The Pluralist Antilevelers of Prague
Gellner, Ernest
Differences which can be summed up in a few words can mean, in historical reality, enormous, complex, and difficult social transformations. The destiny of the so-called socialist societies...
...Well—this is the social condition seized upon by our research in November 1967...
...The authors themselves note that there are important differences between Czechoslovakia and the other European Communist countries...
...the differentiation of rewards by the ERNEST GELLNER force of organizations, administration, and power...
...We cannot summarize all the aspects of this massive and thorough study...
...In any case, the book is not explicit enough about the nature of that nexus between stratification and pluralism which is so central to it...
...Ideologically, the global fashion of sociology in the 1960s coincided and fused with the local impulse toward liberalization...
...The Czechoslovakia of the early '50s and early '60s was proof of the futility of considering whether it is possible upon the present social foundations to replace material incentives by others, such as moral ones...
...Now that is a very worthy and genuine subject, and scholarly, and there are even interesting books written about it...
...It was a revolution of intellectuals, a fact that perhaps always augured ill for its final outcome, though it was a hopeful sign for the quality of its literary and scholarly accompaniment...
...Thus we have, once again, a midwifery kind of social philosophy...
...482 ERNEST GELLNER...
...the end of the book there is a 19-page summary in English...
...It is a collective work by diverse members of a team that had cooperated in a big study of social stratification in "socialist" Czechoslovakia...
...This tension was made possible by the existence of "traditional" inequalities springing from the inadequate industrial development of the country...
...which partially weakened but did not overcome egalitarianism, and undermined the bureaucraticautocratic aspects of direction...
...One should also mention L. Brokl's chapter in the book, which deals with power...
...Instead, he prefers the construction of an "ideal type" of socialism, to use his own words, precisely analogous to Marx's construction of an ideal type of capitalism...
...Philosophy provides the major premise, which is of a "historicist" kind, i.e., an appeal to strong, perhaps irreversible trends...
...Paraphrasing Huey Long, he might have said that of course one may have liberal pluralism and differentiation in Eastern Europe, but one must call it socialism and indeed, why not...
...18) is formulated in extremely abstract terms and might in fact accommodate many of us: it is defined in terms of the "complex and developmental, or structural-genetic character of social phenomena, a developmental dynamism that allows an objective evaluation of progress, inner tensions, and the capacity of human knowledge to advance to greater social understanding, notably by combining theory and empirical work...
...The fact that Czechoslovakia is atypical among the East European states in many important ways, of which the authors are fully aware, does not diminish the interest of the book, though it imposes, of course, severe restrictions on any facile extrapolation of its findings...
...The author goes on to add that although complexity of work plays a primary role within this bundle, he does not interpret the results of the research as a confirmation of its decisive role, precisely because, contrary to his expectations, it is so tightly fused with the other two "social-cultural" components of status...
...Its interest in American society, for instance, is largely comparative and methodological...
...The findings can only be understood from a dynamic viewpoint...
...At the same time we can assert positively that even the sharpest unevenness of power and the greatest leveling of income were unable to prevent people from differentiating in work and above all in leisure according to the cultural parameters of modern socialist society...
...This would be an interesting version of neocorporatism in a Marxist guise...
...The only people whose social position is determined by currently and legally owned property are smallholders on marginal (generally hilly) land, whose land was too poor or awkwardly situated to be worth collectivizing...
...Previously, rival definitions had ranged from "bourgeois pseudo-science" to "applied Marxism" or "the study of socialist social forms...
...Or was it not so much complacency as a reluctance to think too hard about aspects of the recent past that were best forgotten, a reluctance expressed in an eager willingness to confine them to the area of the socially ephemeral...
...We assume that political plurality and opposition can arise on any basis—even sheer unaided competition for power or rivalry of ideas—and that consequently we are not obliged to create or demonstrate the existence of social diversity in order to underpin plurality...
...And Machonin goes on to add, with great passion: 480 Those ordinary, despised, derided, yes hated '60s, in which we often see only the unsavory banality of a criticized regime, the stagnation of the economy and the standard of living, in reality gradually brought about a mass of deep cultural changes, which could not but express themselves in a differentiation of men, work and life-styles...
...During the Prague Spring, Mlynar was responsible for an inquiry into the political structure of the Communist party itself...
...In brief, they underrate politics and power, or at least their analysis seems to do so...
...And that is the minor premise...
...It is one of the less interesting or surprising, but conclusive, results of the empirical research that this type has no relevance to contemporary Czechoslovakia...
