EUROCOMMUNISM-MYTH, HOPE, DELUSION?:THE EUROCOMMUNIST SCHISM

...are less and less being made in the name of a better Communism...

...This, alas, will not help them, if they happened to get power in existing international circumstances, in a position slightly heretical and slightly rebellious, yet essentially as members of the same Communist fraternity...

...In Communist countries at the moment we are not dealing with "liberalized" or "democratized" variants of Communism but essentially with an ailing Stalinism...

...There is no exception to the rule that wherever Communism has come to power, no matter in which way (internal forces or foreign domination), not only were civil liberties and democratic institutions done away with, but a totalitarian form of social organization was imposed...

...Since both in the Soviet Union and in its East European dependencies the ruling parties, aware of their ideological defeat, try to find some contact with the people by means of nationalist slogans (Great Power-glory in Russia, fear-of-Russia in Soviet protectorates), they themselves reinforce the disintegration of the entire system...

...Each of them has developed some specific forms of economic and social administration...

...The end of the Communist faith was the end of the so-called Revisionist movement, which believed for a while that both democratic principles of social life and intellectual and moral standards could be restored within both the Communist idea and its system...

...And it is far from true that mere historical contingencies were responsible for the actual process leading from doctrine to its LeninistStalinist embodiment...

...It is plausible to believe that Lenin meant what he wrote in State and Revolution a few weeks before October 1917...

...As to the people who are outside the power system and do not take part in the squabbles of political cliques, I believe that they naturally sympathize with these tendencies, not because they share a specific Communist creed but because they welcome everything that undermines the all-embracing Soviet hegemony...

...In European Communist countries the Communist ideology is practically dead in the sense that nobody, neither the rulers nor the ruled, takes it seriously any more...

...So far, we haven't seen any Communism in power except in LeninistStalinist, totalitarian versions...

...34 But Communism is a matter of power, not of intellectual discussion...

...or it could mean that they will last 35 until the next "historical stage," which is bound to come when the moment is "ripe...

...To be sure, the Italian Communists have no illusions as to what the Soviet system really is...

...However, since the word has been monopolized by the Soviet system of power, those who want to use it with a significantly different meaning have to make a complete revision of their ideological principles...

...If some of the leaders prove still to be reluctant to accept this dependence, they will simply be replaced by others, who are more reliable...

...Otherwise their cautions and gentle critiques will remain artificial and unconvincing...

...The so-called de-Stalinization, forced upon Communist states by various economic and political necessities, has not suspended the totalitarian principle...

...Nationalist hostilities are the most powerful factor in the decay of the Soviet sphere of domination...

...It assumed that when the state would take centralized control of all means of production the "government over people" would be replaced by the "administration of things...

...There is little reason to deny that these people mean what they say...

...Berlinguer explains that representative democracy is a "strategic" and not a "tactical" principle...

...In spite of all efforts the Soviet Union failed to impose strictly its patterns in dominated countries...

...So far, we lack empirical proofs that a democratic Communism is at all possible, and all the existing proofs are to the contrary...

...and Dubcek-type leaders, if and when they appear in exceptional circumstances, may count on a very large popular support, which however does not imply that their supporters are Communists of yet another brand, but simply that they want more freedom...

...The principle of totalitarianism can achieve perfection only where "the means of production" are entirely state-owned, otherwise some forms of economic activity remain in the hands of individuals, and some segments of the society keep a certain measure of independence...

...Thus, granted all their schismatic tendencies, they still seem to answer affirmatively on the following crucial questions...

...There will never be a democracy for workers when human and democratic rights are denied to society as a whole...

...3. Are the Leninist principles of Party life valid...

...That is to say, the doctrine was innocent or became "distorted" as a result of a whim of History which offered only an improper testing ground for the experiment...

...Although the absolutely perfect totalitarian system (including the state control of all types of human private relationships) has nowhere been quite achieved, the Communist form of ruling has always had the strong and persistent tendency to reach this perfection and to nationalize all aspects of life...

