PART V:

 

HIGHLIGHTS AND DEFINITION

 

[This is Chapter Twenty-Seven of Murphey's book Socialist Thought.]

 

Chapter 27

SOME HISTORICAL HIGHLIGHTS

This book has sought to explore the sociological origins of socialist thought and to compare and analyze its main concepts as one of the massive systems that mediate social reality.

Although this has been extensive and I think valuable, the reader needs to be conscious of the dimensions that it leaves untouched.  No book can seek to accomplish everything.  I have not, for example, given a chronological history of socialism, acquainting the reader with the details about personalities and movements.

Another exclusion, which is of major importance, is that I have not examined closely the de facto socialist regimes.  They are, after all, the living embodiments of socialist thought.  The subject is simply too enormous for anyone who is not totally consumed by it to understand definitively or to relate adequately to the more theoretical material.

There are many things an educated person should know about socialism and its history.  I see one of the purposes of this series of books as being to supply that awareness.  We have, in fact, covered many of them.  The present chapter will acquaint the reader with others.   Since the treatment given to them will be brief, the reader may be best advised to consider them as simply having been "flagged for future study."

I have grouped them into certain major categories:

. The main movements and schools of thought.  My list will be as inclusive as most - and more so; but  any such listing is presumptuous in that it inevitably suffers from countless omissions.  Many movements and schools of thought are left out that may prove to be just as important as those that are included.

. The main conferences and "programs" that are prominently mentioned in socialist literature as having been associated with ideological turning-points come next.

. The various Communist and socialist "Internationals" that have existed since the First International was formed in 1864.

. The main "shocks" that have jarred socialism at various points during its history.  These are important if we are to understand the loss of vital energy that socialism has suffered since, say, the Russian Revolution.

Movements and Schools of Thought

Diggers.  The Diggers were a movement in England in the mid-seventeenth century led by Gerrard Winstanley and William Everard.  They are known as proponents of "agrarian communism" because they advocated the communal cultivation of wasteland.

Levellers. This movement existed at the same time as the Diggers, also in England.  The difference between the Diggers and the Levellers is said to be significant in the Third World today because of its relevance to agrarian reform: the Diggers wanting communal ownership, the Levellers wanting many individually-owned units.1   The Levellers mainly pressed for democratizing reforms, including manhood suffrage and frequent sessions of Parliament.

Chartism.  This movement in England is given its name from the "People's Charter" that was presented to Parliament in 1838.  Their democratizing proposals, which included universal suffrage, were not in themselves socialistic, since classical liberals such as John Bright were also pushing for democracy; but Lichtheim tells us of the Chartists' “hatred of capitalism and liberalism.”2

Fabian Socialism.  The Fabian Society, formed in England in 1884, has consisted of many of England's leading intellectuals, including George Bernard Shaw and Sidney Webb.  The Society is named after Roman general Fabius Maximus Cunctator, who used delaying tactics against Hannibal, because its members have favored a reformist, gradualistic movement of England into socialism.

Guild Socialism.  This sought to adapt syndicalism to England through use of the medieval guild.   The movement was inspired by intellectuals, notably G. D. H. Cole, and was supported by trade unions.   It faded for several reasons, most especially the competing rise of Russian Communism, after World War I.

Left Hegelians.  Beginning in the early 1840s, several thinkers developed materialistic interpretations of Hegel’s dialectical philosophy.  Prominent among them were Moses Hess, Arnold Ruge, Ferdinand Lassalle, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.   Marxism is the primary form of this adaptation.

Right Hegelians.  This term has no general acceptation.  Sometimes it is used so broadly that it includes "all Hegelians who are not Left Hegelians"; i.e., all who don't adopt a materialistic frame of reference.  Karl Popper has suggested a more limited and more sinister variant, however, when he has said that "the left wing replaces the war of nations which appears in Hegel’s historicist scheme by the war of classes, the extreme right replaces it by the war of races; but both follow him more or less consciously.”3

German Volkish Thought.  In the second half of the nineteenth century and the early twentieth, a mixture of German nationalism with the mysticism and anti-modernism of the preceding Romantic period led to the "Volkish movement," which forged a powerful myth of the ancient German "folk."   The leading thinkers were Langbehn and LaGarde.  The worldview was widely popularized by novels, so that Volkish ideas were basic to much German thinking by the time Hitler started his climb to power.   Hitler's "national socialism" was rooted in it.

German Youth Movement.  This was an ideologically diverse movement among German young people, mostly bourgeois, that was similar to the American New Left of the 1960s in its countercultural repudiation of bourgeois values.  Its members, called the Wandervogel, centered their activity around hiking, although after World War I there was more of a paramilitary flavor.  The movement ended when Hitler, who detested its lack of discipline and of coherent ideology, absorbed it into the Hitler Youth in 1933.

