Has History Refuted Marxism?

RICHARD HUDELSON
University of Minnesota-Duluth

This article considers the significance of the fall of communism for the question
of the truth of Marxism. It begins by considering some Marxist theories of
Stalinism and some Marxist criticisms of Bolshevism. Having rejected the ade-
quacy of those theories, the author goes on to argue that while Stalinism in part
rests on a nonmarket vision of socialism derived from Marx, contrary to an
argument of Carl Cohen, this vision is not deeply rooted in Marxist philosophy.

With the collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe and the Soviet

Union, history appears to have dealt a decisive blow to the pretensions
of scientific socialism. The Bolshevik revolution launched the great
experiment. Now, the results are in: in country after country socialism
has failed. Communism is, in the words of Zbigniew Brzezinski, &dquo;the
grand failure.&dquo;’ It is not capitalism but socialism itself that is headed
for the dustbin of history History, to which the Marxists have so often
appealed for the eventual vindication of their cause, has instead
shown the utter failure of it.
However popular this line of thought may be in both the anti-
Communist West and the formerly Communist East, it trades upon a
controversial identification of Marxian socialism with the Communist
systems based on the Soviet model. But it is precisely this identifica-
tion that &dquo;Western&dquo; Marxists and reform-minded &dquo;Eastern&dquo; Marxists
have long resisted. They have argued that the Soviet model, copied
throughout Eastern Europe and the rest of the &dquo;socialist&dquo; world, is a
gross perversion of Marxism. From this point of view, the failure of
the regimes in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union is no indication
of the failure of true Marxian socialism.
The separation of true Marxism and the Soviet model can take several
different forms. In what is perhaps its most simple form, the evils of
the Soviet model are attributed to the departure from true Marxism
effected by Stalin. Thus, in a recent article, resisting the attempt by

Received 23 January 1992

Philosophy of the Social Sciences, Vol. 23 No. 2, June 1993 180-198

@ 1993 Sage Publications, Inc.
180

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 181

some Soviet philosophers to blame Marx for the defects of the Soviet
model, one Soviet philosopher claims that in the Soviet Union a
genuinely Marxist policy &dquo;was abandoned in the late 1920s as a result
of the premeditated acts of a person whom there is every reason now
to call the evil genius of all times and all peoples.&dquo;2
While it is no doubt true that Stalin largely shaped the structures
and practices constituting the Soviet model, the attempt to shift all the
blame for the evils of the Soviet model onto Stalin is highly problem-
atic. In the first place, blaming Stalin alone ignores the role of the
Bolshevik Party, supposedly firmly grounded in Marxism and sup-
posedly firmly in charge of the construction of socialism in the Soviet
Union. If Stalin’s policies represented an abandonment of true Marx-
ism, how was it that Stalin was able to impose these policies on such
a party? The new course launched by Stalin in the late 1920s was
launched in the name of Marxism and approved by the Party Either
we must suppose that there was at least some legitimacy in Stalin’s
claim to orthodoxy, or we must conclude that the Party of Lenin had
no understanding of Marxism.
There is a further difficulty attached to the effort to blame Stalin as
a way of saving Marx. A non-Marxist historian could conceivably

accept the view that the Soviet model was the work of one world
historical individual. But such a conclusion seems flagrantly at odds
with the Marxist conception of history as determined by social forces
which transcend individuals. If Stalin is to blame, then Marxist theory
of history is false. And, if Marxist theory of history is true, then the
Soviet model is, at least in its basic features, the necessary outcome of
historical development. More pointedly, if the Marxist claim that the
political superstructure is determined by the economic base is true,
then it would seem to follow that the repressive political apparatus of
the Soviet model is the necessary consequence of a socialist economic
base. Democratic socialism is impossible. These difficulties have long
troubled Marxist opponents of Stalinism.