...The point is that as long as the schism is not completely consummated in political and ideological terms, it does not depend on Italian Cummunists whether they will be able to keep their independence from the Soviet Union once in power...

...Curiously enough East Europe's colonized countries might have more room for economic maneuvers because the local Communist authority there has the ultimate fall-back guarantee in the form of Soviet tanks...

...Otherwise, in the case of a complete and irrevocable split (which is possible, yet by no means certain), one should ask what the word "Communism" would mean as opposed to social democracy (provided that the schismatics remain faithful to their promises...

...It implied the abrogation of a balanced division of governmental powers and the end of democratically controlled institutions...

...1. Is there such a thing as an international Communist movement of which the PCI is a segment and the CPSU another...

...It still remains absolutely indispensable to the ruling party, for it remains (in the absence of democratic forms of representation) the only basis for the legitimacy of a one-party tyranny...

...The mass support given to the military coup in Portugal in 1974 did not mean that most Portuguese shared specific political ideas of General Spinola, only that they wanted to get rid of the old system...

...It implied—openly, not implicitly—a dictatorship governed not by Law but by sheer violence only...

...The Eurocommunist position remains roughly this: "We are for representative democracy and for freedom, yet we believe that the Soviet system is the highest form of society achieved so far by mankind, even though not entirely perfect and not quite free from mistakes...

...After all, most of the basic words in our political vocabulary have changed meaning so as to become unrecognizable (this includes such words as "socialism," "liberalism," "democracy," "equality," "freedom," "justice," etc...

...Still, we cannot exclude that a new variant of regenerated Social Democracy could ultimately emerge out of the Communist schism...

...Not everywhere, it is fair to add, was it imposed with the same efficacity...

...FOURTH: Eurocommunism may emerge but so Jar it has not...

...As long as they are not, the question of which version of Communism will prevail in the case of Communists coming to power in Italy is a matter of strength...

...I believe, however, that the question of the "sincerity" of Italian Communist leaders is not of great importance in assessing the prospects of this movement...

...These differences are tolerated, to a certain extent, as long as the One-party despotism is not threatened and Soviet domination remains unquestioned...

...Nor do I doubt that it is not exactly the aspiration of Berlinguer to share the lot of Dubcek...

...but this will not help them either...

...And what do they think about the remarks of M. Marchais who offers East European "People's Democracies" as models of a multiparty system...

...2. Is the Soviet Union, despite some "errors" and mistaken moves, a "higher" form of social organization when compared to Western democracies, and does it deserve support in any conflict with the West...

...The sources in history and ideology are various...

...The attitudes of the ruling elites in Sovietdominated lands seem to be ambiguous...

...Demands for human rights, civil liberties, for freedom of speech, of education, freedom of trade unions (etc...

...If the answer of Italy's Communist leaders is indeed affirmative, there is no reason to expect that Communist rule in Italy (not to speak of France) would not tend toward the Soviet-type despotism, no matter how Sr...

...It thus assumed that since "negative" freedom (i.e., freedom defined by the sphere of decisions left to the individuals by the social organizations) implied conflicting interests, it would lose all meaning in the classless and thus (by definition) unified society...

...Yet they can nourish this sympathy only in the depths of their hearts, and it means little in practical terms...

...Many politicians mean what they say and, at the same time, fail to realize that their ideas, taken as a whole, might be incoherent or self-contradictory...

...but the Soviet Union has no such outside guarantee and it risks more in case of a deep crisis...

...Not every variety of despotism is totalitarian...

...WHAT GOOD AND SUFFICIENT reasons are there for those who do accept the values of a democratic socialist ideal to lend credence to the professions of the Eurocommunists...

...In the perfect totalitarian society no form of human activity— economic, intellectual, political—is allowed unless planned or permitted by the state, and human individuals are considered the nationalized property of the state...

...the Soviet type, the only known form of Communist power), its original Leninist ideology was perfectly adapted to its needs...

