Russia and the Monthly Review
H, I.
IT WAS ONLY after the second world war that one became aware of a new political type—the public figure who spoke favorably of Russia not because he had illusions about the nature of...
...subhuman...
...superhu man," was in "its methods and attitude toward the rights and dignity of the individual...
...Sweezy and Huberman systematically deny the crucial significance of the one party dictatorship...
...For them the process of constructing socialism is not that of mankind, through self-conscious and fraternal participation, building a new society with new values and ideals...
...Marx insisted that societies must be seen in their social totality, he called his Capital a study in political economy, he measured the claims of societies by their concrete human consequences...
...Authoritarians of the Left," DISSENT, Winter 1955.] Predictably, the recent events in Rus sia have given the Monthly Review group a rather heady stimulant...
...Couldn't there also be, for exam ple, an evolution toward a no party system with novel forms of political representation and expres sion...
...Marx said that the great evil of capitalism was that it "alienated" man from his work and his self...
...Left authoritarianism" prefers to neglect the question of whether the economic expansion it finds so admirable in Russia has led to an increase or decrease in the "alienation" of the Russian workers and intellectuals...
...In France the breed is numerous...
...But now, in the work of such writers as Frederick Schumann, the traditional democratic rhetoric was brushed aside and Stalinism justified as a power structure that was functional and enduring...
...In a long editorial in their July-August issue the editors celebrate the Khrushchev dispensation and declare their continuing faith in the "socialism" of Russia...
...it is simply an economic process that occurs independently of the will or intervention of the masses of the population...
...But Sweezy and Huberman, can they be shocked...
...Why...
...Left authoritarianism," eager to find some grounds for declaring Russian society "progressive" and for anticipating its "democratization," must abstract the element of industrial productivity from its social context...
...it is necessarily felt at every level of Russian social life, from the street to the factory, from the school to the family...
...A nation tortured by the political barbarism that Sweezy and Huberman themselves acknowledge, must surely be wracked by suppressed conflicts that require free public expression through a multiplicity of parties...
...In a previous DISSENT Lewis Coser and I attempted to describe the "left authoritarian...
...One had become accustomed to Stalinists who sincerely believed that Russia was a democratic and proletarian state...
...But it requires no great profundity to understand that what matters is the relative valuation given to such factors...
...It may expedite the argument to follow if I quote a passage: Marx spoke of "the categorical imperative that all conditions must be revolutionized in which man is a debased, an enslaved, an abandoned, a contemptible being...
...As civilized Americans they would no doubt like to see more than one party in Russia, particularly if they could persuade Khrushchev to agree to it...
...They, whose loyalty to Russian "socialism" rests upon a self-validating theory about the virtues of industrialization in a nationalized economy...
...The intellectual tendency of "left authoritarianism" prefers to speak of the tempo of Russian industrialization...
...Without becoming infatuated with the vision of Howard Fast as a democrat, I can believe that in some curious way Fast had illusions about Stalinist Russia: that is, as an orthodox Stalinist he seems really to have been shocked by Khrushchev's speech...
...but let that pass...
...there are sufficient examples in England...
...Geography, climate, language, the dictator's digestion, the phases of the moon, etc., etc...
...THEY wso wEga never deluded cannot now be shocked...
...IT WAS a stroke of bad luck for Sweezy and Huberman that as their reaffirmation of faith in Khrushchev's "socialism" was reaching the newsstands, the revolt of the Poznan workers broke out...
...Given such a conception it becomes unnecessary to inquire what the mode and quality of life is in this "socialist" Russia, or what the concrete relationships are between rulers and ruled...
...and in America the group centered around the Monthly Review, a magazine edited by Paul Sweezy and Leo Huberman, provides pure specimens...
...Though in the past they seldom brought themselves to more than the faintest criticism of Russian despotism, they now feel free to declare that Stalinist Russia, while "in its aims and achievement...
...This might indeed turn out to be the case, but we think it shows a certain lack of political imagina tion to assume that it must be so...
...With the ruthlessness of a Stalinist regime, the Polish government struck down the workers of Poznan...
...And that is one reason why, even now, they do not go one step beyond Khrushchev in raising questions about the past: they permit themselves the boldness of calling the murder of the Yiddish writers "outright barbarism" (why did they not say this a few years ago...
...And that is why the Trotskyist argument (which Sweezy and Huberman vulgarize by omitting Trotsky's revolutionary passion) that Russia needs not a social but a political revolution, is so devoid of meaning: for in a country like Russia a political revolution, if it were at all genuine or extensive, would be a social revolution...
...I. H...
...For in regard to a country with a statified economy it becomes absurd to suppose that the lack of democracy can be confined to the political or administrative side of things...
...b) "Many people in the West, in cluding not a few left-wing social ists, take it for granted that the essential change [toward making Russia a democratic society] will have to be a shift from a one party toward a multi-party system...
...They simply do not understand that in a society where the state owns the basic means of production, the absence of democracy, far from being a mere casual inconvenience, determines the fundamental nature of the regime...
...Not once in their lengthy editorial do Sweezy and Huberman say a word about the Russian (or the Polish) working class...
...And here we could see the true image of the kind of radicalism represented by Sweezy and his friends: the radicalism of the blackjack that smashes the skulls of the martyrs of east Berlin, of Vorkuta, of Poznan...
...What is crucial, after all, is not the number of parties but that people should have the right and the habit of thinking freely and creatively .. . As for a) : To be sure, there are many other factors besides the number of parties which affect the policies of a regime...
...But as radicals caught up in the technological interpretation of history they are not excessively disturbed by the fact that Russia remains a one party dictatorship, They write: affect the policies and evolution of the regime...
...people who in some corrupted way still gave formal allegiance to democratic and humane values...
...What should not be allowed to pass is that with all their claim to being independent, Sweezy and Huberman even now do not go as far as Togliatti went in raising crucial questions about the nature of the Russian state, nor are they capable of a fraction of the indignation expressed by Howard Fast after Khrushchev's "revelations...
...One might won der how a society which in its attitude toward the dignity of the individual was subhuman, could also be superhuman in its aims...
...but still have not a word to utter about the Moscow trials, the murder of Trotsky or any other Stalinist atrocity...
...With time there arose an even more dubious type: one who suffered no illusions about democracy in Russia, found acceptable the rationalization of Stalinism in terms of "power," but then—and here is the pinch of novelty—identified this mode of thought with socialism...
...the means of production are nationalized because Russia is socialist...
...They do, however, try to cope with the question of the one-party dictatorship...
...Russia is socialist because the means of production are nationalized...
...But does it make any sense to speak of such a development in regard to the Russia that Sweezy and Huberman themselves describe as having been ruled by "oriental despotism" and in which the "oriental" may partly have been eliminated but the "despotism" remains...
...it is not a venture in human self-emancipation...
...Emphasis added.] Which leads us to b) . No doubt it is conceivable that in a socialist future the party system might "wither away" and democracy achieve a new depth...
...a) "There are many other factors beside the number of parties which FOR ALL THOSE who think like Sweezy and Huberman, political democracy is a luxury that would be very nice to have in "socialist" Russia but is not at all indispensable...
...IT WAS ONLY after the second world war that one became aware of a new political type—the public figure who spoke favorably of Russia not because he had illusions about the nature of Stalinism but beause he did not...
...but in doing so they are contraverted by an authority that knows better, namely Pravda: As for our country, the Communist party has been and will be the only master of the minds, and thoughts, the spokesman, leader and organizer of the people...
Vol. 3 • September 1956 • No. 4
