Remarks originally prepared for the Berkshire Forum, 1990.
I would just offer some random observations concerning the dramatic events of the past few years, hoping to put them in proper historical perspective.
It is not enough to criticize a number of aspects of socialist construction and to condemn its shortcomings. Criticism that confines itself to moral indignation does not prepare us to take the correct road. Moreover, if criticism does not show all the connections leading to the negative phenomena, in other words if it does not place the negative phenomena in context, not only will such criticism not help us find the right road, but it will be doing the work of the enemy.
What is needed now is genuine analysis, objective, scientific, and therefore paradoxical as it may seem to some; it must be infused with fierce partisanship on behalf of socialism and on behalf of the working people.
Certainly there is no value in reducing analysis to the condemnation of a particular leader or group of leaders no matter how seemingly powerful. In this regard it is instructive to quote from that classic of historical analysis, Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany, written by Engels shortly after the defeat of the revolutions of 1848:
If then, we have been beaten, we have nothing else to do but to begin again from the beginning. And, fortunately, the probably very short interval of rest which is allowed us between the close of the first and the beginning of the second act of the movement gives us time for a very necessary piece of work: the study of the causes that necessitated both the outbreak, and its defeat; causes that are not to be sought for in the accidental efforts, talents, faults, errors, or treacheries of some of the leaders, but in the general social state and conditions of each of the convulsed nations in March, 1848. [That these] were not the work of single individuals but spontaneous irresistible manifestations of national wants and necessities more or less clearly understood but very distinctly felt by numerous classes in every country is a fact recognized everywhere; but when you inquire into the causes of the counter-revolutionary successes, there you are met with a ready reply that it was Mr. This or Citizen That, who “betrayed” the people. Which reply may be very true, or not, according to circumstances, but under no circumstances does it explain anything, not even show how it came to pass that the “people” allowed themselves to be thus betrayed.
And what a poor chance stands a political party whose entire stock-in-trade consists in a knowledge of the solitary fact, that Citizen So-and-So is not to be trusted…All these petty personal quarrels and recriminations – all these contradictory assertions, that it was Marrast or Ledru-Rollin, or Louis Blanc, or the whole of them, that steered the revolution amidst the rocks upon which it foundered…No man in his senses will ever believe that eleven men, mostly of very indifferent capacity, either for good or evil, were able in three months to ruin a nation of thirty-six millions, unless those thirty-six millions saw as little of their way before them as the eleven did.
And so it is not a matter of finding a villain or supposed villain such as Stalin, or misguided leaders (often referred to as Stalinists), or a narrow stratum which has seized power, such as the bureaucracy. Incidentally, for those who view Stalin as singly a bloodthirsty monster, and for the purpose of placing things in context as we demanded earlier, we think it would be profitable to set Stalin against the leaders of the so-called Western democracies. When Republican Spain went through its agony and succumbed under the terrible blows of Fascism, and especially those of Hitler and Mussolini, who was it that went to the aid of Spanish democracy? It was the Soviet Union under the “tyrant” Stalin. Meanwhile, the leaders of the democracies turned their backs and contributed to the butchery of the finest sons and daughters of the Spanish nation. And when that “butcher” Stalin called for unity of all peace-loving forces to form a common front against the Nazi menace, what was the response of the leaders of the Western democracies? Rebuff. And when Czechoslovakia faced extinction and the Soviet Union called for a joint defense have we already forgotten how the leaders of the Western democracies threw Czechoslovakia to the wolves, hoping thereby that the wolves would continue to roam eastward?
Who kept the vast majority of the peoples in thrall, plundering them and ruling with an iron hand the peoples of Asia and Africa? The Western democracies, of course, while it was the “butcher” Stalin who offered support to the liberation struggles.
But let us pass on.
There is in the final analysis a more fundamental reason why a society fails to transcend a certain level of development than the misdeeds of leaders. I do not now have definitive answers as to why socialism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe reached a certain plateau and then was hurled back. But we can begin an explanation by pointing out that the internal dynamics of socialism in this century, its evolution, cannot possibly be understood except in the context of the titanic struggle against imperialism which for 70 years has conducted a savage campaign to undermine and sabotage the efforts of people who elected to build a society not based on wage slavery. And, by the way does not this ceaseless campaign on the part of imperialism prove that the imperialists recognize that if left in peace socialism would demonstrate its superiority? If socialism is so contrary to human nature, so inefficient, so futile, why has imperialism kept up such a barrage of propaganda against it? Why has it waged economic warfare against it with embargoes on trade and technology? And, of course, what could socialism have accomplished if it did not have to spend so much of its treasure on defending itself against the ceaseless imperialist attacks and threats?
