
transformation to an economic superpower, and considered the five-year period
from 1945 to 1950 as constituting a minor economic miracle. Lester Thurow
characterized the economy of the Soviet Union in the years that immediately
followed as growing “faster than the United States,” and also contended that
“the sudden disappearance of Communism” is “mysterious,” at least as regards
the economy (1992, 11 and 13). Since the collapse of production in the formerly
socialist countries occurred only after 1991, it can very definitely be said
that the economy was not the key factor in the collapse of “real, existing
socialism.”
We
are thus compelled to examine the third front of the “Third World War,” the
ideological one. One of the first goals of the CIA was to set up an efficient
“Psychological Warfare Workshop.” In November 1945, the U.S. ambassador to
Moscow, Averill Harriman, demanded the construction of high-powered radio
stations that could broadcast in all of the USSR's diverse languages. In 1956,
during the days of the Hungarian uprising, the dozen or so small and secretly
constructed radio transmitters played a major role.
4.
A completely unrealistic theory of Communism
The
multimedia supremacy of the United States was not, of course, the most
important factor. During the 1950s (when, as we have seen, the rhythm of Soviet
economic development was extremely promising), Khrushchev proclaimed the goals
of Communism in terms of outpacing the United States. At that time “real, existing socialism” was ideologically
on the offensive to such a degree that, in terms of history and philosophy of
history, it considered the fate of capitalism as being already sealed. The
ensuing years and decades demonstrated the unreal nature of this perspective.
Forced to reduce its ambitions drastically, the Soviet Union proved unable to
analyze its own history or to examine its own ideology in a fundamental way.
Its leaders offered assurances again and again that rapid progress was being
made on the path toward the realization of Communism. Yet this was a Communism
understood in the fantastical manner that is oftentimes handed down to us as a
definition from Marx and Engels. According to the German Ideology,
Communism is supposed to bring forth a condition where it is possible for every
one of us “do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning,
fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner”
according to one's own wishes “without ever becoming hunter, fisherman,
shepherd or critic” (Marx and Engels 1976, 47).
If
we would like to adopt this definition, it would require that the productive
capacities of Communism be advanced so wonderfully that the problems and
conflicts that are ordinarily connected to the measurement and regulation of
the labor necessary for the production of social wealth and the distribution of
this wealth would have disappeared. Furthermore, such an understanding of
Communism presupposes not only the end of the state, but also of the division
of labor, and indeed labor itself, not to mention the disappearance of all
forms of power and duty. Decades of rich historical experience should have
given rise to a profound examination of these themes and problems. In reality
we have not gotten much further than the efforts of Lenin in reformulating the
theory of socialist revolution and taking into account the lengthy duration of
the transition and its unavoidable complexity. What is lacking is the
(absolutely necessary) radical reexamination of the theory of socialism and
Communism in the totality of postcapitalist society.
It
is clear that when the attainment of Communism is put off until an ever more
distant and unlikely future, “real, existing
socialism” loses its credibility and legitimacy all the more. A Party
leadership that gradually became more and more self-important, more spoiled and
more corrupt, lacked any type of general legitimacy. A time like ours seeks
political justification in terms of democracy and people's self-determination.
In addition, the tangible consequences of “real, existing socialism” undermined
the very reasons for its existence. Ever-present compulsion became more and
more unbearable within the civil society that did develop thanks to mass
education, the wide extension of culture, and a modicum of social security.
The
internal difficulties of the “socialist camp” became all the more obvious as
the rhythm of economic development began to lag. The thesis of the inevitable
(and immediate) crisis of capitalism, propounded by socialism's philosophy of
history, increasingly came into crisis itself. The foundation for social
consensus disappeared, and the powerful mechanisms of repression were met with
growing revulsion. At the same time, the Soviet leadership mindlessly cranked
out its tiring hurdy-gurdy tunes about the arrival of the fantastical kind of
Communism described above. And these kinds of litanies had very disadvantageous
consequences for the economy. Disequalibrium and underdevelopment were already
manifest and demanded energetic interventions to heighten the productivity of labor.
