The Unfinished Revolution Other Titles of Interest

The Letters of Rosa Luxemburg, edited and with an Intro- duction by Stephen Eric Bronner

An Infantile Disorder?: The Crisis and Decline of the New Left, Nigel Young

Radicalism in the Contemporary Age. Volume 1: Sources of Contemporary Radicalism, edited by Seweryn Bialer and Sophia Sluzar

Radicalism in the Contemporary Age. Volume 2: Radical Visions of the Future, edited by Seweryn Bialer and Sophia Sluzar

Radicalism in the Contemporary Age. Volume 3: Strategies and Impact of Contemporary Radicalism, edited by Seweryn Bialer and Sophia Sluzar The Unfinished Revolution: Marxism and Communism in the Modern World revised edition Adam B. Ulam

Marxism has been the most pervasive and widespread ideological phenomenon of our times, but seldom, if ever, has it been found in its "pure" form. Whenever the Marxist ideology has been historically significant, it has been so as a beneficiary and associate of another set of political beliefs and passions. As a contender for power it seeks to express the dreams and yearnings of societies caught in the painful process of modernization and industrialization. In power it tends to pay lip service to its lofty goals, but associates them with old- fashioned nationalism. Practice does not reflect theory. Ruling elites and parties surpass traditional capitalism in their dedication to political centralization and industrialism at all costs. This revised edition of Adam Ulam's standard work retains the author's summary and critique of Marx's historical, economic, and political arguments. Ulam then examines the relationship of Marxism to other schools of contemporary socialism and to other radical and revolutionary theories. He traces the development of Marxian thought, explains why it has been the potent force in certain societies-while in other societies its influence has been insignificant-and analyzes how Marxism and Leninism have affected the shaping of Russian Communism. Finally Ulam looks at Marxism in the future: the role it will play in the development of the Soviet Union, and how it will affect the contemporary crisis of liberal institutions in the West.

Adam B. Ulam, one of this country's most eminent authorities on Marxism and the Soviet Union, has been a member of the faculty at Harvard University since 1946, where he is now professor of government. He is also associated with Harvard's Russian Research Center as a research fellow and member of the executive committee.

Adam B. Ulam The Unfinished Revolution Marxism and Communism in the Modern World revised edition

Westview Press I Boulder, Colorado First published 1979 by Westview Press

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Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Ulam, Adam Bruno, 1922- The unfinished revolution. Includes bibliographical references. 1. Socialism—History. 2. Communism—History. I. Title. HX37.U42 1979 355'.009 79-700

ISBN 13: 978-0-367-29691-9 (hbk) Contents

Preface to the Revised Edition ...... ix Preface to the First Edition ...... xiii

I. The Problem ...... I

2. The Argument ...... 9 Materialism ...... 9 Economics ...... 16 The Class Struggle ...... 27 Socialism ...... 38

3. The Sources and Dynamics of Marxism ...... 51 Industrialization ...... 52 Anti-Industrialism ...... 63 Liberalism ...... - ...... 79 Socialism and Anarchism ...... 95

4. The Diverging Paths: Democracy and Marxism ..... ll9 The English Exception ...... 122 The Continental Pattern ...... 134 A New Marxist Synthesis-Leninism ...... 151

5. The Other Side of Marxism ...... 177 Stalinism ...... 178 The International Aspect ...... 203

VZI VI It Contents

6. The Crisis of Marxism and the Soviet State ...... 227 The Party and the State ...... 231 Russian Nationalism and the Nationality Problem .. 236 The Economic Side ...... 242 Soviet Domination and International Communism .. 251 Marxism under Glass ...... 256