Then, too, many of the problems of socialism developed because socialist societies, to some degree, had to counter the vicious methods of imperialism with similar methods, had to fight imperialism with weapons of imperialism’s choosing. This could not but entail negative consequences for socialism. Some might have been avoidable; some were not. For example, the competition to produce the deadliest weapons of mass destruction was not willingly taken up by socialism. It was forced upon it. A culture of secrecy in the socialist world, of restrictions of intercourse with the West, was forced upon socialism by the enormous corrupting power of imperialism, a corruption aimed at the destruction of socialist society, even if it meant mass annihilation. Everything in socialist society was conditioned by the first strike mentality of the imperialists.
Still, the pressure of imperialism cannot alone explain the deformations, the growing alienation of the masses, the stagnation and other negative phenomena piling up in socialist societies.
We have said that answers cannot be found only in the shortcomings of individuals or certain narrow strata. As Engels pointed out, ultimately the responsibility for history must be borne by the people as a whole. The people, and particularly the class or classes upon whom the burden of leading society falls, with all that is admirable in their makeup and in their consciousness, still have serious shortcomings, still lack sufficient maturity still have not achieved the level of development which the building of socialism requires.
Responsibility, then, for many of the negative phenomena of socialism must, therefore, rest on the people’s shoulders. I say responsibility, not culpability. For the people were misled, were stifled, repressed in various measures, and bribed to some degree. So they were not guilty of what transpired that was negative. But ultimately the power is theirs, the power to struggle against deception and repression, and so the responsibility is theirs.
The people will re-learn what they have forgotten, the cruel lessons of a triumphant imperialism. A generation will receive first-hand experience on what capitalism means when it prates about: democracy, the dignity of the individual, freedom, free enterprise, and so on. That experience will kindle or revive the people’s revolutionary qualities.
Imperialism gained the upper hand over socialism because of certain objective phenomena, as well, that gathered force and peaked in the 1980s. These had to do with the unprecedented centralization and therefore potentiation of capital; the rise and expansion of the transnational corporations; the drawing Into the Imperialist orbit of the vast majority of the Third World peoples whose subsistence economies were devastated and whose labor and resources fattened the imperialist centers; the monopolization of the ever-more expensive and ever accelerating technological revolution, which was used in the hands of capital not as a means of raising up the living conditions of the great masses of the world, but as a weapon of extortion and coercion, as a means of placing those without technology at an ever greater disadvantage.
Thus, the vaunted capitalist prosperity, so much admired by the devotees of Gorbachev’s New Thinking and the supposedly marvelous capacity of capital to adapt to new technological conditions has been based on the plunder of the great majority of the world’s peoples – plunder by unequal terms of trade, by the brain drain, by forcing the peoples to engage in frantic and self destructive competition for imperialist crumbs. The supposed inter-dependence and integration of the economies of the nations which New Thinking proclaims, is in reality the subordination of the vast majority to the profit needs of the imperialist centers. Globalization of the economy has led to, on one hand, de-industrialization in the West, with its unemployment, give-backs, and general weakening of labor, and on the other hand to the savage exploitation of cheap Third World labor. This route of plunder was not available to socialism and not wanted by socialism.
The ultimate consequences of this plunder, which is becoming increasingly clear, is the total exhaustion of Third. World economies, mass starvation, and economic crisis in the home of the imperialist pirates. In other words, capitalism has managed to win round one with socialism because it has had a final reserve to tap, buying some respite for itself by ruining the rest of the world.
Those who praise capitalism and point to its stability in its leading centers, as is done by New Thinking, are like those who would portray life in the United States by citing life in our fashionable suburbs. Not only do they fail to include life in the ghettos and in modest working class communities, and therefore distort the reality of life in the United States. Even more, they ignore the fact that the luxurious lifestyle is possible precisely because of the deprivation of others. To point to the handful of imperialist centers as expressing the capitalist essence without mentioning the incredible capitalist misery which feeds it from abroad, as well as the growing Third-World-type misery which is spreading within the metropolitan centers, is to engage in the most cynical misrepresentation.
Similarly, those who admire certain democratic mechanisms in the West, its relative mildness in dealing with dissent or labor struggles, for example, are apparently oblivious to the fact that imperialism allows some liberty at home to buy social peace so that it may have a freer hand in its imposition of fascism on the rest of the world.
