ATTER decades of unrest, struggle and attempted revolutions, in 1917 one great country at last became the scene of a large-scale socialist experiment [ p. 49 ] —Russia. Contrary to the predictions of Marx, Communism first succeeded in establishing the dictatorship of the proletariat, not in the most advanced industrial country but in one of the most backward. This alone, in such contradiction to the Marxist timetable and theories, should have sufficed to arouse immediate suspicion as to the socialist quality of the Russian Revolution. Later developments have proved, and history will undoubtedly record the events of 1917 to be not so much a socialist revolution, as the Great Russian National Revolution, coming a hundred and fifty years after the national revolutions of the Western countries and creating not socialism but something quite different
The slogans and the symbols that germinated the revolution are losing their meaning and importance in the light of more significant historic facts. In 1917, the main revolutionary force of the world was Communism, which unquestionably gave impetus to the violent overthrow of the old regime, czarism and capitalism alike. But the revolution did not establish economic equality and social justice, the aim of its originators. It brought about something quite different
No doubt Lenin, Trotsky, Bukharin and the other theorists and initiators of the Russian Bolshevik revolution were idealists who sincerely believed in a Marxist collectivist society. They were convinced that once “ownership” of land and means of production were expropriated and transferred from private individuals and corporations to the collectivity, represented by the state, social equality would be achieved and a new, prosperous and happy society created. [ p. 50 ] They resorted to terror only as a temporary measure to remove the parasites of the old regime. The dictatorship of the proletariat was to be merely a period of transition, as Marx taught, during which the expropriation of private capital and its transfer to the state was necessary, but would be abolished automatically as soon as the operation was completed and a classless society created.
A few years after the revolution, it became obvious, even to the Soviet leaders, that absolute economic and social equality are incompatible with the very nature of man, that private initiative is essential to progress and that a certain amount of property is an inevitable corollary to the conception of human liberty. A series of reforms were introduced to differentiate income and social position, which in a few years led to gradations in wealth, power and influence as pronounced as in any capitalist country.
One thing about the Soviet system, however, was indisputable. It worked. In an economic system controlled entirely by the collectivity, the agricultural output was raised; coal, iron and gold were mined in ever-increasing quantities; huge factories, dams and railroads were built; steel, aluminum and textiles were produced; tractors, cars and airplanes were manufactured.
The complete failure of the Comintern ideal of world revolution as propagated by Trotsky, Zinoviev and the old guard of Lenin’s disciples, strengthened the position of those who believed that the Soviet Union would perish if it entered into conflict with other nations, that it must be prepared to resist for [ p. 51 ] eign aggression, that the Soviet peoples must concentrate on increasing the industrial strength of the U.S.S.R. rather than on spreading revolution.
For two decades the Russian people worked with all their energy and devotion to lay the foundation of a great industrial power and to produce the aims and munitions necessary to defend the sacred soil of their country against attack. But in spite of the fabulous production figures of Russian heavy industry, the standard of living of the great masses of the Russian people remained stagnant. Although they have expanded their system of transportation and opened up wide, undeveloped spaces for settlement, their standard of living has remained extremely low.
It does not detract one iota from the achievements of the Russian people to state that almost none of the social ideals of Marx and Lenin have been achieved in the Soviet Union dirough the dictatorship of the proletariat. The workers are living under material conditions less favorable than those in the Western democracies. Individual liberty is nonexistent. Alttough all natural resources and tools are collective property, the relationship between management and worker is in principle the same as in England or America in practice, worse. Soviet labor unions are instruments of the state and can do litde toward improving working conditions for their members. In any dispute, the management is just another instrument of the same state. Most of the workers are tied to the factory or mine or land where they work, and have no freedom of movement if dissatisfied with the existing surroundings and conditions. In a short span of twenty years, [ p. 52 ] after the complete elimination of all upper and middle classes, a new ruling class has crystallized. A Red Army general, a high government official, a successful engineer or a famous writer, painter or orchestra conductor is just as far above the great masses of labor as in the most capitalist country.