Yet the solving of this problem is not made any easier by the idea that we
supposedly find ourselves on a path to Communism aiming at universal leisure,
nor by branding every attempt at a rationalization of the production process as
the “restoration of capitalism.” If we want to speak of a collapse in Eastern
Europe, this was far more of an ideological than an economic one.
5.
“Without revolutionary theory there
can
be no revolutionary movement”
But
is not an explanation idealist if it places the accent far more on ideology
than on the economy? In thinking about this question, Marxists would be well
served if they recalled Gramsci's irony with reference to “the baroque
conviction that we are all the more orthodox the more we reach back and grasp `material' things” (1975, 1442). In
addition, it is worth remembering one of Lenin's most famous statements,
“Without revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary movement” (1961,
369). Certainly the Bolshevik Party had a theory for acquisition of power, yet
insofar as revolution meant going beyond the destruction of the old order and
the construction of a new one, the Bolsheviks and the Communist movement
essentially were without revolutionary theory. An eschatological wish for a
completely harmonious society, free of contradiction and conflict, cannot be
considered a theory of the postcapitalist society in need of construction. We
must acknowledge the grievous and gaping void here. This void cannot be filled
by going back to Marx or to other classic sources. We are confronting here a
new, extremely difficult, and absolutely inescapable task.
VI.
The People's Republic of China and
the
historical analysis of socialism
1.
Mao Zedong and the Chinese Revolution
In
China, the Communist Party rose to power riding on the tide of a
national-liberation struggle of epic proportions. The projects relating to
profound social transformation were thus closely connected to the task of
recovering the greatness of the Chinese nation. This is a nation with a
civilization going back through the millennia, yet after the Opium War it was
coerced into semicolonial (and semifeudal) relations. How did this gigantic
Asian land both modernize and socialize, and thereby overcome the fragmentation
and national degradation that imperialism had forced upon it? And how did it
succeed in this amid the difficult conditions of the Cold War and the economic,
or at least technological, embargo that had been deployed by the advanced
capitalist countries? Mao Zedong believed that these problems could be solved
through the uninterrupted mobilization of the masses. This led to the “Great
Leap Forward,” and then to the “Cultural Revolution.” As the difficulties and
dead ends of the Soviet model began to become evident, Mao proclaimed the
slogan “advance the revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat.” A
new stage of the revolution was called upon to
guarantee both economic development and progress in the direction of
socialism. This new stage of socialism had the mission of liberating the initiatives
of the masses from all bureaucratic obstacles—even from the bureaucratic
obstacles of the Communist Party and the state that it controlled.
Make
no mistake about it: this policy led to massive losses. On the political level,
instead of the hoped-for rapid development, there occurred a terrifying
slowdown or even back-sliding in the democratization process. The democratic
warranties and rules of the game were done away with within the Communist Party
and then even more so in the society at large. Clearly relationships worsened
between the Han and the national minorities, who were subjected to multiple
vendettas during the “cultural revolution.” They were sharply discriminated
against, or indoctrinated through intensive short-term schooling. This pedagogy
was inspired by an aggressive and intolerant “enlightenment” approach that came
from Beijing or other urban centers populated by the Han. Because the mediating
roles of the Party and the state had been swept away, there really only
existed, on the one hand, the immediate relationship to the charismatic leader,
and on the other hand, the immediate relationship to the masses (though these
were in fact manipulated and fanaticized by means of the news media and
controlled by an army prepared to intervene in emergencies). These were truly
the years of a triumphal Bonapartism.
Immense
losses were also obvious in the economic arena, and these were not only on
account of the splits and continual confrontations that resulted from the
crisis of having no criteria of legitimation other than fidelity to the
charismatic leader. There is a perhaps more important dimension to the problem.
