Utopian Themes in Marx and Mao

...11 IN THE SEVENTY YEARS before the Russian Revolution, utopian themes in Marx's thought were not extensively discussed—by Marx himself, by Engels, or by their social democratic heirs...

...Alexander Lemberes, former commander of the special forces group, the major functions of the Green Berets in South Vietnam are to act as school-teachers and sociologists...

...Why does he suggest in Capital that communism will eliminate all commodity exchange...

...Arthur Unger, Fayetteville, N.C...

...Restricted to eclectic compromise, it dresses moral truisms in philosophical jargon...

...From early Lukacs to late Sartre, the practical impotence of these isolated thinkers has been balanced by the grandiosity of their theoretical demands...

...For finding a theoretical approach that can integrate its immediate demands and clarify its basic aims, the liberalization movement must turn elsewhere...

...Is it not enough to abolish the legal rules which mask capitalist dictatorship...

...By contrast with Lenin and Stalin, whose deeds failed to match their words, Mao has actually attempted to lead China from the old Gemeinschaft to the new by a process of uninterrupted revolution...

...At the level of theory, he proclaimed in State and Revolution that on the first day of proletarian revolution the state starts to wither away...

...Though a necessary condition for capitalism, commodity exchange is not a sufficient condition: what Marx calls simple commodity production is a classless exchange economy...

...Those New-Left theorists who advance the double claim that alienation is the central problem and Maoism is the key to its solution compound the attractions of communist and existentialist irrationalism...

...Is it not enough for proletarian revolution to abolish the division of labor between wage-workers and capitalists...

...Their attempt to reinterpret Marx from an existentialist standpoint has involved increasing stress upon his dialectic of liberation, at the expense of his sociology of change...

...In his discussion of this complex issue, blunt assertion once more takes the place of theoretical analysis...

...Because division of labor increases men's collective powers of production by decreasing each individual's range of action, the complex culture resulting from such specialization is experienced concretely by most producers as compulsion to act like machines...

...At the level of practice, viewing socialism as a prelude to communism has proved a serious hindrance to facing, rationally and empirically, the problems of improving existing socialist societies...

...Under preindustrial conditions— according to the Manifesto—the revolutionary theories that accompany the proletariat's first struggles for emancipation have necessarily a reactionary character...

...Yet he neither considers the qualifications introduced by Plato nor refutes the arguments advanced by Rousseau...

...The demand for a rebirth of community is acentral theme in Marx's critique of capitalist society...

...Mao's propaganda against material incentives advocates universal asceticism...

...Only a time when human progress ceases to resemble that cruel god who scorned to drink the nectar, except from the skulls of the slain...

...His first attempt to prove this claim was the Great Leap Forward, which was primarily an economic movement...

...There are signs, however, that an alternative approach is emerging among those scientifically oriented intelligentsia, technicians, and administrators who are proponents of liberalization...

...He was also acquainted with arguments of Hume answering those of Rousseau...

...Some of those earlier speculation which the Manifesto calls utopian are more firmly grounded on analysis of the interdependence of institutions and technology than is the Marxian vision of a new Gemeinschaft...

...On the one hand, current conditions seem to rule out dodging the issue by a program that affirms the utopian ideal in theory but STANLEY MOORE postpones indefinitely its practical realization...

...By contrast, his account of the transition from socialism to communism is almost entirely based on his dialectic of liberation...

...He was acquainted with arguments of Plato that provide qualified support for his position UTOPIAN THEMES IN MARX AND MAO on the desirability of eliminating control of conduct by general rules, legal or moral...

...Outside of China, the Maoist demand for Gemeinschaft NOW has won sympathizers within the widespread renaissance of anarchism...

...Marx developed the dialectic of liberation before the sociology of change: in his terminology, he was utopian before becoming scientific...

...Negatively, it must abolish exploitation by establishing a classless economy...

...From the standpoint of these existentialist-anarchists, however, the decisive issue is not ending exploitation but ending alienation...

...the second pair, to describe both the past and the future...

...The communist principle of distribution—to each according to his needs—marks accomplishment of the second task, the transition from society to community...

...The crucial prerequisite is for a minority to acquire as their private property a decisive portion of the means of production— land, raw materials, factories, machinery...

