Flight from History? The Communist Movement between Self-Criticism and Self-Contempt in 'Marxist Forum', Nature, Society, and Thought, vol. 13, no. 4 (2000) by Domenico Losurdo

Addressing the question of anti-Communism on the Italian Left...

Domenico Losurdo is a professor of philosophy at Urbano

University. Together with the late Hans Heinz Holz, he edited the Marxist

journal Topos: Internationale Beiträge zur dialektischen Theorie.

                                (photo: political poster of Lenin from 1960s. Why are communists in 2014 hiding from Lenin?)

Introduction

In 1818, in the middle of the Restoration and just at that time

when the collapse of the French Revolution seemed obvious to

all, some of those who had initially welcomed the events of 1789

now placed them at arms length; for them it had become a colossal misunderstanding or, even worse, a despicable betrayal of

noble ideals. It was in this sense that Byron sang: “Yet France

was drunken with blood and spat out crimes. Its Saturnalia were

deadly for the cause of freedom in every epoch in every country.” Must we make these grave doubts our own today, if we

were to substitute 1917 for 1789 and the cause of socialism for

the “cause of freedom”? Must Communists be ashamed of their

history?

In the history of persecuted ethnic and religious groups, we

find something quite remarkable. At a certain point even the victims tend to assimilate the worldview of the oppressor, and on

this account begin to loathe and hate themselves. This selfcontempt has been studied above all with regard to the Jews,

who for millennia have been subjected to systematic campaigns

of discrimination and defamation. Something similar and equally

tragic occurred in the history of blacks, who were robbed of their

identity as they were deported from their homelands, enslaved,

and oppressed. At a certain point, African American women,

Nature, Society, and Thought,vol. 13, no. 4 (2000)

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even those of extraordinary beauty, began to dream and yearn to

be white, or at least to lighten the darkness of their skin. Such is

the extent to which victims may be subjugated to the values of

their oppressors.

This phenomenon of self-contempt does not affect only

ethnic and religious groups. It can also arise among social

classes and political parties that have suffered a particularly

profound defeat, especially when the victors, standing in the

background or setting aside their usual weapons, intensify their

attacks, today utilizing the profound firepower of the multiple

media. Among the many problems with which the Communist

movement must struggle, that of self-contempt is certainly not

the least important. Let us not even talk about the former leaders

and spokespersons for the Communist Party of Italy (PCI), who

as it turns out now assert that they may have been Party members

in the past without ever really being Communists. It is no accident that these people today look at a figure like Clinton who

could say at his re-election that he thanked God that he was

allowed to come into the world as an American with wonder

and perhaps even envy. An admittedly very subtle form of selfcontempt may ensnare anyone who has not had the good fortune

to belong to an elect or a privileged people, especially to that

people which considers itself predestined to carry to every corner

of the world and by every means available ideas and goods

“Made in USA.”

Thus, as I have said, let us set aside those ex-Communists

who today bewail the misfortune that they were not born AngloSaxons and liberals and lived so far from the sacred heart of the

true culture. Sadly this self-contempt has also taken hold within

the ranks of those who continue to identify themselves as Communists, yet who resist any notion that they had anything to do

with the past that both they and their political opponents regard

as synonymous with ruination. The inflated narcissism of the

victors, who religiously transfigure their own history, has its

counterpart in the conquered who are holding themselves

hostage.

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To me it is clear that the battle against this onerous selfcontempt will be just that much more effective the more our

critical analysis of the momentous and fascinating period

beginning with the October Revolution becomes really radical

and free from preconceptions. Despite any seeming parallel,

self-critique and self-contempt are contradictory attitudes. Selfcriticism, with all of its sharpness and particularly its radicalism,

expresses a consciousness of the necessity to examine one’s own

history; self-contempt represents a cowardly running away from

this history and away from the ideological and cultural struggle

that is expressed in this history. If the foundation of selfcriticism is the revival of Communist identity, then selfcontempt is another word for capitulation and the denial of an

autonomous identity.

Such is the general outline of the analysis I have published in

a series of articles in Ernesto: Mensile comunista.I present here

revised versions of these texts, and I would like to thank the

journal for its consent to do so.

I. At a fork in the road: Religion or politics?

An analysis of the ideas, attitudes, and moods of the contemporary Left today requires that we delve deeply into the past.

1. An enlightening event, almost 2000 years ago

In the year 70 A.D.the Jewish national revolution against

Roman imperialism was forced to capitulate. The capitulation

was preceded by an unforgiving siege that not only sentenced

Jerusalem to starvation, but also destroyed all social relationships: “Sons ripped bread from their father’s mouths, and, what

was the very worst, the mothers were taken from the children.” If

the siege itself was horrendous, so too were the measures taken

to contend with it. Traitors and deserters, real or imagined, were

killed without exception. Suspicion had become pathologically

widespread, and often rested on false accusations that were

brought forth by individuals having private and vicious motives.

Even the elderly and the young were suspected of hiding food

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and were tortured. Yet none of this occurred without reason: the

triumph of the Romans not only brought death to the national

revolution’s leaders and fighters, it brought exile and dispersion

to an entire people.

These events are described by a Jewish author who was

himself a resistance fighter there for a period of time, but who

changed sides and praised the profound courage and invincibility

of the victors. Out of Joseph as he was called emerged

Josephus Flavius; he assimilated this name from that breed of

soldier that had destroyed Jerusalem. More important than this

shifting of camps was what he knew and could disclose about the

Christians. Originally an integral part of the Jewish community,

they nonetheless felt the need to declare that they had nothing to

do with the uprising that had just been suppressed. They continued to rely on the Holy Book, sacred also to the defeated revolutionaries, but this latter group was then accused of falsifying and

betraying the sacred scripture.

This dialectic can be traced especially clearly in the Gospel

according to Mark, which was written immediately preceding the

destruction of Jerusalem. This was a catastrophe that Jesus had

foreseen: “Not one stone will remain upon another.” And the

arrival of Jesus, the Messiah, had already been prophesied by

Isaiah. According to this, the tragedy that had just befallen the

Jews was not ultimately attributable to Roman imperialism: it

was, on the one hand, an original component of the divine plan

of redemption, and on the other, a result of the progressive

deterioration of the Jewish community. The revolutionaries had

improperly interpreted the messianic prophecy in a worldly and

political way, instead of in an inwardly spiritual manner: horror

and catastrophe were the inevitable outcomes of this falsification

and betrayal. Determined to distance themselves from the Jewish

national revolution, the Christians also resolutely distanced

themselves from all historical and political action.

2. A history of subaltern classes and religious movements

Gramsci has made it clear that, in the contemporary world,

various more or less explicitly religious perspectives may also

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appear in the context of liberation movements. Just look at the

dialectic that developed in the wake of the collapse of “real,

existing socialism.”

1

Set aside those individuals who hurriedly

swung aboard the victors’ train. Let us concentrate instead on the

destruction, the intellectual and political devastation, that followed this collapse within segments of the Communist movement. Just as with the Christians in the Gospel according to

Mark, who turned to the Roman conquerors and proclaimed, as

the situation seemed to require, that they had absolutely nothing

to do with the national uprising, so too in our own time not a few

Communists are doing likewise. They passionately deny the

accusation that they are in any way connected to the history of

“real, existing socialism.” At the same time they reduce this history to a simple series of horrors in the hope that this will lend

them credibility especially in the eyes of the liberal bourgeoisie.

Marx summed up the idea and method of historical materialism with the statement about human beings making our own

history, yet not under conditions of our own choosing. When

someone today modestly attempts to direct attention to the permanently exceptional situation that characterized developments

since the October Revolution when someone wants to research

concretely the objective “conditions” within which the project of

building a postcapitalist society occurred just bet that the

“Communist” imitators of the early Christian assembly will cry

out that this is but a scandalous, indecent attempt at rationalization. To understand this attitude look to the Gospel of Mark

rather than to the German Ideologyor the Manifesto of the Communist Party. In the eyes of these “Communists,” the imperialist

encirclement of “real, existing socialism” and the socialist revolution are simply as irrelevant as the Roman siege of Jerusalem

and the Jewish national revolution were for the assembly of

Jewish early Christians. From this perspective every effort to

analyze the concrete historical conditions is a distraction and

immoral; the only thing that really matters is the authenticity and

the purity of the gospel of salvation. Distanced too far away to

perceive the conquest by the Romans as painful, the fall and

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destruction of Jerusalem actually seemed to please the JewishChristian believers; this had been foreseen by Jesus, and in any

case from now on it was possible to proclaim the Gospel without

the falsifications and deviations that politics was said to require.

In like manner there are not a few Communists who declare that

they have a sense of relief and “liberation” since the collapse of

“real, existing socialism.” Now it is possible to return to the

“authentic” Marx and to the idea of Communism and to proclaim

these without the nasty encrustations that history and politics

have deposited upon them.

3. “Back to Marx” and the formalistic cult of martyrs

In this way the slogan “Back to Marx” has come to pass. Yet

it can be rather easily shown that Marx is the most resolute critic

of all “back to” philosophies. In his own time he made fun of

those who, in their disputes with Hegel, wanted to go back to

Kant and even back to Aristotle. One of the fundamentals of historical materialism is the conclusion that theory develops along

with history and the concrete process of change. This great revolutionary thinker did not hesitate to acknowledge that he stood in

debt even to the short-lived experience of the Paris Commune.

Nowadays, however, decade upon decade of incredibly rich historical experience (from the October Revolution to the Chinese

and Cuban revolutions) is declared to be meaningless and unimportant in comparison to the “authentic” Gospel announced once

and for all in the sacred texts. These need simply to be rediscovered and religiously rethought.

At the same time those who proclaim the slogan “Back to

Marx” are the first not to take it really seriously. How else can

anyone explain that they devote such attention to Gramsci and to

Che Guevara? These are certainly individuals whose thought and

action is predicated upon the Bolshevik Revolution and the

development of the international Communist movement, and

who thus understood important decades of world history since

Marx’s deathhistory that took place under conditions that Marx

did not foresee, nor could he have foreseen them. In which text

from Marx, pray tell, is it prognosticated that we will find

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socialism on a small island like Cuba or a guerrilla in Bolivia

fighting for a socialist type of revolution? And as far as Gramsci

is concerned, it is known how he greeted the October Revolution

as The Revolution against Das Kapital.It was the Mensheviks

who at that time used the phrase “Back to Marx” and understood

it in a mechanistic way. The greatness of Gramsci is to be found

specifically in his opposition to them.

“Back to Marx” is clearly a religious phrase. Just as the earlyChristian assembly wanted to have nothing to do with the Jewish

national revolution, and thereby opposed Isaiah and Jesus, so too

today certain “Communists” oppose themselves and Marx to the

historical developments begun with the October Revolution. The

appeals to Gramsci and Che Guevara also carry with them quite

remarkable tendencies. Neither can be conceived of apart from

the teachings of Lenin, yet this must be carefully hushed up. Different as they are, they share the fate of having been in a certain

way defeated. They never were able to participate in the exercise

of power gained through revolution; instead they had to endure

the coercive force of the old sociopolitical order. People esteem

the martyrdom of both of these outstanding representatives of the

international Communist movement, but not their thinking or

their political activity, which belongs to a resolutely repressed

history.