...They seem more sure of their local stratification than they are of pluralism, which they see as its alleged or desired political expression, and they clearly wish to use their documentation of the ERNEST GELLNER former as an encouragement of the emergence of the latter...
...The contrast with which it is genuinely concerned is the one with the conflated "bureaucraticegalitarian" type of society, which it finds conspicuous in the recent Czechoslovak past...
...The regime had previously used educational opportunity as a means of social control, withdrawing access to education from the offspring of those failing to display conspicuous conformity...
...The Communist counterreformation may plunge Eastern Europe into the same kind of somnolent torpor which the original Counter-Reformation imposed on Southern Europe, and from which it really has not yet recovered...
...For instance: the theoretical discussion really goes far beyond the modesty of the title of the book—which claims to be concerned only with Czechoslovak society— and appears to get close to a theory of industrialsocialist stratification as such...
...44 et seq...
...Machonin invokes Marx's analysis of Bonapartism, as basing its tyranny on the equality of smallholders, in his analysis of the pre-1968 dictatorship-withequality in Czechoslovakia...
...the speedup of the move toward the so-called scientifictechnological revolution...
...But not sufficiently: further economic and social progress hinges on giving this principle free play, and on removing hindrances to its full development...
...Here the author's own explanation does not really go much beyond what he himself describes as the "subjective" perception of the situation...
...To arise and function, mature socialism requires, apart from favorable international conditions, a certain technical, scientific, and educational level...
...The other types, disregarding capitalism for a moment (which is admitted not to exist in its pure form), are interesting in that they purport to name close alternatives, either in the recent past of the country, or still available as (in the main regrettable) options...
...Is it not possible that their research, and the theory surrounding it, treats not socialist stratification as such and its options but rather its impact on a very specific historic tradition...
...The author does attribute a good deal of relevance to the "bureaucratic" type of stratification...
...The hypothesis of irony is less likely than the straightforward interpretation, but it is by no means excluded, since it is entirely in keeping with the present general situation in Czechoslovakia, the . vejkovina, the widespread complicity in a reluctant collaboration which does not defy but endeavors to minimize the consequences of submission...
...The author then discusses those who were interested in either opposing or supporting reforms that might overcome these brakes on development and the whole "bureaucraticegalitarian" system...
...The importance of existence without definition, without essence one might say, was of course that any definition might well have been used to inhibit research...
...39 et seq...
...What did surprise us was how far the evolution had already progressed...
...The '60s did not achieve an intensification of production, though many other preconditions were then achieved...
...I suspect that the effects of this policy were relatively small, in the long run—those who wanted education in the end obtained it...
...Or were both these arguments present...
...whereas the technocratic model ascribes status to technocrats or meritocrats, and also favors them distributively...
...democratization" was preferred...
...The author refers to the "trial run" reforms of the 1956-58 period, inspired by the 20th Congress of the CPSU, yet without either identifying them or explaining their lack of immediate impact...
...In saying this, I have no wish to challenge the author's expressed conviction that yearning for "capitalism" is rare and a survival rather than "a phenomenon connected with contemporary structure...
...He sums up his finding (p...
...the real or supposed class struggle...
...Of these types, the second is apparently meant to have some relation to the conditions prevailing immediately after the Communist coup of 1948...
...So they tried labor history instead...
...As the rather unsavory tribuna article observes, when the Spring came, those who wished to build, in theory and practice, "an unbounded `pluralistic' political system" (as did Mlynar), did so on the basis of the sociological work of Machonin and his colleagues...
...in relation to the previously postulated typology of relevant forms of stratification: ". . . social differentiation in Czechoslovakia is explicitly noncapitalist . . . forms of ownership play no role, least of all private ownership...
...Deleveling and consciousness—an interesting pair drawn, I suppose, from functionalism and Marxism respectively—are the book's main themes...
...He notes that the whole of the Czechoslovak development from the 1950s to 1967, and in particular the developments "after January 1968," justify the belief that this ideal type is so not merely in the sense of seeming desirable, but also in the more important sense of corresponding to the real developmental possibilities of industrial societies...
...But it showed that around this center—if it existed at all—there was no larger group of power-potentates, with privileges but without the required education and expertise...
...Differences which can be summed up in a few words can mean, in historical reality, enormous, complex, and difficult social transformations...