...Is it not enough to abolish the commodity exchange which masks cap UTOPIAN THEMES IN MARX AND MAO italist exploitation...

...An example is the comment on Russia's occupation of Czechoslovakia written by Paul Sweezy, from a Maoist standpoint, for Monthly Review...

...They advocate universal asceticism and social leveling in its crudest form...

...At the level of theory, the dialectic of liberation in terms of which Marx prophesies the transition to communism is inconsistent with the sociology of change in terms of which he predicts the transition to socialism...

...Yet Lenin and Stalin —holding power in a backward, isolated country—were led by a different path to a parallel emphasis on utopian themes...

...That such emphasis is common to socialism and capitalism is indicated by the socialist principle of distribution—to each according to his contribution...

...Our usual policy is not to reprint articles from American magazines, but we feel that the one below is important enough to warrant a departure from that policy...

...His second attempt has been the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, which is primarily political...

...The less radical of these demands define the transition from class to classless society...

...Or, as modern revisionists, they can purge Marxism of its utopian elements—rejecting those claims of its dialectic of liberation that are unsupported by its sociology of change...

...In each case total elimination of the social arrangement in question is presented as a moral imperative —as necessary for establishing a community where the free development of each is based upon the free development of all...

...A major political tendency is to increase the role of representative government...

...Without predicting the outcome, one can point to both favorable and unfavorable circumstances...

...and there are grounds for believing that their influence will increase...

...Nor is employment of market mechanisms proof of restoring capitalism...

...Andrei Sakharov's Progress, Coexistence, and Intellectual Freedom marks the opening of this era...

...communist Gemeinschaft...

...At the level of practice, he established in Russia a system of minority rule that has lasted for half a century...

...Then only will they seek as their highest goal moving from society (Gesellschaft) to a new community (Gemeinschaft), to a democratic state...

...Like Marx, Engels, and the social democrats, they can protect their theoretical ideal by assigning to some distant generation the practical problems of attaining it...

...Viewed from his standpoint, any trends toward Gesellschaft in a communist country—except during a short period immediately following the proletarian revolution— amount to taking the capitalist road...

...The moral judgments in writings of his youth receive more attention than the contributions to history and social science in writings of his maturity...

...But he offers neither evidence nor argument to show that an industrialized classless society can— much less will—dispense with all such rules...

...To the extent that he supports assertion with argument at all, he reasons along these lines...

...Positively, an agreement to work, in the spirit of what Marx called scientific socialism, for a just society and an individualistic culture—where the free development of each is both enriched and restrained by the free development of all his fellows...

...Faced with this challenge, theorists of the liberalization movement have two choices...

...tion from socialism to communism...

...Had not Marx himself considered sympathetically the suggestion that nineteenth-century Russia might leap from Gemeinschaft to Gemeinschaft, without a capitalist Gesellschaft in between...

...Russian communists and their followers have consistently opposed the existentialist interpretation of Marx...

...What are from his standpoint foundations of communism are from Marx's standpoint stigmata of preindustrial utopianism...

...In the course of the last half century, however, obsession has replaced neglect...

...They also assert that Russian communists—half a century after the proletarian revolution—are moving in the same direction...

...On the other hand, it is a dialectic of liberation, focused on exposing the sham freedoms of capitalist culture...

...But he offers neither evidence nor argument to show that future technological development will permit —much less require—elimination of all forms of specialization...

...According to Col...

...The focus of discussion shifts from the problem of exploitation— which is central for the transition from capitalism to socialism—to the problem of alienation—which is central for the transi STANLEY MOORF...

...V THROUGH WHAT chains of reasoning does Marx suggest that division of labor, commodity exchange, and control of conduct by general rules will be wholly eliminated in the course of communist development...

...BEFORE HIS STUDY of French revolutionary politics and British political economy, in the period when he was criticizing Hegel's theory of the state from the standpoint of a radical democrat, Marx proclaimed as his ideal mankind's return from Gesellschaft to Gemeinschaft: That self-reliance, that freedom, which disappeared from earth with the Greeks, and with Christianity vanished into the blue haze of heaven, must again be awakened in the hearts of men...

...Maoists assert that Yugoslavian communists—two decades after the proletarian revolution—are reversing the transition from capitalism to socialism...