7. Conclusion ...... 267

Notes ...... 277 Index ...... 283 Preface to the Revised Edition

It is difficult to assess the role of ideologies in this fast- changing world. This book appeared originally in 1960, but I have found little reason to change my original conclusions about the nature of Marxism and why it has been the most pervasive and widespread ideological phenomenon of our times. Where the work needed emendation, in view of our experience of the last twenty years, was in the assessing the current status and prospects of Marxism in the Soviet Union, as well as in evaluating the in£1 uence of Marxian socialism and its relationship to the contemporary crisis of liberal institutions in the West. One of the main theses presented here is that one seldom, if ever, finds political Marxism in its "pure" form; that is to say, whenever this ideology has been historically significant, it has been so as a beneficiary and associate of another set of political beliefs and passions. As a contender for power, Marxism derives its popular appeal from the basically anarchist feelings exuded by societies undergoing the painful process of industrialization and modernization. Once in power, as in the Russia of the 1920's and 1930's, the Marxist party quickly sheds its semi- anarchist and libertarian vestments and matches and surpasses early capitalism in its ruthless dedication to industrialism and political centralization. When the main task of political and economic moderniza- tion has been completed, Marxism in our experience has been relegated to the status of official cult of the authoritarian state.

ix X Preface to the Revised Edition

The Soviet Union is the most vivid, but far from being the only, example of a Communist country where whatever significance the ideology still retains is due to its symbiosis with nationalism. In fact, what has proved to be the most vulnerable tenet of the doctrine has been its self-proclaimed role as the solvent of national and racial conflicts and the harbinger of universal peace. Workers have no country, Karl Marx asserted. But today every Communist regime, including those which depend on the power of the USSR, couches its appeal for popular support and acceptance in the nationalist idiom. The one undoubted advantage of Communism has been its ability to preserve the national state from those forces which everywhere else have eroded the bases of political and traditional authority. And it is difficult to resist the conclusion that it is because the rulers on both sides are Communist that the Sino-Soviet conflict has become sharp and remains basically intractable. But even though Communism has shown little promise that it can satisfy the most urgent need of the age and become the foundation of a peaceful international community, its ideology remains a potent force in the non-Communist world. Parties professing allegiance to the ideas o! Marx, Engels, and Lenin exist in practically every country of the world. Revolutionary movements in the Third World and the sects of terrorist fanatics in the West, while rejecting any ideological orthodoxy, still employ the idiom of Marxism. Even those who consider Communism to be an authoritarian and bureaucrat- ic excrescence upon the doctrine and who repudiate violence often seek in Marxian socialism a guide to a more just and effective social order. Do all these developments attest to the strength and correctness of the theory of history and society first propounded by Karl Marx? Or do they reflect the ever deepening condition of social and international anarchy consequent upon the decline of liberalism and other creeds and ideologies, representing in their sum Western civilization? Or does the power of Marxism "proceed out of the mouth of the gun," Preface to the Revised Edition xz reflecting the growth of power of the USSR rather than the inherent political and intellectual strength and attractiveness of the doctrine? It is to such questions that this inquiry is addressed. I have tried, as well, to see the problem in its historical setting.

Cambridge, Massachusetts September, 1978

Preface to the First Edition

This book is not a genealogy of political ideas. My main interest has been to find out what makes Marxism alive and relevant in certain societies, while elsewhere socialism and Communism remain the creeds of insignificant sects or intellectual coteries. It would take me much too long to list all the people to whom I am indebted in connection with this book. But I should certainly mention with gratitude Mr. Charles D. Lieber of Random House, Miss Mary Towle, my secretary, and Mr. Gabriel Gras berg, my assistant during one phase of this work. It is perhaps appropriate, in view of one of the main themes of the book, that this study of socialism should have been assisted by Guggenheim, Rockefeller, and Carnegie, the names being those of the foundations which have been very generous. The Russian Research Center at Harvard has provided me with leisure not usually available to a college teacher. I am grateful to its personnel and to my colleagues on its staff, and particularly to its first director, Mr. Clyde Kluckhohn.