4. Recovering the capacity for political thought and action

The results of this ultimately religious attitude weigh very

heavily. I will limit myself to two examples. The Italian publications  Il Manifestoand Liberazione2

correctly judged the

embargoes against Iraq and Cuba to be genocide or attempted

genocide, and then criticized the United States for granting

permanent normal trade relationships to China, because this

implicates it in repression of “dissidents.” A country said to be

guilty of genocide is called upon to defend and respect human

rights; on the one hand it is found guilty for its political

embargoes, then on the other hand guilty for refusing to take any

steps toward embargo. This is clearly bereft of any logic. Yet

one will search in vain for even the faintest traces of logic in the

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discourse of a religious mind that shifts about in a realm of

fantasy constantly concerned to proclaim its own rejection of

evil wherever this evil may occur, such as embargoes against the

people of Iraq and Cuba or as repression of “dissidents” in

China.

One needs to have done only the slightest political or historical research to realize that the anti-Chinese campaign of that

period was a “more or less foregone conclusion from the events

of Tiananmen Square” (Jean 1995, 205). In reality the United

States is disturbed about “China as the last great region beyond

the influence of U.S. politics, the as yet unconquered last frontier” (Valladao 1996, 241). But for the religious mind, which is

only concerned to declare (and savor) its own purported purity,

no kind of historical and political analysis counts. Why be bothered that the demand for a Chinese embargo at the expense of the

Chinese people would indirectly legitimate the already practiced

embargoes of Iraq or Cuba? The conquest of this “last frontier”

by the United States would mean the dismemberment of China

(following upon that of the USSR and Yugoslavia) and a catastrophe for the Chinese people. Making a debacle of this great

Asian country would tremendously strengthen the military and

political ability of U.S. imperialism to carry out its strategy of

embargo and the genocidal strangulation of the peoples of Iraq

and Cuba. Yet such thoughts are but superficial considerations in

the religious primitivism of certain “Communists.”

Another example. In Liberazioneone could read articles that

quite correctly compared the radical wing of the secessionist

movement in Italy with the Nazis (Caldiron 1977). But just a little while later this same publication undertook a polemic against

those who demanded the intervention of the courts to halt the

Lega Nord’s propagation of race hatred among secessionists as

well as its preparations for a counterrevolutionary civil war. It

seems that these comrades have not posed a very fundamental

question: just how appropriate is it for Communists to demand

that the Nazi groups not be penalized? Once again, every effort

to seek a logic here other than a primitive religious mentality

proves futile. Coercion is condemned absolutely. Who cares if

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this condemnation of law enforcement and judicial intervention

powerfully invigorates the violence of the Lega supporters and

the Nazis? No matter what, one’s own soul has been saved. We

have a paradoxical situation here. The Vatican emphasizes again

and again the danger of legalistic plans, and calls for government

institutions to oppose quite decisively the danger of rebellion and

counterrevolutionary civil war. Jesus, who emerged from the

disastrous failure of the Jewish national revolution, openly

declared: “My realm is not of this world.” The “Communists”

have appropriated this slogan today, making it theirs even more

than the Christians.

I have compared the perspective of certain “Communists”

with that of the Jewish-Christian believers. But this needs to be

made more precise. The withdrawal of these believers into their

own inwardness also contains a positive element: the distancing

from a national revolution also contributes to the emergence of

universalistic thinking. But the contemporary withdrawal into

inwardness and the distancing from a revolution and a historical

development that is proclaimed today in explicitly universalistic

terms quite simply means an involution and a regression. We do

not need to get all worked up about it. It is quite natural that a

disastrous failure of historical proportions gives rise to perspectives of a religious type. Yet it would be catastrophic to be stuck

in this position. Communists, if they do not want to sentence

themselves to powerlessness and subalternity, must recover the

capacity to think and act in political terms, even when this politics is carried along by momentous ideational tension.

II. The collapse of the “socialist camp”:

Implosion or Third World War?

1. “Implosion”: A myth in defense of imperialism

How did U.S. imperialism succeed in gobbling up Nicaragua?

It subjected the country to an economic and military blockade, to

surveillance and destabilization by the CIA, to mined harbors,

and to a secretly waged undeclared, bloody, and dirty war,

making a mockery of international law. Faced with all of this,

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the Sandinista government felt compelled to undertake limited

defensive measures against external aggression and internal reaction. Incredibly, the U.S. administration swung itself into the role

of defender of human rights against totalitarian repression, and

directed the fire of its entire multimedia machinery against the

Sandinista government. This campaign was supported in the

main by the Catholic hierarchy, yet some of the beautiful souls

on the “Left” played right along. Ortega’s ability to counteract

the aggression was increasingly limited and destroyed. While

ideological crusades and economic strangulation undermined the

social support for the Sandinista government, military power and

the terrorism of the Contras (supported by Washington) weakened the will and ability to resist. The result was elections in

which the extraordinary financial and multimedia power of

imperialism was allowed full play. Already bloodied and impoverished, with the knife closer to their throats than ever before, the

Nicaraguan people “freely” chose to give in to the aggressors.

The strategy used against Cuba is just the same. Here one

may well pose the question: was the collapse of the Sandinista

government the result of an “implosion”? Could the overthrow

of Fidel Castro and Cuban socialism, sought for decades by U.S.

imperialism, be described as an “implosion” or “collapse”?

Immediately visible here is the mystifying character of the concepts used by imperialism to portray a social crisis or catastrophe

as a purely spontaneous and internal process, though in reality it

can not be separated from the momentous stress that imperialism

applied at every juncture.

The concept “implosion” is not any more persuasive when it

is applied in this manner beyond the cases of Cuba and

Nicaragua to the “socialist camp” in general. George Kennan

emphasized as early as 1947, as he was formulating the politics

of containment, that it would be necessary to influence “the

internal developments, both within Russia and throughout the

international Communist movement.” This should take place not

just by means of the “informational activity” of the covert

agencies, though the most influential advisors to the U.S. consulate in Moscow and within the U.S. administration of course

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underscored this especially. But articulated more generally and

more ambitiously, the aim was “to increase enormously the

strains under which Soviet policy must operate,” in order to

“promote tendencies which must eventually find their outlet in

either the breakup or the gradual mellowing of Soviet power.”

What is usually expressed with the remarkable euphemism

“implosion” is here more precisely defined as a “breakup,”

which would be so little spontaneous that it was foretold by

roughly forty years, planned, and actively sought. At the

international level, the economic, political, and military power

relationships were to be such that and this is still Kennan the

West would exercise a kind of “power of life and death over the

Communist movement” and the Soviet Union (Hofstadter and

Hofstadter 1982, 418 f).

2. On the sources of the Cold War

The collapse of the “socialist camp” must therefore be seen in

the context of an unremitting exercise of power, which was the

so-called Cold War. This stretched across the entire globe and

lasted for decades. At the beginning of the 1950s, its conditions

were described as follows by General Jimmy Doolittle:

There are no rules in such a game. Hitherto acceptable

norms of human conduct do not apply....We must...

learn to subvert, sabotage, and destroy our enemies by

more clever, more sophisticated, and more effective

methods than those used against us. (Ambrose 1991, 377)

Eisenhower came to the same conclusions. He, of course,

shifted from the office of supreme military commander in

Europe to that of U.S. president by no mere accident. We are

talking about the assaying of enormous power, which on both

sides utilized any means necessary (espionage, subversion, dirty

tricks, etc.) and became real war in various areas of the

globe for example, in Korea. Apparently seeking to overcome a

lull in military operations in January 1952, Truman dallied with

a radical idea. As he makes clear in his diary, one could confront

the USSR and the People’s Republic of China with an ultimatum

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and make clear that if it were disregarded, “Moscow, Leningrad,

Mukden, Vladivostock, Peking, Shanghai, Port Arthur, Darien,

Odessa, Stalingrad and every other manufacturing plant in China

and the Soviet Union will be eliminated” (Sherry 1995, 182).

What is going on here is not simply some private rumination.

During the Korean War, the use of atomic weaponry against the

People’s Republic of China was seriously contemplated, and this

threat was made all the more horrendous given the recent memories of Nagasaki and Hiroshima.

Without a doubt the Cold War aimed at the dissolutionmore

accurately the breakup of the USSR. But when did it begin? It

was already underway as the Second World War raged. Nagasaki

and Hiroshima were destroyed even as it was clear that Japan

was ready to capitulate. Above and beyond using the bomb

against this already defeated country, the United States aimed

this threat at the USSR. This is the conclusion of prestigious U.S.

historians based upon irrefutable evidence. The new and terrible

weapon was not only to be tested over desert areas for demonstration purposes; it was to be dropped immediately on two large

cities. In this manner the Soviets would come to realize,

unmistakably and thoroughly, what the real nature of power relationships now was as well as the U.S. resolution to shrink from

nothing. And in fact Churchill declared his approval of

“eliminating all the Russian centres of industry” if it were

necessary. At the same time U.S. Secretary of State Henry L.

Stimson was prepared “to force the Soviet Union to abandon or

radically alter its entire system of government.”

Paradoxically, it was the military leaders who reacted negatively and registered opposition to these plans for bombardment.

They called the new weapons “barbarous” because they would

indiscriminately kill “women and children.” These were viewed

as no better than the “bacteriological weapons” and “poison gas”

that were prohibited under the Geneva accords. Beyond all this,

Japan was “already defeated and prepared to capitulate.” These

military officers did not even know that the atomic weapons

were really aimed at the Soviet Union, the one country that was

prepared to oppose Truman’s policy to make the United States

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into “the world’s marshal and sheriff” (as explicitly formulated

at a cabinet meeting on 7 September 1945). The horrible destruction of Nagasaki and Hiroshima disturbed public opinion in the

United States to a degree that could even be called an outcry. For

this reason Stimson intervened with an article that was played up

by all the media. It spread the deceitful fable that these two cruel

massacres were necessary to save the lives of millions of people.

In reality, however, as the U.S. historian cited here emphasizes,

it was about stopping the wave of criticism and getting public

opinion used to the idea that the employment of nuclear weapons

would now be absolutely normal (as well as renewing a warning

to the USSR (Alperovitz 1995, 316–330, 252, 260 f).

3

In Japan another situation was unfolding that is also helpful

in understanding the Cold War. In its aggression against China,

the imperial army of Japan had committed gruesome crimes.

Numbers of captives had been used as guinea pigs for dissection

and other experiments, and bacteriological weapons were used

against the civilian population. Yet those persons responsible for

this and the members of the notorious Unit 731 were guaranteed

immunity by the United States in exchange for the delivery of all

the data collected through these war crimes. In the Cold War that

was just getting started, not only nuclear bombs but also

bacteriological weapons were put into place (Meirion and

Harries 1987, 39).

In this way the beginnings of the Cold War and the final

phases of the Second World War are interrelated. In fact it is not

even necessary to wait until 1945 to see these connections. It is

enlightening to look at the declaration that Truman made immediately after the Nazi invasion of the USSR. At this point the

United States was not officially a participant in the war, though

in fact an ally of Great Britain. It is understandable that the

future U.S. president would make clear that he “doesn’t want to

see Hitler victorious under any circumstances.” Yet on the other

hand he does not shy away from announcing: “If we see that

Germany is winning, we ought to help Russia, and if Russia is

winning, we ought to help Germany and that way let them kill as

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many as possible.” In this fashion Truman made knowndespite

the given alliance with Great Britain and thereby indirect

alliance with the USSR that he was decidedly interested in seeing the country that arose with the October Revolution bleed to

death. At the same time the British minister Lord Brabazon made

similar sentiments known. He was forced to step down, yet the

fact remains that influential circles in Great Britain continued to

see the USSR, with whom they were formally allied, as their

mortal enemy (Thomas 1988, 187).

