p For the anti-communism of the imperialist bourgeoisie the socialist countries, notably the Soviet Union, have always been and still are the objective of bellicose criticism that in many cases is based on fabrications about Soviet internal and foreign policy and about the character of the socio-economic and political transformations in the USSR.

p Very frequently the petty-bourgeois philistine is held captive by distorted ideas about the socialist countries, particularly about the Soviet Union. His position in society compels him to strive for radical changes but, at the same time, he fears these changes. By and large, fear is the 273 constant modus of petty-bourgeois consciousness. The imperialist bourgeoisie skilfully fans this fear by portraying the socialist countries as embodying the “communist threat”.

p However, the duality of the position of the petty- bourgeois strata does not permit them to adopt a consistent attitude to the socialist countries, for, as was put by Marx and Engels in the proposition we have already cited, by the logic of their social being the representative of the “middle estates” remains a critic of capitalism and, as such, turns his gaze to the socialist countries as the practical negation of capitalism.

p The commonplace petty-bourgeois consciousness judges socialism by its own short yardstick of customary notions of “welfare”, “good”, “evil”, “humanism”, everyday comforts and all forms of political vital activity. When the pettybourgeois consciousness is “happy”, i.e., when its exponent is fundamentally satisfied with his existence, the positive elements of his attitude to socialism are measured by the extent the latter is consistent with the material and spiritual values of the bourgeois society in which he lives. On the contrary, when the changing conditions of life make this consciousness “unhappy”, it is forced to look for values outside its own world and, in this quest, turn its eyes to socialism. The “unhappy” consciousness, thirsting to avenge its torments, depicts the world only in sombre hues and, in accordance with this mode of vision, regards real socialism as “inverted” capitalism, as exemplifying the tokens of capitalist values turned inside out, as the conversion of “white” into “black”, and vice versa. For this consciousness socialism is depicted as a society in which the capitalist, exploiting form of organising production and consumption is instantly replaced with the revolutionary self- administration; where anarchy takes the place of discipline; where the structure of requirements (and, partly, the level of consumption) differs fundamentally from the corresponding indicators of capitalist society; where abstract humanism reigns. For this consciousness socialism is a paradise, a fairy 274 tale come true, a realised Utopia and an embodied ideal of human existence. The historical approach to social forms is totally alien to this consciousness on both the commonplace and the theoretical level. The consciousness thinking in terms of black and white records society’s static state and does not perceive historical movement, the transition from one stage of social development to another and the distinctions in the content of identical forms. For that reason when practically embodied socialism, particularly in its Soviet form, proves to be unidentifiable with the image of “ inverted capitalism” created by this consciousness, when its exponents see the contradictory, “incomplete” character of socialism and, especially, the errors that inevitably accompany the advance along a new, unexplored road, they frequently back away from socialism if they do not become its inimical critics, joining hands with the Sovietologists in the camp of the imperialist bourgeoisie.

p In the developing countries, especially in those that have adopted the socialist orientation, the guarded attitude of the petty-bourgeois strata and, as a matter of fact, of a certain section of the proletariat to the Soviet Union is linked with some additional factors, notably with their disappointment over the forms of social organisation that are regarded as socialism by the working people of these countries, although actually they are a deviation from socialism or, to use the words of Ahmed Hamrouch, editor of the Egyptian journal Rose el Youssef, “slandered socialism”.

p In an article of the same heading published in the journal in January 1968, Hamrouch wrote: “Unable to find who can help and deliver him from injustice, the peasant, who is subjected to exploitation and the injustices from persons directing the work of the agricultural co-operative, is losing faith in the revolution.... The worker suffering from the actions of the management, which ignores the difficulties of his life, will never trouble himself with an attempt to analyse and find the difference between the principle itself and the actions of those who translate it into life. The senior or 275 junior employee, who is persecuted or discharged without an investigation of the reasons, will never look for the difference between theory and practice. Those who have been treated unjustly accuse socialism, i.e., slandered socialism, to which are attributed all the errors and deviations committed by some people in high office in various spheres of activity.”^^10^^

p Ahmed Hamrouch sees the direct reason for these deviations in the fact that “most of the persons entrusted with giving practical effect to the socialist idea were, actually, not adherents of socialism. Their convictions were far removed from socialism, and it was alien to their thoughts. Socialism was completely at variance with their paltry dreams, which they had constructed under the influence of capitalist methods or under the influence of the way of life to which they had aspired before our social revolution was accomplished. In private conversation they deride socialism, but laud it at general meetings.”^^10^^

p Whatever the actual motivations for the “disappointment” with socialism, the guarded attitude and hostility to it, they are tangible yardsticks of the consciousness of a section of the petty-bourgeois and marginal strata of the capitalist and the developing countries.