MARXIST THEORIES OF STALINISM

Over the years, a number of efforts have been made to understand

Stalinism from a Marxist perspective. One of the best known of these
is the critique of Stalinism developed by Trotsky in the 1930s. In The
Revolution Betrayed, and other works of this period, Trotsky argued
that the Stalinist model was a bureaucratically deformed version of

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182

the Marxist dictatorship of the proletariat. He held that in 1924 a

Thermidorian reaction had taken place, in which the bureaucracy
seized political power from the true vanguard of the proletariat, and
established itself as a despotic dominant caste. Trotsky also argued,
however, that because the Stalinist model was built around the system
of state ownership created by the Bolshevik revolution, it preserved
an essentially socialist character. In Trotsky’s view, the bureaucracy

was constrained to maintain the &dquo;socialist&dquo; structure of state owner-

ship because this was the goose that laid the golden eggs. Further,
Trotsky argued that this bureaucratic despotism was doomed because
it violated the laws of history discovered by Marx, according to which
the overthrow of capitalism would inevitably lead to the political rule
of the proletariat.33
This last point raises some difficulties. In the first place, it is not
readily apparent how something that violates a true law of history
could be actual. But let us suppose, for the sake of argument, that some
understanding of this as a conceptual possibility can be worked out
in terms of distinctions between transient and long-term forces, stronger
and weaker forces, or the like. The problem then becomes one of
saying what these particular historical forces are. On this point, Trotsky’s
analysis is less than adequate. Trotsky suggests that it is when the
bureaucracy becomes involved in the process of distribution of goods
and services that self-interested temptations lead it astrayBut be-
cause such bureaucratic involvement in distribution is inherent in
Marx’s own model of socialism, it would appear that bureaucratic
despotism is also an inherent feature of Marxian socialism, as Marx’s
anarchist critic Michael Bakunin argued long ago. Further, Trotsky
fails to identify what historical forces there are that will lead to the
overcoming of this bureaucratic deformation of socialism. He as-
sumed that the proletariat would eventually reconquer political power,
but in the absence of a specific account of why the proletariat allowed
the bureaucracy to usurp power, or of the process of reconquest,
Trotsky’s position appears to rest on empty faith.
Because of his faith in the essential correctness of a Marxist law of
history, Trotsky resisted efforts to depict the dominant Stalinist elite
as a ruling class. Other Marxist theorists have taken this step. In the

1950s, the Yugoslav Marxist, Milovan Djilas, argued that in virtue of

its exploitative control over the means of production and its mecha-
nisms for maintaining this control the Stalinist elite did constitute a
5
ruling class in the strictly Marxist sense of this term.5

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 183

This analysis has been extended further by the Yugoslav philoso-

pher, Svetozar Stojanovic, who argues that what developed in the
Soviet Union and Eastern Europe is not socialism, which by definition
involves the democratic control of the means of production, but rather
statism.6 Stojanovic, like other Marxist observers, notes the similari-
ties of this industrial statism with the agricultural statism of what
Marx called the &dquo;Asiatic&dquo; mode of production.’ In such statist socio-
economic formations, the ruling class rules by means of its transpar-
ently political domination of economic decision making and surplus
extraction.
The resemblance between the Stalinist model and the &dquo;Asiatic&dquo;
mode of production is noted as well by the Hungarians, Georg Konrad
and Ivan Szelenyi.$ Like Stojanovic, they identify the ruling elite of
Soviet and Eastern European &dquo;socialism&dquo; as a class exercising exploit-
ative rule over the working class.’ Further Konrad and Szel6nyi
attempt to understand the historical origins of the Stalinist model
from the perspective of Marxism. They describe their work as &dquo;a
Marxist, historical-materialist critique of Marxism. &dquo;10 Their argument
is that in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe the weak bourgeoisie
failed to perform the progressive and transformative role it played in
the West and that, accordingly, the burden of necessary historical
transformation fell upon the state. Because of the lack of development
in these regions, intellectuals in the prerevolutionary years had no
place to turn other than to positions in state bureaucracies or revolu-
tionary sects. The Bolshevik Party was one of these sects. Although it
purported to act in behalf of the proletariat because the proletariat in
these regions was poorly developed, the Party’s intellectuals emerged
in the Stalinist years as the dominant social group. Given the &dquo;laggard
bourgeoisie&dquo; of Eastern Europe, Konrad and Szel6nyi argue that the
only historical alternative to a rule of the Bolshevik type, capable of
achieving modernization, was a &dquo;fascistic hegemony or a nationalis-
tic, military-bureaucratic intelligentsia.&dquo;ll
A similar conclusion is reached by the Romanian sociologist Pavel
Campeanu. He views the Russian revolution as a socialist, anti-
bourgeois revolution but also as an anti-imperialist and antifeudal
revolution. Like Konrad and Szelenyi, Campeanu sees in the failure
of the Russian bourgeoisie to lead the antifeudal revolution, the basis
for the Stalinist development of the October revolution. With the
bourgeois class abdicating its role, and the proletariat insufficiently
developed to lead the revolutionary transformation of backward