Developments during the first twenty-five years of the first Communist state run surprisingly parallel to the evolution of capitalist democratic countries. In a state of permanent international distrust, under constant fear of foreign aggression, in perpetual danger of destruction by outside forces, under pressure of the political nation-state structure of the world, the first and foremost endeavor of the Soviet peoples was to strengthen the power of the centralized Soviet state. The survival, at all costs of the national state the U.S.S.R. is the dominant doctrine of the Stalin regime. It did not take long for the original internationalism in Communist philosophy to fade away and disappear, to give way to National Communism.
Since Stalin’s victory over Trotsky, the Soviet government has been building up the industrial and military power of the U.S.S.R, forging the heterogeneous elements of that huge country into one great national unit, arousing and exalting the group instincts of nationalism, to a point that has made it possible for the Soviet government to ask their people for any sacrifice to defend and strengthen the Soviet state.
The nationalist passions of all the heterogeneous peoples forming the Soviet Union were aroused and inflamed by the same oratory, the same slogans, the [ p. 53 ] same flags, music, uniforms, as in capitalist countries. To build up the power of the nation-state, the people had to give up all hope of a better material life for a long time to come. The production of consumer goods was kept to a minimum to concentrate the entire productive power of the nation on the manufacture of war material and reserves.
It is useless to express opinions on the righteousness or unrighteousness of this turn. It is a historical fact June, 1941, proved how necessary it was. Stalingrad proved how successful.
This change of course in economic policy created much dissent among the peasant and working masses. But this smoldering opposition was ruthlessly extinguished by the central administration which, under growing internal opposition on one side and the growing external pressure created by the deteriorating international situation on the other, became every day more dictatorial, more tyrannical. The aspirations of . the Russian people to a greater degree of individual freedom and political democracy, so manifest during the first decade of the Soviet Union, were slowly strangled, and in the late 1930’s it was dear that from a political point of view the Soviet state was developing not toward democracy but toward absolute state control, toward complete and totalitarian 'domination of society by an autocratic state administration.
Communist economy is based on two completely unreal and fictitious conceptions.
The first is the overemphasized importance attached to “ownership” of tools and means of production. The development ot industrialism in capitalist [ p. 54 ] countries clearly shows that, as mass production becomes more complex, ownership of tools and means of production becomes more diffused and anonymous, is more widely scattered among thousands and hundreds of thousands of shareholders who have practically no control over the actual handling of their property. When a private enterprise is owned by a great number of people, it is managed more or less as a socialist or state-owned enterprise. As regards actual manage ment and the relationship between owners and employees, there is no difference whatever between the American or British railroad companies owned by private capital, and the Scandinavian, German, Italian or Soviet railroads, owned by the state. The employees of the Bell Telephone Company, a private enterprise in America, stand in exactly the same position toward the ownership of the invested capital as do the employees of the British, French and Soviet telephone companies, owned by the state.
Twenty-five years of “Communist” regime in Russia have conclusively demonstrated that recognition of private property is almost indispensable to a smoothly working economic system. A man with initiative and imagination, or one who works hard and is thrifty, is bound to possess more wealth and achieve a higher position than the average worker who merely carries out orders, who has no personal initiative, who worl no more than he can help and who spends everythn ^ he earns. After twenty-five years of “Communist” economy, the range of incomes in Soviet Russia is just as great, if not greater, than the range of incomes in capitalist countries. With this similarity, almost [ p. 55 ] identity, of actual conditions and developments between the Soviet Union and the countries of private enterprise, it matters little to the worker wfeo “owns” the plants and machines. For all practical purposes, it is irrelevant. At the present stage of industrialism there is little or no difference in the situation of the worker employed in the Magnitogorsk Works owned by the Soviet state, or the worker employed by private "^enterprises like Imperial Chemicals or General Motors.