...But the criticism is invalid if it underrates the difference of socialism, so defined, from capitalist society, which has as yet never managed to reduce the span of stratification and to turn achievement into the veritable base of social status—or if it underrates its difference from bureaucratic-egalitarian society...
...intensification of the economy (i.e., as opposed to mere "extensive" expansion of production, which had operated simply by recruiting rural workers and women into industry...
...All the same, it would be interesting to know just how effective, or possibly how counterproductive, such persecution was...
...The author proceeds to comment on power (p...
...Technocratic relations represented a kind of middle point between the two extremes (approximating socialism by its stress on qualifications, and resembling bureaucratism by its lack of democracy...
...In the event, one of the invoked, though not sanctioned and enforced, interpretations was that the new work was adding sociology to Marxism, which itself was not a sociology at all, though evidently it could serve as the base of one...
...Insofar as there is a diagnosis of the "deformations," it is the inverse of the one conventionally current in the West, which sees Stalinist inequality as the price of a rapid and ruthless industrialization...
...In some other sense this is by no means so obvious, and the failure to deal adequately with those other possibilities is one of the flaws of the book (which was to have been filled, perhaps, by the projected study of social change, for which the prospects of completion and publication must now alas be slim...
...Nevertheless, the general form of the connection between the empirical data and the political moral is more subtle: despite the bureaucratic and egalitarian deformations, a "socialist" pattern in its own terms (i.e., a moderate meritocracy, within bounds of social justice and humanity) has been asserting itself, and it constitutes the main feature of Czechoslovak stratification...
...Whereas national democracy was not thoroughly implemented after February 1948, and on the contrary the '50s saw...
...It is well worth following the author in the more detailed exposition of his ideas (pp...
...It also tells us that the Sociological Institute of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences had been the "ideological center of revisionism" and, interestingly, that the Party branch at this institution had been consequently dissolved and that a majority of the Czechoslovak Sociological Society had passed a resolution requesting that sociologists all over the world boycott the Seventh 472 World Congress in Bulgaria, in protest against that country's participation in the military occupation of Czechoslovakia...
...He rejects economic reductionism, and the absolutization of class conflict...
...I shall content myself with a partial summary, and some comment, concerning certain key chapters...
...But there was more to it than simple coincidence and conflation...
...We assume that plurality is self-generating, unless forcibly suppressed...
...The general argument has the form: despite all the official deformation, so much good and desirable stratification, corresponding to the real functional needs of industrial society...
...He also considers the "technocratic" (or "culturocratic") stratification to be relevant, notably as an imminent danger...
...One finds no satisfaction at all in the thought that, if the authors were indeed inclined to ignore this possibility, there is nothing in their present condition to encourage them to persist in this error...
...The Czechoslovak revolution of 1945-48 [i.e., the Communist takeover] resulted from the confluence of two currents: one socialist, the other egalitarian...
...It also refutes the efforts...
...even though the research could not have seized its possible inner center...
...So, within the crucial period of the buildup to the Prague Spring, the very extensive and well-centralized network of teachers and centers of Marxism-Leninism was uberschult to sociology, and sociology itself was placed in the service of finding a way out of the desperate social malaise...
...We could only infer its role .. partly from the very reduced participation in political activity by the broader strata .. . and partly from the leveling effect on the standard of living, which by its lack of congruence with social-cultural components betrays the presence of noneconomic pressures...
...But is this extrapolation justifiable...
...It is the intimate and organic link between the methodological seriousness and thoroughness of the work, and the richness and importance of its ideas, that gives the book its unique flavor and is perhaps its most fascinating feature...
...Bureaucratic-egalitarian social relations were demonstrably the main brake on the further development of industrial culture...
...We are now in a position in some measure to sum up the central thesis of the book, and to do it at least partly in terms of its THE PLURALIST ANTILEVELERS OF PRAGUE own very interesting conceptual framework...
...Nevertheless it is worthwhile to indicate this background...
...But his final conclusion—an encouraging one from his viewpoint—is that a "socialist" 478 (in his sense) type of stratification is assert ing itself, despite its inadequate influence on distribution (too egalitarian) and the power-political realm (too inegalitarian...
...Reforms imposed from above (e.g., deleveling, general economic reform, application of criteria of competence in appointments) were cast in an administrative form that hampered initiative...
...People developed their leisure activity in a manner roughly corresponding to their education and type of work, and managed to use their leveled and not always congruent incomes in diverse ways...
...The Marxism to which he declares his loyalty (p...