...On the one hand, their power hinges obviously on Soviet backing, and they cannot possibly wish national sovereignty for their countries...

...SECOND: Communism functions according to its own principles...

...What this fraternal love implied so far among Communists, everybody knows, including the Eurocommunists...

...One of the salient features of this social form is the abrogation of Law—not necessarily in the 33 sense of rules or procedures in public matters but in the sense of a device that mediates between individual and the state, and thus limits the state's power in dealing with individual human beings...

...The latter consists in the constant tendency to destroy all the existing social ties and all spontaneous crystallizations of social life, and to replace them with state-imposed organizations...

...As to the Eurocommunist leaders, their position is ambiguous as much by their utterances as by their silences...

...It implied that the "abolition of private property" equals the "abolition of classes," and with the end of "classes" the abolition of conflicts of interest and the establishment of the unity of society...

...Briefly, then, neither the heresy nor the schism has been consummated...

...That Marxist Communism would mean, once applied, the stateownership of human persons and an extreme despotic form of government, this had been clearly perceived by many anarchist writers of the 19th century, long before History made its allegedly unfortunate choice of terrain to apply the new idea...

...Are the bureaucrats of the Soviet political, military, and police machine (an unprecedented concentration of power in modern history) "class brothers" in the eyes of PCI leaders...

...Words themselves are not important...

...On the other hand, they prefer less, and not more, Soviet interference in their internal affairs and they can, therefore, sympathize to a certain degree with the tendencies toward autonomy among the Western Communist parties...

...NEVERTHELESS, IT APPEARS that the schism in its present, very moderate form could exert a certain influence on the disintegration of the Communist bloc...

...This entirely conformed to the Marxist doctrine, which assumed that in "the final analysis" all the important social conflicts were rooted in class division, and that such class division would cease to exist once state or "public" ownership of the means of production is effected...

...THIRD: The ideology is dead, yet indispensable...

...Except for a small percen36 tage of the population with vested interests in the present regime, all strata of the society prefer a less rigid rather than a more rigid Communism...

...For the time being, Eurocommunists are unable—no matter for what reasons: the fear of split in the Party, the belief that the schism will be better effected if made step-by-step, various forms of dependence on the Soviets, ideological considerations—to recognize openly the Soviet state for what it is: not only a class society with an extremely rigid hierarchy of privileges, but a despotic, totalitarian and imperialist system, highly oppressive in all domains of social life, political, economic, national, religious and intellectual...

...and if, on the morrow of October, his semianarchist vision was seen to be what it had always been—sheer fantasy— this was not because he had lied but because this vision was utterly impracticable...

...Since, however, the centralized administration of all the productive processes includes the administration of the human labor force, i.e., all of the people—Marxist Communism, so conceived, could only become a labor camp...

...I take it for granted that socalled Eurocommunism is a significant phenomenon in the decomposition of Communism, and certainly not some devilish Moscow plot...

...After having made all the well-known declarations about democracy, after having abandoned the slogan of the "dictatorship of the proletariat" (i.e., despotism of the party apparatus), after having proclaimed the principle of the independence of Communist parties and thus denied Soviet rule over the "movement" and, at last, after having rejected Soviet standpoints on a few important issues (in particular, the 1968 invasion of Dubcek's Czechoslovakia), they still remain within "the movement" as defined by the overwhelming preponderance of the Soviet imperialistic state...

...This last statement could mean that democratic rules would be valid for a longer, not a shorter, time, under Communist rule...

...for they can survive only as vassals...

...Let "Eurocommunists" first prove that they really distrust and detest despotism and would resist despotism and imperialism where despotism and imperialism are strongest...

...Whatever may be right in various interpretations emphasizing the importance of specifically Russian traditions in shaping the "Asiato-Communism" (i.e...

...People think in terms of representative democracy, of national values, of religious ideas, of material well-being—not at all in terms of return to "genuine Marxism," let alone "true Leninism...