...Finally, he offers evidence and argument to show that control of conduct by some general rules is at once the mask and mechanism of capitalist exploitation...

...Yet in other respects its economic organization, political processes, and cultural values would resemble those of a developed capitalist society more than those of a precapitalist or a communist Gemeinschaft...

...Transition to socialism is inaugurated by establishing proletarian dictatorship...

...mixture of Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft...

...transition to communism, by withering away of the state...

...Both lines of argument proceed from utopian premises to reactionary conclusions...

...Viewed from this standpoint the communist economy of the future differs more from a capitalist economy than it does from a feudal economy or the economy of a self-sufficient peasant household...

...Can the two tasks be completed simultaneously...

...Today, both inside and outside countries where communists hold power, discussion of Marxian theory centers on problems connected with the vision of a new Gemeinschaft...

...Yet these same reforms can be attacked as abandoning the attempt to establish a communist Gemeinschaft...

...On the one hand, his theory of history is a sociology of change, focused on analyzing the interaction of technology and institutions...

...Why does he suggest in the Manifesto that communism will eliminate all moral rules...

...In later works—the Grundrisse, the Critique of Political Economy, and Capital—this contrast is developed on its economic side into the comparison of exchange economies with natural economies that reveals the secret of commodity fetish ism...

...Stalin, when Soviet economic production was still below the level reached under the Czars, proclaimed the possibility of an unaided transition from socialism to communism...

...This second goal, however, fights against the first...

...Are there prospects for such a turn...

...But this charge is not monopolized by Maoists or directed solely against these governments...

...But whom does it fit better, Czech reformers or Maoist Chinese...

...Had he treated economic questions in this brusque fashion, all of Capital would be no longer than the Manifesto...

...Pushed to its rigorous extreme, the critique of alienation leads past Stalinism toward Maoism...

...He devotes half of his article to arguing that the Czechoslovaks— like the Yugoslays and the Russians—by increasing the role of the market are objectively restoring capitalism...

...Without explicitly rejecting Marx's vision of a new Gemeinschaft, theorists of the liberalization movement can neither defend their immediate program nor define their ultimate goal...

...Walter Scott, Parade, Sept...

...Because commodity exchange transforms relations between men into relations between things, the abstract freedom of the market is experienced concretely as compulsion to treat other men as things...

...To read Marx critically is to find in the distinction between these tasks the expression of a central tension in his thought...

...At the level of practice he directed, at enormous cost, the transition from a backward agricultural economy to an advanced industrial economy, comparable with those of developed capitalist countries...

...Earlier proponents of a new Gemeinschaft, sacrificing technological for moral gains, proposed to break down existing economies into small, self-sufficient, productive units, utilizing simple techniques...

...But to the extent that the Russian and Chinese leaders currently in power continue to industrialize their economies and to provide their entire youth with technological and scientific education, they are digging their own graves...

...Marx had envisaged roughly the following sequence: precapitalist Gemeinschaft, capitalist Gesellschaft, socialist Gesellschaft, communist Gemeinschaft...

...But he offers neither evidence nor argument to show that further technological development will permit— much less require—planned economic regulation which makes no use of market mechanisms...

...To recognize this second task is to discover a common source for the utopian themes in Marxism...

...His method of unifying theory and practice was to institutionalize schizophrenia...

...As sociological reasoning, Marx's discussion of these issues fails to carry him from some to all...

...Adopting the existentialist interpretation of Marx, such theorists attack oppressive cultural, political, and economic institutions in terms of the struggle against alienation...

...IV THE ORIGIN and influence of the Maoist caricature of Marx's dialectic of liberation can be explained in terms of Marx's sociology of change...

...Mao has envisaged roughly the following sequence: precapitalist Gemeinschaft...

...The response of Marx and Engels to attacks from Bakunin is unlikely to be effective against attacks from Maoists and Stalinists...

...But in retaining his vision of a rebirth of Gemeinschaft, he failed to complete the transition...

...At the level of theory he discussed, with stupefying irrelevance, the transition from socialism to communism...

...Mao's sympathizers among the existentialistanarchists reach a similar conclusion by a different route...

...Because general rules apply the same standard to individuals in widely different circumstances, the abstract justice of moral or statute law is experienced concretely as unfairness...