In 1944, Vice President Truman (who in a year would be

president) became engaged in altering the policy set in the summer of 1941. One should add that Franklin Delano Roosevelt

(who not accidentally had Truman as vice president for a year)

did not seem to have been unacquainted with the intention of

weakening the Soviet Union or bleeding it dry. Toward the end

of the war, it was becoming clear that the Soviet Union and not

Great Britain would emerge from it as “the most important opponent of a global ‘Pax Americana,’” and Roosevelt radically

altered his military strategy. According to an observation of a

German historian:

The consequence of this, letting the USSR carry on the

main effort toward the defeat of Germany, resulted from

the decision to put into place only 89 of the 215 divisions

originally called for in the “Victory Plan;” the chief military might of the U.S. was shifted to the navy and the air

force to secure superior strength in the air and at sea.

(Hillgruber 1988, 295 n. 71)

Perhaps it is necessary to delve back even further. Andre

Fontaine begins his Geschichte des kalten Krieges[History of

the Cold War] in a very telling way with the October Revolution,

which was, of course, really contested both with hot and cold

war. In the period between October 1917 and 1953 (Stalin’s

death), we see Germany and the Anglo-Saxon powers combating

the USSR relay style, so to speak, passing the baton to relieve

one another. The aggression of Wilhelmanian Germany (continuing until the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk) was followed first by that

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of the Entente, then that of Hitler’s Germany, and finally the

Cold War in the narrow sense, whose beginnings were visible

decades before and even connected to the two world wars.

3. A deadly combination: The new face of war

In the struggle against the Soviet Union and the “socialist

camp,” the U.S. administration used the same deadly combination of economic, ideological, and military pressures that it had

successfully utilized to bring down the Sandinista government

and which it hoped would lead to the breakdown of the social

and political system in Cuba. This was the same mixture that it

also deployed against other nations such as Iraq, Iran, Libya, and

from time to time against China.

This new, more subtle, and highly developed type of warfare

was worked out in the course of the prolonged battle against the

social formation that emerged from the October Revolution.

Herbert Hoover, himself a high-level representative of the U.S.

administration and later president, emphasized that sending soldiers against Soviet Russia was sending them to prevent

“infection with Bolshevik ideas.” In his estimation it would be

still better to utilize an economic blockade in a struggle against

the enemy and against those nations who let themselves be

seduced by Moscow, because the threat of an economic blockade

and the perils of starvation would get them to come to their

senses. The French premier, Georges Clemenceau, was immediately fascinated by Hoover’s suggestions. He acknowledged that

this would be a “really effective weapon” that offered “greater

chances for success than military intervention.” Gramsci, in contrast, was incensed by the imperialistic formula, “Your money or

your life! Bourgeois rule or starvation.”

4

Since the start of the Cold War (narrowly defined), yet

another weapon has also been introduced. As early as November

1945, the U.S. ambassador to Moscow, Averill Harriman, recommended opening up an ideological and propaganda front

against the USSR. One could certainly begin this with the dissemination of newspapers and journals, yet “the printed word”

was in his estimation “fundamentally unsatisfactory.” Still better

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would be to utilize strong radio broadcasts in all of the various

languages of the Soviet Union. The penetrating power of stations

such as these was repeatedly recommended and praised (Thomas

1988, 223). Thus radio became the newest weapon in the gigantic confrontation that was now beginning. Radio, which had

served the Nazi regime in the solidification of its social consensus, was now utilized to destroy the social consensus of the

Soviet state.

In combination with this new weaponry, the old standard

weapons continued to be directly or indirectly employed. The

epoch beginning in 1945–46 has been characterized by Eric

Hobsbawm as “a Third World War, though a very peculiar one”

(1994, 226). It is particularly inappropriate to call a war “cold”

that begins with Nagasaki and Hiroshima. What we had here was

a war that not only heated up repeatedly in various places around

the globe, but periodically threatened to become, almost in the

blink of an eye, so hot that the whole (or nearly the whole) planet

would go up in flames. In terms of the confrontation between the

chief antagonists, one must never lose sight of the fact that this

represented a probing and experimentation with terrible military

might, though most of the public fronts were in political, diplomatic, economic, and propaganda battles. Even if there were

never to be a direct and total clash, these forces nonetheless had

serious consequences. This assaying and estimation of power in

the end had effects on the economy and politics of the enemy

nation, its entire system of internal relations. This was the aim,

and it succeeded, as we have seen, in destroying the alliances,

the “camp” of the enemy.

At this juncture the concept “implosion” is revealed to be but

a myth in defense of the systems of capitalism and imperialism.

These systems are celebrating their own presumed advantages in

comparison exclusively with what are considered to be the builtin disadvantages, crises, and difficulties of the social systems in

Moscow, in the Caribbean, and in Latin America. The concept of

implosion or collapse serves primarily to crown the winner. Yet

it has found a friendly acceptance within the Left and among

Communists, especially among those who present themselves as

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ultra-Communists and ultra-revolutionaries. This is but renewed

evidence of their ideological and political subalternity.

A refusal to use the concept “implosion” does not mean a

refusal to engage in an unflinching historical examination of

“real, existing socialism” and the international Communist

movement. Far from it: this kind of examination is only possible

when one explicitly reflects on the reality of the “Third World

War.” Because this unremitting examination must never be

mistaken for capitulation, it is necessary also to carry out fully

the critique of subalternity and religious primitivism as these

have taken hold in the Communist movement in the wake of

defeat.

III. A Communist movement with limited sovereignty?

We have shown that the concept “implosion” is completely

inappropriate as an explanation for the collapse of “real, existing

socialism.” It is far more reasonable to speak of a “Third World

War,” a world war in which a multimedia and ideological barrage has played a central role. This aspect also accounts for the

disorientation of the vanquished. It is as if an ideological Hiroshima has destroyed the ability of the international Communist

movement to think in its own behalf.

1. Normality and the exceptional circumstance

“Sovereign are they who get to decide the exceptional

circumstance.” This aphorism formulated by the ultrareactionary

and ingenious legal scholar Carl Schmidt can aid us in understanding not only the concrete way in which a constitutional

system operates, but also in understanding the vitality of a

political movement and its actual degree of autonomy. An example: In Algeria in 1991 a coup annulled the election that would

have brought the Islamic Reform Front into power. A military

dictatorship was set up using the rationalization that the reform

movement represented an immense danger to the country and its

prospects for modernization. The generals pointed to the

exceptional circumstance, and showed themselves to be the real

holders of political power. As Mao Zedong made clear:

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“Political power comes out of the barrel of a gun.” And sovereign are those who decide when the guns speak. At least this

much can be said about the realities of power within the realm of

a government.

Now let us apply the same methodological criterion to an

investigation of the relations between the different political

camps. The coup in Algeria was accepted at that time by the

West and defended with the argument that it avoided the

establishment of an Islamic and obscurantist government that

would have brought an end to all freedom of expression and horrible retrogression, especially where women were concerned. In

a similar manner a few years earlier, the USSR had tried to

defend its intervention in Afghanistan and supported a government embarked on an ambitious modernization program. It

thereby battled the rabid resistance of Islamic fundamentalists. In

this instance the West displayed not only its disapproval, but also

armed to the teeth the same sort of “freedom fighters” who in

Algeria are branded as common criminals and bloodthirsty murderers. Thus we see that appealing to exceptional circumstances

in one instance is not regarded as valid in another. Sometimes

breaking the rules is legitimated and sanctified, and on other

occasions regarded as heresy to be condemned.

It should not surprise us that the United States or France

inconsistently judge controversial cases according to changing

geopolitical and economic conditions. It is much more interesting to inquire into the attitudes of the Left and especially the

Communists. All in all they seem to plug into the established

ideology: they view the coup in Algeria as if it were something

almost natural and noncontroversial, though they never tire of

condemning the Soviet use of force in Afghanistan. The exceptional circumstances, which call for the suspension of the usual

rules of the game, are the exclusive prerogative of the liberal,

capitalist, and imperialist West to decide. And thus arises the

regrettable condition of a Communist movement without sovereignty, or at best with limited sovereignty. If that person is

sovereign who decides about exceptional circumstances, then the

sovereign par excellencesits in Washington. Washington’s

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sovereignty is complete to the degree that it is able to limit and

sometimes entirely cast aside the power of independent thinking

of those very groups, journals, newspapers, and movements that

consider themselves to be Communist.

2. Bobbio and the exceptional circumstance

What has been said above is not all that may be said in

defense of the thesis presented here. In August of 1991 a curious

putsch occurred in Moscow, which Yeltsin kept from being

really understood. Instead, he provided it with a colossal

propaganda trial, which became the precondition of its ultimate

success. A certain amount of suspicion is legitimate here. The

editorial in Expressoon the 1 September of that year carried the

famous headline: “Yeltsin, or rather Bush, made the real putsch.”

But this is not what interests us just now. Those who initiated the

“putsch” made assurances that they wanted to oppose a dramatic

threat to the unity and independence of the USSR, and that they

were relying on the special use of force that was foreseen in the

constitution in case of exceptional circumstances. Now, who

does not remember the massive international disarmament campaign at that time that also drew in, or overran, the Communists?

Two years later it was Yeltsin who, as the protagonist of a

putsch, dissolved the parliament that had been freely elected by

the people and allowed it to be fired upon. This time the machinery of repression was well oiled and promptly put into service. It

did not content itself with empty threats. The constitutional system was liquidated with utter brutality, yet this did not prevent

the “democrat” Clinton or the “socialist” Mitterrand from

expressing their approval. And the Communists? Above all a

moving sensibility was displayed by Il Manifesto,which looks

toward Turin in order to follow the convolutions of the grand

theoretician of the absolute inviolability of rules and regulations.

When asked to articulate his position, Bobbio5

proclaimed: “I

defend government by rule of law and will always defend it. Yet

in the Russian instance I ask myself: do conditions still exist

there for a law-governed state?” (La Stampa, 24 September

1993). Too bad that this question did not occur to the illustrious

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philosopher two years earlier, in August 1991. Nonetheless, his

consideration here is simple and rational, just a matter of distinguishing exceptional circumstances from normality. This is a

consideration from which Communists also have much to learn,

yet they refuse to distinguish such things and leave it to the sovereign sitting in Washington, or more modestly in Turin, to

decide whether exceptional circumstances exist.

It is enlightening to look at the subaltern dependency of the

Left especially with regard to the campaign that the U.S. administration has undertaken against the People’s Republic of China.

A whole series of disclosures has recently shed new light on the

events of Tiananmen Square. Banned students and intellectuals,

who were exiled to the United States, are today criticizing the

“radical” exponents of the movement back then for seeking to

impede reconciliation with officials in Beijing at any cost. Thus

we see the real goal pursued by certain circles (in China and outside it) after the disturbances of 1989. This is made clear in an

article in Foreign Affairs(a journal close to the State Department) where it is gleefully forecast that China will fall apart after

the death of Deng Xiaoping. It is also noted in passing that this

was exactly the result sought in 1989, the year when the collapse

of Communism was observed “in a dozen countries” (Waldron

1995, 149). From this we can see that the same circles that today

want to pillory the leadership in Beijing were ready at a

moment’s notice to rationalize the canon barrage that might have

been fired by a Chinese Yeltsin.