The “Great Leap Forward” and the “Cultural Revolution” took no account of the
need to normalize the process of transformation. No one can call upon the
masses to be heroes all the time, to endure being continuously and eternally
mobilized, always ready to sacrifice, to do without, to deny oneself. The call
to heroism must always remain the exception and never become the rule. We could
say with Brecht, “happy is the people that has no need of heroes.” Heroes are necessary for the transition from
exceptional conditions to normalcy, and are heroes only insofar as they
guarantee the transition from exceptional conditions to normalcy, which is to
say they are heroes to the extent to which they are willing to make themselves
superfluous. It would be a very peculiar “Communism” that required sacrifice
and self-denial ad infinitum, or nearly ad infinitum. Normalcy must be
organized according to a variety of principles, by means of mechanisms and
norms that allow for the greatest possible undisturbed enjoyment of daily
events. Here you need rules of the game, and insofar as the economy is
concerned, incentives.
In
the last years or months of his life, Mao himself must have been aware of the
need for a change in course. Deng Xiaoping understood this, how to push along
this kind of change without imitating the Khrushchev model of
“de-Stalinization.” He did it without demonizing those who preceded him in
holding power. The enormous historical contributions that Mao made by building
up the Communist Party, and through his leadership of the revolutionary
struggle, were not to be forgotten. The serious mistakes committed toward the
end of the 1950s were seen in a larger context, namely within the contours of
more-or-less hasty, even crazy, experiments, which accompanied the projects
proposed in the building of a society that was without historical precedent.
Was it not the same Mao, who in his better times, 1937, authored On Practice?
He demanded that we not lose sight of the fundamental fact that just as the
“development of an objective process is full of contradictions and struggles, .
. . so is the development of the movement of human knowledge” (1968, 18–19).
This is in fact the key to understanding the oscillations that are
characteristic of the history of the Communist parties and the societies that
see themselves as guided by Communist principles. The point is to emphasize the
objectively contradictory character of consciousness and the knowledge process,
and not the “betrayal” or the “degeneration” of this or that personality.
Insofar as Khrushchev demonized Stalin and reduced everything to the “cult of
personality,” he perpetuated the problematic side of this heritage. Because
Deng Xiaoping refused to quarrel in
this manner with Mao, he is the heir of the better side.
The
procedure chosen by the new Chinese leadership, in any case, avoided a
delegitimation of revolutionary power. Above all, it made possible a genuine
debate about the conditions and characteristics of the construction of a
socialist society, because it did not shift all the difficulties,
uncertainties, and objective contradictions onto one person as scapegoat. In
the course of this debate the internal presuppositions of the “Great Leap
Forward” and the “Cultural Revolution” were criticized and rejected.
2.
A tremendous and innovative New Economic Policy (NEP)
In
the economic arena we are gradually seeing “market socialism” emerge. Characteristic
of this is the development of a large private sector and a concern to make the
public sector efficient. Getting connected up with the world market and the
technology of the West, as well as with its wisdom in the areas of industrial
organization and business management, does not come without a price. In China,
openly capitalist “special economic zones” have appeared. On the other hand,
what are the alternatives? Above all it is no longer possible, after the crisis
and dissolution of the USSR and the “socialist camp,” for a nation to isolate
itself from global capitalist markets unless it wants to condemn itself to
backwardness and powerlessness. Under the new conditions of the world market
and global politics, isolationism would be tantamount to giving up on modernity
and socialism. And even with the attendant high costs, the outcomes of
undertaking this new course are generally visible: a rapid expansion in the
development of productive forces; an economic miracle of European proportions;
access like never before to economic and social opportunities for hundreds of
millions of Chinese. All of this adds up to a liberation process of enormous
proportions.
In
the political realm, the questions were how to develop democracy and eliminate
the residue of the old regime that had survived the revolution as well as
reduce the arrogance of the new
bureaucrats (which was derived from the arrogance of the Mandarins). And so the
path that the aged Mao found so worthy—“Advance the Revolution under the Dictatorship
of the Proletariat”—was relinquished. Because this path had intensified rather
than eliminated the power plays and arbitrariness of the bosses and little
bosses, it created a crisis that delegitimated even the very few norms and
warranties that existed in society. The limitation and regulation of power is
today grounded in the rule of law, a codified system of rules, norms, and
rights. Such a system of law was hitherto unknown, but is now rapidly growing
simultaneously with the separation of Party organizations from governmental
structures. An electoral system has emerged in the villages along with a wide
assortment of candidates. Other measures are being experimented with in this
democratization process, which, as the leaders of the People's Republic
explicitly acknowledge, is far from complete. In the course of its history,
“real, existing socialism” branded “formal” freedoms as empty and deceptive.
