p The pluralists manifest their class bias very distinctly when analyzing the social and class structure of bourgeois society. They strive to circumvent or play down the main division of bourgeois society into two antagonistic classes—workers and capitalists. Insofar as they find themselves forced to speak about this, they examine it as one of the many eternal and immutable contradictions inherent in the ‘nature’ of human society. Like all other contradictions, the contradiction between proletariat and bourgeoisie can also be solved only temporarily and partially, by way of competitive struggle and compromises between the two sides.

p What are the spheres of life, organizations or groups which are taken as a basis in the pluralistic interpretation of the social structure of modern capitalist society? Pluralists and bourgeois theoreticians in general give different answers to this question. Moreover, they do not usually adduce theoretical or methodological considerations, but put first some, then other groups, strata, etc. into the foreground. This is a manifestation of subjectivism, which characterizes the theoretical impotence of the authors and schools they represent. The American sociologist M. Dimok, for instance, enumerates six basic categories of organizations or pressure groups. The first is made up of the ’big three’—the organizations of capitalists (business corporations), those of the workers (the trade unions) and those of the farmers. The second category covers the trade union organizations of working people such as doctors and teachers; the third consists of the churches and religious organizations; the fourth, the women’s 69 organizations; the fifth, the patriotic and pacifist organizations; and the sixth, the organizations fighting for civil rights. The state administration, central and local state institutions are grouped by Dimok into a separate, seventh category of organizations in the pluralistic structure of society (103, p. 23, 24). The views of W. Kornhauser and R. Dahl are similar.

p C. Feiner and the British pluralists in general usually enumerate: the organizations of capitalists; the trade unions, i.e. the organizations of the proletariat; the cooperative movement; the organizations of the liberal professions; the unions of state officials and, lastly, the organizations of pensioners and invalids, church and cultural organizations etc. (29, c. 89)  [69•* .

p What are the stimuli on the basis of which people rally together into organizations, and which set these organizations in operation; what is the mechanism through which these heterogeneous and independent organizations are united into a whole, into a society? Bourgeois sociologists and political scientists cannot bypass the people’s material, economic interests. Firstly, however, they do not recognize the determining role of material interests, and simply enumerate them as one kind of interests. The role played by material needs is greatly underestimated, for instance, by Kornhauser. Charles Perrow extols the pluralistic picture of society given by Kornhauser as a genuine model for a sociological theory, because in it the role of material needs and power is reduced to a minimum. A central part in the conception is occupied by the group (organization), as well as by the norms and values derived from it (148, p. 411). G. Briefs, side by side with the pluralists, thinks that the spectrum of people’s interests is almost boundless and that economic interests are an important but private matter (94, S. 7).

p Both the pluralists and their opponents from the bourgeois camp pay no heed to the link between 70 material interests and production relations. However, it is precisely a scientific analysis of capitalist production relations that shows that the opposition between the interests of the different social categories is not something ’natural and eternal’, but is a historically transitory phenomenon. The historical experience of all socialist countries has categorically borne out this scientific inference of Marxism.

p The mechanism which, according to the pluralists, sets in motion the complex organism of independent organizations, communities and groups in society, is expressed in competition, in the course of which rules for ’conducting the game’ are gradually elaborated.

p Competition, side by side with private ownership over the means of production, is one of the basic principles upon which capitalism rests. However, even the most unscrupulous contemporary champions of capitalism among the bourgeois ideologists cannot deny that competition is one of the sources of many social evils and deformations in bourgeois society. Moreover, the monopolist trends in the present advanced stage in the development of the capitalist social system are in growing contradiction with the principle of free competition. Nevertheless, side by side with the pluralists, their rightist critics from the bourgeois camp seek to defend competition by hook and by crook. This trend is particularly clearly expressed by K. Bosl. According to him, competition will cease to be dangerous and harmful or to disturb social peace, ’if common sense establishes the rules of the game, which no one should dare violate unpunished’ (93, S. 123).