There is no reason why creative minds like Edison, Ford, Citroen or Siemens should be prevented from building up and “owning” great industrial properties, although it may be dangerous to the community and detrimental to society if they remain the private property of second or third generation nonconstxuctive heirs. But ;with rising inheritance taxes, this problem has virtually been solved in most countries. It is only a small step from where death duties stand in England today, for instance, to the complete abolition of the right of inheritance of capital. And this step may quite possibly be taken in a none-too-distant future. Already a great industrial enterprise created by one individual is usually transformed during his lifetime into a corporation of widespread anonymous ownership under a separate management. . The second fallacy of Communism is that the main ^f6blem of economy is distribution. The sad truth is that if today we could divide total annual world production equally among the members of the entire human race, the result would be poverty. If we divided all incomes equally among all men, the general [ p. 56 ] standard of living would scarcely be above that of a Chinese coolie. In spite of our pride in the “miraculous” industrial achievements of the United States, England, Germany and Russia, our production lags miserably behind existing scientific and technical potentialities.
That nationalism and the nation-state represent insurmountable barriers to the development of an individualist capitalist economic system—the system of free enterprise—should be apparent by now to everybody. High tariff walls, export subsidies, exchange manipulations, dumping, cartels, the artificial creation of industries through government financing, etc., have completely distorted the free play of economic forces as understood by the classical theorists of the early nineteenth century. The all-important trend of oui age is to strengthen the nation-state. In the presence of constant threats emanating from other nationstates, the people of each nation have been forced to centralize more and more power in their national governments.
But the similarity, indeed, the exact identity of the development of a socialist economic system within a nation-state, with the development of the capitalist system under the same conditions, is still not fully understood. To point out a few anomalies existing between fact and theory may throw light on the subject.
According to Karl Marx, the state is the result of the breaking up of society into irreconcilable, antagonistic classes. Friedrich Engels explains in his Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State that the state arises when and where class antagonisms [ p. 57 ] cannot be objectively reconciled. And, as Lenin put it, the existence of the state proves that class antagonisms are irreconcilable.
So, according to the Marxist theory, the state is an organ of class domination, an organ of oppression of one class by the other; “its aim is the creation of ‘order’ which legalizes and perpetuates this oppression by moderating the collisions between the classes.” In his State and Revolution, Lenin arrives at the conclusion that “the state could neither arise nor maintain itself if a reconciliation of classes were possible.”
And from here, only one step is necessary to arrive at the conclusion expressed by Engels in his AntiDuhring, that once the proletariat seizes state power and transforms the means of production into state property, “it puts an end to all class differences and class antagonisms, it puts an end also to the state as the state. … As soon as there is no longer any class of society to be held in subjection; as soon as, along with class domination and the struggle for individual existence based on the former anarchy of production, the collisions and excesses arising from these Lave also been abolished, there is nothing more to be repressed, and a special repressive force, a state, is no longer necessary . . . government over persons is replaced by the administration of things and the direction of the processes of production. The state is not ‘abolished,’ it withers away.”
This theory of the state and of its “withering away” after a socialist revolution is one of the main arguments in the writings of Lenin, who regarded it as a fundamental doctrine of Communism. He develops [ p. 58 ] the thesis that the bourgeois state, whether monarchic or republican, absolute or democratic, is “a special repressive force” which can be demolished only by violent revolution. But once the dictatorship of the proletariat has abolished classes, the state will “become dormant”. To quote Lenin from his State and Revolution: “The bourgeois state can only be put an end to by a revolution. The state in general . . . can only wither away.” Or, otherwise expressed by Lenin: “The replacement of the bourgeois by the proletarian state is impossible without a violent revolution. The abolition of the proletarian state, i.e., of all states, is only possible through withering away.”
In his Poverty of Philosophy Marx writes that once the working class replaces the old bourgeois society "by an association which excludes classes and their antagonism . . . there will no longer be any real political power, for political power is precisely the official expression of the class antagonism within bourgeois society/’
In criticizing previous bourgeois revolutions, in The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, Marx roundly criticizes the parliamentary republics for centralizing and strengthening the resources of government “All revolutions [he writes] brought this machine to greater perfection, instead of breaking it up.”