3. The struggle for hegemony

Yet none of this seems to evoke any real analytical effort on

the part of some on the Left, though they are so full of praise for

Gramsci. They seem to forget that one of the fundamental

aspects of his work is the battle against hegemony. Categories,

judgments, historical comparisons one could say that all of

these are today ultimately extracted by this Left from the

dominant ideology. The thirtieth anniversary of the Hungarian

uprising became a platform for a recollection of the 1956 Soviet

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invasion of Hungary. And, in accordance with logic and duty,

the Communists busied themselves with profound and pitiless

self-critique. Toward the end of 1997, however, nobody took the

opportunity to remember the repressive measures taken by

Chiang Kai-shek on Taiwan fifty years earlier. A pretty insignificant event? From official Hungarian sources we know that the

tragic events of 1956 claimed the lives of 2500 people. At the

beginning of 1947, nine years before, 10,000 people died as a

result of the USA-sponsored Kuomintang repression (Lutzker

1987. 178).

Every year there is a renewed memorialization of Tiananmen

Square, but who remembers the hundreds or perhaps thousands

of people who died during the U.S. intervention in Panama

(bombing thickly populated areas without any declaration of

war) in the same year, 1989? There are so many reasons to assert

that the Left, including numerous Communists, is operating with

but limited sovereignty, especially in terms of its own historical

understanding and historical perspective.

This lack of autonomy is all the more evident when we look

at how certain concepts are used. I shall limit myself to one especially obvious example. Whenever did the leftist press and the

Communist press not join the bourgeois press in referring to the

opposition against Yeltsin (including the Russian Communists)

as “nationalists?” It might as well suffice just to read the pronouncements of U.S. leaders to get ourselves a good grounding

in the facts. From his point of view, Bush expressed himself at

the time quite clearly:

I see America as the leader a unique nation with a special

role in the world. And this has been called the American

century, because in it we were the dominant force for

good in the world. We saved Europe, cured polio, went to

the moon, and lit the world with our culture. And now we

are on the verge of a new century, and what country’s

name will it bear? I say it will be another American century. Our work is not done, our force is not spent. (1989,

125)

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Let us listen to Bill Clinton more recently: America “must

come to lead the world” “our mission is timeless” (1994). And

finally let us listen to the pragmatist Kissinger: “World leadership is inherent in America’s power and values” (1994, 834). We

see here the regrettable mythology of the chosen people taking

shape once again. The chauvinism that characterizes it is unmistakable. Yet those who dare to oppose this chosen people are

branded as nationalists.

Mistrust is more than justified. Even the American news

magazine Time admits the following: “For four months a group

of American advisors participated secretly in the campaign to

elect Yeltsin.” An “influential member of the State Department”

had declared so there would be no mistake about it that “a Communist victory” could under no circumstances be tolerated

(Chiesa 1997, 14 and 36). Therefore, whatever the final judgment may be about the putschists of August 1991, it must be

recognized that their conduct was undergirded by a justifiable

concern for the unity and independence of the country! And

whatever the final judgment may be about the way in which the

Chinese Communists met the crisis of 1989, the fact remains that

they all have reason to be on guard against maneuvers designed

to destroy the unity and independence of the one single country

today in a position to restrain the definitive triumph of the American century.

Let me say something very clearly: the point here is not to

justify this or that position with regard to the tensions between

the former CPSU and the CP of China. Every concrete action of

this or that Communist Party (and this means every party that

calls itself Communist) must be examined in a concrete way,

without preconceptions. And this analysis must not be uncritically derived from those interests and methods that are spread by

the dominant ideology. An approach that is free from preconceptions must be extended to everything, and have the aim of

retrieving independent judgment and historical understanding.

Communists are called upon to liberate themselves once and for

all from that limited sovereignty that the victors of the Cold War

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(that is to say the “Third World War”) would gladly make

permanent.

IV. The years of Lenin and Stalin: An initial assessment

1. Total war and “totalitarianism”

You cannot separate the history of the USSR from its international context. The despotism and terror, first of Lenin and then

of Stalin, are less related to the much-maligned Oriental tradition

than to the totalitarianism that began to spread worldwide following the Second Thirty Years War as governments, even in the

liberal countries, expanded their “‘legitimate’ power over life,

death, and freedom” (Max Weber). Evidence for this is found in

the total mobilization for war, widespread use of military courts,

world championship style competition in executions, and the

arbitrary use of force. It is especially revealing to examine this

last phenomenon.

Even in liberal Italy the top military leadership regularly utilizes this, discarding the principle of individual accountability.

There are lessons to be learned from how this works in the

United States too. After Pearl Harbor, Franklin D. Roosevelt had

U.S. citizens of Japanese ancestry (including women and children) deported to internment camps. This occurred not on the

basis of any sort of due process, but rather solely on account of

their membership in a distrusted ethnic group. (Here too the principle of individual accountability was abrogated a characteristic

component of totalitarianism).

In 1950, the McCarran Act was passed, which called for the

construction of six detention camps for political prisoners in various regions of the country. Among the congressmen approving

of this measure were future U.S. presidents Kennedy, Nixon, and

Johnson! Beyond all this, the phenomenon of the personal abuse

of power should also be seen in a comparative perspective.

Franklin D. Roosevelt was ushered into the presidency out of the

depths of the Great Depression and was immediately granted

tremendous controls and powers. Re-elected three times, he died

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at the beginning of his fourth term. The Soviet government,

building up its power during a war characterized by the total

mobilization and coerced consolidation of populations (even in

countries with secure liberal traditions and relatively safe

geographical positions, surrounded either by oceans or the

Mediterranean Sea), had to contend with permanently exceptional circumstances.

If we look at the period from 1917 to 1953, the year Stalin

died, we see that this epoch was characterized by at least four or

five wars and two revolutions. From the West, the aggression of

Wilhelmanian Germany (until the peace of Brest-Litovsk) was

followed first by that of the Entente and then by that of Hitler

fascism. Ultimately there was also the aggression of the Cold

War that threatened to become a tremendous hot one through the

use of atomic weapons. From the East, Japan (which only after

1922 pulled back from Siberia and after 1925 from Sachalin)

became a military threat to the borders of the USSR with its

invasion of Manchuria. This led to larger border skirmishes

before the official start of the Second World War in 1938 and

1939. All of the wars mentioned here were total wars in the

sense that they were either begun without a declaration of war

(whether one looks at the Entente or the Third Reich), or the

invaders had the declared intention of destroying a given regime,

as when Hitler’s campaign sought the elimination of the “subhumans” to the East.

In addition to these wars, we must add the revolutions. Aside

from that of October, there were the revolutions from above that

began to collectivize agriculture and to industrialize the expansive country. The dictatorships of Lenin and (for all of the

differences) that of Stalin had one essential feature in common:

they were confronted with this total war and with permanently

exceptional circumstances, and the Soviet Union was a backward

country without a liberal tradition.

2. Gulag and emancipation in the Stalin period

Up to this point we have said little or nothing about the

internal developments in this country that emerged from Red

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October. At the outset let me make clear that the terror is only

one side of the coin (and this is true also for the Stalinist period).

The other side needs to be described with some citations and

quotations from impeccable sources. “The fifth five-year plan for

the school system was an organized attempt to eradicate illiteracy.” Further policies in this area led to the preparation “of a

completely new generation of skilled workers and technicians

and technically skilled managerial personnel.” Between 1927/28

and 1932/33 the number of college and university students

increased markedly from 160,000 to 470,000. The proportion of

students in higher education from working-class families rose

from one-fourth to one-half. “New cities were founded and old

cities were reconstructed.” The emergence of gigantic new

industrial complexes went hand in glove with massive upward

mobility. This led to “social advancement for capable and ambitious citizens from working-class and agricultural backgrounds.”

As a consequence of the cruel and extensive repression of those

years, “ten thousand Stakhonovites became factory managers,”

and there occurred a parallel phenomenon of upward mobility in

the armed forces. One understands nothing of the Stalin period if

one does not see it as a combination of barbarism (with an

immense Gulag) and social progress.”

6

3. A history we need to be ashamed of?

Members of the phantom (anti-Marxist) “Back to Marx”

movement claim that Communists above all must acknowledge

that the history of the use of power by Lenin and Stalin is a

shameful one. Yet it is not. The epoch-making feature of the

October Revolution and the historical turning-point introduced

by Lenin is described as follows by Stalin in 1924:

Formerly, the national question was usually confined to a

narrow circle of questions, concerning, primarily,

“civilized” nationalities. The Irish, the Hungarians, the

Poles, the Finns, the Serbs, and several other European

nationalities that was the circle of unequal peoples in

whose destinies the leaders of the Second International

482 NATURE, SOCIETY, AND THOUGHT

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were interested. The scores and hundreds of millions of

Asiatic and African peoples who are suffering national

oppression in its most savage and cruel form usually

remained outside of their field of vision. They hesitated to

put white and black, “civilized” and “uncivilized” on the

same plane....Leninism laid bare this crying incongruity, broke down the wall between whites and blacks,

between Europeans and Asiatics, between the “civilized”

and “uncivilized” slaves of imperialism, and thus linked

the national question with the question of the colonies.

(1965, 70–71)

Was this just talk? All theory that does not bring immediate

profit can be regarded as nonessential only in the mind of the

short-sighted capitalist manager or provincial shopkeeper. In no

case can this be the view of a Communist, who is supposed to

have learned from Lenin that theory is indispensable for the construction of an emancipatory movement, as well as from Marx

that theory becomes a material force of the utmost importance

when it is grasped by the masses. And this really did happen.

Even in the darkest years of Stalinism, the international

Communist movement played a progressive rolenot only in the

colonial areas, but also in the developed capitalist countries. In

the “Third Reich,” the Jewish philologist, Viktor Klemperer,

described in heart-rending terms the degradation and insult that

were connected to wearing the star of David;

A removal man, whom I have grown fond of from two

earlier removals, suddenly stands before me in the

Freiburger Strasse and pumps my hand with his two paws

and whispers so that one must be able to hear it across the

Fahrdamm: “Now Professor, don’t let it get you down!

Before long they’ll be finished, the bloody brothers.”

The Jewish philologist was referring with loving irony to the fact

that it must be “decent people who reek strongly of the KPD

[German Communist Party]” who were challenging the regime

in this way (Burleigh and Wipperman 1991, 94).

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Let us shift from Germany to the United States. There

Franklin D. Roosevelt has become president. But in the South a

politics of segregation and lynching is directed against the African American population. Who is opposing it? The Communists,

who not for nothing were branded as “foreigners” and “n-lovers” by those with the dominant mind-set. An American

historian describes the courage that Communists needed in the

United States: “Their challenge to racism and to the status quo

prompted a wave of repression one might think inconceivable in

a democratic country.” To be a Communist really could mean:

“to face the possibility of imprisonment, beatings, kidnapping

and even death” (Kelley 1990, 30 and xii).

In this manner, Communists struggled against anti-Semitic

and racist barbarism in two very different countries, and as we

want to stressthey viewed Stalin’s USSR filled with sympathy

and hope.

4. Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Stalin

Now let us examine the ideology of the dictator himself, and

we shall not liken it to that of Hitlersuch an absurd comparison

can be left to the professional anti-Communists. Instead, let us

look at the ideologies of two other leaders of the antifascist

coalition. A few years ago a well-respected English newspaper

disclosed that Churchill was attracted to the idea that groups of

vagabonds, barbarians, derelicts, and criminals who are not

capable of participating in social life at the level of civilized

beings should be forcibly sterilized (Ponting 1992).

This type of thinking was also evident with Franklin D.

Roosevelt. He was enamored of a radical project at least for

some length of time after his declaration in Yalta that he felt

“more than ever the need for revenge against the Germans” due

to the crimes they had committed. “We’ve got to be tough

against the Germans and I mean the German people, not just the

Nazis. We’ve got to castrate the German people or at least treat

them so that they can never again bring forth people who will

want to act as in the past” (Bacque 1992, chap. 1).7

484 NATURE, SOCIETY, AND THOUGHT

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In spite of the immense losses and the indescribable suffering

that resulted from Hitler fascism, Stalin never engaged in any

kind of comparable wholesale racialization of the Germans. In

August 1942, he asserted:

It would be ludicrous to equate the clique around Hitler

with the German people or the German government. The

lessons of history show that Hitlers come and go, yet the

German people, the German state continue. The strength

of the Red Army rests upon the fact that it can not and

does not abide racial hatred against other peoples, including the German people. (1942)

8

In this case too one could shrug it off as mere theory, mere talk.

But one thing is certain: apart from the barbarism and terror of

these years, Marxist theory, even in Stalin, was superior to the

ideas held by even these respected exponents of the bourgeois

world.

5. Two chapters from the history of subaltern classes and oppressed peoples

We recommend some reflection to the Communists who have

joined ranks with the dominant ideology in demonizing Stalin.

They continue to look to Spartacus. Historians report that

Spartacus, in order to avenge and honor the death of his comrade

Crixius, sacrificed three hundred Roman prisoners, and killed

others the night before this battle. Still more violent was the

action of the slaves who dared an insurgency some decades

before. According to Diodorus Siculus, they broke into the home

of the rulers, raped the women, and brought about “a massive

blood bath, that did not even spare the infants.” These are certainly not the types of conduct that Italian Communists want to

valorize when they wave the portrait of Spartacus at their

Liberazionefestivals or depict it in the pages of their revolutionary Communist newspaper. They never place him on the same

plane as Crassus, who (after restoring an iron discipline to the

Roman Legion through the exercise of arbitrary power) succeeded in putting down the insurgents and had four thousand

Flight from History? 485

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prisoners crucified along the Appian Way. Crassus was the richest man in Rome. He wanted to see slavery made permanent and

he wanted to deny all dignity to the “instruments with speech” of

the world. Yet one of these talking instruments had some

success, at least for a time, in confronting and deflating the

arrogance of his imperial masters, expressing the protest of his

comrades in work and suffering. Insofar as they honor Spartacus,

the Italian Communists are also reinforcing the fact that his personality and his destiny were (in spite of the errors) part of a

movement that was a liberation movement and inseparable from

the history of subaltern classes.

It is little different with the Russian Communists and the

meaning of their demonstrations against the use of the portrait of

Stalin. They want to avoid identifying with the Gulag and the

systematic liquidation of opponents, just like the “Liberazione”

avoid identification with the brutality against women and the

massacre of prisoners and infants that the insurgent slaves were

guilty of. The simple-minded transfiguration of Spartacus is the

other side of the coin of demonizing Stalin. It makes no sense to

flee from reality or to sanitize it arbitrarily in order to protect our

comfort zone. One need not be a Communist to recognize that

“Stalinism,” with all of its horror, is a chapter in a liberation

movement that defeated the Third Reich and that provided the

impetus for anticolonialism and for the struggles against antiSemitism and racism; every honest historian knows this.

One historian observes: It is an error to think “Nazi racism

was renounced as early as the 1930s.” Even the neologism

“racism” with its negative connotations comes into use only

later. Before then racial prejudice was a component of the dominant ideology taken for granted on both sides of the Atlantic

(Barkan 1993, 1–3). Can we even imagine the radical confrontation and transformation of the concepts “race” and “racism”

without the contributions from Stalin’s USSR?

6. Communists must reappropriate their own history

During his presidency, Bill Clinton declared that he wanted to

model himself on Theodore Roosevelt. Teddy was not only the

486 NATURE, SOCIETY, AND THOUGHT

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theoretician of the “big stick” needed when dealing with Latin

America. The person of whom Clinton was so enamored was

also a proponent of the “eternal war” without “false sentimentality” against the American Indians. “I don’t go so far as to

think that the only good Indians are the dead Indians, but I

believe nine out of every ten are, and I shouldn’t like to inquire

too closely about the tenth” (Hofstadter 1967, 209). Of course

this is not the Theodore Roosevelt that Clinton wanted to take as

his model. But this should give us pause to think: a careless reference to a personality that stepped right up to the threshold of a

theoretical justification for genocide. And we should also think

about the silence of others who tirelessly demand that the Left

and the Communists must come to terms with their criminal past.

On the other hand, there are well-known legal scholars who

speak of a “Western genocide” (or at minimum a massacre that

has already cost hundreds of thousands of lives) with regard to

the long-standing embargo against the people of Iraq. And this

massacre did not occur as a result of a horrific and extraordinary

circumstance, but rather in a period of peace. Even the Cold War

was over, and the security and hegemony of the United States

were in no way threatened. Upon what logical basis can one contend that the crimes of Lenin and Stalin are worse that those of

which Clinton is guilty?

Sergio Romano has called the periodic bombings against Iraq

a continuation of the election campaign by other means. Terror

bombing as political advertising: this would have warmed

Goebbels’ heart, yet it is undertaken by the leading state of the

“democratic” West. And all of this, once again, in a period of

peace. The question must be posed: for what reason should a

future historian consider the U.S. president “more humane” than

those who led the USSR during one of the most tragic periods of

world history? Here the attitudes of certain Communists really

become repellent and coarse as they demonize Stalin and view

Clinton as a representative, albeit a moderate one, of the “Left.”

Let us examine the history of colonialism and imperialism. The

West eliminated most Indians from the face of the earth and

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enslaved the blacks. Similar fates awaited other colonial peoples

at their hands, yet this did not stop the West from characterizing

its expansion as the advancement of freedom and civilization,

thus a cause for celebration. This vision has culminated in the

domination of its victims in such a manner that they have internalized their defeat and feel entirely dependent on the conqueror.

They hope to sit in the lap of “civilization,” and they have given

up their historical understanding and cultural identity. Today we

are witnessing a kind of colonization of the historical consciousness of Communists. And this is more than just a metaphor.

Historically the Communist movement has come to power in

colonial lands at the periphery of the West. On the other hand,

the triumph of globalization and the Pax Americana, seen from

the point of view of the media, means that everywhere beyond

the West becomes just a colony or a province. At least this is so

potentially; from the point of view of the center of empire,

Washington can (and does), day in and day out, strike any spot

on the globe with the concentrated fire-power of its multiple

media. To resist this is difficult, yet without this resistance, there

are no Communists.

V. Why the United States won the “Third World War”

1. The U.S. diplomatic-military offensive

The beginning and the end of the “Cold War” were marked

explicitly by two military warnings, two threats, not just of war

but of total war and annihilation: the atomic destruction of

Nagasaki and Hiroshima ordered by Truman, and the Star Wars

program initiated by Reagan. But not just for this reason can the

period between 1945 and 1991 be understood as a kind of “Third

World War” with its own unique characteristics. The victors successfully disturbed and transformed the political-military strategy of their enemies. In 1953, Yugoslavia became a kind of corresponding member of NATO five years after it broke with the

USSR on the basis of its approval of the “Balkan Pact” with

Turkey and Greece, and was thus integrated into the “defensive

488 NATURE, SOCIETY, AND THOUGHT

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position of the West.”

9

Beginning in the 1970s, a kind of “de facto alliance” against the USSR was built up through the U.S.-China reconciliation process, though for its part the USSR wanted to win the United States for a “quasi-alliance againstChina” (Kissinger 1994, 729).

It is obvious that the winning diplomatic initiatives of the

West were connected to powerful military pressures. Let us look

at the People’s Republic of China, which was politically seeking

its own national unity after decades and even centuries of colonial humiliation, yet caught up in a conflict in which its major

goal was the recovery of Quemoy and Matsu, two islands that, as

Churchill emphasized in a letter to Eisenhower on 15 February

1955, lay “offshore” and “are legally part of China.” They

formed a kind of pistol at its temple. And this pistol was not to

be considered out of bounds by the U.S. administration. It would

not hesitate to threaten to defend the islands with atomic weapons. Thus, in 1958, when the Quemoy-Matsu crisis broke out

anew, the USSR, fully aware of the military superiority of the

United States, gave to China a defense agreement that limited

itself only to the mainland. The great Asiatic power was thus

forced to give up its goal one that even Churchill saw a legitimate and “natural.” The assurances were of no use that Khrushchev had given Mao two years earlier, rebuilding the leadership

that the socialist camp required along with  contre-cordon

sanitaire.Obedience to the political line of the USSR no longer

appeared as the path that could end colonial degradation or

achieve national unity. In this manner, the threat of using military force (above all nuclear), if not the actual use of force itself,

decisively influenced the development of the Third World War.

2. The national question and the decline of the “socialist camp”

None of this reduces the magnitude of the mistakes, crimes,

and guilt of the socialist camp. Quite the contrary, it makes these

clearer. Let us take a look at the most difficult points of crisis. In

1948, the USSR broke with Yugoslavia. In 1956, the invasion of

Hungary. In 1968, the invasion of Czechoslovakia. In 1969,

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bloody border confrontations between the USSR and China.

Though avoided then, war between two governments calling

themselves socialist would become a tragic reality a decade later:

first between Vietnam and Cambodia, then China and Vietnam.

In 1981, martial law in Poland in order to prevent a “comradely”

intervention by the USSR, and to bring under control an oppositional movement that had found widespread support because it

appealed to the national identity that Big Brother scorned. For a

variety of reasons, it is nonetheless common to all of the crises

that the national question played a central role. Not for nothing

did the dissolution of the socialist camp begin at the edges of the

“empire,” in countries that had been dissatisfied for a long time

with the limited sovereignty forced upon them. There were also

decisive factors internal to the USSR. The stirrings in the Baltic

republics, which had had socialism “exported” to them in 1939

and 1940, were key to the ultimate collapse, well before the

obscure “putsch” of August 1991. In definite ways the national

question, which had importantly helped the success of the October Revolution, also sealed the end of the historical cycle which

it began.

The strengthened vitality of the People’s Republic of China

(no matter how one evaluates its political orientation back then)

is explicable only because Mao took to heart historical

experiences and understood how to analyze critically the major

difficulties in the USSR caused by its policies in regard to the

peasantry and national minorities (1979, 365 f and 372). At least

during certain periods of their history, the Chinese Communists

understood to stay on the high ground represented by Lenin’s

views of 1916, which stressed that the national question remains

even after Communist and workers’ parties come to state power.