p The intensification of Left-wing tendencies among the petty-bourgeois strata (particularly in the industrialised states) has in recent years led the petty-bourgeois ideologists to redouble their attacks on the practical forms in which socialism has been embodied in the European socialist countries, especially in the Soviet Union.

p These attacks unite the ideologists and leaders of the European and American New Lefts, the Maoists and the Left-radical groups in some Communist parties (a typical example, as we have already noted, being the “II Manifesto” group).

p The petty-bourgeois critic of Soviet society regards it either as having from the very beginning “deviated from true aims” and from the “outline” charted by Marx and 276 Engels, or having, with the passage of time, shed revolutionary proletarian ideals and become a variety of “ integrated industrial society” suffering from the vices of “ consumption”, disintegrating into classes with differing interests and eroded by bureaucracy.

p For the petty-bourgeois ideologist the “distortion” and the “deviation of socialism from true aims” are linked with two main orientations. First, with the “orientation of the socialist countries toward the capitalist model of industrialisation”, with the efforts to overtake and surpass the industrialised capitalist countries in the sphere of technology, attempts which are regarded as automatically leading to the reproduction of the relations and values of capitalist society under new social conditions. The genuinely socialist goal, Herbert Marcuse wrote in this connection, “implies rejection of those policies of reconstruction, no matter how revolutionary, which are bound to perpetuate (or to introduce) the pattern of the unfree societies and their needs. Such false policy is perhaps best summed up in the formula ’to catch up with and to overtake the productivity level of the advanced capitalist countries’. What is wrong with this formula is not the emphasis on the rapid improvement of the material conditions but on the model guiding their improvement. The model denies the alternative, the qualitative difference...”^^11^^ Enlarging upon this argument, he said that he believed the building of free socialism implied rejection of the American model of industrialisation and modernisation, efforts to find a new model for the creation of a totally new social, technical and natural environment, a world no longer dominated by the aggressive needs cultivated by capitalism and where an entirely new type of man would emerge.^^12^^

p Second, socialism’s “degradation” is, in the opinion of the “Left” critics of communism, linked with the orientation of the Soviet Union and other socialist countries toward peaceful coexistence with the capitalist world. “This coexistence explains in large measure socialism’s deviation 277 from its initial idea and the fundamental transformation of capitalism. Today coexistence determines socialism’s future.”^^13^^ “In important aspects, this coexistence has contributed to the stabilisation of capitalism: ‘world communism’ has been the Enemy who would have to be invented if he did not exist—the Enemy whose strength justified the ‘defence economy’ and the mobilisation of the people in the national interest. Moreover, as the common Enemy of all capitalism, communism promoted the organisation of a common interest superseding the inter-capitalist differences and conflicts.”^^14^^

p By claiming that socialism has deviated from the initial goal and idea, from the “ideal”, the exponent of “unhappy consciousness” argues in terms of the typical providentialist, as a wanderer who has suffered much, who seeks the road to the promised land, promised to him by a higher power, and cannot find it. He judges socialism not by collating the historical reality of socialism with the actual possibilities, springing from society’s preceding development, of achieving socialism in a concrete historical situation, but by comparing reality with an abstract moral and aesthetic ideal that had allegedly been given shape by Marx and Engels in the last century but which “had not come true”.