German Historical School.  Composed of the "socialists of the (professorial) chair," the School spanned three generations in German university life during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.  Schmoller and Sombart were two of its leading figures (although Sombart later became a Marxist and then a devotee of Hitler).  Its members emphasized the movement of culture through a series of phases, and in the Methodenstreit (an argument over methodology with the  Austrian School of Economics) denounced classical economics as merely a statement of the relationships within a passing bourgeois phase.  The School's members were advisors to Bismarck, who instituted extensive social legislation.  Most histories of socialism don't include the Historical School among the socialist factions, probably because Marx and Lassalle seemed so thoroughly to preempt the field in Germany at the time.

Bismarck's "State Socialism."  Harrington says the social democrats in Germany called "Bismarck's welfare programs and nationalizations . . . ‘state socialism.’”4   The program amounted clearly to a cooptation of socialism, but commentators differ sharply over whether it should be labelled “socialist.”

German Social Democrats.  The Social Democratic Party was formed in Germany in 1875 as a result of the Gotha Program, which effected a merger between groups led by Lassalle and by Bebel and Liebknecht.   The Party was generally Lassallean until it adopted Marxism in 1891 in the Erfurt Program.  The thrust was heavily Marxist until World War I, although there has always been a tension between its reformist elements (led by Bernstein) and its revolutionary members (represented by Kautsky).  The more committed revolutionaries abandoned the Party in favor of the Communist Party after the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917.  After World War II, the Party shifted directions again: at the Bad Godesberg conference in 1959, it rejected Marxism, indicating that it seeks to keep but to improve a system of free competition.  In 1966, the Party entered into a governing coalition with the Christian Democrats; and in 1969 it became allied with the Free Democrats, electing Willy Brandt as Chancellor.  Helmut Schmidt became Chancellor in 1974 and still holds that office as this is written in 1982.

German National Socialism.  Intensely anti-bourgeois, but also anti-Semitic and anti-Marxist, Nazism arose as a militant expression of German Volkish thinking, nationalism and war-inspired anger after Germany's defeat in World War I.  The Marxist interpretation of it is that it represents "the bourgeoisie in extremis."   In the author's opinion, this is a serious misinterpretation, since Nazism detested individualistic liberalism and democratic, limited government and is best characterized as a form of nationalistic, racialist socialism.

Italian Fascism.  This movement is so identified with Benito Mussolini that its tenets can be illustrated best through his thought.  As a young man, Mussolini was both a Marxist and a revolutionary syndicalist.  He rose quickly within the Italian Socialist Party and before World War I was editor of its paper Avanti!.   He split from the Party, however, when he became disillusioned by the Party's ineffectual efforts in organizing revolution.   After fighting as a soldier in World War I, Mussolini founded the fascist movement in 1919.  He became head of state in Italy in 1922 when his Black Shirts conducted the "March on Rome."  He established the "corporative state" as described in the following entry.

Corporative State.  In 1934 Mussolini established twenty-two "Corporazioni," each governing a part of the nation's production cycle.  The Corporazioni were composed of representatives of capital, labor, the government, the Fascist Party, and technicians.  A National Council coordinated their activities and reported to Mussolini.

Russian populism.  Known as Narodism, Populism was the form revolutionary socialism took in Russia before the general acceptance, through Plekhavov, of Marxism.  Mostly a movement of the intelligentsia, it sought support from an unresponsive peasantry.  The Populists favored a society based on the medieval mir, a peasant village commune.

Russian Social Democrats.  The Russian Social Democratic Party consisted of small groups of intellectuals who had little contact with workers or peasants.  It split into the Menshevik and Bolshevik factions at its Second Congress in the summer of 1903.

Bolsheviks and Mensheviks.  At the Second Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Party in 1903, Lenin pressed hard for acceptance of his doctrines seeking to make the Communist party a vanguard of the revolution.  He wanted a hierarchical party structure supported by the principle of "centralism," which would require disciplined obedience to decisions made by the party leadership.  When a split occurred over these points, Lenin's group became known as the Bolsheviks, the others the Mensheviks.  The Mensheviks continued until they were crushed by Lenin soon after the Bolshevik Revolution.

Russian Social Revolutionaries.  Early in the twentieth century a split occurred within the Russian Left between those who advocated terrorism and those who wanted a coordinated, disciplined revolution.  The advocates of terror became the Social Revolutionaries.  The group continued until the trial of its leaders by the Bolsheviks in 1922.

Marxism-Leninism.  As the name suggests, Marxism-Leninism can be defined as "Marxism as extended and interpreted by Lenin."  Difficulties arise, though, when we realize that Lenin's thinking varied during his lifetime.  Although assorted Marxists can claim to be Marxist-Leninist, the name is mainly claimed by those who embrace the Soviet Union's official version (as it may be from time to time), which is adhered to by Soviet-bloc Communists throughout the world.  A succinct statement of this viewpoint may be found in the "Great Soviet Encyclopedia."  The entry there treats Marxism-Leninism as an organic body of thought to which many people have contributed.  Among Lenin's contributions, it lists his theories about knowledge, his analysis of capitalist "imperialism," and his stress on the role of the Communist party.