Paradoxically, the cultural revolution operated along the same lines.
Currently, however, the Chinese Communist leaders value very highly the
“formal” freedoms guaranteed by law. They also adhere to the notion that the
emphasis must be placed today on economic and social rights, given the present
stage of economic development in the People's Republic. The decision to pursue
also political modernization is irrevocable. In both political and economic
terms, no socialism is now even thinkable that does not understand how to
analyze, compare, and creatively evaluate the most forward-looking practices of
the capitalist West as it rode the wave of bourgeois democratic revolution.
The
social order that in China is currently considered valid presents itself as a
kind of gigantic and expanded New Economic Policy (NEP). This is an NEP that
has become harder to achieve because of globalization and power relationships
worldwide. Nonetheless, the program is quite conscious of the necessity to
connect continually socialism, democracy, and the market with one another, and
to transcend the crudely simplified notion of the homogeneity of the society it
is attempting to build. 3. The stakes are immense
To
speak of a restoration of capitalism in China would be looking at the problem
too superficially. A solid bourgeoisie has undoubtedly emerged there, although
it currently has no possibility of transforming its economic power into
political power. We need to understand the difficult situation in which the
Chinese leaders find themselves. On the one hand, they have to push forward
with the democratization process. This is an essential element of socialist
modernization as it is also a means of consolidating power (today the only
principle of legitimation is that of investiture from below). On the other
hand, they must avoid having the democratization process lead to a conquest of
power by the bourgeoisie, which, by the way, is the goal sought in an entirely
unremitting fashion by the United States. It is resolved to undermine the
hegemony of the Communist Party by any means necessary. If it can bring China
into conformity with the capitalist West, it will attain the planetary triumph
of the “American Century.”
It
is a shame that the U.S. administration gets support for this also from the
“Left.” Certain leftists get upset about the priority that is given to the
attainment of a modicum of material equality within a developing country having
one billion two hundred million inhabitants. Here these leftists demonstrate
that they have retrogressed to the position of the neoliberals, who do not
merely view Marx with contempt, but also liberals like Rawls. They talk about
the primacy of freedom over equality, or put it another way in terms of
negative over positive freedom. They quickly add that their principle is only
valid “under the presupposition of a minimum income guarantee.”
But
what of the openly declared capitalism of the “special economic zones?” Those
who are undertaking an anti-Chinese crusade in the name of Mao Zedong would do
well to think over an important fact. As late as five years before the conquest
of power, the great revolutionary leader acknowledged the durability not only
of capitalism in this gigantic country, but also the “slave-holding regimes” (referring to Tibet) as well as the
“feudal landlords,” yet he was not at all upset by this. And if we want to
consider how broadly extended conditions of poverty and unemployment clash with
the upwardly mobile lifestyles of the newly rich, think back to an
extraordinary page from Gramsci written in 1926. He is analyzing the USSR and
writes about a phenomenon “that has never occurred in history.” A “ruling”
political class “in its entirety” lived “under conditions that were worse than
certain elements and strata of the dominated and subjugated class.” Masses of
people, who endured a life of deprivation and want, were made to feel even more
insecure by the theatrics of the “NEP-man in furs, who had access to all the
material goods of the earth.” Yet this must not lead to perturbation or
refusal, because the proletariat can neither conquer power nor retain it if it
is not able to sacrifice particular and immediate interests to the “general and
permanent interests of the class.”
The
construction of a socialist society is an extraordinarily complex process.
