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Title: Two Indictments of Communism Author: Daniel Guérin Date: 1957 Language: en Topics: Communism, libertarian communism Source: Chapter from *For a Libertarian Communism* Notes: Originally from Jeunesse du socialisme libertaire.
Two books that appeared simultaneously, those of Tito’s prisoner Milovan
Djilas and Michel Collinet,[1] have led us to rethink the ideological
foundations of Bolshevism. Even though produced by two men of different
temperaments and origins and using quite divergent methods, they reach
more or less the same conclusions and present more or less the same
qualities, as well as the same defects.
One of their merits is to demonstrate that the Blanquist concept of the
party formulated by Lenin from 1901 contained at least in germ the
totalitarian communism of the Stalinist era. Djilas and Collinet stress
that the ideological monopoly of the leadership of the party, in this
case Lenin himself, claiming to embody the objective aspirations of
society,[2] was in fact an idealist conception of history that would
later result in the total monopolization of the bureaucratic apparatus
over that society.[3]
Where the two writers diverge is on the historical excuse of
“necessity.” Djilas, still incompletely freed of the authoritarian
concepts he was brought up on, believes that the success of the
revolution, which had to defend its very existence and the indispensable
industrialization of the USSR, required the establishment of a tyranny.
Collinet, on the contrary, condemns Lenin for having made a virtue of
necessity, and does not think totalitarian dictatorship necessarily
flowed from the tragic circumstances of the Civil War.[4]
While establishing a direct connection between Leninism and Stalinism,
the two authors stress, correctly, that under no circumstances can the
two regimes be confused and that differences of an important nature
distinguish them, and not simple “nuances.” as Collinet once lets slip.
Forms that were still revolutionary during Lenin’s time were transformed
into reactionary ones under Stalin.
Collinet and Djilas, in the most solid part of their work, provide both
brilliant and implacable descriptions of the privileged “new class.” of
the feudal bureaucracy that seized power in the USSR. For Collinet
today’s Russian society realizes “the most perfect absorption of society
by the state that history has ever seen.” and for Djilas modern history
has never recorded a regime oppressing the masses in so brutal,
inhumane, and illegal a fashion. The methods it employed constitute “one
of the most shameful pages of human history.” And in a flight of
inspiration, he opposes the idealism, devotion, and spirit of sacrifice
of communism of its early days to the intolerance, corruption,
stagnation, and intellectual decadence of contemporary communism. The
analysis of the “new class,” of the way it exploits the working class
and its poor economic management, is more acute in Djilas than it is in
Collinet: Djilas—and this is the main interest of his book—is a witness
who lived the evil from within.
The two authors are in agreement in denouncing the thirst for and
obsession with power of the communist oligarchs, as well as in
stigmatizing the transformation of Marxism into a dogmatism, into an
essentially sterile and conservative scholasticism.
Both Collinet and Djilas reproach Trotsky, not without reason and almost
in the same terms, for having shown himself incapable, despite the great
merit of his indictment of Stalinism, of defining sociologically and
fully exposing the meaning of contemporary communism. Why? Because he
lacked perspective, according to Djilas; because he persisted until his
death in not questioning Leninist ideas of organization according to
Collinet. There is probably something of the truth in both of these
explanations.
But to my mind both books are marred by a certain number of errors I
would like to point out. In the first place, they both show a total lack
of understanding of the concept of “permanent revolution.” Collinet
makes the mistake of considering Marx’s famous text of March 1850 an
unimportant accident in the history of Marxist thought, an ephemeral
“Blanquist” crisis from which the author quickly recovered.[5] He and
Djilas draw erroneous conclusions from a correct observation, which is
that the “permanent revolution” is more acutely manifested in backward
countries where it is easier to directly leap over the capitalist stage
from feudalism to socialism. But they are wrong in concluding that
revolutionary Marxism is only applicable to underdeveloped countries and
that it has no chance in highly industrialized nations. Maintaining, for
example, as Djilas does, that in a country like Germany only reformism
can carry the day means forgetting that from 1918 to 1933 the German
proletariat was on the brink of victory on several occasions and that
without the errors caused by its being a satellite of Moscow, it would
probably have abolished the most advanced capitalism of Europe. In May
’68 did we not see the working-class revolt in France a hair’s breadth
from overthrowing an advanced capitalism?
What is more, the two books insist insufficiently upon the relatively
progressive aspects of communism in power, although both mention some of
them. Collinet accepts that the national bourgeoisies have been
eliminated, the poor peasants liberated from the yoke of big landowners
and usurers, and that industrialization has been carried out; Djilas
that the collective ownership of the means of production has allowed for
the realization of rapid progress in certain sectors of the economy. But
the Yugoslav contradicts himself by claiming against all evidence that
no great scientific discoveries have been made under the Soviet regime
and that in this domain the USSR probably trails tsarist Russia. And in
the final conclusions of these two books the progressive aspect is
forgotten and the balance sheet presented is too negative.
In the same way, concerning the possibilities for the evolution of the
post-Stalinist regime the two authors demonstrate a pessimism that in my
eyes is excessive. To be sure, they are right in maintaining that the
Khrushchev regime was that of a conservative pragmatism lacking in
ideas. They are also right in stressing the relatively narrow limits of
de-Stalinization and in being skeptical about the democratization and
the decentralization of the regime, be it in Russia itself, Yugoslavia,
or Poland. But at times when reading them it seems that “dialectical”
evolution is blocked, that it forbids all hope. And yet, in other
passages the two authors admit that the break with the Stalinist past is
profound, that something has truly changed, that the domination of the
“new class” has been shaken, that liberation is on the march, and that
the release of popular discontent is irreversible. But they conclude
that the outcome will be irremediable ruin and the collapse
of”communism” without indicating with what the “monster” will be
replaced.