This thought is developed in the Communist Manifesto and Lenin gives it clear expression when he says in State and Revolution that: “All revolutions which have taken place up to the present have helped to perfect the state machinery, whereas it must be shattered, broken to pieces . . /’ These lessons 'lead us to the [ p. 59 ] conclusion that the proletariat cannot overthrow the bourgeoisie without first conquering political power, without obtaining political rule, without transforming the state into the proletariat organized as the ruling class; and that this proletarian state will begin to wither away immediately after its victory, because in a society without class antagonisms, the state is unnecessary and impossible.”
Before digging further into the “scientific” conclusions and predictions of Marx, Engels and Lenin about the nature of the state and its automatic and immediate “withering away” after its conquest by the proletariat, let us pause for a moment to compare these prophecies with the realities of the Soviet state, with what it has become after a quarter of a century of existence.
Lenin said: “The centralized state power peculiar to bourgeois society came into being in the period of the fall of absolutism. Two institutions are especially characteristic of this state machinery: bureaucracy and the standing army.”
What would be the reactions of Lenin’s comrades in the Politburo if he were able to make this statement in Moscow twenty years after his death?
Thundering against “those Philistines who have brought socialism to the unheard of disgrace of justifying and embellishing the imperialist war by applying to it the term of ‘national defense’ M Lenin proclaims: “Bureaucracy and the standing army constitute a ‘parasite’ … a parasite bom of the internal antagonisms which tear that society asunder, but essentially a parasite ‘dogging every pore’ of existence.”
[ p. 60 ]
What would be the reaction of the Soviet leaders if Lenin should arise from his mausoleum and make that speech in the Red Square today?
And what would the marshals of the Red Army and the high dignitaries of Soviet diplomacy say if, twenty years after his death, in talking about the role of state power in Communist society, Lenin were to repeat that it “can be reduced to such simple operations of registration, filing and checking that they will be quite within the reach of every literate person, and it will be possible to perform them for ‘workingman’s wages’ which circumstance can (and must) strip those functions of every shadow of privilege, of every appearance of ‘official grandeur’.”
And what would the families of Lenin’s comrades of the revolutionary days of 1917 think if, remembering the events of 1936 and r937, they reread the statement Lenin made at the time of the revolution: “We set ourselves the ultimate aim of destroying the state, i.e., every organized and systematic violence, every use of violence against man in general.”
The contradictions are even more striking if we turn to the writings of the founders of Communism and their views concerning the role of law and the relationship of the individual to the state.
In State and Revolution Lenin wrote: “Only in Communist society when the resistance of the capitalists has been completely broken, when the capitalists have disappeared, when there are no classes . . . only then the state ceases to exist and it becomes possible to speak of freedom . . . only then will democracy itself begin to wither away due to the simple fact [ p. 61 ] that, free from capitalist slavery, from the untold horrors, savagery, absurdities and infamies of capitalist exploitation, people will gradually become accustomed, to the observance of the elementary rules of social life that have been known for centuries and repeated for thousands of years in all school books; they will become accustomed to observing them without force, without compulsion, without subordination, without the special apparatus for compulsion which is called the state.”
A few more short quotations from Lenin are necessary to a comparison of socialist theory and socialist reality.
“Communism renders the state absolutely unnecessary, for there is no one to be suppressed no one in the sense of a class, in the sense of a systematic struggle with a definite section of the population”.
“While the state exists there is no freedom. When there is freedom there will be no state.”
“The more complete the democracy, the nearer the moment when it begins to be unnecessary.”
And to the question as to how the state, standing army, bureaucracy and compulsion will “wither away” in a Communist system through the dictatorship of the proletariat, Lenin answers with the dogmatism of a high priest: “We do not know how quickly and in what succession, but we know that they will wither away. Witt their withering away, the state will also wither away.”
These doctrines might have been taught two thousand years ago, in some primitive rural community. [ p. 62 ] But it is somewhat astonishing to hear them put forth in the second decade of the twentieth century.