Certainly the contents and essential characteristics of the society that the Chinese
Communists seek remain vague. The process of acknowledging the objective
realities is occurring one more time, and one gets to know the objective
realities confronting a society unprecedented in history neither linearly nor
easily. Given the theoretical weaknesses of Marxism, it would be stupid during
this epoch of globalization to underestimate the great danger of the
homogenization of China through adaptation to the surrounding context of
capitalism. But it would be an act of political blindness to assume that this
homogenization has already occurred, and even worse to promote the process by
joining the anti-Chinese campaign instigated by the United States. The stakes
are immense in this game. The realities of a continent-wide country include
every sort of difficulty and contradiction. Yet China is resolved to overcome
underdevelopment and not to give up its political independence. Furthermore, by
becoming technologically autonomous, it seeks to attain socialist modernity.
Should it succeed in this, the power
relationships of our planet would be drastically and completely altered.
VII.
Marxism or anarchism? Think through Communist
theory
and practice in a fundamentally new way
1.
Materialism or idealism?
The
historical events introduced by the October Revolution have led to certain
conclusions for many leftists that might serve as negative models. Very often
the degeneration and the collapse of the USSR and the “socialist camp” are
explained by tracing everything back to Stalin. This attitude is translatable
into the sigh: Oh, if only Lenin had lived longer! What a terrible misfortune
that his place was not taken by Trotsky or Bukharin. Too bad that the Bolshevik
leadership did not understand how to follow the path Marx would have wanted—the
path of the “authentic” Marx—as understood by one or another of the inflexible
judges over the history of “real, existing socialism.” And if perchance one of
them (like Rossana Rossanda) had held power instead of Stalin, we would not
have had the return of the Czarist flag and the Duma to Moscow. Not at all, we
would have the victory of the soviet system and the red flag over New York. If
that analysis were correct, we would not only have to go back to Marx, but at
least as far as Plato and his idealism. It really is hard to imagine a more
radical liquidation of historical materialism. The objective circumstances are
of no interest at all: the condition of Russia and its historical background;
the class struggles domestically and internationally; power relationships in
the areas of economics, politics, and the military, etc. Everything was the
result of the crudeness, the brutality, the will to power, the paranoia—in any
case, the character of a single personality. Ironically, it is just this type
of explanation that reproduces the fundamental errors of Stalinism. These are
reproduced even to a greater degree, because the objectively existing
contradictions are forgotten and a weak and prejudicial recourse is made to the
concept of “betrayal.” Mind you, not to a specific act, but rather to almost seventy years of history regarded
as one long uninterrupted “betrayal” of Communist ideals. All of this committed
by Stalin, who is thus to be delivered over to the execution squad of the
historians, or better yet, to the journalists and ideologues.
From
this type of analysis sometimes an entire philosophy of history is hammered
together. In the period around 1968, a book was circulated fairly widely whose
very title, Proletarians without Revolution (Carria 1966), was thought to
deliver the key to understanding universal history. Always inspired by the most
noble Communist sentiments, the masses were regularly betrayed by their leaders
and the bureaucrats. And this is also paradoxical because what was intended to
be a complaint of the masses against the leaders and bureaucrats converts
abruptly into an indictment against the masses. The analysis reveals the masses
to be completely irredeemable simpletons who are entirely unable to comprehend
their own interests at decisive moments. They long to consign their fate to
swashbucklers. And here once again we see an overarching idealism; deception
and betrayal by swashbucklers is supposed to explain all of world history.
Occasionally
there are slight variations of this account. Here one contrasts the initial
liveliness, beauty, and abundance of debate in the soviets with the monotony of
the bureaucratic and autocratic apparatus that takes over. Again we give the
traitors, gravediggers, and killers of the soviets the merry chase. People who
reason this way (or who sigh this way) forget that historical upheavals and
revolutions are generally accompanied by a transition from poetry to prose. The
Protestant Reformation challenged the pope and the powers of the day by
distributing the demands of the general priesthood, yet the original enthusiasm
did not survive the occurrence of difficulties, objective contradictions, and
the outbreak of the terrible conflicts that followed. The changes could only
take place on a more limited, yet more realistic, basis. The revolutions of
1789 and 1848 in France give us similar things to consider.