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184

Russia, the Bolshevik Party was itself forced to dominate the process
of revolutionary change:
Itself the functional surrogate of the bourgeoisie in the industrial revo-
lution, the proletariat now found itself in turn replaced by the party in
the leadership of the anticipatory revolution. The substitution of the
proletariat by the party largely preceded Stalinism; indeed it was all but
fore-ordained, given the objective contradiction in underdeveloped
countries between the potential role of the proletariat and its real
possibilities of fulfilling that role. 12
The aim of these remarks is not to present a comprehensive over-
view of Marxist attempts to reconcile the Stalinist model, the actual
outcome of history, with historical materialism. The analyses of Trotsky,
Konrad and Szelenyi, and Campeanu are obviously much more com-
plex than is indicated here and differ from one another in interesting
ways. Each is worthy of further serious study. Here, my aim is to focus
on four underlying themes that unite these three approaches.&dquo; First,
each views Marx’s historical materialism as a deterministic theory.
Second, each agrees with a deterministic understanding of historical
materialism. Third, each attempts to &dquo;correct&dquo; the Marxist law of
historical development by identifying &dquo;unusual&dquo; factors present in
the Russian revolutionary experience. And, finally, each identifies the
absence of an antifeudal bourgeois revolution as one of the primary
&dquo;unusual&dquo; factors responsible for the Stalinist outcome in Russia and
in the other countries of &dquo;existing socialism.&dquo;

EARLY MARXIST CRITICISMS OF BOLSHEVISM

This Marxist explanation of Stalinism is foreshadowed by early

Marxist criticisms of the Bolshevik revolution. Within the year follow-
ing the Bolshevik revolution, nearly every major Marxist thinker in
the world denounced Bolshevism as a perversion of Marxism. Some,
like Karl Kautsky and Rosa Luxemburg, focused their criticisms on
the undemocratic aspects of the Bolshevik model.&dquo; Luxemburg’s
criticism, written from her German prison cell during the first year of
Bolshevik rule, when most of her left-wing comrades were swept up
with enthusiasm for the Bolshevik path, saw clearly into the dangers
of the Bolshevik model. She wrote,
In place of the representative bodies created by general, popular elec-
tions, Lenin and Trotsky have laid down the soviets as the only true

