The New Shape of Politics: Thoughts on "Prosperous" Communism

...Production of consumer goods can then be stepped up...

...To the extent that we indulged in such moods we may sometimes have been led to overlook possibilities of change in Russia which, though they would not alter its essential character, yet would affect significantly the quality of life...

...SOVIET SOCIETY is an atomized society, that is, a society in which the traidtional social groupings which bind citizens in associations and communities or self-conscious classes have been destroyed and replaced by the imperative coordination of public activities through organs of Party and State...

...Only if the power-holders succeed in diverting this freed energy into channels of private enjoyment, only if they engage in a conscious policy of "Americanization," can they hope to achieve a condition in which the bulk of the population, freed from the onerous burdens of pre-hump conditions, quietly engage in the pursuit of private pleasures, passive, indifferent, atomized and malleable...

...Having found abundant evidence for the totalitarian nature of Russian society, we have perhaps sometimes been forced into a kind of Manichean world view according to which Russia represented absolute and immutable evil...

...p.s...

...Furthermore, and perhaps more importantly, it is most probable that the Russian decision-makers are quite aware of this fact...

...After three weeks in industrial Yorkshire, he reported that, outside political committee rooms and meetings, he had never once heard politics spontaneously mentioned, nor taken part in any political conversations except those initiated by himself...

...These safety valve institutions help to maintain the system by preventing otherwise probable conflict or by reducing its disruptive effect...

...One need hardly be a Marxist to expect that if a pre-hump economy differs significantly from a post-hump economy then the quality of social and intellectual life must also be affected...

...I cannot believe that within the foreseeable future there will come any significant move to relax the hold which the total party has over the political life of the country...

...He then reported some of the characteristic responses he had met with...

...There is no reason to assume that the Russian economy will in the foreseeable future usher in an age of abundance but there is reason to believe that, as compared to pre-hump conditions, the Russian consumer is now faced with a considerably brighter future...

...A chambermaid thought all poltics were 'daft' and what we needed was a coalition, as during the war...

...While this theory has been most fruitful for an understanding of Soviet society until quite recently, it has not been able to account for a number of new developments both in the satellite countries and in the motherland of the Soviet empire...

...Each individual stands apart in solitary weakness...

...Let us then assume for the purpose of argument that the standard of living in the Soviet Union will continue to rise substantially in the next period, and that certain modes of restraint which were necessitated by the process of primitive accumulation will have become obsolescent...

...The fact is, of course, that it was not published...

...But there might be a possibility, a chance, that though the political reins will be held as tightly as in the past, considerably more relaxed policies may be applied to intellectual and social life...

...Total loyalty being the pre-condition of total domination, so the argument runs, a totalitarian regime cannot permit effective freedom in any sphere...

...How can this be explained...

...The individual has been thrown upon his private sphere, "hence such men can never, without an effort, tear themselves from their private affairs to engage in public business...

...On the contrary, our thinking here ought to start from the premise that while a ruling group never commits suicide there have been a number of ruling groups which have been shrewd and elastic enough to adjust their reign to the requirements of new conditions...

...It has been considered axiomatic that totalitarian regimes must ri necessarily extend their control over all spheres of social life, that none of these can be left uncoordinated since each uncontrolled sphere must be considered a source of infection from the point of view of the powerholders...

...the writer, the student, the professor is free to reject the assumptions of official policy provided, and this seems to me the crux of the matter, provided I say, that these intellectuals do not appeal to the underlying population...

...And once the constraining and cribbing effect of dire want and nagging hunger is removed one can expect that this will have very significant effects on the social and intellectual life of the country...

...Individuals want finally to cash in on the results of industrialization, they clamor for consumer goods and a more relaxed style of life...

...if we should note an end to the detailed regulation of personal opinions and private lives, then this should not lead us to believe that the Soviet Union has become a free and humane society...

...Russia would still be a bad society...

...If Soviet man were to acquire the characteristics of Tocqueville's mass man, then it stands to reason that the political formula I have alluded to stands a considerable chance of successful implementation...

...In Latin America the apathy and passivity of the population is conditioned by illiteracy and primitivism...

...Theory becomes a physical force as it takes possession of the masses" (Marx)—and as long as it does not, it may be tolerated because it must finally remain innocuous...

...The thaw of recent years plainly was more than a public relations device...

...Gaitskell for 'stabbing us in the back over the Suez,' but that he was going to vote Labour because the Tories are the party of big business, and they 'don't want the ordinary man to have a car.' "—from a letter to the Editor of the Twentieth Century...

...population...

...There are a great number of signs which lead one to conclude that Khrushchev is consciously engaged in an effort to atune the social and intellectual conditions of Russia to the new economic circumstances...

