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The Challenge of Rudolf Bahro in Eastern Europe

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The Challenge of Rudolf Bahro in Eastern Europe BAHRO 17 THE CHALLENGE OF RUDOLF BAHRO IN EASTERN EUROPE Rudolf Bahro The Alternative in Eastern Europe T H E ALTERNATIVE IN communist parties and socialists in western EASTERN EUROPE by RUDOLF Europe and elsewhere. He differs from many BAHRO. New Left Books, London, 1978. others who have been imprisoned in that he remains very much a marxist and a Reviewed by DENIS FRENEY. communist, whose vision of socialism comes directly from Marx. Rudolf Bahro was released from prison in Bahro's book is immensely valuable, not the German Democratic Republic in October only for those who are concerned about the 1979, under an amnesty proclaimed on the future of socialism in Eastern Europe, the thirtieth anniversary of the founding of the Soviet Union and China, but also for those GDR. He had been arrested in August 1977, concerned more generally about the and in July 1978 was sentenced to eight transition to socialism — and communism — years’ jail for “espionage”. The act of in advanced capitalist nations and more “espionage” was the smuggling of the generally for all of humanity. Bahro's manuscript of this book to West Germany analysis intersects with this concern on such where it was published. questions as the environment, consumerism, Bahro, then, was a political prisoner. His wornetvs liberation, the division between imprisonment aroused many protests among intellectual and "manual” labor, and so on, 18 AUSTRALIAN LEFT REVIEW No. 72 with issues that have come to the fore for Soviet State has fulfilled the most important communists in countries like Australia. double function of achieving labor discipline and combatting the egalitarian tendencies of the masses. This was the precondition for Bahro’s book is divided into three parts: economic advance in the conditions The Non-Capitalist Road to Industrial inherited from the Russian past .... the Society; the Anatomy of Actually Existing purpose was to accumulate more on this Societies; and, finally, the Strategy of a narrower basis that the capitalists whom it Communist Alternative. was seeking to overtake .... All in all, the Soviet state with the party as its core, was The first part, which need not detain us long not the substitute for a working class too in this review, centres around an analysis of weak to exercise power, but rather the special Marx’s concept of the “Asiatic mode of substitute for an exploiting class” . production” and its characteristic form of “ Oriental Despotism” as applied to pre­ Bahro sees an inevitability, in the revolutionary Russia. Bahro engages in a conditions of necessary primitive lengthy analysis of oriental despotism of the accumulation of capital as in Russia, in the past, which could be debated, but the dominating role of the state. At best, he relevance of it to the Soviet experience concedes that the excesses of Stalin can be cannot be disputed: the Bolsheviks inherited avoided, but that the basic form will remain. what Engels described as the “natural basis He quite specifically rejects the theory of of Oriental Despotism .... Not only the “deformation” of the October Revolution Russian State in general, but even its specific “from Khrushchev to Garaudy” (via, of form, Tsarist despotism .... is the necessary course, Trotsky), and seeks to show that “the and logical product of Russian social political history of the Soviet Union is not conditions” . one of abandonment of the ‘subjective Bahro sums up his conclusions by listing factor’, but rather of its transformation, by those factors which were the “historical roots the task it had to undertake of for the subjection of Soviet society to a industrialising Russia” . bureaucratic State machine” : the It is possible to agree with Bahro’s basic “pressure of the technological superiority of thesis that in conditions of isolation, a the imperialist countries, enforced by their revolution in a backward capitalist country policy of military intervention and must inevitably and objectively proceed encirclement” ; second, the “ semi-Asiatic toward the dictatorship of a bureaucratic past of Russia, with the inherited elite, which will also objectively tend fragmentation of its agricultural base, with towards “ excesses” . However, the the extremely heterogeneous national “subjective factor” can and must play a role. composition of its colonialist multi-national After all, the overthrow of capitalism is a State, with the political traditions of Tsarist conscious act led by a subjective force, in autocracy going back to the despotism of which the masses of peasants and the small Baty Khan and with the psychology of the working class rise above their condition and masses still trapped to a large extent in for no matter how short a time, become an primary patriarchy” . historical force with a consciousness way Third, “the revolutionary situation itself’ beyond their objective cultural condition or referring to what Bahro sees as the role of a possibilities. strong state in any revolutionary Of course, as Bahro