Democratic Socialism Of Social Fascism?
Brzezinski, Z. K.
Lewis Coser's article provides an analysis of the past and a projection into the future. It breaks ground and offers stimulating new perspectives on the latter topic; it offers less that...
...Almost thirty years ago, Trotsky accused Stalin of being the gravedigger of the Revolution...
...Given the social conditions prevailing in East Europe in the aftermath of the Second World War and Stalinist degradations, it is unlikely that these Communist ruling bureaucracies will be transformed into socialistdemocratic movements...
...Like many others before him, he very correctly points out that ideology and nationalism provide interdependent and highly enmeshed motivations, and that stages of development do not explain why a decade ago China was much more reasonable and moderate in its policies than the Soviet Union...
...The objective, and indeed even the subjective, conditions seem ripest for them, with Western welfare democracy creating a welcome setting for such a development...
...They were replaced in the Soviet Union by a new generation of muzhiks-turnedprofessionalbureaucrats...
...I would be inclined to go further than that in projecting the likely course of Communist disintegration...
...It would be ludicrous to think that for a Shelepin or an Adzhubei "their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions...
...have been concerned with the internal contradictions of the Soviet bloc somewhat earlier than Coser implies...
...Looking into the future, Coser makes the challenging prediction that "the orphans of Western communism might have to be welcomed back to the house of Western democratic socialism...
...Lewis Coser's article provides an analysis of the past and a projection into the future...
...I would be inclined to argue that in the foreseeable future, i.e., the next several decades, only the West European parties are likely to return to the "house of Western democratic socialism...
...the destruction of its previously absolute quality will go far beyond the emergence of two "parallel Communist movements...
...I doubt very much that they will be able to maintain even their present degree of sway over the East Europeans, not to speak of the revolutionary Communist parties around the world and the increasingly "democratized" Communists of West Europe...
...I have little quarrel with Coser's analysis of the breakup of Communist unity...
...However, what the Chinese are unwilling to and cannot acknowledge is that they themselves are increasingly pushed into a position alien to that of Marxist-Leninist tradition, even though they may be right in saying that the Soviets in the course of the debate with the Chinese have systematized and rationalized an argument which is closely akin to that of Mensheviks...
...Rather, and present trends seem to bear me out, the tendency among them is toward a growing reliance on anti-inteIlectualism, and wherever relevant, even antiSemitism...
...The Chinese have extolled the role of the peasant and of the national liberation struggle to such an extent that their views are closer to that of the Social Revolutionaries than to those of the Old Bolsheviks...
...Moreover, having developed the theory of the geographical shift in the vortex of the revolution from France to Germany and to Russia and now to China (Chou-Yang), the Chinese have "sinified" the Communist doctrine to such an extent that it, too, has become the rationalization of a particular national position...
...His valuable and original concepts of "relative size" and "span of control" provide useful tools of analysis additional to those developed in the last decade or so by the specialists who have followed closely the progressive disintegration of Communist unity, and many of whom (Griffith, Lowenthal, Ulam, etc...
...At the same time, I am somewhat less optimistic about the likelihood of such a development in the East European and Soviet parties...
...it offers less that is novel in its analytical exposition of the former...
...Perhaps in this last respect they do resemble some of the post-ideological "Social Democrats" of contemporary Western Europe, but the democratic setting and the democratic traditions seem to be markedly absent...
...The charge was premature, but it is a historical fact that subsequently the international, revolutionary, cosmopolitan leadership of the Bolshevik revolution was physically destroyed by Stalin...
...The Chinese are certainly right when they say that power in Moscow is today in the hands of the betrayers of Communist traditions...
...This process of fragmentation, in my view, is closely linked to the general relativization of Communist doctrine...
...He is quite right in rejecting single-factor causality, be it nationalism, ideology, or stages of development...
...Social Fascism" rather than "Social Democracy" seems to be the more likely future for the East European Communists...
...It seems to me that the fragmentation we are now witnessing will not stop with the creation of "two antagonistic camps...
...By and large, the same pattern seems to hold true for the Soviet Union...
...As a result, the Communist parties in East Europe are beginning to resemble the semi-fascist nationalist movements of radical protest, reform, and modernization that were beginning to gain the upper hand in East European politics prior to World War II...
...Rather, they seem to be becoming increasingly bureaucratized and static organizations of professional rulers ("the clerks"), more and more interested in their own positions and less and less with ideological concerns...
...that it is only in the highly developed semicapitalist societies that a truly international outlook is maturing...
...Already today, Marxism-Leninism means one thing to a French Communist, and another to an Italian, a different thing still to a Polish Communist and so on...
...In my view, it is far more likely that after the initial polarization, the process of fragmenting will continue at both ends and that neither the Chinese nor the Soviets will ever enjoy within their own "internationals" the degree of control and unity that Stalin once possessed...
...Indeed, it is the paradox of our age that Communism is becoming the last refuge for the chauvinist and the anti-intellectual...
...It breaks ground and offers stimulating new perspectives on the latter topic...
...The new generation of rulers has little international outlook, is intensely nationalistic, great-power oriented, and according to all private reports, increasingly concerned with its own material well-being...
...Yet that, according to the stirring conclusion of the Communist Manifesto, was the hallmark of the true Communist...
Vol. 12 • July 1965 • No. 3