It
is not reasonable to compare the inspiration and encouragement of the initial
stages of the battle against the old regime
needing to be toppled with the later more prosaic and more difficult
phases. Here a new government must be built in spite of all the difficulties
and in spite of contradictions of every sort, including those that derive from
having too little experience. It would be like condemning a marriage or
partnership (including the successful ones) in the name of the unique and
irreplaceable moments experienced when one first fell in love. It appears that
in the developmental stages of a revolution the original enthusiasm of the
participants can suspend for a time the mundane division of labor and everyday
business. Still these will eventually again demand our attention. Therefore it
makes sense to reduce that sector of society that will need to be called upon
to be actively involved, and this leads unavoidably to a certain degree of
professionalization in political life. The institutions that developed out of
the Protestant Reformation followed one and the same dialectic. So too did the
clubs of the French Revolution, the Russian soviets, the sections of the
Italian Communist Party (PCI) that emerged during struggle, or reemerged in the
student organizations that arose during the movements of 1968. A “general
priesthood” cannot last forever. Rather it makes room for more limited and
prosaic structures, which, if the revolution or movement has succeeded, are
very different from a return to the old order. In terms of the USSR, the real
problem was never a taking leave from the original beauty of the soviets, but
rather the return of the Duma and the economic and political power of big
money.
2.“Dictatorship
of the proletariat”
and
“withering away of the state”
In
order to get beyond the idealist types of pseudo-explanations, it is necessary
to replace the concept of betrayal (that really plays a minor role) with that
of learning. The victory of a revolution can only be considered secure when the
class that has carried it out succeeds in giving its sovereignty a durable
political form. All of this takes place in the middle of a long and complex
learning process marked by conflict and contradiction, experiment and error.
This learning process lasted from 1789 to
1871 for the French bourgeoisie, for example. Not until after this
period does this class really find its form of political rule, as Gramsci
underscores, in a parliamentary republic grounded in universal (male) suffrage.
This proves itself to be durable when it succeeds in connecting hegemony and
compulsion in such a manner that its dictatorship and use of force only become
visible in moments of acute crisis.
Why
did not something quite similar occur after the October Revolution? In order to
explain the “totalitarian” petrification of the Soviet regime, the theory of
the dictatorship of the proletariat is often cited. This is a very superficial
understanding. Ultimately it acts as if the demands of the liberals, or at
least the non-Marxists, for freedom preclude a theoretical justification for
dictatorship during a transitional phase or for situations of acute crisis. In
reality, all of the classical philosophers of liberalism (Locke, Montesquieu,
Hamilton, Mill, etc.) have explicitly allowed for the suspension of
constitutional guarantees and the use of dictatorship in exceptional
circumstances. For Italy, the example of Mazzini is of particular interest. He spoke
of a “dictatorial, strongly concentrated power” that would suspend the Charter
of Rights, and fulfill its mission only when the national revolution had
finally triumphed and independence had been attained. What the national
revolution was for Mazzini, the socialist revolution was for Marx, Lenin, or
Stalin. With regard to the USSR, the problem can thus be reformulated. Why was
the transitional phase (or exceptional circumstance) never overcome?
Of
course, one must never lose sight of the economic encirclement. But closely
connected to this objective fact is an important subjective limit: the
political and cultural education of the Bolshevik leaders. As with Marx and
Engels, so too with these leaders. Time and again they were confronted with the
problem of democracy, yet this came to the fore only to disappear again almost
immediately. The reason was this: one of the fundamentals of their theory or
their worldview was that the state withers away with the overcoming of class
antagonisms and social classes, and so
democracy as a form of the state also withers away.
This
theory, or rather illusion, of Marx and Engels is grounded in a dramatic
historical analysis. The First Republic, born in France in 1789, was
transformed in the course of the revolution first into dictatorship and then
into the empire of Napoleon I. The Second Republic, a child of the 1848
revolution, soon made room for the Bonapartist dictatorship of Napoleon III. In
England, during periods of crisis, the ruling class did not hesitate to suspend
habeas corpus or legal rights, and subjected Ireland to a kind of permanent
siege when its people rather undiplomatically rejected British colonial rule.