...Their subjective aim he characterizes in his conclusion as STANLEY MOORE "some kind of a democratic socialist utopia...

...Why does he suggest in his Critique of the Gotha Program that communism will eliminate all legal rules...

...Having started by identifying Gesellschaft with alienation, they end by identifying liberation with Gemeinschaft...

...To ask this question is to understand the contrast drawn by Marx in The Communist Manifesto and The Critique of the Gotha Program between two stages of communism—in Lenin's terminology, between socialism and communism...

...At the level of theory, these developments mark the last stages in eliminating from Marxism its empirical and rational elements—its degeneration into a mass mystique of rebirth in Gemeinschaft...

...t. VI WILL THIS theoretical approach be adopted by liberalization movements in communist countries...

...What Hegel calls the transition from Sittlichkeit to Moralitat, and Tonnies calls the transition from Gemeinschaft to Gesellschaft, Marx reverses in his account of the transition from capitalism to communism...

...Why does Marx suggest in The German Ideology that communism will eliminate all division of labor...

...The socialist society resulting from such trends would differ from capitalist societies in being classless...

...Lenin, Stalin, and Mao—coming to power in preindustrial societies and strongly impelled to treat drawbacks as advantages—increasingly stressed the possibility of a less complex and protracted development...

...Without evidence that this transfer of ownership is actually occurring in Russia or Yugoslavia, the charge of restoring capitalism seems nothing more than paranoid abuse...

...On the other hand, in European communist countries most of the theoretical critiques of Stalinism have been formulated in utopian terms...

...Our readers will note similarities of argument with both Erazim Kohak's "Requiem for Utopia," which appeared in our January-February 1969 issue, and Benjamin Schwartz's "The Reign of Virtue: Thoughts on China's Cultural Revolution" in the May June 1969 issue...

...Their cure requires nothing less than a new birth of Gemeinschaft...

...He was also acquainted with arguments of Rousseau to the effect that control by general rules is an essential prerequisite for individual morality and political freedom...

...28, 1969 UTOPIAN THEMES IN MARX AND MAO III A STRIKING FEATURE of current disputes among Marxists is the accusation that large groups of lifelong communists are engaged in restoring capitalism...

...Coming to power three decades after Lenin, he advanced the claim that preindustrial China could effect its transition from socialism to communism before industrialized Russia...

...To the dreary scholasticism of Stalin's Dialectical and Historical Materialism they oppose the revolutionary utopianism of Marx's Economic Philosophical Manuscripts...

...The evils of alienation, as Marx presents them throughout his writings, cannot be ended simply by ending exploitation...

...In his discussion of this complex issue, blunt assertion takes the place of theoretical analysis...

...The proletarian revolution has, therefore, not a single but a double task...

...The more radical define the transition from the abstract egoism of the old Gesellscha f t to the mass fraternity of a new Gemeinschaft...

...And is it not enough to abolish the moral rules which mask capitalist class-interest...

...Yet he is not content simply to advocate establishing a classless Gesellschaft, by abolishing exploitation...

...Outside the organized communist movement this shift of emphasis has resulted from the spreading influence of existentialist interpreters of Marx...

...His cultural revolution advocates social leveling in its crudest form...

...Examined in terms of Marx's theories, this charge is indefensible...

...Stressing material incentives is not proof of restoring capitalism...

...He offers evidence and argument to show that some forms of specialization have become obsolete in the course of past technological development...

...In Capital exchange economy, class or classless, is contrasted with four nonexchange economies, class and classless...

...Are they not prerequisites for providing to each socialist citizen—in fact as well as words—a standard of living and a degree of economic, political, and cultural autonomy which compares favorably with those enjoyed by the average citizen in an industrialized capitalist country...

...Having started by identifying classless society with Gemeinschaft, he ends by identifying Gesellschaft with class society...

...A major economic tendency of liberalization movements in communist countries is to increase the role of commodity exchange...

...Yet he neither considers the qualifications introduced by Rousseau nor refutes the arguments advanced by Hume...

...A. The Green Berets have engaged in such practices in Vietnam in line with obtaining intelligence, but those are not their chief functions...

...Instead, he views the transition from capitalism •to socialism as preparation for a more radical change— emergence of a new Gemeinschaft, which will differ from all its predecessors in fostering rather than frustrating full development of every man's potentialities...