representation of the laboring masses. But with the repression of polit-

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 185

ical life in the land as a whole, life in the soviets must also become more
and more crippled. Without general elections, without unrestricted
freedom of press and assembly, without a free struggle of opinion, life
dies out in every public institution, becomes a mere semblance of life,
in which only the bureaucracy remains as the active element. Public life
gradually falls asleep, a few dozen party leaders of inexhaustible energy
and boundless experience direct and rule. Among them, in reality only
a dozen outstanding heads do the leading and an elite of the working
class is invited from time to time to meetings where they are to applaud
the speeches of the leaders, and to approve proposed resolutions unan-
imously-at bottom, then, a clique affair-a dictatorship, to be sure, not
the dictatorship of the proletariat, however, but only the dictatorship of
a handful of politicians, that is a dictatorship in the bourgeois sense, in
the sense of the rule of the Jacobins (the postponement of the Soviet
Congress from three-month periods to six-month period!). Yes, we can
go even further: such conditions must inevitably cause a brutalization
of public life: attempted assassinations, shooting of hostages, etc.
(Lenin’s speech on discipline and corruption).15
Similar criticisms were voiced by leading Russian Marxists as well.
I. O. Martov criticized the Bolsheviks for suppressing individual
liberty, democratic institutions, and independent trade unions.16 He
also expressed moral revulsion at their use of terror and violence.17
For Martov, Bolshevik practices were incompatible with Marxism and
the tradition of European socialism built upon Marxism.18 Martov
accused the Bolsheviks of &dquo;spitting on Marxism,&dquo; and he feared that
Bolshevik practices would discredit socialism in the eyes of the peo-
p1e.19 He saw Bolshevism as leading Russia &dquo;toward some kind of
Caesarism.&dquo;2o
G. V. Plekhanov, generally regarded as the &dquo;father&dquo; of Russian
Marxism, who was dying of tuberculosis in the months following the
October revolution, repeatedly attacked the policies of the Bolsheviks.
In his last published article, Plekhanov denounced the Bolshevik
dictatorship.
Their dictatorship represents not the dictatorship of the toiling popula-
tion, but the dictatorship of one part of it, the dictatorship of a group.
And precisely because of this they have to make more and more
frequent use of terroristic means. The use of these means is the sign of
the precariousness of the situation and not at all a sign of strength. And
in any case neither socialism in general nor Marxism in particular has
anything to do with it.21
Similar views of Bolshevism as misguided, un-Marxist, and un-
socialist came from three other founding figures of Russian Marxism.
A. N. Potresov held that in the Russian revolution peasant rebellion,

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186

not Marxism, had triumphed.22 Vera Ivanovna Zasulich, a founder

with Plekhanov of the Marxist Emancipation of Labor Group, saw the
Bolsheviks as violent counterrevolutionaries.23 And, in a similar vein,
P. B. Axelrod, another founder of the Emancipation of Labor Group,
tried to persuade socialists around the world that Bolshevism repre-
sented a reversion to pre-Marxian forms of the Russian revolutionary
tradition.24
Underlying these criticisms was a conception of a Marxist law of
historical development, according to which all societies passed from
feudalism to capitalism to socialism. In the view of its Marxist critics,
Bolshevik policies deviated from Marxism into the realm of utopian-
ism by attempting to lead a backward Russia directly from feudalism
to socialism, skipping the capitalist stage recognized as historically
necessary by Marx’s law of historical development. Thus we see a
kind of agreement between Marxist criticisms of Bolshevik policies,
formulated at the time of the October revolution, and Marxist expla-
nations of the causes of Stalinism formulated after the fact. Marxist
predictions of a party dictatorship leading to Ceasarism are confirmed
by the historical experience, and the explanation of this historical
trajectory as a necessary consequence of the absence of a bourgeois
capitalist revolution against feudalism likewise fits with earlier Marx-
ist warnings against the attempt to skip the necessary capitalist stage
of development. In this way, it is possible to construct a historical
materialist understanding of the failure of communism that appears
to be consistent with Marxism. Although these later explanations
might be contaminated by knowledge of the earlier criticisms, the
solution reached here appears to be one deeply rooted in Marxist
theory and not merely an ad hoc avoidance of historical falsification.

CRITICISM OF THE HISTORICAL

MATERIALIST EXPLANATION OF STALINISM

Nevertheless, I am not myself satisfied with this &dquo;Marxist&dquo; solution

to the problem of the failure of Communism. My dissatisfaction rests
on two conclusions that I have reached. First, this solution relies on a

supposed law of history that I believe is neither Marxist nor plausible.

Second, this solution ignores features of Stalinism that draw deeply
on Marxist sources.
With respect to this first conclusion, here I can only sketch my
reasons for holding that there is no plausible Marxist law of history.25

