And Can There Be Peace?
Rabassiere, Henri
Mr. Deutscher's able paper raises a number of problems which certainly go far beyond the immediate purpose of his analysis; yet they go right to the heart of the question which prompts him and...
...Deutscher justly rejects the idea that Stalin personally created Stalinism, he certainly must count the pressure of Russia's foreign relations among the conditions which caused the rise of the bureaucracy, the degeneration of a socialist into a defense economy, the shifting of emphasis from consumer goods to means of production, the high rate of capital accumulation provided in the five-year-plans, the frantic drive to fulfill them in four years, in short the very exploitation which resulted in the serious stress of all economic, social and political relations and in the ruthless police methods used to overcome them, in the smashing of all resistance (technological or social) and of all nuclei of opposition...
...or it may be that— no matter how well the program of industrialization has been fulfilled and how far Soviet technology may have outstripped more capitalistic countries— security considerations demand a new wave of rapid accumulation...
...It was not just the instrument of transforming a backward into a highly industrialized society...
...he has directed our attention to the social, economic and political trends which are far more important than the factions in the Presidium...
...Except for these misleading parallels which Trotsky bequeathed to his disciples, Mr...
...Both sides to the controversy pursue their analysis as though the Soviet Union were a self-sufficient entity, living in a vacuum and becoming aware of its external enemies only when it suits her rulers to go to war...
...Whether real or imaginary, this threat had become an obsession with the ruling circles...
...Deutscher knows at least two such reasons—namely the desire of Bonapartistic governments to export their domestic troubles, and the conflicts arising from capitalistic competition for markets and investment opportunities...
...It is true that the Russian experts are in a sorry predicament...
...The rightist and the leftist deviations usually develop simultaneously, and are liquidated simultaneously, too...
...Rarely, however, did the ultimate motive find direct expression in conquest...
...Deutscher is absolutely right in pointing to Stalin's terrorism and his policy of peace as "two sides of the same medal...
...The motion was on the point of being carried when the emperor, with a harshness contrary to his manner, spoke openly for the informers, complaining that the laws would be ineffective, and the State brought to the verge of ruin...
...War had to be prepared, conducted and willed by a class (or elite) which found militaristic, chauvinistic and expansionist patterns of power suitable for, or compatible with, its interests...
...One could not distinguish between aliens and kinfolk, between friends and strangers, or say what was quite recent, or what half-forgotten from lapse of time...
...Once they are set in motion, they develop a dynamism of their own, tend to perpetuate themselves and influence the course of history far beyond the period of their socio-economic usefulness...
...This is so, not because the rulers are evil-minded, power-hungry or forgetful of the common good, but because power itself is evil and contrary to the common good...
...But he did not thereby create a belief in his patriotism, for he had revived the law of treason, the name of which indeed was known in ancient times, though other matters came under its jurisdiction...
...Then our farm spokesman will be a "traitor" and we get more terrorism...
...my point is that the Russians at nearly all times considered it so...
...This writer, who does not claim to be a Russian expert but has the habit of drawing upon history, therefore wondered why an able historian like Deutscher should have adapted the method of these experts to his Marxist concerns...
...Summer 1954 • DISSENT • 247 AS RECORDED BY TACITUS...
...Deutscher's able paper raises a number of problems which certainly go far beyond the immediate purpose of his analysis...
...Might not the picture be different when Russia is no longer backward and weak, but wealthy and "democratic...
...Arguing against the vulgar notions of some Neo-Marxists, he emphasizes the fact that recent impulses towards quasi-liberal reforms in the Soviet Union have come, not from the rank and file, but from the bureaucracy itself...
...People were incriminated for some casual remark in the forum or at the dinner-table, for every one was impatient to be the first to mark his victim, some to screen themselves, most from being, as it were, infected with the contagion of the malady...
...what matters, however, is not this or that policy (as in a democracy of traditional type) but who carries it out...
...This is the mechanism of government in a totalitarian country...
...In fairness, Mr...