And afterwards the liberal and democratic state had no difficulty in
transforming itself into an open and even terrorist dictatorship whenever a
crisis situation emerged or became more acute. Lenin drew a conclusion from all
of this. With the outbreak of the First World War, the Bolshevik leaders saw
governments with long-established liberal traditions change over into ones that
would totally regiment their populations, becoming bloody behemoths. They were
prepared to utilize martial law, execution squads, and arbitrary terror,
sacrificing their citizens in massive numbers on the alter of imperial expansion
and the state's will to power.
Whether
we look at it from the point of view of its historical or psychological
origins, the theory of the withering away of the state flows into an
eschatological vision of a society without conflict that consequently needs no
norms of legality to regulate or limit conflicts. The abstract utopian quality
of this watchword is something of which Marx and Engels at definite times seem
explicitly conscious. For example, they obviously oscillate between speaking of
the withering away or demise of the state in general, yet on the other hand
refer specifically to the “state in its contemporary political sense” and
“political force in its own peculiar sense.” Furthermore, the state, as they
quite appropriately analyze it, is not only an instrument of class domination,
but also a form of the “reciprocal rights” and “mutual security” that exist between individuals and the class
in power. It is not at all clear why one would find “rights” and “security”
superfluous for the individual members of a solidified society after the
disappearance of classes and class struggle.
In
any case, waiting for the withering away of all conflict and the demise of the
state, and political force generally. makes it impossible to solve the problem
of how to transform the government that emerges from socialist revolution. This
expectation privileges the continuing existence of inflexible “overturners,”
whose perspective is incapable of giving concreteness or stability to the
emancipation of the subaltern classes. After the October Revolution, there were
outstanding revolutionary socialists who proclaimed that “the idea of a
constitution is a bourgeois idea.” With this as one's basis, it would not only
be easy to justify terroristic measures during emergencies, but also extremely
difficult or impossible to make a transition to constitutional normalcy,
especially since this is branded as bourgeois from the start. In this manner,
exceptional circumstances privilege utopianism, and utopianism makes exceptional
circumstances more extreme.
3.
Politics and the economy
In
general, one can say of Marx and Engels that politics, after playing a decisive
role in the conquest of power, apparently disappears along with the state and
the use of political force. This is all the more true when (in addition to the
disappearance of classes, the state, and political power) the division of
labor, nations, and religions, in short all possible sites of conflict, are
thought to have disappeared.
This
messianic vision ultimately leads to anarchism, and has also played a
deleterious role in regard to the economy. A socialist society is quite
unthinkable apart from a more or less extensive public sector (or one regulated
by government) within the productive apparatus as well as within the service
industries, the functioning of the public sector being decisive. The solution
to this problem can be left to the anarchist myth of the emergence of the “new
type of person,” who, it is alleged, will
spontaneously identify with the collective without the appearance of any
sort of conflict or contradiction between private and public, individual and
individual, social group and social group. This is obviously a secular version
of the religious notion of “grace,” which would make the law unnecessary. Or
the solution can be sought in a system of rules and incentives (both material
and moral), and of controls that are intended to secure the transparency,
efficiency, and productivity of this sector. Certainly all of this is made more
difficult, if not impossible, by an (anarchistic) phenomenology of power that
situates domination and oppression exclusively in the state, the centralized
power, and the general social rules. In this manner, the dialectic of the
capitalist society as Marx described it is quite reversed. In “real, existing
socialism,” anarchism led to terror as compared to a civil society. This terror
became all the more unbearable as exceptional circumstances faded, and the
philosophy of history that promised the withering away of the state, of
national identities, of the market, etc., increasingly lacked credibility.
4.