Stalinism.  The dictatorship under Stalin is generally considered an aberration among contemporary socialist authors, who accordingly make a “special case” out of it.  Stalin's victory over his competitors is seen as the victory of bureaucracy and of a "cult of personality."  Konrad and Szelenyi indicate that the Stalinist period was one of rule by an unthinkingly loyal elite in which the political police then served as an elite within the elite.  Beginning in 1928, Stalin sought the rapid industrialization of the Soviet Union.  He advocated “socialism in one country,” being more anxious to strengthen the Soviet base than to foment immediate revolutions elsewhere.  His administration made continued use of "prophylactic mass terror" in which millions were killed, starved or imprisoned, including a substantial proportion of the earlier Bolshevik revolutionaries themselves.

Trotskyism.  Leon Trotsky lost out to Stalin in the struggle to succeed Lenin, went into exile and was eventually assassinated by one of Stalin's agents.  Trotsky viewed himself as representing the left wing of Bolshevism as distinct from Stalin's centrist wing.   He advocated "permanent revolution," which included rapid industrialization, the elevation of the proletariat over the peasantry, and active support for revolutionary movements throughout the world.  Thus Trotskyism is taken to mean a more messianic form of Marxism-Leninism following the Russian Revolution than was adopted by Stalin.

Utopian Socialism.  This term can refer to any socialist theory that points ahead to a form of socialist society that is described in the theory.   Much more frequently during the past century, however, it has been used in the sense in which Marx used it, which was to refer to all socialist theories that discuss the socialist alternative without including the elaborate dialectical theory of history that to the Marxist is so essential to understanding the dynamics of social development.

Scientific Socialism.  Marx claimed that his theory was "scientific," rather than "utopian," because he properly understood the underlying causal factors that produce class struggle and social change.  There are empirical, as distinguished from purely dogmatic, versions of Marxism that may legitimately claim some connection with "science," but it should be noticed that the theory does not lend itself to a process of true prediction-and-verification.  It is also reductionist in its exclusion of many important variables in social causation.

Revisionism.  In the terminology of anyone who calls himself a Marxist, a "revisionist" is anyone who purports to be Marxist but who does not adhere to the correct version.  Thus, each faction of Marxists considers the others "revisionist," a term of deprecation.  More specifically, the term is used to refer to the peaceable reformism advocated by Eduard Bernstein in Germany at the turn of the century.

Communism.  The term "communism" has often been used interchangeably with "socialism."  Since the Bolshevik Revolution, "Communist" has often referred specifically to a member of a Communist party.  As used within Marxism, "communism" is the final stage of society.  The state and party wither away; everyone produces "according to his ability" and receives "according to his needs."  Post-revolutionary society has an interim period, however, called "socialism" in which there is still a failure fully to adopt the collectivist ethos.  Here, everyone is to be paid according to the work he has done, since the willingness to produce to ones full ability cannot be presumed.  The "dictatorship of the proletariat," headed by the Communist Party, serves as the bridge during the period of "socialism."   The Soviet Union considers itself still to be in the "socialist" phase, although its leaders periodically predict the coming of the "communist" period within a few years.

Mutualism.  This is the socioeconomic model favored by Proudhon that was to involve cooperative enterprises and extensions of credit.  Its exact content does not appear clearly in the literature.  It is considered an anti-statist model of socialism. 

Anarchism.  In its more generic sense, “anarchism" is any theory or system in which the state is to be abolished.  Anarchists presuppose that society can operate satisfactorily on the basis of voluntary mechanisms.  Anarchists differ among themselves over the types of mechanisms they favor and over the methods to be used to attain anarchy.  There is anarcho-communism, organized through some type of collectives; anarcho-syndicalism, organized through trade unions; anarcho-individualism, in which all constraints on the individual are opposed; and anarcho-capitalism, which favors private property and a market economy.   Proudhon is considered a father of anarcho-communism, Sorel of anarcho-syndicalism. Left-wing anarchists were active between 1860 and World War I, often using terrorist methods.  Anarcho-syndicalism was the basis for Mussolini's fascism, and anarchism was a major ingredient in the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s.   Anarcho-syndicalism was important in the 1968 General Strike in France.  Marx's projected “classless society” is anarcho-communist in inspiration.

Syndicalism.  This refers to a society in which the life of the nation would be organized around the trade union.  Schumpeter argued that it is more than mere revolutionary trade unionism, saying that it is highly anti-intellectual and involves the workman's own seizure of the shop in which he works.  It is doubtful that this is fully correct, however, since syndicalism has had substantial intellectual work done on its behalf.   Sorel, with his belief in the General Strike and the value of myth, was the prime mover; Mussolini in Italy advanced the cause of a national-syndicalism.

Saint-Simonism.  Saint-Simon (1760-1825) favored a centrally planned industrial society in which the state would be the sole proprietor.  There was to be a social hierarchy, with the industrial chiefs controlling and with spiritual direction given by scientific intellectuals.