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 187

Although there certainly are passages in Marx’s writings that suggest

the view that there is a sequence of economic formations-ancient
slavery, feudalism, capitalism, socialism-that all societies must pass
through, Marx never attempts to ground these claims in either a
theoretical or empirical fashion. Rather, they typically appear in pre-
faces or introductions to major scientific works or in works written
for the popular press. Thus, for example, the most famous treatment
of historical materialism occupies less than two pages of the preface
to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, which was written
in 1859 as the first published draft of Marx’s economic theory. Marx
devoted nearly forty years and thousands of pages to the task of
developing an economic theory of capitalism. This theory involves
extensive analysis of both a formal and an empirical kind. We have
nothing even remotely like this with respect to historical materialism
as a general scientific theory of history. Further, Marx himself, in a
letter to the editors of a Russian journal, denies that he has ever
established a general law of history. He says that his own account of
primitive accumulation, which deals with the change from feudalism
to capitalism, &dquo;does not pretend to do more than trace the path by
which, in Western Europe, the capitalist order of economy emerged
from the womb of the feudal order of economy &dquo;26 But, Marx com-
plains, &dquo;that is too little for my critic. He feels he absolutely must
metamorphose my historical sketch of the genesis of capitalism in
Western Europe into a historico-philosophic theory of the general
path every people is fated to tread, whatever the historical circum-
stances in which it finds itself.... But, I beg his pardon. (He is both
honoring and shaming me too much.)&dquo;&dquo;&dquo; And, Marx also directly
addresses the question of whether Russia must pass through a capi-
talist phase:
In his remarkable articles this writer has dealt with the question whether,
as her liberal economists maintain, Russia must begin by destroying the

village community in order to pass to the capitalist regime or whether,

on the contrary, she can without experiencing the tortures of this regime

appropriate all its fruits by developing the historical conditions specif-

ically her own.... To conclude, as I am not fond of leaving &dquo;anything
to guesswork&dquo; I shall come straight to the point. In order that I might
be specially qualified to estimate the economic development in Russia,
I learned Russian, and then for many years studied the official publica-
tions and others bearing on this subject. I have arrived at this conclu-
sion : If Russia continues to pursue the path she has followed since 1861,
she will lose the finest chance ever offered by history to a people and
undergo all the fatal vicissitudes of the capitalist regime 28

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188

It appears to me, then, to be a mistake to attribute to Marx the claim

that there is a universal law of historical development according to
which all societies must pass through the fixed sequence: feudalism
to capitalism to socialism. Accordingly, the attempt to divorce Stalin-
ism from Marxism on the grounds that the Bolshevik revolution was
a utopian violation of Marx’s scientific
theory of history fails.
More important, it appears to me that, whatever Marx may have
thought or said about this, there is no plausible ground for accepting
the view that there is a universal law of historical development. I say
this not because, like Karl Popper, I deny the possibility of genuine
historical laws of development.29 Nor do I follow humanistic Marxists
who reject historical materialist laws of history on philosophical
grounds of antideterminism. Stojanovic, for example, dissolves the
apparent falsification of Marx’s historical materialism by rejecting the
deterministic context within which this difficulty arises. He says,
For highly deterministic Marxists, socialism constitutes a historical
necessity: the collapse of capitalism and the victory of socialism follow
&dquo;iron laws.&dquo; But, for humanistic Marxists, socialism is only a historical
possibility and tendency and its realization crucially depends on peoples’
value choices and their collective actions
This remark raises a false contrast between humanistic and deter-
ministic standpoints. That the realization of socialism should depend
on people’s values and actions is fully compatible with a deterministic
outlook. Only fatalistic versions of determinism would deny it. The
question is not the efficacy of human values and choices but their
causation. Even the economic determinist can grant the efficacy of
values and choices, holding only that these values and choices have
economic causes.
My dissatisfaction with historical materialism as a general law of
history rests neither on a philosophical rejection of determinism nor
upon an argument against the possibility of laws of history. Rather,
my dissatisfaction rests upon the specific weakness of historical
materialism’s claim to the status of a law of history. Fundamentally,
my view is that there are not sufficient formal or empirical grounds
for holding that the sequence of stages is a necessary course of
historical development.
To take the case at hand, the of the Russian revolution, it
history
appears to me that the various studies cited above have not succeeded
in showing that Stalinism was the inevitable outcome of the Bolshevik
revolution. The argument, in its most simple form, rests upon the