The theory that the state is created by the struggle between the capitalist and proletariat classes and that, once the capitalist class is done away with, state machinery would be unnecessary and would therefore disappear, is in total contradiction to existing facts and to the teachings of history. Of course, conflict between groups within a given society necessitates the creation of law and the use of force by the community to prevent violence between the two conflicting groups. But it is difficult to understand how otherwise scientifically trained minds could make the assertion that class struggle alone is the source of the state and that the only purpose of the state is to perpetuate the domination of one class by another.
Law and coercion in society are necessitated by thousands and thousands of conflicts arising within a given society between individuals and groups of individuals in innumerable fields, among which, in modern times, one is unquestionably the class struggle.
The state is not a diabolic device invented by a ruling class to oppress another class. It is the product of historical evolution. From ancient times, when magicians and priests in primitive tribes proclaimed and enforced the first rules of human conduct, up to the establishment of British constitutional monarchy, the republican constitution of the United States, the constitution of the Soviet Union, all history of civilization passing upward through families, tribes, villages, cities, provinces, principalities, kingdoms, republics, empires, commonwealths and modern nation-states, [ p. 63 ] the one fundamental and invariable motive of this evolution has been that human beings, taken individually or in any given division of groups, whether vertical or horizontal, whether racial, linguistic, religious or national, are constantly in conflict with each other and that, in order to prevent these permanent and manifold clashes of interest from degenerating into violence, certain rules are necessary, certain restrictions and limitations on human impulses must be imposed and an authority established to represent the community with the right and the power to enforce such regulations and restrictions on the members of that community.
The Ten Commandments given to Moses on Mount Sinai, the writing of the Koran by Mohammed, the commands of Darius and Genghis Khan, are identical in purpose with the laws enacted by Parliament in London, Congress in Washington and the Supreme Soviet in Moscow. The differences are only changes in form throughout one long historical evolution. All these rules and regulations of human conduct, in no matter what form laid down, were devised to enable men to live together in a given society.
Who should have decisive influence in formulating these rules, what should be their content, to whom they should apply, how and by whom they should be carried out, how should they be changed, by whom and how their creation and application controlled—these have been the eternal questions of man as a member of society and on these questions political [ p. 64 ] struggles have centered for thousands of years and will center for thousands of years to come.
During the past fifty years we have been passing through a stage in this long development where modera industrialism has created a conflict between those who own or manage industrial enterprises and those who function as wage earners in that system. The conflict between the capitalist class and the proletariat is doubtless deep and acute, and a solution to this problem must be found. But to say that in our age this is the only conflict between groups of men and that, with the resolving of that conflict, the state as such can or will disappear since it will become “unnecessary” is an altogether fantastic and unrealistic conclusion.
In 1917, in the midst of the first World War, Lenin wrote in his preface to the first edition of State and Revolution: ”The foremost countries are being converted—we speak here of their ‘rear’—into military convict labor prisons for the workers."
How right Lenin was in pointing out that as a result of international wars, states are becoming “convict labor prisons.” But how wrong he was in attributing this to class struggle.
In all the Marxist analysis of the state and of the development of the state toward more and more bureaucratic and militaristic institutions, there is not one word about the real cause of this development—nationalism. There is not one word about the fact that the nation-states are in conflict with each other, a conflict which is bound to find expression in recurrent wars. There is not one word that these wars between [ p. 65 ] national units are caused, not by the internal structure of the economic and social system within these individual nation-states but by the fact that they are independent, sovereign units whose relationship is unregulated.
In saying that after establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat and the Communist system of economy, the “state will wither away” and that in a “classless” society, coercive law and the use of force will not be necessary, because once everyone is a “worker,” the people will acquire the “habit” of behaving in society so that the state machinery will not be necessary—Marx the theorist and Lenin the realist show themselves to be greater Utopians than the early socialists they so mercilessly lashed with their powerful didactic minds. The belief that institutions can change human nature is indeed the dominant feature of all Utopias.