states, quoting transformation, including for the economic Gramsci, after the revolution there is the transformation. Here he quotes Marx on the process of “revolution-restoration” in which transformation from feudalism to the legacy of history must be accounted for, capitalism. Fourth, “the productive forces and in which the objective forces are that had to be accumulated under the expressed, including among the working pressure of the capitalist environment, in class and above all among the peasantry, but order to create the preconditions of socialism, also among the vanguard — the Party. themselves bear an antagonistic character .... Via a principle of reward according to As Bahro amply demonstrates, Marx, work that is in no way taken from Marx, the Engels and Lenin had no illusions about the BAHRO 19 weight of these objective forces in countries substantially combat the objective forces such as Russia. But all conceived of the driving to a bureaucratic dictatorship, even Russian Revolution being but the spark for when the process has begun. In China, the Germany, and the advanced capitalist experience prior to the Cultural Revolution countries, where the working class there showed that transformation of the would respond. When, in Lenin’s last years, countryside could be tackled without the it became increasingly clear that Russia excesses of Stalin. There is good reason to would remain isolated and that the believe that, in specific circumstances, revolutions in Western Europe would not particularly with a leadership aware of the achieve victory, Lenin sought to halt the fundamental problems, it would be possible bureaucratisation. One method waB the to go beyond the Yugoslav experience, even formation of the Workers and Peasants in a backward country in Africa, Asia or Inspectorate, which, as Bahro notes, became Latin America. itself bureaucratised and under Stalin a means for his dictatorship. Finally, it is worth noting that the Chinese Cultural Revolution, and latter-day Maoism, The question of how far it is possible to were in many ways rooted in this desire to limit bureaucratisation in backward Bkip the inevitable stages of capital countries remains a burning one, for it is in accumulation, by a “forced march” using the these countries that socialist revolutions are techniques of pre-revolutionary guerrilla taking place, and where the same or similar warfare and mass mobilisation to “leap” objective conditions pertain and where the forward. goal of primitive accumulation of capital is dictated. In one sense, it was an attempt to replace the mass terror used by Stalin as a means of In one sense, these revolutions are not as labor discipline with mass political isolated, as the Soviet Union and eastern mobilisation, which implied self-denial by Europe form a powerful economic force the masses and an end of “material which could objectively give the basis for incentives” , which, with the politically- lessening the ravages enforced by such inspired labor of the masses was to allow the accumulation. The problem remains, first massive accumulation of capital resources. because the aid offered is not, and for the foreseeable future could not be sufficient to The “deformations” of the Cultural overcome the basic problem, and, second, the Revolution, denounced by Mao, were the fact that the Soviet bloc remains a effects of objective forces arising from the bureaucratic dictatorship, and recommends, historical backwardness of China, distorting even imposes, its model on new socialist the ideal Mao had set. The end result was revolutions, leads to new revolutions falling disastrous, with two decades lost. Now the for these reasons into the same pattern. All Deng-Hua group is attempting the other one can say is that some of the excesses of road, offering the masses, and particularly Stalin are avoided, particularly the forced the peasantry, the “ material incentives” collectivisation which still imposes such a denied in the past, while exploiting the heavy burden on Soviet agriculture. present world conjuncture to hope for massive western investment to escape from Bahro mentions the Yugoslav and Chinese the iron grip of China’s economic experiences a number of times, while backwardness. deploring the fact that in east Europe he must rely on western sources to know what is At the extreme, we have Pol Pot’s happening. This, of course, points to the Kampuchea, where the desire to go straight problems someone like Bahro faces, to communism, to physically destroy the particularly when studying China. In total historical legacy, down to the most regard, for example, to the Chinese Cultural minute example, led to the massacre of Revolution, this has led him into a too-ready hundreds ofthousands, if not millions, guilty acceptance of the verbiage of that particular of carrying in their heads some aspect of the episode. past, or of simply objecting to Pol Pot’s “experiment” . The end result was that the Jugoslavia does, however, show that in experimenters themselves came quickly to given conditions it is possible to embody the worst barbarism of the past 20 AUSTRALIAN LEFT REVIEW No.
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