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 189

claims that the party was forced to play the role of the laggard
bourgeoisie and this inevitably led to Stalinism. But this argument
ignores the period of NEP (new economic policy) from roughly 1921
to 1929. During this period, the Bolshevik Party retreated from the
coercive collectivism that prevailed during the years of civil war
following the revolution. In particular, the party allowed for the
development of free markets in agriculture and most consumer goods.
This substantial private sector created a space where, for example, the
intellectuals considered by Konrad and Szel6nyi could begin to find
room for independent activity By the late 1920s, the economy had
recovered to prewar levels. Although the Party maintained a monop-
oly on political power, there is no obvious reason why the Soviet
Union could not have evolved in the direction of political pluralism
and a mixed economy.31 To be sure, there were political interests
opposed to this. Such development threatened the interests of the
ruling political elite. But why did these interests dominate? And do
the proposed revised historical materialist accounts offer a convincing
explanation of the historical outcome? After all, there were opposing
interests and opposing voices. For example, Bukharin argued against
the abandonment of the NEP and against the forced collectivization
of the peasantry on moral grounds and on the political grounds
that with forced collectivization the Bolsheviks risked political sui-
cide.’ Why did the ruling elite run this risk, abandon the NEP, and
launch the Soviet Union along the course of development that led to
Stalinism?

MARXIST ROOTS OF STALI1VISM

In part at least, I think the Bolshevik elite took this decisive step
because they were Marxists. It is this that I had in mind in suggesting
earlier that features of Stalinism are deeply rooted in Marxism. When
the decision was made to abandon the NEP and move toward collec-
tivization and central planning of all aspects of the economy, the
argument was made that the development of a large class of small
capitalist farmers was a political threat to Bolshevik rule. But another
consideration that influenced the decision within the party, and also
moved many of the young comrades who actively implemented the
policy of collectivization of agriculture, was an appeal to the idealistic
impulses of revolutionary socialism. Many socialists saw the NEP as
a miserable compromise with capitalism. It was not this for which the

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190

heroes of the October revolution and the civil war had fought and
died. True socialism meant much more than this. The origins of Stalinism
lie, at least in part, in an appeal to an ideal vision of socialism.
The vision of socialism underlying this effort can be found in Marx.
Although Marx never attempted to provide a detailed picture of the
socialist world that is to emerge from capitalism, and in places refused
on principle to speculate about this, enough is said to provide a sketch
of the socialist society. In general, it can be said that, in Marx’s view,
production in a socialist society will be aimed at the satisfaction of
human needs, and democratic planning will replace market mecha-
nisms in directing the process of production and distribution of goods.
In contrast to the opacity of market relations, in which unintended
consequences frustrate human ends, socialism will be marked by the
&dquo;transparency&dquo; of production processes deliberately directed to the
satisfaction of these ends. Marx tells us that &dquo;ancient social organisms
of production are, as compared with bourgeois society, extremely
simple and transparent&dquo; and that the mystifications of bourgeois
society can be abolished only when society is based on &dquo;production
by freely associated men, and is consciously regulated by them in
accordance with a settled plan.&dquo;33
This vision of the socialist society of the future informed the think-
ing of all orthodox Marxists. Lenin, for example, presented this pic-
ture of the postrevolutionary society:

Accounting and control-that is mainly what is needed for the &dquo;smooth

Working&dquo;, for the proper functioning, of the first phase of communist
society. All citizens are transformed into hired employees of the state,
which consists of the armed workers. All citizens become employees
and workers of a single country-wide state &dquo;syndicate&dquo;. All that is
required is that they should work equally, do their proper share of work,
and get equal pay. The accounting and control necessary for this have
been simplified by capitalism to the utmost and reduced to the extraor-
dinary simple operations-which any literate person can perform-of
supervising and recording, knowledge of the four rules of arithmetic,
and issuing appropriate receipts. 34

To be sure, Lenin did come to realize the inadequacy of this as a

guiding vision for the immediate post-revolutionary society and led
the Bolsheviks to adopt the NEP But many Bolsheviks saw the NEP
not as an alternative vision of postcapitalist society but as only a
temporary necessity forced on the Party by the economic ruin result-
ing from the civil war. For these Bolsheviks, the Marxist vision of a
noncommodity, centrally planned economy remained the directing