The inability of socialist societies to correct their mistakes in a timely manner in the course of development seems in some measure to be due to its successes as much as its shortcomings. For the socialist record has obviously not been one of unrelieved failure. In all socialist countries there were periods of rapid and substantial progress. The most essential needs of the people were in the main satisfied or were being progressively addressed, although there were periods interspersed of acute difficulty. The political consequences of this mixed bag were that the courage required to confront entrenched leadership could only come from the political backing of a desperately angry people, and the people were far from desperate. For while the leadership were often authoritarian, they were nevertheless paternalistic.
Along with that, there was immense power of the ruling groups to reward their followers, those who did not rock the boat. The upheavals in East Europe and the response within the Communist Parties to those events as well as the behavior of large numbers of Communists in the Soviet Union illustrate what a mighty impact careerism has had in perverting the development of socialist society. And so socialist societies will have to find answers to the problem of ensuring that being a member of the vanguard entails sacrifice, rather than constituting a means of personal advancement and a road to material security.
Socialist societies must also find ways to ensure an atmosphere free of intimidation for honest forces seeking to improve socialism, must not only prevent repression, but even moral intimidation, must find ways to ensure an atmosphere permitting of honest and free discussion, and where servility, a lack of imagination, and routine is not rewarded. Of course, this applies not only to socialist societies but to revolutionary parties in capitalist societies.
Still another question which we must ponder is how is it that leaders in the socialist world, who proved their dedication to the working people, their heroism, their capacity even for the supreme sacrifice, who in their younger days were the most energetic, consistent and loyal fighters for the cause of the working people, how is it that so many of them eventually insulated themselves from the influence of the masses, became arrogant, sometimes cruel and even in some cases personally corrupt?
Another question, for those who, supposedly on the Left, are now engaged In pouring so much dirt on socialism’s historical experience: How is it that the most militant, self-sacrificing, staunchest fighters against fascist barbarism, against the misanthropic system which is capitalism, people who dedicated themselves to the well-being of the working and oppressed peoples, dedicated themselves to the cultural and spiritual advancement of the people, fought against all dehumanizing values — how was it that these same people were drawn to the example of the Soviet Union and other countries and were drawn as well to the Communist Parties of their own homelands? If the whole socialist project was such a wasteland, what has inspired these people to even withstand prison and sometimes torture, not even shrinking from death for the cause, and inspired them in those seemingly un-heroic tasks of the persistent, frustrating, drab and difficult work of the day-to-day class struggle?
I believe that the fundamental error in building socialist society has been a lack of understanding of the role of the masses, a lack of understanding by leaders and by the masses themselves. Yes, one can always find rhetorical acceptance of the role of the masses by people calling themselves Marxist-Leninists. But it has remained largely rhetorical. A particularly ironic example is that of Egon Krenz, who served briefly as head of the Communist Party of the German Democratic Republic before being swept away in the upheaval.
Writing in the October 1989 World Marxist Review, Kyenz described what he claimed to be the situation in his country:
The increasingly broader development of the people in decision-making at the level of the state and society has been a hallmark of democratic development throughout the 40-year history of the GDR. Today, one in three citizens of the republic performs a state or social function on a volunteer basis. These can be no true people’ s rule without the broadest possible involvement of the people in its organization and exercise.
We can only wince at the hollowness of these words, as demonstrated by recent events.
Marxists know that all revolutions have been made by the masses. Whenever great tasks have been on the historical order of the day, the masses were summoned or spontaneously pulled themselves out of their normal lethargy, became energized, and after either the success or failure of the revolutionary or insurrectionary effort, retired to somnambulance.
The nature of the participation of the masses, however, has changed over time. More has become required of the people. Beginning with passive obedience to a charismatic “divinely inspired” or divinely charged” leader, and then passing to the later sophistication of giving allegiance to parties or ideas or leaders whose intelligence was as important as their bravery, the fundamental role of the masses was still to provide the cannon fodder, the fire power, the physical force necessary to ensure victory.
The scientific socialist revolution based itself on a completely different idea the need to raise the level of consciousness of the masses to a point that would enable them not only to deal with the much more sophisticated rule of the oppressor classes, but to effectively become active builders of a new society, to learn the art of administration, the secrets of government, of political economy, to become familiar with the principles of modern science and to become versed in its various branches and be able to hold accountable those assuming governmental and administrative functions and to control their work.