...An important source on this is an article in the ideological Party journal tribuna (sic), dated October 14, 1970, by a man whom it may be charitable not to name...
...The final and equally fascinating section of Machonin's crucial chapter is concerned with the origins of this situation...
...All in all, what characterized the Czechoslovakia of 1967 was the tension between bureaucratic-egalitarian relations on the one hand, and socialist ones on the other...
...There was the relatively influential group of bureaucrats, based on power positions, and a more numerous and more dynamic group of technocrats...
...Hence, there were many who had not forgotten the "original sense of socialism" and found the social crisis hard to bear, seeing it subjectively as the result of "deformations...
...The main evidence for (or meaning of) this contention is indeed the sharp difTHE PLURALIST ANTILEVELERS OF PRAGUE ferentiation in the distribution of power, in such marked contrast to the absence of great inequalities in other spheres...
...Machonin rejects such an approach, on the grounds that such a synthetic concept would have very little content, if any...
...Sociology played a crucial role in the liberalization process in Czechoslovakia...
...Without wishing, like the apologists of bureaucratism, to underrate the importance of the sphere of political power, we must respect the facts which prove that in Czechoslovakia as of November 1967, power was not altogether the axis or basic skeleton of social differentiation and social life, but rather a kind of external form, in part adapting itself to, and in part obstructing, another type of social differentiation...
...On page 160, the author makes some comparative remarks...
...The impacts of mere power upon it are classified as deformations...
...doubtless a socially differentiated society (dominated, but not exclusively, by professional differentiation) and stratified, mainly on the basis of the effectiveness and hence complexity of labor...
...At this distance, it is impossible to tell...
...It tells us that Machonin is now a "political corpse," that he has been expelled from the Party, and that the political battle with revisionism has now been substantially decided, though elsewhere the article implies that not all its representatives have given up the struggle...
...Its major survey was carried out in 1967, with the very important support of the official statistical services...
...The author clearly believes that, though this danger exists, his work has evaded or overcome it...
...The application of the principle of achievement, which was implemented in its technocratic form was incomplete and...
...But not enough, alas...
...He goes on to note that these conflicts of interest—who could not be articulated fully in an exchange of views and in political activity in 1967—were producing a latent tension of critical dimensions...
...but they tend to see inequality as an inevitable price paid for this plurality, rather than as making a direct and valuable contribution to social health...
...egalitarian stratification operates on "inverted" ascription in favor of the less qualified and the less productive, who benefit from its distributive principles...
...But, let us face it, the flesh is weak, and though perhaps it may not be the dullest of all subjects, it must at least be in the running for such a title, and it is hard to hold the attention of the young with it...
...In fairness to Machonin, it should be added (though this is not evident from the book) that he also looks forward to an ultimate releveling, presumably at a stage of real industrial maturity, following the deleveling which he holds necessary at the present stage...
...One of the most interesting aspects of the book is the attempt to formulate a typology of possible, relevant types of social stratification (p...
...Interestingly, this social research concentrated less on the abuses of the old regime than on the force of the tendenciesthat brought about the rebirth— tendencies which, the authors claim, legitimate themselves by their very strength and their deep social roots...
...They tried Marxist philosophy, but evidently no one could stomach for very long the drivel about Negation of a Negation and Interpenetration of Opposites...
...to prove that the socialist type of society can replace...
...The article in question, nominally a report on sociology and on the Seventh World Sociological Congress, tells us that Pavel Machonin, the principal author of the book under review, represented in sociology what O. Sik represented in economics, Z Mlynai in political science, and K. Kosik in philosophy...
...It may be best to offer an abbreviated version of the author's own words (p...
...ERNEST GELLNER A major turning point in favor of the sociologists had come when the Party, at the highest level, not merely allowed sociology to exist, but after prolonged inquiry allowed it a legitimate existence without defining it...
...let us have more of it, and let us call it socialism...
...The term "liberalization" was not used, incidentally...
...but it is important to stress that the outstanding merit of the book, as a piece of sociological thought and research, is quite independent of the crucial position its authors and sociology occupied in the political struggle...
...But it is made revolutionary in its context by the addition of the empirical minor premise, and this is indebted to the Western theory of "industrial society" and to Western research techniques...
...Had it been produced under politically stable or uninteresting circumstances, in a country whose contemporary condition makes no special claim on our interest, and were it available in an easily accessible language, it still would make its mark as a major contribution to the literature on social stratification in industrial societies and would become one of the most important texts in the field...
