FRIEDRICH RAPP
MARX AND THE SOVIET SYSTEM*
The Soviet Union is the largest nation on earth. Its territory makes up half of the European landmass and more than a third of Asia. It is a military superpower and a leading industrial nation, despite its numerous pre-industrial traits. Above all, however, the Soviet Union is the center of world-Communism, in spite of all the divisions and national Communisms. It is said that the theory and practice, worldview and policies of the Soviet Union repose on the principles of Marxism-Leninism. Soviet philosophy occupies a key position, therefore, in the concrete efficacity of Marxian thought. Two restrictions have to be introduced, however, since Marxism, Soviet philosophy and Marxism-Leninism are not at all identical. First, one cannot accept Marxism-Leninism as the paradigmatic version of Marxism. Not only are there such things as Titoism and Maoism, but some Western Marxists even question the right of Marxism-Leninism to invoke the name of Marx. Secondly, philosophy in the Soviet Union is by no means influenced by Marx alone. There is the simple fact that many philosophic domains logic, methodology, philosophy of science, esthetics - were treated by Marx and the other 'classics' either not at all or not in a form that is relevant today. Marxian in the Soviet Union today are mainly the dogmatic social philosophy and philosophy of history. In other fields, one finds rather a general orientation on the basic parameters of dialectical and historical materialism; meaning that against every idealism one has to assert the objective reality of the external world as well as the primacy of material conditions and of economic relations of production. These restrictions do not change the fact that in the Soviet Union one constantly invokes the name of Marx in theoretical work and in practical activity, e.g. in the formulation of the official ideology and in the setting up of concrete economic, political and social relations. Of course, distinctions and additions have to be taken into account because of Lenin's need to explain why (a) the Communist revolution happened in a primarily agricultural nation and (b) the anticipated world-revolution did not happen. Furthermore it is virtually impossible to decide who among the successors of Lenin - Stalin
Studies in Soviet Thought 26 (1983) 15-19. 0039-3797/83/0261-0015 $0050. @ 1983 byD. ReidelPublishing Co.
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or his excluded opponents (e.g. Trotsky, Bukharin) - had the 'more correct' version of Marxism for the construction of Soviet society. It is not easy to come to terms with this question since the concrete political, social, economic and juridical format of the Communist state that would follow the elimination of private ownership of the means of production was not a central theme for Marx. He discussed it only occasionally and on the side. After the successful revolution in the Soviet Union, there was a need to fill this gap with practical measures and theoretical innovations. That Marx had not addressed this question is testimony to how he remains enfeoffed to Hegel. The latter sees history as a dialectical, teleological progress where each era sees mutually opposed elements in conflict being superseded to a higher level. This leads Marx to see the supersession of the opposition between collective production and private appropriation as automatically solving the problem of what future Communist society would be like. As everyone - especially be he Soviet - knows, this expectation failed. The Soviet Union, like every other part of the world, knows differences of status, cases of exploitation, and social injustice. In fact, these are intensified by the extensive power and oversight of state and Party in the Soviet Union. A careful comparison between how one lives in East and West has to be decided in favor of the West. It is ironic that the humanistic thrust of Marxian thought is better represented in the capitalist West than in the countries of 'real socialism' which are supposed to constitute a better world. It has to be remembered that the Soviet Union is the main instance we have of a philosophic theory being translated into practice. To everyone who wishes to understand the people, the country, daily life, politics, etc., in the Soviet Union, Marxism-Leninism is offered as a key. On the theoretical level, Plato's philosopher-king has come into being here. All other attempts in this direction - by utopian socialists or during the French Revolution pale by comparison. The Soviet Union and its clients form the most massive and persistent human experiment of transforming all social relations according to a logical plan. What counts is not tradition but the rational and structured relations that flow from a certain understanding of man and history. In principle, everyone who is morally awake and rationally operative has to applaud these efforts toward a better world; and this is precisely the ground for the attraction that Communist ideas exercise in the West. Out of immediate contact with the failed practice, one can be bemused by the high ideals.