Fourierism.  Fourier (1772-1837) advocated voluntaristic communities called "phalanges" situated in a common dwelling, the "phalanstery."  Each person would be a proprietor; distribution would not be totally equal.  Fourier favored “passional attraction” and many of his followers became “free love” enthusiasts.  Fourier is a source for the branch of socialist thought that favors communal living.  This was strong within the American New Left in the 1960s.

Social Democracy.  This involves "a belief that social and economic reform designed to benefit the less privileged should be pursued within a framework of democracy, liberty and the parliamentary process," according to Paterson and Thomas.5   Crosland has listed the elements as "political liberalism, the mixed economy, the welfare state, Keynesian economics and a belief in equality."  Paterson and Thomas point out that the term is often used to mean any form of democratic socialism.  In these usages, the term clearly is not being used to refer back to the turn-of-the-century thrust of the German Social Democratic Party.  Instead, it relates to the much less militant viewpoint of the social democratic parties in Europe within recent years.

Social market economy.  Harrington reports that since World War II social democrats in Europe have “adopted the idea of a 'social market economy' in which the state controls, but does not own, the crucial means of production.”6   (See item 2 in Chapter 21 of this book.)   It is significant, however, that free market economist Arthur Shenfield has said in a letter to me that "in fact it is the system devised by the neoclassical liberals Roepke, Mueller-Armack and Eucken, and put into practice with great success by Dr. Erhard . . . It was the brain-child of anti-socialists . . . It is true that the German Social Democrats have accepted it, (with, of course) some considerable amendment." 

Eurocommunism.  After warning that there is no "unified phenomenon" to which the term can apply, George Ross defines Eurocommunism as "Western European Communist Parties' pursuing United Front strategies without strategic subordination to Soviet foreign policy."  He points out that the adaptation by the party in each country is "radically different from others.”7   The term refers to the drift rightward by the Communist parties in Western Europe that has resulted from the loss of Soviet hegemony.  This movement involves a commitment, sometimes firm and sometimes tenuous, to parliamentary democracy.  The overall aim of such parties, however, is said to remain the ultimate transformation of capitalist society.

State Socialism.  Harrington defines this as “a strategy of government intervention into the economy, including the nationalization of certain enterprises, for the purpose of shoring up capitalism."8   The term is sometimes used to refer to any socialist doctrine, such as Saint-Simon's, that wants the state to be the central institution.

European New Left.  The New Left arose in Europe after Krushchev's revelations about Stalin at the Twentieth Party Congress in the Soviet Union in 1956.   No longer able to identify with the Soviet Union, but dissatisfied with the "compromises" that social democrats were making with capitalism, the militant Left gravitated toward a Third Worldish point of view.  The New Left Review began publishing in 1960.  The New Left dissipated because of a lack of organization and ideological homogeneity, but made a brief comeback during the disturbances in France in 1968.

American New Left.  C. Wright Mills wrote his famous "Letter to the New Left" in 1960, urging that "the new revolutionary classes were the intellectuals and the students," according to Laslett and Lipset.9   The New Left reached back to virtually all parts of socialist intellectual history for its ideological roots.  It rejected "the Establishment," including American welfare liberalism, and for several years orchestrated a mass protest movement.  Its adherents lacked a consensus, however, over the issues that typically divide socialists: the ultimate model preferred; the methods to be used; and who is to lead.   In 1968 the largest New Left organization, the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), split into three groups.  The movement remained at white heat through May 1970, and then dissipated rapidly.   Most of its followers melded back into the middle class; some continued in underground terrorist groups for a few years; others withdrew into spiritual contemplation and, in Jerry Rubin’s case, masturbatory self-indulgence.

Neo-Marxism.  Throughout the Stalinist era, Marxist ideology was dominated by the dogmatism of the Soviet Union.  With the loss of Soviet hegemony in the late 1950s, Western academic interest in Marxism revived.  The New Left Review played a major role in creating this new academic Marxism.   As with the New Left in general, neo-Marxism has been torn by differences.  There has been considerable evaluation of the revolutionary potential of the "working-class" in the United States, with some but not all of the neo-Marxists concluding that that potential is slight.


Certain Declarations and Programs

 

Gotha Program (1875).   In this year the German Social Democratic Party was formed by the merger of a group headed by Lassalle with one founded by Bebel and Liebknecht.  The resulting Gotha Program largely reflected Lassalle's thinking, in that it saw the state as the instrument for achieving socialism and called for producers' cooperatives.

 

Erfurt Program (1891).   The German Social Democratic Party swung clearly to Marx at the Erfurt Congress.  The resulting Erfurt Program, however, contained a "synthesis of revolutionary and reformist tendencies," allowing continued division.11

 

Stuttgart Resolution (1907).  The Second International affirmed its belief that nationalistic passions were instruments of bourgeois manipulation.  Proletarians were urged to identify with one another, regardless of nation, and not with the nation-state.  Disillusionment set in in 1914 when the workers and most intellectuals threw themselves into World War I on behalf of their respective countries.