p The Utopian and unscientific character of this proposition is obvious. Whose common sense is it a question of when, for instance, workers and capitalists have opposite views on the question as to what is just and what not in the class relations between them? Moreover, even if we assume that such ‘rules’ could be elaborated, who will observe their application when the bourgeois state in all class conflicts in the final analysis takes the side of the exploiters against the working people, irrespective of the efforts of the bourgeois 71 ideologists, pluralists and non-pluralists, to present it as ‘above-class’, ’all-people‘s’, or as a ‘mediator’.

p In William Kornhauser’s above-mentioned book ’The Politics of Mass Society’ the author strives to build up an integral conception of the pluralistic structure of contemporary capitalist society. The starting point in his theoretical constructions is not the classes but the concept of ’mass society’. According to Kornhauser mass society is not identical with industrial society. He also wants it to be distinguished from ‘totalitarian’ society.

p Two other concepts—‘elite’ and ‘non-elite’ lie at the basis of Kornhauser’s pluralistic conception. The ‘elite’ are the ruling strata in the various fields of life, and the rest of the population forms the ‘non-elite’, i.e. the ‘mass’—according to the terminology of most of the adherents of the elitist theory. Kornhauser, however, attaches great importance to the difference between the concepts ‘non-elite’ and ‘mass’. The ‘non-elite’, i.e. the common citizens, are transformed into a ‘mass’, according to him, if they are not organized into different independent groups and organizations (134, p. 32).

p The negative trends which, according to Kornhauser, characterize the ’mass society’ are expressed in the loss of autonomy by one part of the elite and at the same time—in the ‘atomization’ of society, i.e. in a weakening of the independent social organizations of which the citizens are members. All this, according to him, favours the setting up and strengthening of ‘totalitarian’ movements. Totalitarian’ movements, according to the author, are the centrally organized movements, mainly the political parties. The main difference between the mass and the pluralistic society, according to him, is that in the mass society the individuals are not directly connected with one another through a multitude of independent groups or organizations. That is why ’mass society’ proves highly susceptible to totalitarian movements and regimes (134, p. 33).

p To avoid strengthening the negative trends in mass society, Kornhauser recommends observance of the 72 established procedures and rules of government, together with preservation of the constitutional order.

p The author proceeds from the premise that these procedures and rules have been established by society as a whole or at least by the overwhelming majority of the citizens. But what is to be done, when enough eloquent evidence is availble that the procedures, rules and ’constitutional order’ are undemocratic, and that they express the will and defend the interests not of the majority, but of the exploiter minority? The only course of action which the author recommends for all cases is negotiation and balancing out between the ‘elite’ and the ‘non-elite’. The struggle of the workingclassand the other working people against the anti-democratic and reactionary ’procedures and rules’ of government, in favour of true democracy, is labelled as anti- democratic by Kornhauser.

p Kornhauser accepts as self-evident the thesis that liberal, i.e. bourgeois democracy is the most suitable social system for contemporary industrial society.However, a science-based comparison of the two systems shows and proves that only socialism creates favourable conditions for the development of society, and above all for overcoming the social inequality typical of capitalism and for raising the living and cultural standards of the working people— problems which bourgeois democracy for centuries has failed to solve. That is why both the question asked by Kornhauser: what kind of social structure corresponds to liberal democracy?—and the answer which he gives to it: social pluralism—fall wide of the mark as concerns the crying need of the day, which is evoked by the crisis in capitalist .society: a change in the system.

p Kornhauser indulges in detailed reflections regarding the mechanisms of liberal democracy, which are already at hand and have only to function well: free and open competition between the different ‘elites’ for leadership; widespread participation in the selection of leaders; restraint in the application of pressures on le& "ers (i.e. freedom of leaders to act at their own 73 discretion); self-government in wide areas of social life, etc. (134, p. 230, etc.).