p Marx had indeed given shape to the ideal of the harmonious, universal development of the individual, having in mind the individual’s ability to assimilate creatively the achievements of mankind’s aggregate development and actively deploy this wealth in all-sided contact with other individuals. For that reason Marx spoke of communism as “an association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all”.^^15^^ However, Marx, Engels and Lenin had never regarded communism (socialism) as a ready-made abstract model that had only to be realised in practice, or as an ideal society offering every conceivable benefit. This has been clearly stated by the founders of scientific communism at the very outset. “Communism is for us not a state of affairs which is 278 to be established, an ideal to which reality [will] have to adjust itself. We call communism the real movement which abolishes the present state of things. The conditions of this movement result from the premises now in existence.”^^16^^

p The founders of Marxism approached socialism as historians and natural scientists who did not invent ideal types, but studied the actual condition in which people have been placed and which they aimed to remake. “There is,” Lenin wrote, “no trace of an attempt on Marx’s part to make up a utopia, to indulge in idle guess-work about what cannot be known. Marx treated the question of communism in the same way as a naturalist would treat the question of the development of, say, a new biological variety, once we know that it had originated in such and such a way and was changing in such and such a definite direction.”^^17^^

p But in a natural-historical approach to socialism the latter is seen not as a speculatively constructed “perfect” society embodying a radical rupture with preceding history, but as a new phase of historical development that “sublates” the preceding stages, in other words, simultaneously breaks with them and represents their natural historical continuation and, consequently, determined by them to one extent or another and reproducing various of their aspects in new forms, depending on the specific social, political and economic conditions in which the revolution had taken place.

p The course of the socialist revolutions and of socialist construction may prove to be quite different from the course pictured by theoretical thought before the revolution. But “deviations” of this kind are not necessarily evidence of the “ideal’s deformation”, of a refutation of “Marxian prophecies”. They may be evidence of the destruction of the illusions of the petty-bourgeois “unhappy consciousness” that identifies the strategic goal of the proletariat— communism—with the concrete phase of the historical advance toward that goal, and the tasks of one or several generations of revolutionaries with the tasks of many generations. Actually, on a broad historical plane, the goal of a generation 279 frequently proves to be only a means relative to the strategic goal of the many generations building communism, and when this becomes clear the dispersion of the illusions about the identity of these goals is seen by the individual who expected communism to be built overnight as the dead cause for which he had fought, or as a “deformed goal”, or as the breakdown of “historical prophecy”.

p As the history of China exemplifies, there can indeed be deformations in the building of socialism, but this deformation consists either of surrender of positions that have already been won or betrayal of actual possibilities. If we speak of historical need, which is not given in “ready-made” form but is created by the people here and now, it will be seen that from the scientific standpoint the arguments about the “deformation” of the given socialism are utterly untenable. Indeed, if we raise the question of industrialisation, then had the Soviet state, with the relatively low level of economic development at the time the revolution was accomplished in Russia, any realistic alternative to industrialisation with the utilisation of the rational aspects of the technical experience of economically advanced countries like the USA, Britain, Germany and France? Was not the orientation toward the utilisation of this experience dictated by the social logic of socialism’s establishment in a country with a medium level of development of capitalism?

p Marx had pointed out that no socio-economic system perishes before the development of all the productive forces for which it gives adequate scope. With the inauguration of the epoch of imperialism and the increasingly more pronounced uneven development of capitalism, with the promotion of worldwide economic relations that are turning each country into a link of a single system of states, a realistic possibility arose of carrying out the socialist revolution initially in one country not necessarily one of the most developed. Marx’s conclusion revealed a new significance: inasmuch as the requisite material conditions 280 for a socialist revolution exist on a global scale, it is possible, in a certain link of the world capitalist system, to cut short capitalism’s development before it exhausts its potentialities.

p But this requires a certain compensation—under the new system—by the transmuted reproduction of processes historically linked with the preceding system. These processes cannot be realised by the socialist state, by virtue of the law of saving time, without a certain copying of capitalist processes, without a certain utilisation of capitalist experience. Industrialisation is one of these processes. True, today we are witnesses of a distinctive policy proclaimed by some “young” socialist countries in the sphere of industrialisation and utilisation of machinery, a policy that utterly rejects the “capitalist orientation in the use of machinery”, an orientation toward cultivating needs that are not linked with a high level of industrial development, and this evokes a fit of delight among the “Left” critics of socialism. But this orientation (in the relatively insignificant degree it is actually pursued) is possible for a certain time span only owing to the fact that these countries belong to the world socialist community. This means that they directly or indirectly rely on the aggregate might of the community (above all, on the might of the Soviet Union), thereby receiving the guarantee of their own existence in a situation that had once threatened the pioneers of socialism with destruction in the face of world imperialism.