 

Frankfurt Declaration (1952).  The Socialist International declared that it accepted a mixed economy.  It no longer considered it necessary to nationalize all industry.

 

20th Soviet Party Congress (1956).   It was here that Krushchev gave his secret speech denouncing Stalinism and detailing its abuses.

 

Bad Godesberg Conference (1959).   The German Social-Democratic Party adopted a new program that in effect abandoned Marxism.  It shifted the Party's appeal to be to "all laboring people," not just to the proletariat; and it adopted Christian ethics, humanism and classical philosophy as the "primary source of values" for the Party.  Private property was accepted and the emphasis placed on reforming rather than abolishing capitalism.


The Internationals

 

The First International. Called the "Working Man's International Association," the First International was formed in London with Marx's active participation in 1864. The headquarters were later moved to New York City. The organization was disbanded in 1872 because of frictions brought on in part by the Franco-Prussian War and by the split between anarchists and non-anarchists.

 

The Second International.   Formed in 1889, the Second International continued until World War I.  

It was torn during its first decade over the effort to disavow the anarchists and their General Strike weapon.  The Marxists won a victory over the gradualists at the Amsterdam Congress in 1904.  In 1907 the Stuttgart Resolution declared the international solidarity of the working class.  The organization's dissolution came about in part because of the trauma of seeing so many socialists support their respective countries during World War I.  The Bolshevik Revolution split the world Left, setting the stage for the Internationals that followed.

 

Third International.  Formed in Moscow by Lenin, this was also called the Communist International and the Comintern.  It was organized in anticipation of the European upheaval that was expected to follow the Bolshevik victory in Russia.  It was controlled by the Soviet Union and followed a Stalinist line.  It ended functionally in 1939 and was formally dissolved in 1943.

 

Cominform.  Its more formal name was the Bureau of Information of the Communist and Workers' Parties.  It was formed in 1947 by the Soviet-bloc Communist Parties to increase Communist militancy in Europe and to consolidate Communist control within Eastern Europe.  Tito of Yugoslavia was expelled in 1948.  The organization was dissolved after Krushchev's anti-Stalinist speech at the 20th Soviet Party Congress.

 

Socialist International.   Following the collapse of the Second International and the Communist Parties' formation of the Comintern, the democratic socialist parties formed their own International at Hamburg in 1923.  It was dissolved in 1940 under the circumstances of World War II, and between 1945 and 1951 took the form of the International Socialist Conference.  The Socialist International was reconstituted as such in 1951 at Frankfurt.  The Frankfurt Declaration of the next year is important for its acceptance of a mixed  

economy.

 

Fourth International.   Formed by Leon Trotsky in the 1930s after his exile from the Soviet Union, it represented Trotskyism as against the Communist International controlled by Stalin.  Although Trotsky was assassinated in 1940, the group has continued since that time, as evidenced by manifestoes issued in recent years.

 

Black International.  This was an organization formed by Bakunin’s followers in 1881.  It was called "black" (representing anarchism) to differentiate it from the First and the Second Internationals.


Shocks Incurred by the Socialist Movement

From one perspective, the very existence of a massive socialist movement in the nineteenth and  twentieth centuries is an amazing fact; and socialism has captured the world in one form or another far more than might have been expected.  A complete history would certainly tell a story of victory as well as of defeat.  We do not, however, have the space in this volume to devote to such a history.

With the warning that it is by no means to be taken as the complete story, I will list several of the "shocks" that have been incurred by socialist ideology and that have contributed so much to the decline of socialist elan.  Socialism has suffered many disillusioning experiences.  It is probable that if it were not for the intellectual and ideological weaknesses of socialism's opponents, we would by now have passed into a new era in which the Left as we have known it would no longer exist.  [Note in 2001: The demise of the Soviet Union and, with it, the world Communist movement, did not end the presence of the Left.  We see it today primarily in the form of the “multiculturalist” ideology, which combines a demographic invasion of European and American societies by other peoples with a militant attack on those societies’ social consensus and historical memory.  As such, it is potentially a much more successful attack on the civilization from which the Left has so long been alienated.  Nothing seems to be standing in its way.]

Revolutionary Year of 1848.  Fried and Sanders say that "the failure of the 1848 revolutions effectively destroyed the incipient socialist movement in Europe . . . By 1850 nearly every species of socialism had disappeared . . . A pall of conservatism, lasting two decades, fell upon the whole continent.  When it lifted, . . . Marxism emerged as the most serious challenge . . . .”l2

World War I.   James Weinstein says that "the almost universal support given their wartime governments by European socialist parties in 1914 shocked and disillusioned millions of Party Members and sympathizers.”13   The expectation that socialists would not support a European war had been raised by the Stuttgart Resolution enacted by the Second International in 1907.   Relating this to American socialists, Daniel Bell writes that "for the first time, the party had to face a stand on a realistic issue of the day.   And on that issue almost the entire intellectual leadership of the party deserted; and, as a result, the back of American socialism was broken.”14   It should be kept in mind, though, that World War I also did a great deal to spawn socialism in other ways: it created the setting in Russia for Lenin's ascension to power; it gave enormous impetus to the "national socialist" movements of Hitler and Mussolini, as well as to Communist activity in Europe (such as the brief Soviet Republic in Munich); and by subjecting the national economic systems to central coordination it laid the foundation for the comment in a country like Britain that “we are all socialists now.”  [Note in 2001: It is of the greatest consequence that we can now see World War I as perhaps the beginning of the end for Western Civilization, which by the advent of the twenty-first century seems to have lost its will to survive.]