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Why the failure? First we should note that we are not faulting the inevitable slippage between ideals and the all too human falling short of their realisation. This is true of all ethical demands. One is guided by the Pole Star without ever reaching it. However, Lenin's version of Marxism is not just a normative appeal but a practical guide based on social and historical laws, somewhat like technological procedures that are based on laws of science. It would be unfair to blame Marx for all that his ideas have become in the hands of others. One can assume that he was, like everyone, limited by the horizons of his time and was doing analysis and critique rather than social-political action programs. What is more, the efficacity of ideas like those of Marx does not depend merely on their theoretical consistency, but also on external circumstances - e.g. the October Revolution and the spread of Soviet Communism as political reality, and the rigidification of the Communist ideology. Nevertheless, the Marxist-Leninist appeal to Marx is not completely unjustified. Even though the ideas developed by Marxism-Leninism about the construction of Communist society are not as central to the thought of Marx as the materialist conception of history or his analysis of the capitalist mode of production, they do correspond to what he grosso modo held. Both Marx and Marxism-Leninism see the elimination of private ownership of the means of production in terms of the species-nature (Gattungswesen) of man, the dictatorship of the proletariat (not pluralistic democracy), and classless (not differentiated) society. Since Marxism-Leninism sees itself as a plan of action, it has to be judged in these terms as having failed to move toward a world without oppression and alienation. Even the functionalist argument that the Communist system is at least ideal for achieving forced industrialization is hardly convincing when one sees how much better Japan and Germany have done it than the countries of the Bloc. The failure of this experiment can be imputed to the following: (1) One's historical heritage cannot be done away with through theory or an act of the will. If Gogol or Dostoevsky were to return today, much in the Soviet Union - ritualistic elections, omnipresent Marxist-Leninist propaganda, for example - would puzzle them. Much of what is going on, however, would not seem strange to them at all. Uvarov's pravosIavie, samoder~avie and narodnost' are easily recognizable in the Marxist-Leninist
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Party-line, the autocracy of the Central Committee, and Soviet-Russian nationalism. Slavic spontaneity, xenophobia, Russian expansionism, nationality conflicts - all are older and stronger than the ideas of Marxism-Leninism. (2) Following on Marx, Marxism-Leninism has been caught up in a one-sided view of man: to be human is to be species-being, determined in thought, will and act by social relations. This leads to the optimistic expectation that changed social relations will bring changed men. Sixty-five years of experience in the Soviet Union give no hint of classless society, of a new man, or of a disappearance of religion; rather we hear complaints about low productivity, about 'material stimuli' to production, and about selfaggrandizement. Human nature seems less changeable than expected. A quick glance around the Soviet Union might lead one to believe that the official Party-line, in all media and forms of education, is shared by the population. This illusion is the result of a reduplication of the world: alongside the public and official agreement to the Party-line, there is the private, familial sphere of what one actually believes. External unity exacts a price in the form of split identity and a surveillance system to keep the split in place. While actual individual practice gets along without the influence of Marxism-Leninism, the conceptual system of the latter maintains its currency since no opposing view can be widespread. (3) Finally, both Marx and Marxism-Leninism fail accurately to assess the functioning of complex industrial societies. Our scientific-technological world cannot get along without division of labor, decision hierarchies, specialisation, and the competence of experts. These realities mean that a modern Soviet society cannot be free of the social differentiations that are found everywhere today. Philosophically seen, Marxism-Leninism suffers from the typical intellectual disease of believing in the omnipotence of theory: the world is supposed to conform to thought and the result should be exactly what was planned. This way of thinking had the success that it did in the realm of technology because one did not forget Bacon's insight that the physical world can be constrained only in accordance with the laws that govern it. It is the concrete, historically given need for individual differentiation and the functional conditions of complex industrial societies that stand over against MarxistLeninist theory and the effort to impose it through an act of the will. The theoretical notion finds itself in a foreign and resistant milieu - something it should have learned from its materialist understanding of nature and history.
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To ignore this reality is inevitably to fail, whether theory can recognize it or not. Marx wanted to replace Hegel's self-movement of the absolute idea with the economic - and therefore material - grounding of society and history. But, precisely to the extent that he formulated a theory, Marx gave himself over to the level of abstraction that he so vigorously criticised in Hegel. It is worth reflecting on the fact that no theory can get along without some simplifications. One can discuss Marx's materialist conception of history as a clever analysis o f the capitalist mode of production, as a critique of social relations in early capitalism, and as an alternative to the idealist theory of history. One cannot dispute its failure as guide to the actions that it promises will lead to the realm of freedom and humanity. Kishon the satirist came out with the very pertinent description of the whole state of affairs: Communism is a wonderful theory that, unfortunately, can be applied.
NOTE * This is an expanded version of a talk at the colloquium in honor of the 80th Birthday of J. M. Bochefiski, November 5, 1982, in Ffibourg, Switzerland.
Technische Universitiit Berlin