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 191

ideal. In appealing to this vision and in calling on young and old

members of the Party to renew themselves to the struggle for social-
ism, Stalin claimed the Marxist high ground. Some sixty years later,
in the attempt to restructure the model of socialism derived from
Stalin, the demand for the transparency of social relations remained
central for many of those committed to preserving socialism: &dquo;It is
incumbent on us to make all of our social relations truly transparent,
for without this a genuine socialism is unthinkable.&dquo;35

PERESTROIKA AND MARXISM

Since the early 1960s, reformers within the socialist world have
called for marketization of parts of the socialist economies. The rea-
sons for this lie in the practical experience of difficulties with the
central planning approach. The analysis of these difficulties has led
some economists to the conclusion that these problems cannot be
overcome within the framework of the central planning model. Con-

sequently, these economists have advocated the introduction of a

substantial market component to the Soviet system.’ If the reformers
are right in claiming that there are problems with any attempt to
realize the model of centrally planned socialism, and I think they are,
then the problems of Stalinism are deeper than the historical materi-
alist criticisms of Stalinism considered above would lead us to believe.
In attempting to protect Marx from blame for Stalin, A. P Butenko
says that &dquo;Karl Marx was not at all to blame for the fact that since those
concerned had once begun to build a new society where conditions
for eliminating commodity-money relations did not yet exist, they
proceeded to eliminate them anyway.&dquo;3’ But if the reformers are right,
the Stalinist devolution of socialism cannot be understood as com-
pletely a product of the attempt to build socialism on unripe historical
conditions. Rather, it infects the Marxist noncommodity vision of
socialism in a more fundamental way. All attempts to build socialism
in accordance with this vision are doomed to failure. Conditions will
never be ripe.
The debate over perestroika in the Soviet Union touched on a num-
ber of the topics considered in this article. At the economic level, the
proposed reforms had a clear resemblance to the policies of the NEP
period. Politically and philosophically, they raised the question of the
relationship between Stalinism and Marxism. Here, I have argued for
the inadequacy of the view that Stalinism has nothing to do with

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192

Marxism. In saying this, I do not mean to suggest that Marx is to blame

for all the ills of Stalinism. In particular, I would reject the suggestion
of A. Tsipko that no democratic noncommodity economy is possible.38
My argument is only that such an economy, even if democratically
organized, cannot practically achieve the kind of rational planning
envisaged by Marx. I would also argue on broadly empirical grounds
that the traditional incentives argument against socialism must be
taken seriously. In Manifesto of the Communist Party, Marx dismisses
the incentives argument on the grounds that &dquo;according to this,
bourgeois society ought long ago to have gone to the dogs through
sheer idleness; for those of its members who work acquire nothing,
and those who acquire anything, do not work.&dquo;39 But this ignores the
real incentives at work in capitalism. As Marx was well aware, work-
ers are forced to enter into exploitative agreements with capitalists by
the &dquo;coercion&dquo; of want. Marx’s evasion of the incentives argument
trades on focusing on the carrot and ignoring the stick. The historical
experience suggests that the problem of incentives has been a signif
icant factor in the difficulties faced by the economies built on the
Soviet model. For these reasons then, I conclude that Marx’s vision of
a noncommodity socialism is seriously defective.
What then remains of Marxism? In my own view, a great deal
remains. Marx’s great scientific achievement was the theory of capi-
talism. Developed as a critique of the prevailing ideology of laissez-
faire, Marx’s economics is of abiding importance. It has, for example,
informed the reformist practices of Social Democratic politics in much
of the world.40 Ethically, Marx’s account of exploitation and alienation
offer powerful insights into the modem world. Philosophically, his
nonreductive materialism appears to have held up surprisingly well.
There is no reason why a Marxist philosophical position and a reform-
ist politics based on the insights of Marx’s theory of capitalism cannot
continue to play a significant role in world affairs. Marxism has
always presented, as it were, two faces to the world. One is the radical
revolutionary, and perhaps utopian, vision of a centrally planned
democratic socialism. The other is a reformist socialism in which the
working class gradually extends its control over the institutions in-
herited from the capitalist world. The failure of the utopian experi-
ment of Soviet communism need not discredit the more modest
reformist vision of socialism. To be sure, the reformist vision of
socialism retains a substantial market component. And because of the
opacity of market relations, the reformist vision abandons any hope