...It contains an interesting attempt at a socialtheory of socialist societies and a general typology of industrial societies...
...The precondition for the successful liberalization had been an economic and social malaise and stagnation (even actual economic decline), for which plainly no solutions or concepts were available within the official ideology...
...Without democracy, technocratic reforms failed to achieve their ends and became sterile through the endless struggle with the ubiquitous bureaucracy...
...Even lukewarmness of the fathers was visited upon the children...
...He rejects vulgar Marxism, though interestingly he admits that his own generation had made its first acquaintance with Marxism only in this form and was obliged to overcome its influence...
...These trends became stronger during the second half of the '60s and reached their height by attaining the first steps of an income deleveling, and by some manifestations of a "changed consciousness" on the part of the "active segments of society...
...Otherwise the regime, which did not continue to implement the democratic program, could not have gained the minimal support for...
...Now this is all very well as names go, but what is it...
...Are we too complacent...
...in the West, many of us find it possible to be both pluralists and egalitarians (though admittedly we do not give it much profound thought, for the danger of the implementation of equality is so small as to make its compatibility with liberty a less than pressing problem...
...They place their trust in basic social trends...
...So, if the author is right, the liberalization movement of the 1960s saw itself in a midwife role—assisting in the birth of a social form that was in any case emerging: A realistic socialism is beginning to emerge with us as a socially just form (i.e., one that has removed capitalist inequality and displays no tendency to return to it) of an industrial achievement society, a richly differentiated and stratified one, though not too sharply—and hence differentiated in terms of interests and viewpoints...
...Contemplating the horror of the '50s, he says in effect—we were betrayed, we had not willed this...
...Or is it a residue of simplistic Marxism...
...This procedure would have to include not merely Communist states, but also reformist or nationalistic socialism, without regard to their specific culture or level of social development...
...One can of course never be sure about the pensge intime of people who have the misfortune of living under a dictatorship...
...The aim is to identify a characteristically socialist kind of stratification...
...These real trends reveal a diversified, achievementoriented industrial society, and a pluralistic one...
...It is an important pioneering attempt (even if not wholly successful) to include the dimension of power in stratification and to do so under "socialist" conditions...
...As it is, the study claims the attention of various sociologists and specialists, but of course its significance and relevance are far wider...
...By this he means a replacement of the current bureaucracy by one that is selected for technical competence, but a replacement not accompanied by democratization (which seems to mean greater genuine participation through pluralism and liberalization...
...Should our conception of socialism seem to some to consist simply of the shared characteristics of modern societies, then such an objection is valid to the extent that we really do not deem it fitting to invent our socialism—we prefer rather to deduce it from the real trends of development...
...And the bureaucratic segment opposed it...
...the evolution of socialist democracy including national equality...
...They can certainly cite Tocqueville as well as Marx in support of their fears...
...This is one of the most interesting parts of the book, not merely because of the inherent fascination of its topic, but also because of its struggles with the methodological problems of perceiving power, and the author's quite exceptionally frank use of "Western" sociology and disregard for Marxism...
...No doubt there is a whole array of common traits and tendencies of all industrial societies...
...The destiny of the so-called socialist societies of Eastern Europe is one of the great questions of our time...
...Information or reminders of this order can only warm the hearts of that Czech majority which does not welcome the present Stalinism with a human face, and consequently one must wonder whether the author of the article is an opportunist timeserver and a fool, who unintentionally gives much comfort to his enemies, or whether on the contrary the article is a double take, deliberately letting slip information under the guise of somewhat nauseating abuse and questionbegging denunciation of "petit-bourgeois revisionism...
...At the same time, he firmly asserts that his material refutes the contention that power is the crucial principle of differentiation in all "socialist" societies—whether such an assertion is made by way of hostile criticism or in the spirit of a romanticized endorsement of "revolutionary violence...
...In addition to excluding any significant survival of "capitalist stratification," the author also, and similarly, excludes the applicability or survival of the "dictatorship of the proletariat...
...It is hard to speak of the "theory of the new class" as a power elite with all the other attributes of a top stratum...
...Or do we find signs here of a residue of political caution, concerning the extent of political plurality which is to be encouraged (e.g., was it to be only internal to the Party, rather than multiplying effective parties...
...The span of the stratification of a mature socialist society corresponds to the functional requirements of the development of industrial society...
...and any real achievement...
...In other words, they reflect a powerful, and perhaps an irresistible trend, and one which, for this author, plainly is an object not only of investigation but also of love...