p These and other similar mechanisms do indeed have a certain practical significance for the better functioning of the social system. However, the fundamental question posed by the condition of the capitalist system, which is going through an organic crisis, is not one of partially improving the individual mechanisms of the system, but one of removing it from its foundations and replacing it with a new system established on new principles corresponding to the social character of the powerful productive forces nowadays.

p Facts show that Kornhauser’s whole conception of ’mass society’ is a false construction. His fear of ’mass society’ is in fact fear of the organized, centralized force of the working people, fear of their political parties and trade unions organized on a nation-wide scale and centrally guided.

p P. Drucker to a certain extent takes into account the impact of the integrating processes under statemonopoly capitalism on the social structure of society. The old, traditional pluralism was characterized by the fact, Drucker says, that the duke, count, bishop and even petty landowner differed from one another mainly in their titles and incomes. To this he counterposes the new, modern pluralism, where each one of the groups or organizations is specialized (105, p. 175, 176). Moreover, Drucker points out the increasingly complex intermingling of the functions of the different organizations in present-day developed capitalist society (p. 178). In this connection, certain suspicions slip into his work regarding the expediency of the pluralistic structure, which have found expression in his statement that the legislative organs (in the imperialist countries— author’s note, A.K.) are disturbed by the symbiotic relations in a society made up of organizations (105, p. 185).

p A number of contemporary bourgeois economists, sociologists and political scientists draw special attention to the new phenomena in the social structure of modern capitalism, connected with the scientific and 74 technological revolution and the new stage in the development of the concentration of capital, the integration of production processes and centralization in management.

p In his book ’The New Industrial State’, which appeared in 1968, G. K. Galbraith examines in detail the processes of increased capitalist integration and the growing role of centralization in the management of economic life connected with this. Proceeding from similar evaluations, Kariel maintains that the gigantic economic corporation is the highest organizational form in which industrialism manifests itself in the USA. (129, P. 27).

p However, the gigantic economic corporation is a capitalist enterprise, whose activity is guided by the egoistic interests of a handful of millionaires and multimillionaires who own the control package of shares, and not by the interests of society. The same egoistical interests are also served by the ’symbiotic relationship’ between the capitalist corporations themselves and between them and the state organs, which worries Drucker.

p The elements of planning, forecasting and centralized economic management under statemonopoly capitalism are therefore aimed at a more rational defence of the interests of monopoly capitalism. On this basis the contradictions between the working people and the monopoly top crust become still further aggravated. The contradictions between the monopoly associations and the smaller capitalist enterprises also become still further aggravated. The contradictions between the individual monopoly supercorporations are preserved and often become sharper, because each corporation of this kind strives to achieve the highest possible profits, even at the expense of its partners. Owing to all this, the contradictions between labour and capital, which are so typical of capitalist society, remain and become still deeper. Competition is also preserved, irrespective of any temporary compromise agreements between the big monpoly associations.

p The theoretical champions of the interests of statemonopoly capital try to dress up as a positive phenomenon the trend towards a further restriction of bourgeois democracy and towards stepping up the regulating function of the capitalist states and the monopolies.The characteristic conception here is that of the ’formed society’, which was put forward by certain ideologists of state-monopoly capitalism in the Federal German Republic during the midsixties (63, c. 104, 105).

p The theoreticians of the ’formed society’ openly confess that a restriction on the democratic rights and freedoms of the working people is being exercised, and try to explain it as a manifestation of the weakened class struggle. The policy aimed at subordinating the interests of the working people to the interests of the monopoly bourgeoisie was represented as a policy aimed at the ’common weal’ of society as a whole.

The development of the scientific and technological revolution, the automation and cybernetization of production processes and management lead to further integration and centralization in the economy of the socialist countries, too. However, the lack of" an exploiter capitalist class and the existence of socialist production relations brings about the extension and improvement, and not the limitation, of socialist democracy, as we shall see later.