...The very common and honorable misconception, that democracies are by definition peaceful, is as old as the French revolution when Immanuel Kant made the amazing statement that republican governments in all countries would guarantee eternal peace...
...This is the main source of deviations...
...Strangely enough, all disputants seem to be agreed on one proposition—that developments inside the Soviet Union, whether through the viciousness of the Bolshevik ideology or the ambition of the members of the Politbureau, whether the greed of the ruling bureaucracy or the political harrassment of a (possible) Bonaparte, may bring war...
...But he also says, and rightly so, that under Stalin Russia still was weak and backward...
...Vice versa, those who feel that co-existence, or at least the absence of a shooting war between the major powers, might be possible over a number of years, base their argument on the assumption that such compulsive factors, projecting the inner tensions in the Soviet Union to the outside, are not powerful enough, or even may be waning in the structure of Soviet society...
...Wars and imperialistic adventures start when powers seek more power, by annexing territory, by improving their frontiers or by requiring power positions—if only to deny such positions to other powers...
...All that need not change the totalitarian character of that society...
...It is customary among Marxists to speak of Bonapartism as a cause of war, mainly because Marx pointed out the particular mechanism by which such a government would stumble into a war...
...historically older forms of power conflicts and expansion include dynastic wars, territorial disputes between nations, conquest of colonies for exploitation, and that most useless and reprehensible of all wars, the crusade...
...Since Mr...
...Given the interdependence of external and internal stresses, socialism is not possible in one country, not even one as big as the Russo-Chinese coalition empire...
...Since I am only concerned with the question of peace and war, I should like to conclude with a few assumptions which should suffice to assess the intentions of the Soviet Union as a great power...
...Moreover, the mutual influence of foreign and domestic affairs also works the other way: once the structure of the political system has been geared to the demands of autarchy and isolation, its dynamism will engender more isolationism...
...Be this proposition true or false, it is irrelevant...
...viewed from Russia, the history of the last twenty years may be read quite differently, and the Russians in their own self-righteousness look at us with the same suspicions their policies arouse in us...
...It is very different from either democracy or Bonapartism—the two alternatives alone Deutscher envisages for the Soviet Union, after a brief "relapse" into Stalinism...
...The Western prejudice, that the "democratic" phase of the cycle may be more propitious to a conciliatory attitude in foreign relations, is without foundation in experience...
...Are not nearly all new rulers of the Kremlin in a position, as to legitimacy, loyalty and popular roots, that resembles the position of Napoleon rather than that of Robespierre...
...to result in armed conflict, it had to become manifest in a power organization and its accompanying ideologies...
...Some powers may have additional reasons for going to war...
...It was Augustus who first, under color of this law, applied legal inquiry to libelous writings...
...Or does Deutscher maintain that the Franco-German war was avoidable...
...Not that the peasants become articulate, but their manipulator asks for better techniques to make them deliver...
...One may argue that from where he sits, he can foresee deficient harvests unless the peasants get more free cash in their hands...
...Inside the hierarchy, differences of viewpoint and position beget struggles for power and influence...
...it also may either accelerate or retard the course to war...
...It is idle to speculate which of them is more important or more basic...
...words went unpunished...
...Deutscher seems to subscribe to this belief with the qualifications that might be expected from a socialist...
...Notably with respect to the possibility of peace, or co-existence, neither his optimism nor his pessimism seems to be warranted...
...These cycles tend to bewilder Marxists and particularly ex-Bolsheviks who are interested in dubbing each new development either "rightist" or "leftist...
...The fight between various elites may result in democracy...
...Deutscher needs to be reminded of the objections which the notion of "socialism in one country" provoked as soon as it was promulgated...
...Deeds only were liable to accusa+ ion...
...Deutscher reminds the proponents of a Summer 1954 • DISSENT • 243 certain backwoods Marxism...
...However, the ruling classes are rarely united and aware of their common long-term interests, as Mr...
...The Soviet society has outgrown these classifications...
...ANNALS I, 72-73 In consequence of the suicide of Cornufus if was proposed to deprive informers of their rewards whenever a person accused of treason put an end to his life...