...One of its most remarkable products— quite possibly the most remarkable one— is a 619-page tome, The Czechoslovak Society,* which its author still managed to bring out toward the end of 1969...
...The significant negative implication of this is that Marxism as yet does not contain a sociological theory —a contention which, as indicated, was important in avoiding the possibility of conflict between Marxism and the newly emergent sociology...
...156-70) . 476 The central conclusion of this research into stratification is that social status in Czechoslovakia is determined above all by what the author calls the bundle of socialcultural differentiations: type of work, style of life and leisure, and education...
...Bureaucratic stratification ascribes status on the basis of a monopoly of power and operates distribution so as to favor bureaucrats—power-holders...
...The organizational aspect of sociology and its participation in the thaw is interesting and amusing...
...Deformations are most regrettable, but one fears the touch of complacency in the hint that in the long run, deformations cannot stand up to the "real" social structure...
...The workers as a general class are neither beneficiaries nor homogeneous in their position, nor in any significant sense associated with power...
...When, then, is there socialist stratification...
...158) : All this is not to say that the power-politicalorganizational system played no significant role during this period in forming stratification...
...it is gradual (without excluding altogether the influence of inheritance and ascription) .. . and consists of largely open strata...
...The notional content of such a "mature socialism" may be rich, and the author notes the danger of its detachment from reality, and of utopianism...
...the overcoming of the notion of class war as the main motive force of inner development...
...The various chapters, concerning the relation of stratification as to complexity of work, lifeTHE PLURALIST ANTILEVELERS OF PRAGUE style, education, income, prestige, self-image, family, generation, social contacts, and so forth, clearly deserve thorough consideration, from the viewpoint of both substance and method, and above all from a comparativist angle...
...It does not stoop to the tactics of down-to-earth political struggle, or its unhappy termination...
...FOR PURPOSES OF COMPARISON, the author suggests six currently relevant types of social stratification: capitalist, dictatorship of the proletariat, bureaucratic, egalitarian, technocratic-meritocratic, and socialist...
...this mature socialism is not the only type of social organization possible in an industrial society, though in our view it comes close to an optimal arrangement of the relation between industrial culture and human personality (at least in our conditions...
...It is not the case, as the reader might suppose, of a shocked discovery of the form—despite official socialism, so much stratification...
...The English summary at the end does not remotely do justice to its richness of thought and documentation (nor, alas, is its English particularly attractive or free from ambiguity...
...One would also like to know the long-term consequences of the erstwhile favoring of working-class candidates, and the discouragement of "bourgeois" ones, unless they and their fathers enthusiastically overcompensated for their background...
...and humanism...
...It is a major study of stratification in a "socialist" society...
...It is in the light of this principle that the author defines "socialism," trying to capture the appeal of this word both for his values and his interpretation of current social trends, and observing that there is no point in "inventing" one's socialism: one must de duce it from real social tendencies...
...As Machonin observes, one might approach such a model by a kind of inductivist procedure, seeking the shared traits of societies that consider themselves socialist, or are considered to be such...
...474 The connection between Machonin's and his colleagues' enormously thorough empirical research into Czechoslovak socialist stratifications and the political morals drawn from them is interesting...
...The extensive [i.e., a nonintensive] industrial development...
...For one thing, this macro-research could not catch the occupants of the summits of power, and their stratificational characteristics...
...It may be relevant at this point to note that Machonin not merely proclaims the Marxist foundations of his thought at the beginning of the book...
...In 1967, their institute was indeed still called a "Marxist-Leninist" one, though at that time there was a tendency to apologize even for the name...
...Whatever other merits this view may lack, it certainly had the signal advantage that if Marxism was not and did not already contain sociology, then naturally the new sociology could not come in conflict with it, and could pursue its own work unhampered...
...Note: not income or participation in management...
...Others adjusted to it, sometimes hesitantly...
...If you are a director of an institution training, let's say, chemical engineers, or if you are the man under him made responsible for giving that course of Something Extra—what, concretely speaking, do you talk about...
...corresponded to this social trend...
...Is it that here the authors are clear and unambiguous Marxists, in a straightforward and specific sense, and believe that unless you have classes and opposition, you cannot have political plurality...
...Income differentiation we reconsider to be leveled out, in contrast with capitalist countries with their high incomes of the upper strata, and also in comparison with European socialist countries...
...in which case publicly acknowledged stratification, with a recognized right of selfexpression, would be a substitute, in some measure, for complete political freedom...