Eliot House Cambridge, Massachusetts April 1960

xiii

-]- The Problem

What Marxism is and is not is a question that has occupied and divided scholars and politicians for a long time. The difficulty is obvious. Here is a doctrine of enormous intricacy and subtlety addressed not to the intellectuals but to the masses; a philosophy of liberation and freedom that in our day has given fruit in two of the most despotic and bureaucratized states history has seen. The earliest Marxists assumed that their doctrine would triumph in fully industrialized and modernized society: by contrast, history has shown Marxism victorious and influential mainly in societies groping their way toward industrialization and modernity, and not in the cradle of the doctrine, the industrialized West. Such is a small sample of the paradoxes of Marxism, which may well convince the average American or Englishman that life is difficult enough and sufficiently complicated by the visible results of the doctrine- Soviet Russia and China and their satellites-without the additional trouble of comprehending the intricate system of thought that is somehow behind it all. Furthermore, the doctrine is not only intricate but elusive. The mutual relationship of the elements of the triad Marxism-socialism- Communism is far from simple. An academician may look condescendingly at the obtuseness of the people who do not understand how Communist Russia can proclaim itself to be a socialist state, yet obviously the Soviets themselves are confused on the subject. Witness the declaration made in 1961 by Nikita Khrushchev that in 1978 the Soviet state and society would enter the era of Communism. Well, Nikita Khrushchev is long