Cleavages following the Bolshevik Revolution.   Revolutionary Marxist-Leninists were of course anxious to form their own Communist Parties loyal to the Soviet Union after the Bolshevik victory in Russia.  An example of this is that Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht formed a German Communist Party in 1918.  The Communist International soon came into existence to coordinate the new Communist Parties.  The social democratic parties established the Socialist International.  In a sense, there is vitality in diversity; but fragmentation has been so great a weakness for the Left that these cleavages have become increasingly significant. 

The "social fascist" period.    In 1928 the Sixth Congress of the Comintern declared total hostility toward social democrats, who were then labelled "social fascists."   In Germany thereafter, the Communists united with the Nazis in attempting to overthrow the Social Democratic government of the Weimar Republic.  In the United States, the Communist Party sternly repudiated all "liberals and democratic socialists," and called for a "Soviet America."   The period was one of active antagonism and ended when the Seventh Congress adopted the Popular Front strategy.

Stalin's purges.   Stalin directed mass atrocities that included starving millions of peasants in 1932-3 and incarcerating other millions for long terms in the Gulag concentration camps.   Even today, however, despite Solzhenitsyn, these are not impressed upon the world's consciousness.  Stalin's trial and execution of many thousands of his fellow socialists, however, did a great deal to destroy his following.  Robert Conquest's The Great Terror describes Stalin's purges in the 1930s.  The extent of the purges is indicated by the fact that of the 1,996 delegates to the 1934 Soviet Party Congress, 1,108 were eventually shot.  Bakharin's career offers an excellent illustration: an editor of Isvestia, a member of the Politburo and chairman of the Comintern . . . and then executed in 1938.

The Hitler-Stalin Pact.   In August 1939, the Nazis and the Soviets entered into a "non-aggression pact" with each other.   A secret protocol divided Eastern Europe into spheres of influence between them.   On September 1, Germany attacked Poland, occupying the western half; and this was followed by Stalin's forces'  occupying the eastern half.   A great many Communists around the world were severely disillusioned by Stalin's "breach of faith" in becoming an ally of Hitler.

Cold War abandonment of the Popular Front.   The Soviet Union followed a Popular Front strategy during World War II but returned to a harshly sectarian policy when the war was over.   Each reversal displayed the insincerities of the Soviets and the puppet-like nature of Communists acting under the discipline of the Party.  These increased the disillusionment of the intelligentsia worldwide with the Soviet Union as the inspirational center of socialism.

The Yugoslavian example.   A split occurred in the Soviet bloc in 1948 when Marshal Tito and the Yugoslav Communist Party were expelled from the Cominform, although Tito was "rehabilitated" by Krushchev and Bulganin in 1955.  The Yugoslavian form of socialism, based on "workers' and social self-management," has seemed ideal from the point of view of such "social humanists" as Lucien Goldmann.   Konrad and Szelenyi tell, however, how in the 1960s Yugoslavia became the prototype for class rule by the intellectuals.   In the 1970s, though, the intelligentsia made the fatal mistake of allowing the ruling elite to redirect the self-management system to comport with the elite's interests.  As a result, there were no effective institutions for self-management by workers, while intellectuals in the universities were deprived of their own organizations, which previously had been autonomous.15

The Lysenko Affair.   Marxist theoreticians under Stalin did much to discredit Marxism in the world intellectual community by applying Marxist polylogism to science.  Instead of being unified, science was seen as broken by the class struggle, so that there is proletarian science and bourgeois science.  (This is analogous to Nazi views pertaining to racialist science.)  This discreditable viewpoint was brought to a head when in 1948 the Lenin Academy of Agricultural Sciences endorsed the theory formulated by biologist Trofim D. Lysenko that an organism passes environmentally-acquired properties on to the next generation.  Thereafter, all teaching of Mendel’s theory of heredity-through-genes was suppressed in the Soviet Union as representing "bourgeois science."   Lysenko's supremacy within Soviet biology continued until the mid-1960s.

Krushchev's 1956 speech.  At the 20th Congress of the Soviet Communist Party in 1956, Krushchev delivered a scathing attack on Stalinism.  This was an earthquake, in effect, within the Communist system, and  fragmented the Left throughout the world.  It was a major stimulus to the rise of the New Left.