...There are reasons for suspecting that working-class entry into higher education suffered from egalitarianism, by diminishing financial incentives for undergoing it, and thus encouraging the self-recruitment of those oriented toward it as an end in itself...
...Machonin (though he stresses the industrial backwardness of Czechoslovakia by the standards of today) in effect says: just because the country was already industrial, it could use egalitarianism to compensate for the other deformations and buy off popular discontent in some measure, and postpone through "extensive" expansion that stagnation which, in the end, was the inescapable penalty of the "egalitarian-bureaucratic" syndrome...
...This argument, be it noted, gives a special nuance to the more conventional theories of pluralism, quite apart from using a new name for it...
...Most probably, the authors had not entirely made up their minds...
...a critique of egalitarianism and bureaucratism...
...For this volume indeed constitutes a very remarkable achievement...
...There can be little doubt about the correctness of these findings, if the influence of property is interpreted in a narrow, literal, and strictly contemporary sense...
...Even the power elite, he goes on to observe, did not remain untouched by the movement described—especially some of its segments...
...The nexus between the stratification they document and welcome and the pluralism they desire is of the greatest importance, but the details of this connection are left a little obscure...
...The author attributes importance to the fact that the regime of the Socialist Czechoslovak Republic was born of a genuinely democratic and socialist revolution, that its THE PLURALIST ANTILEVELERS OF PRAGUE bureaucratization was carried out as it were "behind its back," and was contrary to the intentions of the major part of its creators...
...Those opposing the changes were the carriers of the "past of the revolution . . . unable to understand the transition to the positive construction of socialism...
...As we have seen, it leaves the relative merits of the two systems to further developments and future research, and even hints that optimality may hinge on local (presumably historical) circumstances...
...it is my strong impression that his declaration of faith is sincere...
...The abuse, however, does highlight the relevant background of the work under review...
...This is quite unlike the ideas of those reformers who seek inspiration or vindication in the young Marx...
...For the other side of the conflict, the author claims the interests of the "broadest masses...
...Other pluralists tend to concentrate on the multiplicity of autonomous groups and institutions, as a necessary means of producing the countervailing forces to the state and possible other dangers to liberty...
...We have diversity anyway, but we do not feel we need it specifically for the purpose of political pluralism...
...The "bureaucratic-egalitarian social relations" were thus opposed by a powerful coalition of social forces...
...More important perhaps is what might be called the implicit sociologism of the authors...
...The deformations may be more important than the alleged substrate...
...He lists its ideas: economic reform...
...It is unfortunate that this work is likely to remain inaccessible to most of its potential readers for at least sometime...
...Equally interesting is the proclaimed ambition to use the general Marxist foundations to build a modem sociological theory, and in particular one facilitating the empirical study of contemporary social forms, inERNEST GELLNER eluding those which emerged in the course of socialist reconstruction...
...But one might fear that if the prerevolutionary history of mankind is the story of the forms of alienation, then postrevolutionary history is the story of the varieties of "deformation...
...A realistic conception of socialism, respecting this differentiation of interests (and hence the existence of tensions and possibly their accentuation) has begun to gain recognition with us and in other socialist countries in the '60s...
...Almost symbolically, this little bit extra, by way of literary or philosophical edification, tends to be called "liberal studies" in Britain, and in Eastern Europe it is called Marxism-Leninism...
...In common with nonsocialist societies, the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic had to face the problem of what to teach young technologists, over and above technology itself...
...The full story has not yet been told and ought to be fascinating when it becomes available, both in its ideological and its organizational aspects...
...The various chapters are written in Czech and in Slovak, but at * Pavel Machonin, et al., Ceskoslovenskd spoleenost: sociologickd analjza socidlni stratifikace ["The Czechoslovak Society: A Sociological Analysis of Its Social Stratification"] (Bratislava: Epocha Publishers, 1969...
...Quite the reverse...
...There was also the group of unqualified but wellpaid workers, who might have an interest in maintaining the "egalitarian" system...
...limited...
...161 et seq...
...But they were followed up in the '60s (a later paragraph says "from the first half of the '60s") by the reform movement...
...This is what I have in mind: given the stress on qualifications, complexity of work, and cultural level as determinants of stratification, one naturally wonders about the role of past wealth as a correlate of educational opportunity or aspiration...
...The socialist reconstruction of society needed the political support of the masses: this it gained above all by concessions to the egalitarian sentiments, which in our sociocultural community find support in centuries-old obejctive and subjective traditions...
