The Uses of the Word "Socialism"
Rubel, M.
From Paris we have received the following letter which raises problems that we hope will be discussed in later issues of DISSENT. Its author, M. Rubel, is a distinguished scholar whose work...
...By tracing back to its origins one of the most powerful social movements of modern times, one could assist in the genesis of what has not ceased to be the unrealized dream of all disinherited humanity since the technical innovations which have almost miraculously multiplied the material power of man: a society from which exploitation would be ban ished and in which the free unfolding of each individual would be the condition for the freedom of all...
...There are non-Marxist socialisms, just as there are Marxist and anti-Marxist socialisms...
...This is only the most significant of the questions with with which anyone is faced when he begins thinking about what a socialism with boundaries fixed in relation to Marx's thought might be today...
...There is also the sociologically decisive fact of the existence of socialist parties, solidly rooted in the political life of their respective 10 DISSENT Winter 1954 countries...
...I do not speak of another risk which such a profession of faith entails in certain countries of high Christian civilization...
...Be it usurpation or trickery, the fact remains: hundreds of millions of men are today forced to accept for the word "socialism" the content and thought decreed by their political masters in Russia, in China, in the European countries that revolve within the orbit of the Russian star...
...Brief comments from readers will be extremely welcome...
...This fact is new and crushing...
...Or is not one, at least, indulging in a naive fidelity to a Western tradition more than 100 years old which no longer has any raison d'etre in a world where men and things, values and institutions, are ceaselessly undergoing profound transformations...
...Such a confrontation might succeed in reaching a pragmatic conclusion as to the scope and legitimacy of the use of the word "socialism" to designate aspirations as well as intellectual and political attitudes which openly conflict with nearly all existing forms of "socialism," be they in the totalitarian or in the democratic countries...
...Further, even in the West and without taking into account the Stalinist imposture, does the significance of the world "socialism" rest upon an unanimously accepted definition, which allows of no equivocation among those who employ the word...
...Such an inquiry could, at the same time, bring a serious contribution to the study and comprehension of one of the most overwhelming problems of our epoch...
...There is, however, a way to halt this intellectual confusion...
...M. RuBEL Winter 1954 DISSENT II...
...Since the Russian Revolution the term "socialism" has served to designate a regime with enough authority to prohibit its subjects from questioning the validity of this label...
...And isn't this choice made in order to justify an emotional tie with a tradition that has been condemned by the gigantic upheavals our world has known since the First World War...
...To call oneself a "socialist" today in countries where one can still speak freely and, at the same time, to condemn Russo-Asiatic "socialism"is this not verbal fetishism...
...It would make possible, finally, a reply to the question of whether it would not be better today to abandon the word socialism to those who have usurped it for oppressive or demagogic ends so as to save the conceptual content once attached to this term...
...Is it not precisely one of the traits of this secular tradition that it permits the "co-existence" of multiple and diverse "socialist" currents and schools which, frequently, confront one another with hostility even when they proclaim their origin from the same intellectual patrimony...
...His letter came too late for any prolonged comment, but we hope to arrange a symposium on the questions he presents...
...Is it not childish to ignore it...
...Today, anyone who insists upon describing himself as a socialist runs the great risk of not being immediately understood...
...It consists in comparing the conceptual content of the word "socialism," as it was formed in a number of Western minds more than a century ago, with the significance that this term has taken on throughout the whole world beginning with the First World War...
...As can be seen, what is involved is an inquiry both historical and sociological...
...Isn't calling oneself a "socialist" (outside of what is institutionally considered as such) deliberately to choose intellectual confusion...
...From Paris we have received the following letter which raises problems that we hope will be discussed in later issues of DISSENT...
...the role of language in the formation of the political intelligence of people subjected to the incessant pressures of ideological propaganda...
...What remains, then, for a socialism not to be confounded with any of the ideological tendencies or any of the existing political programs...
...Its author, M. Rubel, is a distinguished scholar whose work includes a study of Marxism and morality...
Vol. 1 • January 1954 • No. 1