Hungarian Revolution (1956).   David Caute reports that the Hungarian Revolution "cost the French and British Communist Parties much of their support among intellectuals.”16   Merryn Jones says the Revolution set off a "furious debate throughout the European Left."   Seville and Miliband in Britain are examples of intellectuals who left the Communist Party in 1956, "believing that the Party was now wholly discredited.”17

The "Polish October of 1956."   This was a movement that according to Wlodzimierz Brus sought a socialist renewal and the reversion of power to the working people.18   It went further than the de-Stalinization favored at the same time by Krushchev.   It sought an end to mass terror, the termination of Soviet domination, and a movement away from compulsory collectivization and central bureaucracy.   The effort was defeated without bloodshed by orthodox Marxists within Poland who were supported by the Soviet Union.  In the early 1980s we have seen enormous ferment within Poland in the form of the Solidarity movement.

Leftist Anti-Semitism.   We are told of the "annihilation of Jewish culture in the Soviet Union in the late 1940's.”19   Merryn Jones says that "Israeli complicity in the Suez aggression (in 1956) sowed the first doubts about whether the cause of Israel was necessarily the cause of the Left.”20   Since then, we have seen the alignment of the Soviet bloc and of the Third World against Israel.  From the perspective of the analysis I have made of socialism, this anti-Semitic orientation is potentially disastrous to the future of socialism and indicates a failure on the part of much of the Left to understand the historic roots of socialist thought.  The rise of the Left during the past century and a half has been based on the alienation of the intellectual against bourgeois culture.  It is not too much to say that Jewish thinkers have been a significant part of the world intellectual culture. Their loss by the Left may in the long run undermine to an incalculable degree the socialist intellectual consensus, which we are seeing has been eroded by many other factors as well.

Movement by European social democrats away from both Marxism and nationalization.  In 1952 the Socialist International declared in the Frankfurt Declaration that it no longer considered nationalization of all industry necessary.  At the Bad Godesberg Congress in 1959, the German Social Democratic Party shifted the base of the Party from a Marxist "party of the working class" to one that welcomed the diverse elements of the population.  Marxism was rejected in its broader dimensions and at the same time the Party accepted private property and opted for a program of reform, rejecting thorough-going nationalization.  Similar moves have been made within British socialism, with Gaitskell and Anthony Crosland closely identified with them.

Loss of Soviet hegemony: Eurocommunism.   Although there are significant differences among the Communist Parties within Western Europe, those parties have lost their disciplined ties to the Soviet Union, charting their own respective courses.   In pursuit of "Popular Front" strategies, they have to varying degrees affirmed a commitment to parliamentary processes.

Fragmentation: Persistence of an Extreme Left.  There have been many devotees to revolutionary socialism who at various times during the twentieth century have refused to conform to the lead of the Soviet Union, but who have wanted to remain far more militant than the social democratic parties.   Trotskyites were an early example.   After 1956, the New Left was the main vehicle.   Since the early 1970s, underground terrorist groups have played this role.

Shifts within China.  Each of the twists and turns within Communist China has caused fragmentation within the world Left.   In 1957 Mao briefly encouraged independent thought during the "One Hundred Flowers" episode.  Clinton Rossiter says, however, that "no sooner had Mao's garden begun to grow than most of the new flowers were identified as 'poisonous weeds,' and rooted out savagely."21   The Sino-Soviet split began after Krushchev's denunciation of Stalin in 1956.  The rivalry and suspicion between the two Communist giants has been a major fact since that time.  During the Cultural Revolution between 1966 and 1976 militant Maoists exacted absolute conformity.   In 1977 the eleventh Chinese party congress, however, denounced the Gang of Four, thereby sharply repudiating the Cultural Revolution.   The emphasis since that time has been on modernizing China.  Socialists around the world disagree sharply over the merits of each development.  In an interview in the World Marxist Review in early 1979, Cuba's Fidel Castro vented his displeasure: "In China an opportunist, reactionary policy is being conducted along every line, there is a scandalous betrayal of revolutionary principles and overt, blatant and ever growing collaboration with imperialism and world reaction."22

Czechoslovakia 1968.   The Soviet repression of the liberalizing Dubcek regime in Czechoslovakia in 1968 had damaging repercussions so far as Soviet influence within the world Left was concerned.   Jiri Valenta tells us, for example, that "the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 . . . was detrimental to Soviet interests in the independent African countries as well as in the national liberation movements themselves . . . The invasion . . . created a 'second vacuum' in Africa . . . . “23   Gunter Minnerup tells how Rudolf Bahro, an East German Communist, "names the experience of Czechoslovakia 1968 as the decisive turning point of his political evolution; and from all we know, we can assume that August 1968 had the effect of an ideological earthquake on many of his generation."24  Tamara Deutscher adds that the invasion even politicized the samizdat (self-publishing) movement within the Soviet Union.25