A position paper of the Chinese Communist Party in 1956

stressed that within the socialist camp continuing efforts are necessary to overcome the tendency toward great nation chauvinism. This is a tendency that by no means disappears immediately

with the conquest of a bourgeois or semifeudal regime, and that

may even be heightened during the “heady” times when revolution is newly victorious. The position paper states:

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[This is a ] phenomenon that is not unique to any particular country. For example, country B can be small and

backward compared to country A, yet large and developed

with regard to country C. Therefore it can happen that

country B, while complaining about the great-nation chauvinism of country A, can simultaneously display characteristics of great-nation chauvinism toward country C.

(Ancora a proposito1956)

I am treating the problem here very generally, yet is not hard

to see that behind B we could find Yugoslavia complaining

about the arrogance and chauvinism of the USSR (A), yet itself

showing hegemonic ambitions toward Albania (C). Ultimately

the Chinese Communists came to denounce the USSR as socialist in words but imperialist in deeds. They utilized a concept

(social imperialism) that correctly castigated actions like the

invasion of Czechoslovakia, but which nonetheless unfairly

erased national conflict from socialist reality and fell thereby

into a utopian perspective on socialism.

Not so very long ago Fidel Castro attempted to analyze and

evaluate these issues and came to this remarkable conclusion:

“We socialists have committed the following error: we have

underestimated the power of nationalism and religion.” (Here

one should remember that religion in particular can form an

essential element of national identity, as in countries like Poland

and Ireland. Today we might also say the same about the Islamic

world.) Unable to acknowledge and respect national peculiarities

because of an abstract and aggressive “internationalism,”

Brezhnev’s openly chauvinistic and hegemonic theory of the

“international dictatorship of the proletariat” came to pass, which

resulted in limiting the sovereignty of countries officially allied

with the USSR. The breakup and collapse of the socialist camp

stems from this, as does also the ultimate triumph and practice of

the “international dictatorship of the bourgeoisie” worked out by

the United States.

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3. The economic and ideological front of the “Third World War”

Above and beyond the diplomatic/military side of the “Third

World War” was the economic side, the war’s second front. A

technological embargo had been declared against the USSR and

kept in force, for all practical purposes, until the final breakdown

of the Soviet Union. Nonetheless it would be erroneous to overestimate the role played by the economy in this process. It will

suffice to relate the views of a few establishment U.S. sources on

this matter. Paul Kennedy viewed the Russia of the 1930s as

being on the road to a speedy transformation to an economic

superpower, and considered the five-year period from 1945 to

1950 as constituting a minor economic miracle. Lester Thurow

characterized the economy of the Soviet Union in the years that

immediately followed as growing “faster than the United States,”

and also contended that “the sudden disappearance of Communism” is “mysterious,” at least as regards the economy (1992, 11

and 13). Since the collapse of production in the formerly socialist countries occurred only after 1991, it can very definitely be

said that the economy was not the key factor in the collapse of

“real, existing socialism.”

We are thus compelled to examine the third front of the

“Third World War,” the ideological one. One of the first goals of

the CIA was to set up an efficient “Psychological Warfare Workshop.” In November 1945, the U.S. ambassador to Moscow,

Averill Harriman, demanded the construction of high-powered

radio stations that could broadcast in all of the USSR’s diverse

languages. In 1956, during the days of the Hungarian uprising,

the dozen or so small and secretly constructed radio transmitters

played a major role.

4. A completely unrealistic theory of Communism

The multimedia supremacy of the United States was not, of

course, the most important factor. During the 1950s (when, as

we have seen, the rhythm of Soviet economic development was

extremely promising), Khrushchev proclaimed the goals of Communism in terms of outpacing the United States. At that time

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“real, existing socialism” was ideologically on the offensive to

such a degree that, in terms of history and philosophy of history,

it considered the fate of capitalism as being already sealed. The

ensuing years and decades demonstrated the unreal nature of this

perspective. Forced to reduce its ambitions drastically, the Soviet

Union proved unable to analyze its own history or to examine its

own ideology in a fundamental way. Its leaders offered assurances again and again that rapid progress was being made on the

path toward the realization of Communism. Yet this was a Communism understood in the fantastical manner that is oftentimes

handed down to us as a definition from Marx and Engels.

According to the German Ideology,Communism is supposed to

bring forth a condition where it is possible for every one of us

“do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the

morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise

after dinner” according to one’s own wishes “without ever

becoming hunter, fisherman, shepherd or critic” (Marx and

Engels 1976, 47).

If we would like to adopt this definition, it would require that

the productive capacities of Communism be advanced so

wonderfully that the problems and conflicts that are ordinarily

connected to the measurement and regulation of the labor necessary for the production of social wealth and the distribution of

this wealth would have disappeared. Furthermore, such an understanding of Communism presupposes not only the end of the

state, but also of the division of labor, and indeed labor itself, not

to mention the disappearance of all forms of power and duty.

Decades of rich historical experience should have given rise to a

profound examination of these themes and problems. In reality

we have not gotten much further than the efforts of Lenin in

reformulating the theory of socialist revolution and taking into

account the lengthy duration of the transition and its unavoidable

complexity. What is lacking is the (absolutely necessary) radical

reexamination of the theory of socialism and Communism in the

totality of postcapitalist society.

It is clear that when the attainment of Communism is put off

until an ever more distant and unlikely future, “real, existing

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socialism” loses its credibility and legitimacy all the more. A

Party leadership that gradually became more and more selfimportant, more spoiled and more corrupt, lacked any type of

general legitimacy. A time like ours seeks political justification

in terms of democracy and people’s self-determination. In addition, the tangible consequences of “real, existing socialism”

undermined the very reasons for its existence. Ever-present

compulsion became more and more unbearable within the civil

society that did develop thanks to mass education, the wide

extension of culture, and a modicum of social security.

The internal difficulties of the “socialist camp” became all the

more obvious as the rhythm of economic development began to

lag. The thesis of the inevitable (and immediate) crisis of

capitalism, propounded by socialism’s philosophy of history,

increasingly came into crisis itself. The foundation for social

consensus disappeared, and the powerful mechanisms of repression were met with growing revulsion. At the same time, the

Soviet leadership mindlessly cranked out its tiring hurdy-gurdy

tunes about the arrival of the fantastical kind of Communism

described above. And these kinds of litanies had very disadvantageous consequences for the economy. Disequalibrium and

underdevelopment were already manifest and demanded energetic interventions to heighten the productivity of labor. Yet the

solving of this problem is not made any easier by the idea that

we supposedly find ourselves on a path to Communism aiming at

universal leisure, nor by branding every attempt at a rationalization of the production process as the “restoration of capitalism.”

If we want to speak of a collapse in Eastern Europe, this was far

more of an ideological than an economic one.

5. “Without revolutionary theory there

can be no revolutionary movement”

But is not an explanation idealist if it places the accent far

more on ideology than on the economy? In thinking about this

question, Marxists would be well served if they recalled

Gramsci’s irony with reference to “the baroque conviction that

we are all the more orthodox the more we reach back and grasp

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‘material’ things” (1975, 1442). In addition, it is worth

remembering one of Lenin’s most famous statements, “Without

revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary movement”

(1961, 369). Certainly the Bolshevik Party had a theory for

acquisition of power, yet insofar as revolution meant going

beyond the destruction of the old order and the construction of a

new one, the Bolsheviks and the Communist movement essentially were without revolutionary theory. An eschatological wish

for a completely harmonious society, free of contradiction and

conflict, cannot be considered a theory of the postcapitalist society in need of construction. We must acknowledge the grievous

and gaping void here. This void cannot be filled by going back to

Marx or to other classic sources. We are confronting here a new,

extremely difficult, and absolutely inescapable task.

VI. The People’s Republic of China and

the historical analysis of socialism

1. Mao Zedong and the Chinese Revolution

In China, the Communist Party rose to power riding on the

tide of a national-liberation struggle of epic proportions. The

projects relating to profound social transformation were thus

closely connected to the task of recovering the greatness of the

Chinese nation. This is a nation with a civilization going back

through the millennia, yet after the Opium War it was coerced

into semicolonial (and semifeudal) relations. How did this

gigantic Asian land both modernize and socialize, and thereby

overcome the fragmentation and national degradation that imperialism had forced upon it? And how did it succeed in this amid

the difficult conditions of the Cold War and the economic, or at

least technological, embargo that had been deployed by the

advanced capitalist countries? Mao Zedong believed that these

problems could be solved through the uninterrupted mobilization

of the masses. This led to the “Great Leap Forward,” and then to

the “Cultural Revolution.” As the difficulties and dead ends of

the Soviet model began to become evident, Mao proclaimed the

slogan “advance the revolution under the dictatorship of the

proletariat.” A new stage of the revolution was called upon to

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guarantee both economic development and progress in the direction of socialism. This new stage of socialism had the mission of

liberating the initiatives of the masses from all bureaucratic

obstacles even from the bureaucratic obstacles of the Communist Party and the state that it controlled.

Make no mistake about it: this policy led to massive losses.

On the political level, instead of the hoped-for rapid development, there occurred a terrifying slowdown or even back-sliding

in the democratization process. The democratic warranties and

rules of the game were done away with within the Communist

Party and then even more so in the society at large. Clearly relationships worsened between the Han and the national minorities,

who were subjected to multiple vendettas during the “cultural

revolution.” They were sharply discriminated against, or indoctrinated through intensive short-term schooling. This pedagogy

was inspired by an aggressive and intolerant “enlightenment”

approach that came from Beijing or other urban centers populated by the Han. Because the mediating roles of the Party and

the state had been swept away, there really only existed, on the

one hand, the immediate relationship to the charismatic leader,

and on the other hand, the immediate relationship to the masses

(though these were in fact manipulated and fanaticized by means

of the news media and controlled by an army prepared to intervene in emergencies). These were truly the years of a triumphal

Bonapartism.

Immense losses were also obvious in the economic arena, and

these were not only on account of the splits and continual confrontations that resulted from the crisis of having no criteria of

legitimation other than fidelity to the charismatic leader. There is

a perhaps more important dimension to the problem. The “Great

Leap Forward” and the “Cultural Revolution” took no account of

the need to normalize the process of transformation. No one can

call upon the masses to be heroes all the time, to endure being

continuously and eternally mobilized, always ready to sacrifice,

to do without, to deny oneself. The call to heroism must always

remain the exception and never become the rule. We could say

with Brecht, “happy is the people that has no need of heroes.”

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Heroes are necessary for the transition from exceptional conditions to normalcy, and are heroes only insofar as they guarantee

the transition from exceptional conditions to normalcy, which is

to say they are heroes to the extent to which they are willing to

make themselves superfluous. It would be a very peculiar

“Communism” that required sacrifice and self-denial ad infinitum, or nearly ad infinitum. Normalcy must be organized

according to a variety of principles, by means of mechanisms

and norms that allow for the greatest possible undisturbed

enjoyment of daily events. Here you need rules of the game, and

insofar as the economy is concerned, incentives.

In the last years or months of his life, Mao himself must have

been aware of the need for a change in course. Deng Xiaoping

understood this, how to push along this kind of change without

imitating the Khrushchev model of “de-Stalinization.” He did it

without demonizing those who preceded him in holding power.