...This much by way of background to the book which, itself, does not indicate it, except at a rather high theoretical level insofar as it considers the general problems facing its own kind of society...
...And it contains, in restrained and sober, but very substantial terms, the theory of the Czech liberalization movement, both in the sense of offering an explanation of it and of specifying its rationale...
...after the inner resources of extensive industrialization were exhausted...
...So it seemed both necessary and permissible to turn to sociology, though of course permission was not granted at once, nor without a prolonged struggle...
...Various kinds of such societies can be considered as variants of one structure, and the question of their relative merits must be left to the real development and the scientific investigation of reality...
...Differences that can be summed up in a few words can mean, in historical reality, enormous, complex, and difficult social transformations...
...Here I wish to anticipate somewhat the author's line of thought, to make clear to the reader the argument's general direction...
...The author proceeds to tell us that the egalitarian type of stratification was also found to be important, notably in producing the narrow span of income and some degree of incongruence between the standard of living on the one hand, and the educational level, complexity of work, and leisure styles on the other...
...Almost simultaneously with the declared completion of socialization, the protracted economic-cultural crisis of the '60s broke out, caused by the inability of the bureaucraticegalitarian system to satisfy the elementary cultural needs of society (this was manifested by the stagnation and partial decline of production), and even less to stimulate further progress...
...Political differentiation we consider to be somewhat steep...
...The book does not polemicize with the "capitalist" variant of industrial society...
...a good measure of bureaucratism, egalitarian ideas were for this very reason further implemented...
...Before discussing the book further, it may be worth saying a little about what is publicly known of the subsequent fate of its major author and the institutions connected with it...
...Now sociology and political science (known in Czechoslovakia as politology) are—at least during the '60s, the decade of the apotheosis of sociology—quite another matter...
...This would admittedly be out of tune with their opposition to the old cult of the class struggle, but it would also constitute an interesting back-to-front use of the erstwhile Communist orthodoxy, which maintained that just because classes were in the process of abolition, there was no further need for a multiplicity of political parties...
...The empirically indicated direction of our evolution did not surprise us, for all in all we expected it...
...We consider the differentiation in complexity of work education and the cultural ERNEST GELLNER use of leisure to be, all in all, close to the analogous differentiations in industrially developed countries, or rather in countries approaching this stage, except that we lack the luxury style of leisure and the luxury orientation of consumption, and that the lower levels of complexity of work, education, and presumably of life-style are relatively larger...
...But above all, we could not capture the mechanism of the influence of power...
...The abortive Prague Spring remains a good source of evidence for what countervailing forces could possibly save Eastern Europe from such a fate...
...This of course in no way excuses these repellent measures nor does it hold much consolation for those who had to suffer from them, least of all for those who never recovered...
...THE PLURALIST ANTILEVELERS OF PRAGUE 481 In stressing the need of a stratificational base for political plurality and hence freedom, the authors may be more realistic than the starry-eyed Western progressive, who thinks he can without strain love both liberty and equality...
...The philosophical premise drawn from Marx in this scheme is of the hard, historical-necessity-recognizing strand in his thought, and not from the recently popular soft center of his youth...
...He observes that, on the contrary, the unfavorable traits of the political system affected above all the workers, the most numerous segment of the population...
...These smallholders are socially and economically at a very low level, comparable to that of unskilled agricultural laborers, and hence it is not surprising that, judged by this literal criterion, there are few or no survivals of "capitalist" stratification...
...mature socialism is conceived as a formally and substantially democratic community of effort, based on collective ownership...
...Unfortunately the full emergence of these trends is hampered by the egalitarian-bureaucratic system—egalitarian in order to hide its lack of political democracy, egalitarian economically but inegalitarian politically—which is at the same time incapable of making the society function, economically and otherwise...
...Thus the book as a whole contains both the philosophy and the sociology of liberalization...
...In any case, Machonin and his colleagues evidently live in •a world that does not encourage such complacency...
...An objective need, or the conscience of the pedagogue or of the educational administrator, or who knows what, cannot quite tolerate a higher educational course containing nothing but technology: there must be a bit of humanity, civics, or morality somewhere...
...It was also in conflict with inequality arising from economic backwardness (the back wardness of rural areas, agriculture, of Slo vakia, and the underprivileged position of the economically inactive and of women...
...It is possible to make some general criticisms...
Vol. 19 • July 1972 • No. 3