Social and political institutions are the result of human behavior, the product of man. Periodically they become obsolete and require improvement or even radical reform, not to change human nature, but to make it possible for men to live together, with their existing and unchangeable characteristics, in changed circumstances.
Lenin’s assertion that freedom will exist only when the state has been abolished, is another dialectic distortion, a superficial observation and a most erroneous conclusion.
It proves that he had no understanding of the real meaning of freedom.
Far from being the result of the abolition of the [ p. 66 ] state, freedom in human society is exclusively the product of the state. It is indeed unthinkable without the state.
There is no freedom in the jungle. Freedom does not exist among animals, except the freedom of the beast of prey, the freedom of the strong to devour the weak. Freedom as an ideal is essentially a human ideal. It is the exact opposite of the freedom of the tiger and the shark. Human freedom is freedom from being killed, robbed, cheated, oppressed, tortured and exploited by the stronger. It means protection of the individual against innumerable dangers.
Experience demonstrates that during all our history, there has been one method and one method alone to approach that ideal. The method is: Law.
Human freedom is created by law and can exist only within a legal order, never without or beyond it. Naturally, through changing conditions and economic and technical developments, new situations constantly arise in which certain individuals or groups of individuals find that their freedom is menaced by newly arisen circumstances or insufficiently protected by existing laws. In all such cases, the law must be revised and amended. New restrictions, new laws create additional freedoms.
The required new freedom, made necessary by new conditions, results from the promulgation of new laws, by the granting of new, additional protection to the individuals by the community. Freedom is in no way created by the abolition of the source of such protection.
Twenty-five years after the creation of the first [ p. 67 ] Communist state based on the principles of Marx, Engels and Lenin, the Soviet Union has developed into the greatest nation-state on earth, with an allpowerful bureaucracy, the largest standing army in the world, a unique police force controlling and supervising the activities of every Soviet citizen, a new social hierarchy with exceptional rewards and privileges for those in leading positions in the state, the army, the party or industry, with incomes a hundred times or more higher for the privileged few than for the average wage earner.
The Soviet people may say that it is unjust to blame the Communist regime for having developed into a strong, centralized state with a powerful army and bureaucracy. They may say that this was necessary, because the Soviet Union was surrounded by hostile capitalist states which forced them to change their original program and policy for more democracy and higher standards of living, into a policy of armaments and preparedness for national defense.
Precisely.
But in this inevitable process, the fact that the U.S.S.R. was Communist and the other countries were capitalist is totally irrelevant. England and Germany were both capitalist when they went to war. Nor was the United States Communist when it was attacked by Japan.
The one major cause of the development of the Soviet Union into a powerful centralized state and not into a “withering away” of that state, is that there were other sovereign power units in existence outside the U.S.S.R. and that as long as there are several [ p. 68 ] sovereign power units, several national sovereignties, they are bound to conflict, no matter what their internal economic or social systems. And irrespective of their internal economic and social systems, these units, under the threat of conflict, are irresistibly driven to strengthen their own national power.
It would have been extremely interesting to watch Communist society develop in Soviet Russia without any outside pressure, in a complete absence of interference and disturbance from outside forces. But on this earth it is impossible to create laboratory conditions for social experiments. The world as it is, is the only place where social experiments can be carried out
To state that Russia’s tremendous development in the first twenty-five years of the Soviet regime has virtually nothing to do with socialism and Communism is not to be interpreted as disparaging the positive achievements of the Soviet government and the Russian people during this quarter century. The strides made in industrialization, production, education, organization, science and the arts, have been fabulous indeed. But in this respect, Russia has done nothing unique. The very same progress had already been achieved in many capitalist countries and with demo: cratic political institutions.
What the Soviet regime has demonstrated is the important fact that in spite of skepticism and hostility in capitalist countries, a Communist economy can create heavy industry, build huge mechanized factories, produce armaments and organize a powerful centralized state just as well as any capitalist country.
[ p. 69 ]
The rapid adaptation of the Soviet Union to the existing world order is a most striking phenomenon.