...Does not Marx, too, assume a (pardon me: "dialectical") interrelation of foreign and domestic affairs...
...In the process, incidentally, it might take up the suggestion which originally came from the opposition...
...that does not exclude other mechanisms which play in the case of other types of government...
...the first experiments at such accusations, in order to explain the origin of a most terrible scourge, how by Tiberius's cunning it crept among us, how subsequently if was checked, finally how it burst into flame and consumed everything...
...We must assume that Soviet makers of policy are ardent patriots, intelligent schemers and rationally calculating experts with considerable experience, not easily swayed by considerations of ideology or by other irrational motivations (this distinguishes them from the fascist type of totalitarian dictators), but honestly endeavoring to aggrandize their country to increase its power in accordance with the conditions of the world balance of power and the opportunities it affords...
...Deutscher himself admits that at least certain forms of government (or certain groups of elites in the totalitarian society as I would rather say) might tend to provoke war...
...As the organizational center must at all times seek roots in the nation (it is not a simple police or military dictatorship as in a Banana republic), it will stretch out new tentacles to the right and left, encouraging wider participation of the lower bureaucracy or even of the people in the administration, until a time when again harsh necessity forces a new sacrifice of group improvements to the national interest...
...Or any subsequent war...
...Bonapate was Marx's principle enemy in the 'Fifties of the last century...
...He seems to think that a democratized Soviet system need not covet foreign possessions...
...ANNALS VI, 7 248 • DISSENT • Summer 1954...
...Western observers in their selfrighteousness usually take it for granted that the Russians alone can be the aggressors...
...in any actual situation of history each country appears as a complex entity, shaped by its internal condition and external relations, and shaping its destiny in accordance with that situation...
...It will not be uninteresting if relate...
...Did the dialectic stop its ineluctable course when Stalin died...
...Indeed, was it not Trotsky himself who pointed out that Stalinism was as much a consequence as it was a cause of isolation...
...vice versa, conciliatory gestures abroad have not been hampered by either tension or relaxation within...
...Such a society can leave a little more or a little less elbow room for the individual, depending on its natural wealth or poverty, backwardness or advanced technology...
...Moreover, this usually is done whenever the technological deviationists tend to become spokesmen of real group or class interests (since Deutscher denies the existence of classes in the Soviet Union, I shall not develop this line here) . The reins are pulled in more tightly, the apparatus executes a retrenchment operation, narrows its scope of pseudoSummer 1954 • DISSENT • 245 democratic "activation" of popular organs and reestablishes its undisputed authority...
...Nor can a power organization as big and forceful as the Soviet state renounce foreign policy and deny itself the use of warlike means if its interests, opportunity or the nature of its position in the world indicate it...
...A number of the more brutal wars can be explained by economic necessity, in others whatever economic gains they brought to the victor were purely accidental...
...Today we say democratic for republican, but it is still the same illusion which stays unsupported by either historical facts or theory...
...These periods of strenuous defense efforts and of relaxation alternate in cycles, just as under capitalism periods of accumulation are followed by periods of deceleration...
...Soon afterwards, Tiberius, when consulted . . , as to whether prosecutions for treason should be revived, replied that the laws must be enforced...
...Again, I do not say that in my eyes this nightmare justifies the terror: I do say that in Russian eyes it may appear to do so...
...Neither his "democratic" alternative, nor the "bonapartistic" variant must inevitably lead either to war or to peace...
...Now it may be that his demand is compatible with the goals which the planners have set for other industries...
...it can give its subjects no democratic rights at all or it may find advantage in letting them participate in the administration of their local or even of national affairs...
...At times, though, phoney steps towards democracy, even the adoption of a new Constitution, have been used to make a Popular Front policy and the wooing of foreign alliances more believable...
...Thus a constant cycle of relaxation and tension creates factions and rejects them, attracts new managerial personnel into the whirlpool of the administration and destroys them...
...There is no reason why any change in the Soviet society (which Deutscher assumes and the present writer does not exclude), should reduce rather than increase its aggressiveness, if that change means greater strength and more chances that aggressiveness might pay...