...Positively, it must construct a new community to replace the old society...

...Their moral counterpart has been the campaign of propaganda against material incentives...

...And to the degree that this new anarchism is combined with existentialism, two major traditions claiming the heritage of Marx have found a common ground...

...WHAT THEN may be expected from such revisionists...

...Up to the present, theorists of liberalization have come largely from literary and philosophical circles: an existentialist-anarchist viewpoint is congenial to such groups...

...Again, he was acquainted with arguments of Rousseau that provide qualified support for his position on the desirability of eliminating division of labor and commodity exchange...

...Marx recognizes that capitalist Gesellschaft, with all its defects, has come nearer to realizing his ideal of universal free development than has any precapitalist Gemeinschaft...

...The revisionist controversy focused on the transition from capitalism to socialism, largely ignoring the transition from socialism to communism...

...His account of the transition from capitalism to socialism is very largely based upon his sociology of change...

...In nearly every communist quarrel throughout the world, between countries or within countries, one group accuses another of taking the capitalist road...

...Examined, however, in terms of what has happened to Marx's theories, the charge is understandable...

...The socialist principle of distribution—to each according to his contribution—marks accomplishment of the first task, the transition from class to classless society...

...Literary and philosophical rebels might be suppressed indefinitely...

...Viewing commodity exchange and representative government as major sources of alienation in capitalist society, they do not welcome the program of communist liberalization...

...Q. Are the major functions of the Green Berets in Vietnam torture and assassination...

...The experience of half a century dictates rejecting—as romantic and utopian in theory, oppressive and reactionary in practice—the Marxian call for a new birth of Gemeinschaft...

...By contrast, the growth of liberalization movements within industrialized communist countries poses problems internal to Marxian theory, by dramatizing the tension between Marx's sociology of change and his own dialectic of liberation...

...As moral reasoning, Marx's discussion of these issues falls far short of careful analysis...

...In his ma ture thought this tension is reflected in his separation of the two tasks of proletarian revolution...

...Negatively, the rejection of obscurantist verbiage and incoherent dreams, even when the verbiage and dreams are those of Marx...

...It is a formula that harks back to the Manifesto: utopian theory, reactionary practice...

...Increasingly Stalinism and Maoism will be attacked, not only as offenses against human decency, but as fetters upon the forces of production...

...The first pair of terms he uses to describe the present...

...Lenin, between the February and October revolutions, wrote more concerning the transition from socialism to communism than Marx wrote during his whole lifetime...

...In no case is total elimination presented as a technological imperative—as necessary for adjusting men's relations with one another to a new stage in the development of the forces of pro duction...

...An empirical, positivistic viewpoint is congenial to these groups...

...The most implacable opponent of Maoism is neither a clique of individuals nor an alliance of vested interests: it is the socialist industrialization of China...

...Yet this philosophical critique of alienation is too apocalyptic in approach to guide a gradualist, empirically oriented struggle for reforms...

...It first appeared in the Monthly Review, June 1969, and is here reprinted with permission of that journal and the author...

...In Marx's early communist writings, from The Jewish Question to the Manifesto, the contrast between Gesellschaft and Gemeinschaft reappears as the contrast between biirgerliche Gesellschaft—together with its complement, politischer Staat—and Gemeinschaft or Gemeinwesen...

...Is not Marx's vision of a new Gemeinschaft, based on a largescale, complex, industrial technology, far more utopian than theirs...

...His heirs, confronted with the staggering problems of raising Russia to the economic and political level of industrialized capitalist countries, chose in part to deny the existence of those problems by proposing shortcuts to the new Gemeinschaft...

...At the level of practice, Mao's dialectic of liberation seems to culminate in what undialectical people call repression-an unlimited and unquestioning subordination of individual to collective wills...

...They will seek no New Jerusalem...

...Again, he offers evidence and argument to show that economic regulation solely through market mechanisms will become incompatible with continued technological development...

...Reforms increasing the economic role of commodity exchange, increasing the political role of representative government, and decreasing the authoritarian uniformity of culture can be defended as urgent necessities for developing and strengthening socialist Gesellschaft...

...Utopian themes are now the focus of theoretical controversy throughout the communist world...