The visibility of socialist failures.   Writing in Monthly Review, a magazine strongly Marxist but independent of the Soviet bloc, Paul M. Sweezy says that "none of these 'socialist' societies behave as Marx . . . thought they would.  They have not eliminated classes . . . The state has not disappeared . . . I think it is no exaggeration to say that by now the anomalies have become so massive and egregious that the result has been a deep crisis in Marxian theory . . . now visibly tearing the international revolutionary movement apart."26

Reassertion of nationalistic instincts.   Throughout the world, the desire of' the soviet bloc for hegemony and of Marxism in general for cross-cultural identification of proletarians with one another has been at odds with nationalistic passions.   We have seen how this came to a head with World War I.  We can see continuing divisions reflected, too, in Tamara Deutscher's comment, which relates to Poland but which has much broader implications, that "the Polish intelligentsia on the whole resents not so much the counterfeit brand of socialism imposed on their country as the violation of the country's sovereignty by the traditionally despised Muscovites."27

Growing self-doubt among intellectuals.   Lewis Feuer reports that “the sustaining sense of the intellectual's mission all but vanished during the last two decades (the 1950s and 1960s) . . . His normlessness is the fact that his socialist ethic is gone, and the recognition that it's all careerism.”29   Intellectuals have increasingly looked inward, where they have begun to perceive the lack of complete purity in their own motives.  There is by now an extensive literature commenting on the sociological role of the intellectuals as a class.

Unresponsiveness of the proletariat and the peasantry.   Marxism presupposes that capitalism will turn all of the have-nots into proletarians, and that the proletarians will then develop a revolutionary class consciousness.  In the real world, however, the peasantry is often steeped in the folkways of traditional living; and have-nots of all descriptions tend, if they wish change, to want to partake of the good things of bourgeois affluence rather than to become revolutionary.  Socialists might well have had some premonition of this when in the 1870s the Russian Populists found the peasants totally unresponsive.  It isn't surprising to find that later the American New Left philosopher Herbert Marcuse was forced to base his thinking on a candid assessment of the non-revolutionary disposition of the American working class.  (In his insistence on the perverse logic of alienation, he ascribed this to bourgeois manipulation of the proletariat through affluence.)   Perhaps the best statement of the frustration that has been felt by socialists has come from Dwight Macdonald, who said about the masses that "we were right, but they wouldn't listen."29


NOTES

1. Michael Harrington, Socialism (New York: Saturday Review Press, 1970), p. 23.

2. George Lichtheim, A Short History of Socialism (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1970), p. 162.

3. Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1950), p. 224.

4. Harrington, Socialism, pp. 67, 68.

5. William E. Paterson and Alastair H. Thomas (ed.s), Social Democratic Parties in Western Europe (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1977), p. 11.

6. Harrington, Socialism, p. 295.

7. Ralph Miliband and John Saville (ed.s), The Socialist Register 1977 (London: The Merlin Press, 1977), p. 208.

8. Harrington, Socialism, p. 8.

9. John H. M. Laslett and Seymour Martin Lipset (ed.s), Failure of a Dream? Essays in the History of American Socialism (Garden City: Anchor Press, 1974), p. 60.

10. Laslett and Lipset, Failure of a Dream?, p. 496.


11. Paterson and Thomas, Social Democratic, p. 176.


12. Albert Fried and Ronald Sanders (ed.s), Socialist Thought (Garden City: Anchor Books, 1964), pp.  278, 7.


13. Laslett and Lipset, Failure of a Dream?, p. 683.


14. Laslett and Lipset, Failure of a Dream?, p. 98.


15. George Konrad and Ivan Szelenyi, The Intellectuals on the Road to Class Power (New York, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1979), p. 233.


16. David Caute, The Left in Europe (Since 1789) (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1966), p. 72.


17. Ralph Miliband and John Saville (ed.s), The Socialist Register 1976 (London: The Merlin Press, 1976), p. 15.


18. Miliband and Saville, Socialist Register 1977, pp.178-180, 44.


19. Miliband and Saville, Socialist Register1976, p. 6.


20. Miliband and Saville, Socialist Register 1976, p. 84.


21. Laslett and Lipset, Failure of a Dream?, p. 489.


22. Interview with Fidel Castro, World Marxist Review, Jan. 1979, p. 18.


23. Article by Jiri Valenta, “The Soviet-Cuban Intervention in Angola, 1975,” Studies in Comparative Communism, Univ. Southern Calif., No.s 1 & 2, Spg-Sum 1978, p. 7.


24. Ralph Miliband and John Saville (ed.s), The Socialist Register 1978 (London: The Merlin Press, 1978), p. 2.


25. Miliband and Saville, Socialist Register 1978, p. 21.


26. Article by Paul M. Sweezy, Monthly Review, June 1979, p. 23.


27. Miliband and Saville, Socialist Register 1978,  p. 25.


28. Lewis S. Feuer, Marx and the Intellectuals (Garden City: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1969), pp. 96, 97.

 

29. Feuer, Marx and the Intellectuals, p. 97.