The enormous historical contributions that Mao made by building up the Communist Party, and through his leadership of the

revolutionary struggle, were not to be forgotten. The serious

mistakes committed toward the end of the 1950s were seen in a

larger context, namely within the contours of more-or-less hasty,

even crazy, experiments, which accompanied the projects

proposed in the building of a society that was without historical

precedent. Was it not the same Mao, who in his better times,

1937, authored On Practice? He demanded that we not lose sight

of the fundamental fact that just as the “development of an

objective process is full of contradictions and struggles,...so is

the development of the movement of human knowledge” (1968,

18–19). This is in fact the key to understanding the oscillations

that are characteristic of the history of the Communist parties

and the societies that see themselves as guided by Communist

principles. The point is to emphasize the objectively contradictory character of consciousness and the knowledge process, and

not the “betrayal” or the “degeneration” of this or that personality. Insofar as Khrushchev demonized Stalin and reduced

everything to the “cult of personality,” he perpetuated the

problematic side of this heritage. Because Deng Xiaoping

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refused to quarrel in this manner with Mao, he is the heir of the

better side.

The procedure chosen by the new Chinese leadership, in any

case, avoided a delegitimation of revolutionary power. Above

all, it made possible a genuine debate about the conditions and

characteristics of the construction of a socialist society, because

it did not shift all the difficulties, uncertainties, and objective

contradictions onto one person as scapegoat. In the course of this

debate the internal presuppositions of the “Great Leap Forward”

and the “Cultural Revolution” were criticized and rejected.

2. A tremendous and innovative New Economic Policy (NEP)

In the economic arena we are gradually seeing “market

socialism” emerge. Characteristic of this is the development of a

large private sector and a concern to make the public sector

efficient. Getting connected up with the world market and the

technology of the West, as well as with its wisdom in the areas

of industrial organization and business management, does not

come without a price. In China, openly capitalist “special economic zones” have appeared. On the other hand, what are the

alternatives? Above all it is no longer possible, after the crisis

and dissolution of the USSR and the “socialist camp,” for a

nation to isolate itself from global capitalist markets unless it

wants to condemn itself to backwardness and powerlessness.

Under the new conditions of the world market and global politics, isolationism would be tantamount to giving up on modernity

andsocialism. And even with the attendant high costs, the outcomes of undertaking this new course are generally visible: a

rapid expansion in the development of productive forces; an economic miracle of European proportions; access like never before

to economic and social opportunities for hundreds of millions of

Chinese. All of this adds up to a liberation process of enormous

proportions.

In the political realm, the questions were how to develop

democracy and eliminate the residue of the old regime that had

survived the revolution as well as reduce the arrogance of the

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new bureaucrats (which was derived from the arrogance of the

Mandarins). And so the path that the aged Mao found so

worthy“Advance the Revolution under the Dictatorship of the

Proletariat” was relinquished. Because this path had intensified

rather than eliminated the power plays and arbitrariness of the

bosses and little bosses, it created a crisis that delegitimated even

the very few norms and warranties that existed in society. The

limitation and regulation of power is today grounded in the rule

of law, a codified system of rules, norms, and rights. Such a system of law was hitherto unknown, but is now rapidly growing

simultaneously with the separation of Party organizations from

governmental structures. An electoral system has emerged in the

villages along with a wide assortment of candidates. Other

measures are being experimented with in this democratization

process, which, as the leaders of the People’s Republic explicitly

acknowledge, is far from complete. In the course of its history,

“real, existing socialism” branded “formal” freedoms as empty

and deceptive. Paradoxically, the cultural revolution operated

along the same lines. Currently, however, the Chinese Communist leaders value very highly the “formal” freedoms guaranteed

by law. They also adhere to the notion that the emphasis must be

placed today on economic and social rights, given the present

stage of economic development in the People’s Republic. The

decision to pursue also political modernization is irrevocable. In

both political and economic terms, no socialism is now even

thinkable that does not understand how to analyze, compare, and

creatively evaluate the most forward-looking practices of the

capitalist West as it rode the wave of bourgeois democratic

revolution.

The social order that in China is currently considered valid

presents itself as a kind of gigantic and expanded New Economic

Policy (NEP). This is an NEP that has become harder to achieve

because of globalization and power relationships worldwide.

Nonetheless, the program is quite conscious of the necessity to

connect continually socialism, democracy, and the market with

one another, and to transcend the crudely simplified notion of the

homogeneity of the society it is attempting to build.

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3. The stakes are immense

To speak of a restoration of capitalism in China would be

looking at the problem too superficially. A solid bourgeoisie has

undoubtedly emerged there, although it currently has no possibility of transforming its economic power into political power. We

need to understand the difficult situation in which the Chinese

leaders find themselves. On the one hand, they have to push

forward with the democratization process. This is an essential

element of socialist modernization as it is also a means of consolidating power (today the only principle of legitimation is that

of investiture from below). On the other hand, they must avoid

having the democratization process lead to a conquest of power

by the bourgeoisie, which, by the way, is the goal sought in an

entirely unremitting fashion by the United States. It is resolved

to undermine the hegemony of the Communist Party by any

means necessary. If it can bring China into conformity with the

capitalist West, it will attain the planetary triumph of the

“American Century.”

It is a shame that the U.S. administration gets support for this

also from the “Left.” Certain leftists get upset about the priority

that is given to the attainment of a modicum of material equality

within a developing country having one billion two hundred

million inhabitants. Here these leftists demonstrate that they

have retrogressed to the position of the neoliberals, who do not

merely view Marx with contempt, but also liberals like Rawls.

They talk about the primacy of freedom over equality, or put it

another way in terms of negative over positive freedom. They

quickly add that their principle is only valid “under the presupposition of a minimum income guarantee.”

But what of the openly declared capitalism of the “special

economic zones?” Those who are undertaking an anti-Chinese

crusade in the name of Mao Zedong would do well to think over

an important fact. As late as five years before the conquest of

power, the great revolutionary leader acknowledged the durability not only of capitalism in this gigantic country, but also the

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“slave-holding regimes” (referring to Tibet) as well as the

“feudal landlords,” yet he was not at all upset by this. And if we

want to consider how broadly extended conditions of poverty

and unemployment clash with the upwardly mobile lifestyles of

the newly rich, think back to an extraordinary page from

Gramsci written in 1926. He is analyzing the USSR and writes

about a phenomenon “that has never occurred in history.” A

“ruling” political class “in its entirety” lived “under conditions

that were worse than certain elements and strata of the dominated and subjugated class.” Masses of people, who endured a

life of deprivation and want, were made to feel even more

insecure by the theatrics of the “NEP-man in furs, who had

access to all the material goods of the earth.” Yet this must not

lead to perturbation or refusal, because the proletariat can neither

conquer power nor retain it if it is not able to sacrifice particular

and immediate interests to the “general and permanent interests

of the class.”

The construction of a socialist society is an extraordinarily

complex process. Certainly the contents and essential characteristics of the society that the Chinese Communists seek remain

vague. The process of acknowledging the objective realities is

occurring one more time, and one gets to know the objective

realities confronting a society unprecedented in history neither

linearly nor easily. Given the theoretical weaknesses of Marxism, it would be stupid during this epoch of globalization to

underestimate the great danger of the homogenization of China

through adaptation to the surrounding context of capitalism. But

it would be an act of political blindness to assume that this

homogenization has already occurred, and even worse to promote the process by joining the anti-Chinese campaign instigated

by the United States. The stakes are immense in this game. The

realities of a continent-wide country include every sort of

difficulty and contradiction. Yet China is resolved to overcome

underdevelopment and not to give up its political independence.

Furthermore, by becoming technologically autonomous, it seeks

to attain socialist modernity. Should it succeed in this, the power

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relationships of our planet would be drastically and completely

altered.

VII. Marxism or anarchism? Think through Communist

theory and practice in a fundamentally new way

1. Materialism or idealism?

The historical events introduced by the October Revolution

have led to certain conclusions for many leftists that might serve

as negative models. Very often the degeneration and the collapse

of the USSR and the “socialist camp” are explained by tracing

everything back to Stalin. This attitude is translatable into the

sigh: Oh, if only Lenin had lived longer! What a terrible

misfortune that his place was not taken by Trotsky or Bukharin.

Too bad that the Bolshevik leadership did not understand how to

follow the path Marx would have wanted the path of the

“authentic” Marx as understood by one or another of the inflexible judges over the history of “real, existing socialism.” And if

perchance one of them (like Rossana Rossanda) had held power

instead of Stalin, we would not have had the return of the Czarist

flag and the Duma to Moscow. Not at all, we would have the

victory of the soviet system and the red flag over New York. If

that analysis were correct, we would not only have to go back to

Marx, but at least as far as Plato and his idealism. It really is hard

to imagine a more radical liquidation of historical materialism.

The objective circumstances are of no interest at all: the condition of Russia and its historical background; the class struggles

domestically and internationally; power relationships in the areas

of economics, politics, and the military, etc. Everything was the

result of the crudeness, the brutality, the will to power, the

paranoia in any case, the character of a single personality. Ironically, it is just this type of explanation that reproduces the

fundamental errors of Stalinism. These are reproduced even to a

greater degree, because the objectively existing contradictions

are forgotten and a weak and prejudicial recourse is made to the

concept of “betrayal.” Mind you, not to a specific act, but rather

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to almost seventy years of history regarded as one long uninterrupted “betrayal” of Communist ideals. All of this committed by

Stalin, who is thus to be delivered over to the execution squad of

the historians, or better yet, to the journalists and ideologues.

From this type of analysis sometimes an entire philosophy of

history is hammered together. In the period around 1968, a book

was circulated fairly widely whose very title, Proletarians without Revolution(Carria 1966), was thought to deliver the key to

understanding universal history. Always inspired by the most

noble Communist sentiments, the masses were regularly

betrayed by their leaders and the bureaucrats. And this is also

paradoxical because what was intended to be a complaint of the

masses against the leaders and bureaucrats converts abruptly into

an indictment against the masses. The analysis reveals the

masses to be completely irredeemable simpletons who are

entirely unable to comprehend their own interests at decisive

moments. They long to consign their fate to swashbucklers. And

here once again we see an overarching idealism; deception and

betrayal by swashbucklers is supposed to explain all of world

history.

Occasionally there are slight variations of this account. Here

one contrasts the initial liveliness, beauty, and abundance of

debate in the soviets with the monotony of the bureaucratic and

autocratic apparatus that takes over. Again we give the traitors,

gravediggers, and killers of the soviets the merry chase. People

who reason this way (or who sigh this way) forget that historical

upheavals and revolutions are generally accompanied by a transition from poetry to prose. The Protestant Reformation

challenged the pope and the powers of the day by distributing the

demands of the general priesthood, yet the original enthusiasm

did not survive the occurrence of difficulties, objective contradictions, and the outbreak of the terrible conflicts that followed.

The changes could only take place on a more limited, yet more

realistic, basis. The revolutions of 1789 and 1848 in France give

us similar things to consider.

It is not reasonable to compare the inspiration and encouragement of the initial stages of the battle against the old regime

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needing to be toppled with the later more prosaic and more

difficult phases. Here a new government must be built in spite of

all the difficulties and in spite of contradictions of every sort,

including those that derive from having too little experience. It

would be like condemning a marriage or partnership (including

the successful ones) in the name of the unique and irreplaceable

moments experienced when one first fell in love. It appears that

in the developmental stages of a revolution the original enthusiasm of the participants can suspend for a time the mundane

division of labor and everyday business. Still these will eventually again demand our attention. Therefore it makes sense to

reduce that sector of society that will need to be called upon to

be actively involved, and this leads unavoidably to a certain

degree of professionalization in political life. The institutions

that developed out of the Protestant Reformation followed one

and the same dialectic. So too did the clubs of the French Revolution, the Russian soviets, the sections of the Italian Communist

Party (PCI) that emerged during struggle, or reemerged in the

student organizations that arose during the movements of 1968.