During the second World War, at all international meetings called to discuss the shape of a new world organization, the representatives of the Soviet Union have been defending exactly the same position that of unrestricted national sovereignty as did Lodge, Johnson and Borah in the United States Senate at the end of the first World War. The most stubborn of American isolationist Senators of 1919 would undoubtedly agree heartily with the views advocated a quarter century later by the country which claims to be and is regarded as the most revolutionary and “international” of all the countries.
Soviet foreign policy developed along exactly the same lines as that of any other major power a policy of alliances and spheres of influence, resorting to expediency and compromise in weak situations, unilateral decisions and expansion after military victories. The Soviet Union even puts its diplomats into uniform with no stint of gold lace. In the third decade of its existence, the Soviet government is clearly pursuing power politics, the same power politics as czarist Russia or any other great country pursued when able to do so, no matter what its internal regime. They are playing the game even better. As a result of the profound upheaval in the Russian social structure and restratification that follows every revolution, a great number of first-class talents in every field emerged from Russia’s immense human reservoir. The nationalist Soviet statesmen, diplomats and generals are patently more talented than the statesmen, diplomats [ p. 70 ] and generals in other countries engaged in the international struggle for national supremacy. It is apparent that the political and military leadership of the U.S.S.R. is much more astute, shrewd and cunning—and consequently more successful—than that of the older democratic countries where military and political preferment are not easily obtainable by merit alone.
However, all these assets held by Soviet Russia have nothing to do with socialism or Communism. They are the achievements of a first generation of vigorous, self-made men and the results of a national revolution. The same upsurge took pkce after radical changes in the history of the United States, France, England and many other countries.
Some people are convinced that nationalism in Soviet Russia—which has been in the ascendant since the death of Lenin and has become so manifest during the second World War—is nothing but a means, a new technique of Stalin to spread Communism and to bring to pass Lenin’s original dream: world revolution. History will most probably be of just the opposite opinion. Long before the first centenary of the Soviet Union, it will be apparent that Communism was but a means to the end, to the great end of nationalism.
The tremendous achievement of the first twentyfive years of the Soviet regime was the creation of a centralized, powerful nationalist state.
Under Lenin and for several years after his death, the Soviet regime was not at all what it is today.
There was a great deal of individual freedom, there were open and public discussions, criticism of the [ p. 71 ] government and of the party in the press and on the platforms. Not until later did the system develop into a totalitarian state with an all-powerful police force, the suppression of free speech, free criticism and all individual liberty. The development of the Soviet Union into a totalitarian dictatorship has run parallel with the awakening and growth of nationalism and the strengthening of the nation-state.
The first few years of the Soviet regime proved that socialism is not incompatible with political freedoms. It was the influence and pressure of nationalism that forced the regime to evolve into a totalitarian dictatorship. And in traveling the road toward the totalitarian state, the Soviet regime destroyed not only political freedom but also the principles of socialist society as they were understood and proclaimed by Lenin and his associates in 1917.
Since the 1920’s, Communism has been diminishing in importance and nationalism has been growing by leaps and bounds. During these first twenty-five years, the Communist Internationale, in spite of innumerable attempts, failed to spread the influence of Moscow abroad. But the totalitarian Soviet nationstate succeeded. Even the many Communist parties in foreign countries, unquestionably inspired by Moscow, have given up their fight for the socialization of their countries and become merely the instruments of Soviet Russia’s nationalist policy, adopting in each country an attitude dictated not by the necessity of fostering Communism, but by the necessity of strengthening the international position of the Soviet Union as a nation-state.
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In the second World War, the Communists in every country have become more nationalist than any monarchists, landowners or industrialists anywhere. They have provided the vanguard of “patriotic” forces in every country.