This new concept of the role of the masses is especially associated with the teachings of Lenin and with his practical work in building the first socialist state. Tragically, as is now clear, this absolutely crucial concept was little by little forgotten, discarded, formalized or distorted. The sad truth is that the leadership in socialist societies saw themselves as custodians of revolution, saw themselves as the real creators of history, while the masses were explicitly and implicitly encouraged to retire to passivity in return for paternal dispensations.
There are people on the Left who claim that: Marxist- Leninist theory has been utterly discredited, repudiated by the people East and West, and by the course of events in capitalist and socialist societies.
Those who draw these conclusions fall, in the main, into three categories: those who never accepted Marxist-Leninist theory and they have little to show for their practice; those who embraced a caricatured version of Marxism-Leninism, and they have little to show for their practice; and those whose Marxism-Leninism was purely formal, without understanding, or based on career considerations. In their hands Marxism-Leninism has indeed been discredited. But the conclusion to be drawn is that Marxism-Leninism is not an occult body of knowledge that requires only magical incantation. Rather, it is a scientific method which can only succeed with sincere commitment.
Actually, what has happened in the world recently is a brilliant confirmation of Marxism-Leninism. A giant petty-bourgeois wave has engulfed the socialist world, the perils of which Lenin continually raised warnings about. And that petty bourgeoisie is behaving in exactly the manner as described by Marx and Lenin. And so much of the negative phenomena associated with the leadership of Communist Parties, West as well as East, can be shown to derive from deviations from Marxist-Leninist teachings. It is a fashionable theme these days among Communists themselves to assert that Communists or Marxist-Leninists do not have a monopoly of the truth. Of course this is true. But while other theories can accommodate some truths, it is only Marxism-Leninism that can accommodate all truth, even when Marxist-Leninists are in error. That is, only Marxism-Leninism applies the strictest scientific standards to its analysis, for it represents a class whose interests demand a theory that completely corresponds to reality. Truth is on its side. Lies, error and half-truths only set back its liberation struggle. So we will continue to hold the lance of Marxist-Leninist theory, and we know we are not tilting at windmills.
Our urgent task now is to rededicate ourselves to its study, searching out how far our own thinking may have wandered from its basic teachings, and to continually enrich that scientific theory with the lessons of contemporary struggles.
Finally, this decade, and especially the events of the past few years, needs to be put into a long-term historical perspective. The agonizing movement of the oppressed stretches out for thousands of years. The movement of the modern working class began only in the early part of the last century with flash rebellions that were quickly put down. The revolutions of 1848 that swept through Europe were a great step forward for the working people, but again they were suppressed. A giant step forward was taken when the working class took power for the first time in 1871 in Paris. Though drowned in blood after holding power for only a few months, generations of revolutionaries took heart from the Paris Commune’s glorious example, and drew important lessons from its achievements as well as its weaknesses.
1905 represented the crest of a new wave, giving birth to the Soviets and serving as the indispensable precursor to the magnificent 1917 October revolution.
The influence of socialism spread deeper and ever more widely. Revolutions flickered in Europe after the Bolshevik Revolution, to be quickly extinguished. But after World War II they broke out again and could not be extinguished at least not for several generations and not in every case. But as the admirers of capitalism are finding out, it is extraordinarily difficult to restore capitalism in those countries where socialism has sunk roots. Today, Cuba is attempting to blaze new trails, profiting from the painful lessons of the Eastern European debacle.
The point is that revolution has its periods of ebb and flow. After defeat, it generally comes back stronger than before, carrying revolutionary tide to new heights.
A defeat is not a failure. Defeats are valuable, even indispensable moments in the revolutionary process. So we must fight defeatism, which has gripped many Left groupings and even the leadership of important, revolutionary movements. For the ground is shaking under capitalism. Crisis manifestations are piling up. The present imperialist domination is akin to a star which flares just before its death. The increasing economic difficulties and sharpening social conflicts at home will cause imperialism to loosen its grip on world developments, to be unable to cope with the growing resistance from abroad and from within.
We have seen our precious banners scattered over the battlefield. Some of them fell when their bearers received mortal wounds. Some were flung down in cowardice. Many of our banners were besmirched by those unworthy of carrying them.
Now we begin the process of re-forming our ranks, of soberly evaluating the lessons of our defeat and working out our new battle plans. But the first step must be to gather up those glorious fallen banners, wash away the muck, and proudly lift them once again.
And so, if I may take liberties with the words of Tom Paine, that great democrat of our past:
These are the times that try our souls. The sunshine socialist and the summer Marxists will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their people. But they that stand up now shall be drawn into our glorious future’s loving embrace.