...It established a new type of state in a new type of society, neither capitalistic nor socialistic, neither democratic nor dictatorial in any older sense of the word, but totalitarian in the specific sense that all efforts are directed toward, and subject to, the attainment of higher efficiency for the nation in its struggle to surpass other nations in economic, military and political power...
...Other 242 • DISSENT • Summer 1954 conditions certainly were cooperating in bringing about the specific features of this dictatorship, but the threat of capitalist encirclement remained the constant justification of the system and of the most hideous acts of its terrorism...
...then we get "democratization...
...as a Marxist, Mr...
...he also seems to deny the existence of classes in the Soviet Union, and hence equalizes democracy in Russia with socialism, which in his book is peaceloving by definition...
...It can be gov 244 • DISSENT • Summer 1954 erned by harsh or by lenient hierarchies, by stupid or by intelligent specialists...
...Periods of belligerent behavior have accompanied both, conciliatory and harsh phases of the terror cycle...
...Managers and specialists identify themselves with the population groups, sectors of industry or cultural interests which have been entrusted to their care...
...Deutscher at least has developed a more intelligent method of looking at Russia...
...Deutscher's method and analysis are far superior to those of his critics...
...But under no circumstances—not even after a "war of liberation"—can such postStalinist pseudo-democracy and pseudo-egalitarianism be imagined as a simple return to pre-Stalinist democracy...
...they have to make predictions with nothing to go by...
...Should there not be a direct relationship between this relative weakness (in comparison with potential enemies) and a cautious foreign policy...
...Deutscher comes very close to making this point himself...
...ANNALS IV, 30 And this was the most dreadful feature of the age, that leading members of the Senate, some openly, some secretly, employed themselves in the very lowest work of the informer...
...But Stalinism was not just a deviation from a predestined course of the Soviet Power to democratic socialism...
...To compare Krushchev with Robespierre, after 246 • DISSENT • Summer 1954 Stalin himself has been so compared, amounts to a gross desecration, and to compare the Bolsheviks of 1954 with the Jacobins of 1792 (who indeed feared the war) instead of those of 1794 (who organized the revolutionary armies and carried the wars of liberation to foreign countries) is an arbitrary misuse of history...
...honest divergencies on how best to manage the affairs of the nation and how best to manipulate opinion, reveal cracks and stresses in the Soviet economy and in its class structure...
...tension abroad and tension within mutually intensify each other...
...Deutscher wishes to apply the materialistic interpretation of history—but are not organizations of power material forces too...
...It is all the more regrettable that he should have allowed some of our dearest prejudices of the Left to block the conclusions which, I think, follow from his insight into the possible development of Soviet society...
...We must discard any crusading idea and admit evil intentions only to the extent that must be attributed to any disciple of Macchiavelli or, for that matter, to graduates of any school of diplomacy...
...Deutscher has done a great service in opposing the so-called "Russian experts" who try to predict Molotov's next move in foreign policy from the disposition of chairs in the Kremlin...
...Has the Party, and in it the Org-apparatus, regained its authority over the deviationist managers of special sections...
...I do not say that capitalistic encirclement was at all times an actual danger...
...yet they go right to the heart of the question which prompts him and others to discuss the future of the Soviet system, namely, the possibility of co-existence between such a power and others...
...Then the rigidity can be relaxed again and a new cycle can begin...
...After Stalin, Deutscher seems to think, the Russian state will assume one of the forms known to us from earlier historical experience— either democratic or, at worst, bonapartistic...
...It may be necessary here to open a parenthesis...
...no definition of a classless society includes a country relying for its defense on a huge apparatus of specialists and managers in appointive, non-elective offices...
...Precisely...
...Thus the informers, a class invented to destroy the commonwealth, and never enough controlled even by legal penalties, were stimulated by rewards...
...Better," he said, "to subvert the constitution than to remove its guardians...
...Least of all Mr...
...A totalitarian democracy is just as thinkable as totalitarian dictatorships which so far have been our experience...
Vol. 1 • July 1954 • No. 3