1 2 The Problem

gone, 1980 is around the corner, and nothing has been heard about the dramatic transformation the year was supposed to bring. There is a suspicion among both statesmen and academicians in the West that "serious people," in this case the rulers of international Communism, cannot really be moti- vated by theories and analyses devised a century ago by two German thinkers. The ideology is relegated to the realm of propaganda; or, conversely, some of the leaders of Com- munism are dubbed fanatics, and every step in their policies is related to the blueprint of world conquest emerging from Marxism-Leninism. The uncertainty about the nature of the challenge is accompanied in Western thought by uncertainty about the nature of policies designed to meet it. If the doctrine of Marx and Engels implants in its devotees an implacable resolve to destroy the capitalist world, then the premise of the ideological motivation of the Soviet system must lead the Western exponents of democracy to concentrate on concrete tasks of defense. If, on the other hand, the doctrine presents danger mainly from the propagandist point of view, isn't the right response to prevent its spread among the underprivileged parts of the globe through technical and economic assistance? To the newspaper reader, the challenge of Communism resolves itself into a blurred composite: a military review in the Red Square; a Communist agitator haranguing an Oriental crowd; Russia's laboratories, with their eager masses of engineers and mathematicians; and somehow behind it all two bearded German thinkers. We no longer are as confident as we once were that this is a rational world. But the Western, especially Anglo-American, tradition still clings to the belief that political and economic problems must have concrete, easily identifiable, and rational solutions. Here we are dealing with a complex of problems that seemingly elude our grasp. Both "reasonableness" and "firmness" fail to arrest the assertiveness of Soviet policies. Emancipation of the colonial peoples and economic help to the underdeveloped areas appear incapable in themselves of endowing the new states with democratic institutions or immunity to Communism. Problems of an international society undergoing an economic and ideological The Problem 3 revolution seem to defy the social scientist's expertise, just as they defy the democratic citizen's common-sense analyses and the generosity-granted its qualifications and errors-that has characterized the policy of the leading democratic powers of the West. It is at least instructive to take a closer look at the origins of the doctrine, which, whatever else it may be, deals with the phenomenon of the economic revolution that has transformed the world during the last century and a half. Knowledge of the origins and structure of Marxism may not help in the solution of an international crisis. But that knowledge is in itself a form of action (the notion Marxism inherited from ancient philosophy) is perhaps the least deb;:ttable Marxist tenet. The origins and the structure of the Marxist system explain much about the spread of Marxism and its offshoots like Com- munism, a spread that has often taken place in societies and circumstances quite different from those that Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels had assumed would welcome their system. If it appears presumptuous to add yet another to the long list of interpretations and explanations of Marxism, then it may be offered as a partial excuse that events since World War II have enabled us to see new dimensions and facets of the problem. Karl Marx wrote in the midst of and about a revolution that was changing Western society and affecting all parts of the globe-with all its destructive effects on the old orders of Europe. We who have taken the industrial system for granted and assumed that we have seen all its political and social effects, we in the West, have all but lost the conception of the first spontaneous reactions to its arrival: the wonder at the power of technology and science, the bewilderment and resentment at the abrupt destruction of the old social and political institutions and beliefs, and the gropings for a system that would somehow explain it all and put the whole world together again. We have tended to consider reactions to industrialism not found in our own society (or at least assumed not to be found there) as expressions of primitivism, or of the exoticism of a given society, or of a national or economic catastrophe. Even the Bolshevik revolution and its conse- quences have been usually taken (and this is only to a degree 4 The Problem less true of Western Marxists than of their opponents) as something quite exceptional, a freak of history, perhaps attributable to the peculiarities of the Russian national character. It is only since World War II that we have realized that we are in the midst of a yet unfinished revolution. Its character is more complex than commonplace Communist propaganda would have it; and it also defies the usual Western editorializing, which always sees in revolutionary stirrings the result of an inadequate standard of living, or corruption and oppression by a particular government. The conditions underlying the current revolution are in many ways similar to those that disturbed and transformed Western European society during the first half of the nineteenth century. Under different conditions and in a different world situation, we see parts of Asia, Africa, and Latin America entering the initial or intermediate stages of the Industrial Revolution. The birth pains of modern industrial society, which Marx often mistook for the death throes of capitalism, are being enacted before our eyes. We can see more clearly what Marxism was about than could the generations for whom it was a movement of protest against capitalism, an obsolete economic theory, or a philosophical justification for an international Communist conspiracy. Also, in another dimension, within the context of a highly industrialized society, both the insights and the limitations of Marxism are more clearly perceptible now that a society based on Marxist ideology is challenging the greatest nonsocialist state for industrial and political supremacy. In other words, we can begin to see Marxism not only as a set of theories and prophecies postulated by its author and his disciples, but as something that "exists in nature" as well. We need not agree with Marx's own appraisal of his theories: that he was discovering the laws of social development. Certainly his doctrine has been victorious under conditions quite unforeseen by him, and Marxism got hold of societies which the very "laws" of Marxism would have precluded from falling under its influence, while conditions and societies thought by him most appropriate for the realization of socialism have developed in a quite different direction. But a thinker may be The Problem 5 supremely important and his thought of world significance not only because he formulates historical laws, but also because his thought reflects the essence of the mood of great historical periods. This has been the great significance of Marx. Philosopher, economist, a would-be politician and revolution- ary, his ideas are still alive and important because they are attuned to the two greatest tendencies of the industrial age: the worship of science and mechanization and limitless faith in their power to transform mankind; and the very opposite- protest against the soullessness and destructiveness of the machine age. Every society reaching for industrialization and modernization has its "Marxist" period, when some of the ideas of Marx are relevant to its problems and are reflected in everyday sentiments of the masses of people, even though the name of Marx and his movement may be unknown to them. Hence the attraction for Marxism, and the quasi-Marxist character of social protest in many areas of the world-an attraction which would still exist, though perhaps in a different form, were Marxism not represented by one of the two greatest powers of the world. Hence also the stubborn character of the appeal of Marxism to the intellectual and scientist as well as the masses in a society undergoing industrialization. For Marxism comes to them not entirely as a new argument attempting to convince with facts and figures, but as something which co-ordinates and brings together their own ideas and sentiments. Marxism, then, is not only the complex of theories bequeathed by Marx and Engels and developed, interpreted, and acted out in countless ways by countless theorists, parties, and movements. To use an analogy from physics: science has learned to produce in the laboratory elements found in nature. Imperfect as such comparisons must be, Marxism to a remarkable degree reproduces the social psychology of the period of transition from a preindustrial to an industrial society. If this is correct, then it is not surprising that Marxian socialism found little response in late nineteenth-century England and a great deal in Russia at the turn of the century. The industrialized United States has experienced Marxism in the last generation only as an intellectual reaction to the 6 The Problem

