No.5 IN A SERIES OF OCCASIONAL PAPERS ON THE NATURE OF .· COMMUNISM AND RELATIONS WITH COMMUNISTS IRVING HOWE 112 EAST 19th STREET • NEW YORK, N. Y. 10003 ~t:. L)l,) ON THE NA URE OF COMMUNISM AND RE . ONS WITH COMMUNISTS By IRVING HOWE The following article was written for a special purpose. It wa.r comMis.ri.IYC •y tJu League for Industrial Democracy aJ part of a group of writings to be submitted t• a .r~cial c01tj1rence of Stu­ dents for a .Democratic Society held dur_ing Christmas week 1965. The ~~r i.J .,. eff•rt to explain to younger student radicals the attitude toward Communism held by persons like myself on the democratic left. When the LID proposed to rel.Jrint this paper for wider circulation, I . thought at first of rewriting it, so that there would be no evidence of the special occa.rion for which it was produced. But on second thought, I have left the paper as it was written, so that it will retail its character and, perhaps, interest as a contribution to the discussion between generations. - I. H. I shall attempt something here that may be country has been demagogically exploited for re­ in1modest and impractical-to suggest, in com­ actionary ends. pressed form, the views held by persons like my­ In any case, we would favor various steps to­ self, those who call themselves democratic social­ ward the demilitarization of central Europe; to­ ists, on a topic of enormous complexity. For the wards arrangements with China in behalf of stab­ immediate purpos·es of provoking a discussion, ility in the Far East; and towards all sorts of these notes may, however, be of some use. While trade and cultural arrangements. That such steps my friends and colleag~es are likely to agree with would eradicate the struggle between th~ major the general drift of these remarks, the detailed power blocs-a struggle that seems virtually in­ formulations are my responsibility alone. herent in the nature of the competing systems­ I. International Relations, the UN, etc. seems unlikely. Nevertheles, anything which les­ This, of all the problems attached to Commun­ sens the dangers of war and allows liberal tend­ ism, is programmatically the simplest. We believe encies in both camps to flourish, is to be wel­ it is foolish to try to keep Red China out of the comed. A "breathing spell'~ in the Cold War, even UN and equally foolish to refuse to recognize the a moderation of its ferocity, can only help the political reality of Communist domination of main­ more creative elements within both worlds, and land China. Consequently, for all the familiar rea­ make it mQre difficult for both Communist and sons, we favor the admission of Red China to the capitalist powers to use the Cold War ideology UN and recognition of Red China by the U.S. as a rationale for repressive measures at home. Similarly, we favor various steps toward a les­ II. Notes Toward an Analysis of Communism. sening of Cold War tensions. We reject the idea 1. There no longer exists a monolithic Com­ that the Cold War is due to some sort of misun­ munist bloc. That major conflicts of strategy and derstanding, a "breakdown in communications," interest have arisen among the Communist pow­ or that it is the offspring of a machiavellian plot ers, just as they previously arose among the by the CIA and similar agencies which deliber­ capitalist powers, indicates that the Communist ately create "phantoms" to obsess people with countries have succeeded in solving the problems "anti-Communism." We believe that Communism of national interest and nationalism no better is an urgent problem in the world today; that no than their rivals. But if there is no longer a mono­ one pretending to political clarity or involvement lithic political structure operating on a world can fail to take an unambiguous attitude toward scale, tQ which all the national branches of the it; and that it presents one with fundamental Communist movement are subservient in the moral chokes-though we also believe that the sense that they were from about the late 1920's kind of anti-Communist climate dominating this until about the middle 1950's, it is both possible 2 League for Industrial Democracy and useful to specify certain characteristics of the traditional bourgeois or democratic revolu­ Communist socjety-characteristics all the Com­ tion do not exist. munist countries share, from the relatively "lib­ What determines whether a society can be eral" Yugoslav regime to even the far more re­ looked upon as socialist is, in our view, not the pressive Chinese regime. question of formal property ownership, that is, What are these characteristics'? not whether property is owned by individuals, First, the existence of a total party-state, that corporations or the state. A certain amount of is to say, a society in which a single ruling party collective ownership (though this need not and tends to merge with and control