...Yet it can serve them only if the chance of wider strata in the population picking up this criticism and turning it to their own uses is effectively minimized...

...John Strachey "Capital Accumulation and Socialist Politics," DISSENT, Fall 1956...

...During the Stalinist pre-hump period the main aim of the policy-maker was to constantly mobilize the energies of the masses of de-grouped individuals in the service of statified industrialization...

...I am aware that a new freeze set in when the thaw threatened to flood the well-guarded river banks of required conformity...

...The tentative ideas which follow are to be read as an effort to counter tendencies toward the ossification of thought among radical and socialist anti-Communist thinkers...

...Do I believe this speculation...

...their natural bias leads them to abandon the latter to the sole visible and permanent representative of the community, that is to say the State...

...What do you think...

...It seems, indeed, as if recent Russian development follows a rhythmic pattern of restriction and release, of expansion and contraction, while yet, at the same time, exhibiting a secular trend toward relaxation...

...THE MAIN FACT to be considered here is that Russian society has reached a stage of growth which has brought it over the "hump" in the process of industrialization...

...I half believe it, I fear it, I just don't know...

...Those of us who have maintained a sustained critical stance toward the Soviet Union may sometimes have succumbed to a certain rigidity which has hampered our judgment...

...in an industrialized post-hump society mass culture may be the functional equivalent of illiteracy...

...Only naive believers in the Iron Law of History, such as Isaac Deutscher, imagine that the ruling bureaucracy of the Soviet Union will now engage in preparing collective suicide because they are "no longer historically progressive...

...Once the initial hump of industrialization has been surmounted, however, high levels of accumulation become less imperative and at the same time easier to achieve...

...The regime is half-heartedly willing to give in, but is also aware that relaxation means that energies which were heretofore harnessed to the service of political and economic tasks would now be set free...

...In such countries the citizen is free to criticize the government...

...but it might be worthwhile to speculate whether there is something inherent in the structure of Soviet society which must necessarily rule out the possibility...

...and private lives have been freed from many of Stalin's terroristic controls...

...Modern economists such as Balogh, Strachey and Rostow have argued that there is a hump in the process of industrialization, a hump which is most painful to surmount...

...Till societies are over the hump, the process of primitive capital accumulation is exceedingly demanding since it can only take place at the direct expense of the standard of living of the mass of the underlying "Politics is Daft...

...a certain amount of undogmatic and relatively open discussion has been permitted to scientists, literary men, university personnel...

...In other words, freedom could be granted only to those modes of expression which do not directly challenge the basis of Soviet rule...

...he may say outrageous things, he may needle and annoy and criticize the men of power and yet he will be innocuous since his ideas will have no consequences...

...Tocqueville envisaged this most clearly when he adumbrated the modern mass society: "The sentiment of ambition is universal, but the scope of ambition is seldom vast...

...This was also the almost unanimous opinion in a pub...

...There can be no relaxation with regard to autonomous political action...

...but society at large is active, provident, and powerful: the performances of private persons are insignificant, those of the State immense...

...What then are the limits of relaxation...

...More striking was the opinion of a textile worker who said he could never forgive Mr...

...In other words, apathy of the population is a sine qua non for the employment of such a political formula...

...Zhivago will be published in Russia, but not conceivable that Djilas' New Class appear there...

...But in post-hump Soviet society this becomes more difficult and less necessary...

...surely the most thought-provoking [words on the British elections] were those of The Times correspondent from Leeds on October 8th...

...Here I consider it axiomatic that the ruling bureaucracy will not voluntarily relinquish its monopoly on political power and on the legitimate use of the means of violence...

...There exist today a number of countries, especially in Latin America, where a small authoritarian elite tightly controls the political structure and where the citizens still have a considerable degree of intellectual and personal freedom...

...Only if relaxation is unlikely to lead to the mobilization of political energies can it be successfully applied...

...provided, in other words, that there is mass apathy about things political...

...It is conceivable that Dr...

...We may witness in the future Russian society a considerable relaxation of controls over writers, scientists, university intellectuals...

...It is conceivable that a certain amount of intellectual and personal freedom in Russia might serve just such safety valve functions...

...Under such conditions the intellectual is likely to play the role of the court fool...

...Any freedoms that the Russian intellectual elite may achieve in the foreseeable future would be bought at the price of the continued passivity, dehumanization and degradation of the underlying population...

...If the Soviet Union grants these men freedom to think and create...

...Social systems provide for specific institutions which serve to deflect hostile and aggressive sentiments away from vital targets...

...Zhivago might have been published in the Soviet Union if only a few hundred words had been eliminated...

...Yet even a brief glance at the intellectual and social conditions of the Russia of 1959 must convince the unbiased observer that these are considerably removed from the terroristic modes of Stalin's regime...