A “general priesthood” cannot last forever. Rather it makes room

for more limited and prosaic structures, which, if the revolution

or movement has succeeded, are very different from a return to

the old order. In terms of the USSR, the real problem was never

a taking leave from the original beauty of the soviets, but rather

the return of the Duma and the economic and political power of

big money.

2.“Dictatorship of the proletariat”

and “withering away of the state”

In order to get beyond the idealist types of pseudoexplanations, it is necessary to replace the concept of betrayal

(that really plays a minor role) with that of learning. The victory

of a revolution can only be considered secure when the class that

has carried it out succeeds in giving its sovereignty a durable

political form. All of this takes place in the middle of a long and

complex learning process marked by conflict and contradiction,

experiment and error. This learning process lasted from 1789 to

504 NATURE, SOCIETY, AND THOUGHT

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1871 for the French bourgeoisie, for example. Not until after this

period does this class really find its form of political rule, as

Gramsci underscores, in a parliamentary republic grounded in

universal (male) suffrage. This proves itself to be durable when

it succeeds in connecting hegemony and compulsion in such a

manner that its dictatorship and use of force only become visible

in moments of acute crisis.

Why did not something quite similar occur after the October

Revolution? In order to explain the “totalitarian” petrification of

the Soviet regime, the theory of the dictatorship of the proletariat

is often cited. This is a very superficial understanding.

Ultimately it acts as if the demands of the liberals, or at least the

non-Marxists, for freedom preclude a theoretical justification for

dictatorship during a transitional phase or for situations of acute

crisis. In reality, all of the classical philosophers of liberalism

(Locke, Montesquieu, Hamilton, Mill, etc.) have explicitly

allowed for the suspension of constitutional guarantees and the

use of dictatorship in exceptional circumstances. For Italy, the

example of Mazzini is of particular interest. He spoke of a

“dictatorial, strongly concentrated power” that would suspend

the Charter of Rights, and fulfill its mission only when the

national revolution had finally triumphed and independence had

been attained. What the national revolution was for Mazzini, the

socialist revolution was for Marx, Lenin, or Stalin. With regard

to the USSR, the problem can thus be reformulated. Why was

the transitional phase (or exceptional circumstance) never

overcome?

Of course, one must never lose sight of the economic encirclement. But closely connected to this objective fact is an

important subjective limit: the political and cultural education of

the Bolshevik leaders. As with Marx and Engels, so too with

these leaders. Time and again they were confronted with the

problem of democracy, yet this came to the fore only to disappear again almost immediately. The reason was this: one of the

fundamentals of their theory or their worldview was that the state

withers away with the overcoming of class antagonisms and

Flight from History? 505

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social classes, and so democracy as a form of the state also withers away.

This theory, or rather illusion, of Marx and Engels is

grounded in a dramatic historical analysis. The First Republic,

born in France in 1789, was transformed in the course of the

revolution first into dictatorship and then into the empire of

Napoleon I. The Second Republic, a child of the 1848 revolution, soon made room for the Bonapartist dictatorship of

Napoleon III. In England, during periods of crisis, the ruling

class did not hesitate to suspend habeas corpus or legal rights,

and subjected Ireland to a kind of permanent siege when its people rather undiplomatically rejected British colonial rule. And

afterwards the liberal and democratic state had no difficulty in

transforming itself into an open and even terrorist dictatorship

whenever a crisis situation emerged or became more acute.

Lenin drew a conclusion from all of this. With the outbreak of

the First World War, the Bolshevik leaders saw governments

with long-established liberal traditions change over into ones that

would totally regiment their populations, becoming bloody behemoths. They were prepared to utilize martial law, execution

squads, and arbitrary terror, sacrificing their citizens in massive

numbers on the alter of imperial expansion and the state’s will to

power.

Whether we look at it from the point of view of its historical

or psychological origins, the theory of the withering away of the

state flows into an eschatological vision of a society without conflict that consequently needs no norms of legality to regulate or

limit conflicts. The abstract utopian quality of this watchword is

something of which Marx and Engels at definite times seem

explicitly conscious. For example, they obviously oscillate

between speaking of the withering away or demise of the state in

general, yet on the other hand refer specifically to the “state in its

contemporary political sense” and “political force in its own

peculiar sense.” Furthermore, the state, as they quite appropriately analyze it, is not only an instrument of class domination,

but also a form of the “reciprocal rights” and “mutual security”

506 NATURE, SOCIETY, AND THOUGHT

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that exist between individuals and the class in power. It is not at

all clear why one would find “rights” and “security” superfluous

for the individual members of a solidified society after the disappearance of classes and class struggle.

In any case, waiting for the withering away of all conflict and

the demise of the state, and political force generally. makes it

impossible to solve the problem of how to transform the government that emerges from socialist revolution. This expectation

privileges the continuing existence of inflexible “overturners,”

whose perspective is incapable of giving concreteness or stability

to the emancipation of the subaltern classes. After the October

Revolution, there were outstanding revolutionary socialists who

proclaimed that “the idea of a constitution is a bourgeois idea.”

With this as one’s basis, it would not only be easy to justify

terroristic measures during emergencies, but also extremely

difficult or impossible to make a transition to constitutional

normalcy, especially since this is branded as bourgeois from the

start. In this manner, exceptional circumstances privilege utopianism, and utopianism makes exceptional circumstances more

extreme.

3. Politics and the economy

In general, one can say of Marx and Engels that politics, after

playing a decisive role in the conquest of power, apparently disappears along with the state and the use of political force. This is

all the more true when (in addition to the disappearance of

classes, the state, and political power) the division of labor,

nations, and religions, in short all possible sites of conflict, are

thought to have disappeared.

This messianic vision ultimately leads to anarchism, and has

also played a deleterious role in regard to the economy. A

socialist society is quite unthinkable apart from a more or less

extensive public sector (or one regulated by government) within

the productive apparatus as well as within the service industries,

the functioning of the public sector being decisive. The solution

to this problem can be left to the anarchist myth of the emergence of the “new type of person,” who, it is alleged, will

Flight from History? 507

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spontaneously identify with the collective without the appearance of any sort of conflict or contradiction between private and

public, individual and individual, social group and social group.

This is obviously a secular version of the religious notion of

“grace,” which would make the law unnecessary. Or the solution

can be sought in a system of rules and incentives (both material

and moral), and of controls that are intended to secure the transparency, efficiency, and productivity of this sector. Certainly all

of this is made more difficult, if not impossible, by an (anarchistic) phenomenology of power that situates domination and

oppression exclusively in the state, the centralized power, and

the general social rules. In this manner, the dialectic of the capitalist society as Marx described it is quite reversed. In “real,

existing socialism,” anarchism led to terror as compared to a

civil society. This terror became all the more unbearable as

exceptional circumstances faded, and the philosophy of history

that promised the withering away of the state, of national identities, of the market, etc., increasingly lacked credibility.

4. A Communism beyond the abstract, anarchical utopia

Even now we lack a theory for conflict within a socialist society or within the socialist camp. This is why the most profound

crisis of the Communist movement set in at the same time, paradoxically, as the triumph and immense expansion of socialism

after World War II. The anarchistic and messianic version of

Communism which prevails up to the present time must be confronted with its own definition as a “realistic movement.” This

has nothing to do with a resurgence of the slogan coined by

Bernstein (“the movement is everything, the goal is nothing”).

Bernstein refused to challenge the political domination of the

bourgeoisie and the arrogance of the imperialist powers. (It is

well known how the leaders of German social democracy looked

at the “civilizing” mission of colonialism with great approval.)

The one ambition that Bernstein would gladly have given up

(thus perpetuating the established sociopolitical systems nationally and internationally) was the building of a postcapitalist and

postimperialist society, a social order that can and must no

508 NATURE, SOCIETY, AND THOUGHT

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longer be imagined as an insipid and uncritical utopia.

Detachment from this kind of utopianism is the fundamental

precondition of the Marxian notion of Communism as a

“realistic movement.”

It is entirely understandable that the desire outlined here to

find a new conception of Communism has given rise to some

perplexity. In their polemic against my position with regard to

the withering away of the state, it appears to me that comrades

Luigi Cortesi and Walter Peruzzi do not present arguments that

can make plausible the idea of a society without conflict or the

need for legal safeguards. Instead they give vent to their disappointment that no properly inspired vision of a postcapitalist

society leaps forth from my pages. Many a comrade might even

go further, and question whether it is worth the trouble of fighting for a future society that does not bring with it the elimination

of all conflict and contradiction. This is a little bit like the religious notion that life on earth does not really make any sense

without the prospect of an afterlife beyond.

The wisdom of Gramsci would be a fine counterweight to

these basically anarchistic and religious tendencies. He

accomplished an enormous historical task as the first to have

deliberated about an effective and radical project of liberation

that never viewed itself as the end of history. It is really a matter

of drawing a clear line of demarcation between Marxism and

anarchism, and thereby taking leave once and for all from

abstract utopianism, while at the same time demonstrating the

historical reasons why it arises. We can also make good use here

of a piece of advice from Engels, who observed the following,

while comparing the revolutions in England and France: “In

order to secure even those conquests of the bourgeoisie that were

ripe for gathering at the time, the revolution had to be carried

considerably further....This seems, in fact, to be one of the

laws of evolution of bourgeois society” (1990, 291–92) There is

no reason not to apply the materialistic method developed by

Marx and Engels to the real historical movements and revolutions they both inspired.

Flight from History? 509

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This article orginally appeared in March 1999 under the title “Fuga dalla

storia? Il movimento comunista tra autocritica e autofobia,” published in

Naples by Edizioni La Città del Sole. A German translation by Hermann Kopp

was published in 2000 as Marxistische BlätterPamphlet 01 by Neue Impulse

Verlag, Essen. The article presented here was translated from the German

edition.

Philosophy Faculty

Urbano University, Italy

Translated by Charles Reitz

Philosophy Department

Kansas City Community College

NOTES

1. The term real, existing socialismwas used in the Soviet Union and its

allied socialist countries to describe the socioeconomic and political system that

they had adopted for socialist construction. The term was intended to distinguish an idyllic, utopian approach to the establishment of a communist society

from the practical realities of socialist construction under conditions of constant

economic, military, and political pressure by the imperialist powers committed

to their destruction. Ed.

2. Liberazioneis the organ of the Communist Refoundation Party. Il Manifestoidentifies itself as a “Communist daily newspaper.” Ed.

3. On Truman’s policy, see Thomas 1988, 187.

4. See in this regard Losurdo 1997, 75–88. In regard to Hoover’s policy,

see Trani 1979, 124).

5. Norberto Bobbio is an Italian philosopher and member of the Italian Senate, representing the Party of the Democratic Left. Ed.

6. On the problems treated here, see Losurdo 1996a, 1996b, and 1998.

7. With regard to the racialization of the Germans (and the Japanese) in the

United States during the Second World War, see Losurdo 1996a, 158–69.

8. Compare also Losurdo 1996a, 153–54.

9. This is the way the Yearbook of International Politicsof the Istituto gli

Studia di Politica Internazionale expressed it on p. 391 that same year (cited in

Canfera 1996).

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