the state ap­ probably should not be entirely equated with paratus, while preventing any opposition parties state ownership) may be a necessary condition from functioning. A virtual identity of interests for a socialist society. But it is not-and this seems crucial-a sufficient condition. For the is asserted between the "vanguard" party and question must always arise: the state may in­ society as a whole. (Consensus politics, with a deed own the property, but who, sot!» speak, owns vengeance.) the state? And there is no evidence whatever In China there is supposed to be a.n almost that in any of the countries ruled by a one-party complete harmony of opinion and interest be­ Communist dictatorship the workers have any tween rulers and ruled. (Wherever a government genuine possibility of controlling the state, that insists upon asserting such an extreme "har­ is to say, that they have any genuine possibility Inony,'' it can be assumed that in reality there of overriding, checking, resisting, or anulling the 2re very deep conflicts of interest it wishes to decisions of the Communist party leadership, let paper over.) In Yugoslavia the party is ready to alone choosing another leadership. Consequently allow a certain autonomy to various social insti­ we reject, not merely as a matter of sociological tutions, ranging from an amorphous "socialist definition, but as a matter of principle-a prin­ front" to the workers' councils, but only on con­ ciple fundamental to the whole socialist outlook dition that the party, or leadership of the party, -the notion that there is anything about the retain ultimate authority and that no compet­ mere existence of nationalized property which ing political institutions be allowed to appear. warrants that it be described as socialist. It is this assumption of identity between a This point becomes especially important in ruling, self-perpetuating "vanguard" and society view of the fact that there now have appeared as a whole which marks an essential character­ throughout the world societies in which large istic of the totalitarian outlook. This outlook is sections of the economy are state-owned and realized, with a ruthless logic, in the further as­ operated, but which cannot by any stretch of the sumption that all rival parties-be they of the imagination be described as free or progres-sive past, present or future-must be outlawed on or socialist. The aim of democratic socialism is the ground that they represent interests hostile not a mere transformation in the forms of prop­ to "socialism." erty, that is, from private to collective modes Second, the regimes established under the vari­ of ownership. In the classical Marxist literature ous forms of Communist dictatorship are hos­ -that is, the literature of the early Marxists­ tile both to private property in its traditional there is a considerable coolness toward the idea capitalist forms and to genuine socialist values of mere nationalization or state ownership. (Cf, and relationships. Wherever the Communist Engels' writings on Britain.) What you will find, movement has achieved power, it has destroyed instead, is an insistence upon certain social norms private property in industry, and in most coun­ and values _as the essential determining char­ tries, agriculture. At the same time, it has no­ acteristic of socialism. For it becomes more and where permitted a true development of authen­ more clear that there is... in all modern industrial­ tic-or, if you wish, "participatory"--democracy ized economy a tendency toward statification, among the people below. In a society where the centralized economic control, and even a degree basic means of production are nationalized-that of national economic planning. Where the crucial is, are owned and/or controlled by the state­ issue then arises is in the question of who will the only way in which it is possible for clashing control this process and what social-mora! values social groups freely to express themselves is it will embody. through the mechanisms of political democracy. A third characteristic of Communism as a dis­ In the society we designate as Communist, how­ tinctive form of society is that it finds its ideo­ ever, the elementary rights won in and through logical and moral justification, as well as its Irving Howe 3 image (authentic and/or distorted) of the future, Communist society, though not of course to them in a body of doctrine it loosely designates as alone. Leninism. There may be, and now are, severe 2. During the past two decades most Western divergences among the Communist countries and liberals and socialists have tried to grapple with parties as to the proper interpretation of texts, the problem of Russian society by constructirtg yet there remains a common historical source a conceptual model of a unique phenomenon called lnd a common proclaimed purpose among the totalitarianism.