The passionate debates, the international strife existing between the protagonists of capitalism and socialism, seem of secondary importance if we take into consideration the following undeniable facts:
a. A state-controlled economy can build factories and produce commodities just as well as a system of free enterprise.
b. Ownership of capital, tools and means of production does not appreciably affect either the economic or the social structure of a state.
c. Under both capitalism and socialism ownership tends to become impersonal.
d. In both systems, employed, salaried management is the real master of the economic machinery.^
e. Socialism fer se does not raise the material standard of the workers nor does it secure for them a higher degree of political and economic freedom.
f. Economic and political security and freedom depend upon specific social legislation which can be and in varied degrees has been evolved both in capitalist and in socialist countries.
g. Socialism cannot prevent international conflicts any more than can capitalism.
h. Under the present political structure of the [ p. 73 ] world, both capitalism and socialism are dominated by nationalism and actively support the institution of the nation-state.
i. The permanent state of distrust and fear between nation-states and the recurring armed conflicts between them have the same effects on capitalist and on socialist economy, neither being able to develop under the constant threat of war.
In view of these facts, there seems to be no place for dogmatism in connection with the dispute between capitalism and socialism. Both proclaim their aim to be an economy of rational mass production, full exploitation of modern technological and scientific methods to raise the material and cultural standards of the masses. Which system can best accomplish this task should be decided by experience, not by cracking each other’s skulls in a senseless class warfare. If certain people—like the Slavs—through their centuryold traditions, have an inclination toward collective ownership of farm lands, pastures or modern industrial plants and prefer a socialist system, and if other peoples like the Latins and Anglo-Saxons through their century-old traditions and inclinations, prefer an individualist and private ownership economy, there is not the slightest reason why these different methods should not be able to coexist and co-operate with each other. To concentrate on differences of opinion and habit, and to believe that this is the field on which will be fought the great battles of the twentieth century, is an unfortunate confusion of issues.
We can continue this class struggle for decades. [ p. 74 ] It may even be that one of the two classes will defeat and dominate the other. But whether we continue this internecine strife forever or whether one system achieves victory over the other, the solution of the problem of the twentieth century will not be advanced a single step.
This analysis of trends in the Soviet Union is in no way intended to be anti-Communist or anti-Russian, just as the analyses of similar trends in the United States, Great Britain and other capitalist-democratic countries are not intended to be anti-capitalist, antiAmerican, anti-British or anti-anything. The conclusions are not directed against any nation, any social system, any economic order. Far from it, they seek to prove the irrelevancy and complete uselessness of class accusations and how superficial is criticism based on the belief that any economic system as such is capable of solving the issues with which we have to deal.
Our endeavor is to demonstrate that it is the political status quo—the existing system of sovereign nationstates, accepted and upheld today by capitalists and socialists, individualists and collectivists, all national and religious groups alike—that constitutes the insurmountable obstacle to all progress, to all social and economic efforts, that bars all human progress on any lines.
The conflict between our static, inherited political institutions and the realities of economic and social dynamism is the real issue to which we must address ourselves.
The underlying thesis of Marxist historical materialism, [ p. 75 ] that history is nothing but a class struggle moved solely or preponderantly by the profit motive, the economic self-interest of the dominating classes, is an oversimplification which pays undue tribute to human intelligence and reason.
It would be extremely easy to solve social problems if the motor of human action were such a clearly definable, materialist driving force. The trouble is that man is not such a reasonable creature. History is molded by much more volcanic, much more primitive forces, much more difficult to control and to deal with than the economic self-interest of individuals or classes. The real powers of historical evolution have always been and are today more than ever, transcendental emotions, tribal instincts, beliefs, faith, fear, hatred and superstition.
And Marxism, in spite of its scientific aspirations, has merely created another set of emotional feais, superstitions and taboos which have become a very strong force in the present world convulsion, but which is only one of many such emotional forces at work today.
It might advance a dispassionate approach to the sterile and now century-old controversy, if the champions of capitalism and socialism would realize that they are fighting each other within a hermetically sealed conveyance. The fight for a better seat, for a broader view, for a little more comfort is rather meaningless, as they are being carried by it relentlessly toward the same terminus. The vehicle is nationalism. The terminus is totalitarianism.