p Further, it goes without saying that the utilisation of the knowhow of advanced capitalist states by the socialist countries does not predetermine a rigid orientation of social development and does not signify the transfer of capitalism to a new soil. In technology certain functions are, of course, always programmed, but these functions may be attended by different social goals, for the goal of technology (with the exception of some of its specific varieties) is not necessarily directly contained in it.

p Petty-bourgeois Left-radical ideology regards the “ containment” of the world revolutionary process as an outcome 281 of peaceful coexistence. In a certain sense such containment is indeed to be observed if, say, it implies the huge unproductive expenditures forced on the socialist countries by capitalism. But peaceful coexistence has yet another aspect, namely, the class struggle between the two social systems on an international scale, a struggle in which capitalism not only advances, but is also on the defensive. Exposed as it is to dual pressure—external, from the world socialist community, and internal, from the working class and other antiimperialist forces of the capitalist countries—capitalism is compelled to take measures that are essentially alien to its nature. Although these measures are in the long run “digested” and “assimilated” by state-monopoly capitalism through the evolution of new protective mechanisms, nonetheless they and, partly, even the protective mechanisms themselves, create new material conditions for the transition to socialist society.

p Peaceful coexistence is thus one of the factors making capitalism concentrate to the maximum its internal economic resources and place inner-capitalist competition under a certain measure of control if not to restrict it. Hence the active state interference in the operation of the market economy mechanism, the control over it and the attempts to replace the market with a “conscious” regulator in the person of the state. Tactically, these measures directly bolster the functioning of capitalism, but at the same time they are a further and very significant step toward preparing the basis for socialist structures, a step that makes it possible to hasten the completion of socialist reforms after power has been taken over by the working classes.

p Peaceful coexistence, which the petty-bourgeois ideologist regards solely as a vehicle “postponing” or “delaying” the revolution and the direct seizure of power by the proletariat in the industrialised capitalist states, thus has still another very important aspect which totally escapes the consciousness of this ideologist. It latently paves the way to the revolution by creating the requisite material conditions and 282 socialist structures, and by giving effect to transmuted forms of the transformations that at preceding phases were put into effect within the framework of socialism and were regarded as the prerogative of the latter.

p The “postponement” of revolution as a political act is in some measure compensated by socio-economic measures, which, provided the working people seize power by revolution, substantially facilitate the building of a new society (from the standpoint of the search for socialist structures adequate to the prevailing conditions, the shortening of the time needed for socialist reforms and the transition to the building of a mature communist society). Lenin agreed wholly with the thesis, advanced in 1920, that “after the victory of the proletariat the reasons for the ease of that victory dialectically become reasons for the immense difficulty” and that “the rate of the onset of revolution was not directly proportionate to the maturity of capitalist relations and the type-level of the revolution”.^^18^^

p Far from losing its topicality, this thesis has received further corroboration in the history of the world revolutionary process.

p Thus, neither socialist industrialisation with the use of the knowhow of the capitalist countries nor peaceful coexistence determine the “deflection” of countries from the road of socialism, just as rejection of industrialisation and peaceful coexistence is by no means evidence that countries that have proclaimed the socialist orientation are actually developing along socialist lines.

p In their criticism of real socialism, chiefly of the Soviet Union, the petty-bourgeois Left-radical ideologists constantly stress that their attitude differs fundamentally from that of the anti-communists and Sovietologists of the imperialist bourgeois camp, arguing that the end goal of their criticism is to make a scientific analysis of the reasons for real socialism’s “deflection” and find the way if not for its “sanitation” then, at least, for other countries to avoid the errors made by socialist countries.