An ambiguity all the more worrisome in that one senses in their analysis
a singular indulgence towards Western bourgeois democracy, considered
the sole alternative to “communist tyranny.”
It seems that for both Collinet and Djilas the Russian regime alone is
responsible for the Cold War and the division of the world into two
blocs. The capitalist and imperialist character of the Western
democracies is blurred. For Collinet financial capitalism is a “mythical
monster.” and even Djilas who has spent time in the U.S., contests the
idea that the Western governments are controlled by a handful of
monopolists. Collinet claims with a straight face that there exist
Western democracies “untainted by any vestiges of imperialism.” and
Djilas that the United States tend towards an increasingly statist
regime. The dangers that American big business and its claim to world
leadership present are conjured away. Collinet goes even further when he
attacks the Bandung Accords which, according to him, are “nothing but a
weapon against the Western democracies.” and when he presents Mossadegh
and Nasser as instruments in the service of Russian expansionism.[6] The
impact of the indictment of Stalinist totalitarianism and the
executioners of the Hungarian people is considerably weakened by the
blank check issued the aggressors of Suez and Western colonialism.
Why do Collinet and Djilas both go off the rails at the end of their
analysis? In my opinion the real reason for their error is their
inability to find a third way outside of those of Stalinism and
bourgeois democracy. And the source of this inability is the refusal to
rally to libertarian Marxist ideas.
They make only vague and insufficient allusions to the great conflict
between authoritarian socialism and anarchist socialism that so deeply
divided the working-class movement of the nineteenth century. They seem
to be ignorant of the fact that the totalitarian communism they denounce
was condemned a century before them in prophetic terms by Proudhon and
Bakunin. For Collinet and even more for Djilas authority directly
exercised by the proletariat in the absence of any state coercion is an
“illusion” and a “utopia.” And yet the two authors occasionally
contradict themselves and express unconscious libertarian aspirations.
Collinet lets slip that “the logic of democracy was not the Jacobin
state, even animated by good intentions, but the state, withering away
and transferring its functions to the entire social body.” And Djilas,
after having denounced the Jacobin-style intolerance of contemporary
communists, exalts “man’s imperishable aspiration for freedom.” and
announces as imminent the moment when industrialization will render
communism “superfluous.” Analyzing the demands of the underground
opposition currently maturing in the USSR, Collinet—who is more precise
than Djilas on this matter although, alas, he does not go as far as he
should—says that “they do not appear to be demanding Western
parliamentarism; rather their essence is the independence of the people
and their economic and cultural organizations in relation to the party
and state apparatuses.”
If Collinet and Djilas had more clearly deduced these libertarian
conclusions from their analyses they would have avoided getting bogged
down, due to their failure to clearly glimpse a third way, in a
pro-Western Menshevism that deprives their argument of much of its force
and persuasive power. None of this, of course, justifies the prison
sentence inflicted on the Yugoslav, which does no honor to Tito’s
regime.
The lesson: a revolutionary socialist who frees himself of
Marxist-Leninist Jacobinism is in great danger of falling into
petitbourgeois and counter-revolutionary ideologies. There is only one
healthy and certain way to “de-Jacobinize,” to distance oneself from
authoritarian socialism, and that is to go over to libertarian Marxism,
the only reliable value of our time, the only socialism that has
remained young, the only authentic socialism.
[1] Milovan Djilas, The New Class: An Analysis of the Communist System
(Thames & Hudson, 1957); Michel Collinet, Du Bolchevisme: evolution et
variations du Mandsmeteninisme (Le Livre Contemporain, 1957). [Djilas, a
former Yugoslav Partisan and Communist leader and at one point touted to
succeed Tito as president, became increasingly critical of the
Yugoslavian system and was imprisoned in 1956. The New Class had been
finished before his arrest and was published in the USA in 1957, which
led to his being sentenced to a further seven years’ imprisonment.
Eventually released in 1966, he remained a dissident in Belgrade until
his death in 1995. Collinet (1904–1977) was also a former Communist
turned dissident, and then became a member of the Socialist Party’s
Revolutionary Left faction and, later, the Workers’ and Peasants’
Socialist Party alongside Guérin. He was active in the Resistance during
the Second World War, and remained a member of the Socialist Party after
the Liberation. —DB]
[2] It is regrettable that neither Collinet nor Djilas quote the
remarkable pages (pp. 157, 205) that, well before them, Valine, in his
Revolution inconnue, dedicated to the Bolsheviks’ claim to
infallibility.
[3] Nevertheless, Collinet and Djilas both exaggerate Lenin’s dogmatic
rigidity and underestimate his surprising intellectual flexibility and
his ability to revise his positions in light of facts, aptitudes that on
every occasion disconcerted his dull lieutenants and in a large measure
compensated for the failing for which he is criticized.
[4] Collinet here joins Valine without stating so (op. cit., pp. 180–2).
[5] Address of the Central Committee to the Communist League, London,
March 1850. [DB]
[6] The Bandung Conference of 1955 brought together twenty-nine Asian
and African countries, mostly former colonies, with the aim of promoting
economic and cultural cooperation and opposing colonialism and
neo-colonialism. Mohammad Mosaddegh was the democratically elected prime
minister of Iran who was removed from power in a coup organised by
British and US intelligence agencies in 1953. Gamal Abdel Nasser led the
overthrow of the Egyptian monarchy in 1952 and nationalized the Suez
Canal in 1956, which led to invasion by Britain, France, and Israel.
[DB]