A Communism beyond the abstract, anarchical utopia
Even
now we lack a theory for conflict within a socialist society or within the
socialist camp. This is why the most profound crisis of the Communist movement
set in at the same time, paradoxically, as the triumph and immense expansion of
socialism after World War II. The anarchistic and messianic version of
Communism which prevails up to the present time must be confronted with its own
definition as a “realistic movement.” This has nothing to do with a resurgence
of the slogan coined by Bernstein (“the movement is everything, the goal is
nothing”). Bernstein refused to challenge the political domination of the
bourgeoisie and the arrogance of the imperialist powers. (It is well known how
the leaders of German social democracy looked at the “civilizing” mission of
colonialism with great approval.) The one ambition that Bernstein would gladly
have given up (thus perpetuating the established sociopolitical systems
nationally and internationally) was the building of a postcapitalist and
postimperialist society, a social order that can and must no longer be imagined as an insipid and uncritical
utopia. Detachment from this kind of utopianism is the fundamental precondition
of the Marxian notion of Communism as a “realistic movement.”
It
is entirely understandable that the desire outlined here to find a new
conception of Communism has given rise to some perplexity. In their polemic
against my position with regard to the withering away of the state, it appears
to me that comrades Luigi Cortesi and Walter Peruzzi do not present arguments
that can make plausible the idea of a society without conflict or the need for
legal safeguards. Instead they give vent to their disappointment that no
properly inspired vision of a postcapitalist society leaps forth from my pages.
Many a comrade might even go further, and question whether it is worth the
trouble of fighting for a future society that does not bring with it the
elimination of all conflict and contradiction. This is a little bit like the
religious notion that life on earth does not really make any sense without the
prospect of an afterlife beyond.
The
wisdom of Gramsci would be a fine counterweight to these basically anarchistic
and religious tendencies. He accomplished an enormous historical task as the
first to have deliberated about an effective and radical project of liberation
that never viewed itself as the end of history. It is really a matter of
drawing a clear line of demarcation between Marxism and anarchism, and thereby
taking leave once and for all from abstract utopianism, while at the same time
demonstrating the historical reasons why it arises. We can also make good use
here of a piece of advice from Engels, who observed the following, while
comparing the revolutions in England and France: “In order to secure even those
conquests of the bourgeoisie that were ripe for gathering at the time, the
revolution had to be carried considerably further. . . . This seems, in fact,
to be one of the laws of evolution of bourgeois society” (1990, 291–92) There
is no reason not to apply the materialistic method developed by Marx and Engels
to the real historical movements and revolutions they both inspired.
This
article orginally appeared in March 1999 under the title “Fuga dalla storia? Il
movimento comunista tra autocritica e autofobia,” published in Naples by
Edizioni La Citt_ del Sole. A German translation by Hermann Kopp was published
in 2000 as Marxistische Blätter Pamphlet 01 by Neue Impulse Verlag,
Essen. The article presented here was translated from the German edition.
Philosophy
Faculty
Urbano
University, Italy
Translated
by Charles Reitz
Philosophy
Department
Kansas
City Community College
1.
The term real, existing socialism was used in the Soviet Union and its
allied socialist countries to describe the socioeconomic and political system
that they had adopted for socialist construction. The term was intended to
distinguish an idyllic, utopian approach to the establishment of a communist
society from the practical realities of socialist construction under conditions
of constant economic, military, and political pressure by the imperialist
powers committed to their destruction.—Ed.
2.
Liberazione is the organ of the Communist Refoundation Party. Il
Manifesto identifies itself as a “Communist daily newspaper.”—Ed.
3.
On Truman's policy, see Thomas 1988, 187.
4.
See in this regard Losurdo 1997, 75–88. In regard to Hoover's policy, see Trani
1979, 124).
5.
Norberto Bobbio is an Italian philosopher and member of the Italian Senate,
representing the Party of the Democratic Left.—Ed.
6.
On the problems treated here, see Losurdo 1996a, 1996b, and 1998.
7.
With regard to the racialization of the Germans (and the Japanese) in the
United States during the Second World War, see Losurdo 1996a, 158–69.
8.
Compare also Losurdo 1996a, 153–54.
9.
This is the way the Yearbook of International Politics of the Istituto
gli Studia di Politica Internazionale expressed it on p. 391 that same year
(cited in Canfera 1996).
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