p But whatever the actual motivations of these critics, the fact remains that in characterising the situation in the socialist countries they frequently use methods of “analysis” that are typical of imperialist anti-communism: a biassed attitude to the object of analysis, falsification, the juggling of facts, and so on. Indicative in this respect is the book Transition to Socialism (in the series Reference Books edited by the West German poet, author and publicist Hans Magnus Enzensberger, who is closely associated with radical Left-wing circles), recently published in West Germany. One of the contributors, Neumann, who propounds “true socialism”, attacks the Soviet intelligentsia, alleging that in the course of the socialist transformations in the Soviet Union a new ruling class that collectively owns the means of production emerged from the proletarian intelligentsia as a result of a long process.^^19^^

p In their arbitrary, subjective interpretation of the situation in socialist countries, the petty-bourgeois ideologists in many cases do not confine themselves to an “academic criticism” but draw organisational and political conclusions that, in effect, put them in the same category as the ideologists of the reactionary imperialist bourgeoisie. In the abovementioned book Enzensberger writes that the proletariat has to wage “an open class struggle against the Soviet bourgeoisie”, adding that the revolutionary “opposition” must vitalise its activity since there cannot be a “spontaneous, direct transition of the Soviet proletariat from its present state to a revolutionary class consciousness”.^^19^^ The “great proletarian cultural revolution” in China, which has become a “revolutionary model” for the petty-bourgeois Left- radical ideologists, clearly shows how this “opposition” is conceived and into what the “struggle of the proletariat” against the “bourgeoisie” in the socialist countries evolves. This orientation is not accidental, for the Maoists are not only conducting virulent anti-Soviet propaganda, calling upon the “Soviet people” to accomplish a new “revolution”, but giving practical embodiment to the “ultra-revolutionary” 284 slogans coined by the European and American petty- bourgeois ideologists.

p The frankly hostile criticism of the Soviet Union and other socialist countries by these ideologists nullifies the proclaimed goal of this criticism, and in the given question objectively places them in the same rank with imperialist anti-communism. Socialism in the USSR is in a state of development and does not claim to be ideal, a society free of internal contradictions and shortcomings, a society delivered entirely from survivals of the past. The striving to create better forms of social relations and constructive criticism—as an element of development—of the really existing forms of socialism—are the moral and political imperative of a Marxist and a norm of relations between Communists reaffirmed by practice. But it would be naive, to say the least, to expect that today it is possible to break through to these more improved forms of social relations by ignoring the socialist experience of the Soviet Union, rejecting it as of little practical value or even undermining the Soviet Union’s position on the international scene and in the international communist movement. This attitude spells out objective betrayal of communism and enlistment in the service of capitalism.

p This contradiction between the striving to create an improved society (a striving that is sincere on the part of a segment of the petty-bourgeois and marginal strata and their ideologists) and the use of these means and methods to fulfil this striving, which makes it quite impracticable and objectively helps to prolong capitalism’s existence, is the crux of the tragedy of the present-day “Left” petty bourgeois and the representative of the marginal strata.

p This contradiction is necessarily taken into account by Communists when they work out their position toward the social forces we have been considering. Marxism’s ideological firmness requires a consistent and unflagging struggle against anti-communism and anti-Sovietism, regardless of the source. Moreover, if this ideology gets an outlet in the 285 foreign policy of countries where anti-Soviet oriented representatives of the petty-bourgeois strata are in power, the socialist countries thereby receive the right to a similar effective defence of their own interests and, ultimately, of the interests of world communism.

p However, in view of the split consciousness of the pettybourgeois mass and the gulf between this mass and its ideological leaders, who in various aspects join hands with imperialist anti-communism, the petty bourgeoisie and the marginal strata cannot be simply qualified as a real or potential force of anti-communism, and their consciousness as simply anti-communist. This orientation may become predominant if Communists apply a simplified measure to it and abandon their unremitting and painstaking work among the non-proletarian masses.

In spite of the general trend toward the strangulation of the small proprietor by big capital, particularly in the conditions being created by the scientific and technological revolution, the petty bourgeoisie inevitably reproduces and will continue to reproduce itself as a vital condition of the functioning of big capital itself. Moreover, judging by the trend noted by modern science, the numerical strength of the petty-bourgeois strata (not belonging directly to the category of small entrepreneurs) will not diminish in the immediate future but, on the contrary, increase through the inclusion in it of the able-bodied population entering independent life and of the marginal strata. Thus Marx’s surmise that “the petty bourgeoisie will form an integral part of all the impending social revolutions”^^20^^ remains in force. This calls for a differentiated and flexible approach to the petty-bourgeois strata and a skilful combination of the struggle against elements of anti-communism in the consciousness of these strata with a constructive search for ways of forming an alliance with all the forces capable of becoming allies of the proletariat in the anti-monopoly revolution.