Depression; but large parts of Latin America, drawn increas- ingly into modern economy and its concomitants, are experiencing social and political turbulence which, while not directed by Marxists and not necessarily inspired by socialism or Communism, is Marxist in its mood if not in its postulates. It is always dangerous as well as ungracious to condescend to great men's ideas because the passage of time has inevitably shown their incompleteness or partial errors. A college student is not a greater physicist than Newton because he knows the incompleteness or limitations of Newton's theories. The great body of literature that has grown up in the exposition of Marx's errors, the incompatibilities of his theories with historical facts, and his inconsistencies has served-only a little less than the incredible intellectual calisthenics of the defenders of the literal truth of every single postulate of his canon-to obscure the main meaning and importance of his doctrine. It is not proposed here to minimize the importance of critiques of the Marxist system or to consider them merely as emanations of their times. But it is possible and sensible to look at Marxism not as an infallible canon or as a series of intellectual aberrations. Lenin, for all his dogmatism, used to quote fondly Goethe's saying about the grayness of the dogma and the greenness of the tree of life. In this case the grayness of the dogma often conceals the passion and movement of life. The surplus-labor theory may be "wrong" from the point of view of a non-Marxist economist, yet it implies the supreme value of human labor and individuality in the midst of societies where the worker views himself as an adjunct of the machine. The economic historian may patiently prove that under capitalism the fate of the worker has not grown worse, but this Marxist "error" still communicates to the worker in an industrializing society his loss of the stability and security he enjoyed in his previous status of peasant or craftsman. This does not mean Marx was manufacturing social myths or dealing in symbolism. Again the context of his times enables us to understand how he came to believe with the intensity of a religious fanatic in many, to us, bizarre notions, just as the context of our own times shows how a simplified version of the The Problem 7 same ideas can drive people into political action. In many respects, Marx culminates rather than transcends the ideas of his times and society. His economics are in the final flowering of the tradition of classical political economy. His philosophy and dialectic, those sources of exasperation to would-be Marxists in the pragmatic Anglo-Saxon countries, conclude the main Hegelian stream in German philosophy as well as subvert it. In Marx, socialism from sporadic sects and movements and from philosophers became an international movement and a definite body of thought. And even some of the postulates of liberalism, his main intellectual target, are, as we shall see, enshrined in his philosophy more rigorously and dogmatically than in the work of the most typical representa- tives of liberalism itself. Marxism, then, as a system of thought, cannot be understood except through an understanding of the intellectual traditions that made up nineteenth-century thought. The source of the historical influence of Marxism can be understood only if we realize how recurrent the kind of social and intellectual situation of Western Europe in Marx's time has been in other parts of the world up to our own times. It is not proposed here to establish a new form of determinism. The existence of Marxist situations in large parts of the world does not inevitably portend the victory of Communism there. It was a grouping of fortuitous events and forces that enabled Marxism to triumph in Russia. But it was not an accident that in 1917 Marxism in Lenin's version appealed to large segments of Russia's working class and intelligentsia. Similarly today: whether the Marxist situations all over the world become Communist preserves depends mostly on the relative strength and policies of the Western and the Soviet camps. But the outcome must be affected by the naturalness or inappropriateness of the setting for Com- munism in any given society. The study of the underdeveloped territories, and the attempt at their economic development by Western resources and skills, must take into realistic account the fact that at the crucial point of transition from a pre- industrial society to a modern, at least partly industrialized state, Marxism becomes in a sense the natural ideology of that 8 The Problem society and the most alluring solution to its problems. Another dimension of the contemporary problem of Marxism is equally important to practical politics. What of Marxism in the Soviet Union? If Marxism's alternative roles are the expression of protest against the pains and deprivations of industrialization and modernization and, simultaneously, the ideology under which this modernization and industrializa- tion are accomplished, what are the prospects for Marxism in the largely industrialized Soviet state? Is the ideology still important to an analysis of the Soviet Union, or has it become a mere fa~ade behind which practical people make practical decisions aimed at the maximization of their own power and that of the totalitarian state over which they rule? To sum up: from a variety of vantage points a study of Marxism is a study not of disembodied ideas, but of crucial social and political ideas; not only of theories but also of human emotions which have shaped and continue to make the modern world.