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 193

for realizing the transparency of social relations. But this is a small

price to pay for achieving feasible socialism.
This sanguinary assessment of the extent of the damage done to
Marxism by historical experience can be challenged by an argument
suggested by some remarks of Gerald Cohen. In &dquo;Karl Marx and the
Withering Away of Social Science,&dquo; Gerald Cohen argues that the
assumption of the transparency of socialism is deeply rooted in Marx-
ist philosophy in such a way that it becomes, for Marxists, a necessary
feature of true socialism.41
Cohen’s analysis begins with Marx’s conception of science as an
attempt to lay bare the reality underlying and controlling the surface
appearances of things. Marx says that &dquo;all science would be superflu-
ous if the manifest form and the essence of things directly coin-
cited.&dquo;&dquo; In a capitalist system, the surface appearance of free and
voluntary contracts among equals masks an underlying reality of
coercion, exploitation, and inequality. Further, the market system,
which is one of the fundamental features of capitalism, systematically
translates the intentional action of individual agents into unintended
social outcomes. Socialism does away with all of this. In doing so, it
does away with the gap between appearance and reality. In eliminat-
ing this gap, socialism eliminates the need for social science. Hence,
Cohen argues, Marx foresees the withering of social science under
socialism and the transparency of socialist construction.
This version of Cohen’s argument is only partially rooted in Marx-
ist philosophy. Whereas the conception of science is surely a philo-
sophical idea, the remaining premises of the argument, that capitalism
involves a gap between appearance and reality and that socialism
does not, are more like empirical generalizations. That capitalist
freedom, equality, and rationality mask an underlying coercive, ex-
ploitative, and anarchic reality is firmly established in Marx’s own
scientific theory of capitalism. But the remaining premise, that in
socialism there is no gap between appearance and reality, is not
similarly grounded in Marx’s own scientific research. Is it then a mere
assumption?
One possible basis for this assumption is a conception of socialism
as a society beyond scarcity. Imagine a society in which people order
whatever they need from a central warehouse. Warehouse managers
must fill these orders and secure sufficient goods to replenish the
warehouse shelves. In such a society, administrative functions are
reduced to operations of elementary mathematics and record keeping,
as was suggested by Lenin in the remarks quoted above. But in a

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194

society where needs exceed available goods, decisions must be made

about what needs to satisfy and how to allocate scarce resources to
the satisfaction of these needs. Markets determine allocation of re-
sources in capitalist systems. To be sure, they do this in ways that

reproduce exploitative social relationships and in ways that produce

anarchic results. But it is not obvious that socialist allocation can be done
in any simple or transparent fashion. The assumption of the transpar-
ency of socialist construction may rest on a confusion of the postscarc-
ity conception of socialism with the immediate postrevolutionary con-
struction of socialism under conditions of scarcity
Now I think that revolutionary socialists may have conceptually
overstepped the difficulties of the transition period in their enthusi-
asm for a vision of developed socialism and in this way been theoret-

ically unprepared for the enormous practical difficulties involved in

the construction of socialism. To the extent that this is so, the assump-
tion of the transparency of socialism rests on a confusion of developed
and undeveloped socialism that has no basis in Marxist theory But
Cohen suggests another basis for the transparency assumption, one
that is rooted in the philosophical foundations of Marxism.
Cohen finds such a foundation in the Marxist concept of the unity
of theory and practice. In addition to requiring that policy be formu-
lated under conditions of interaction between theory and practice,
Cohen finds in the concept of the unity of theory and practice &dquo;some-
thing of a higher metaphysical grade.&dquo;&dquo; Cohen explains this sense of
the unity of theory and practice as &dquo;a constituent of the revolutionized
rational world that policy achieves. It is a world in which the theory
explaining the practice of socialist man appears in his practice, and
needs no separate elaboration in a theorist’s head.&dquo;44 What makes this
sort of unity of theory and practice a metaphysical requirement of
socialism is the Marxist conception of socialism as a stage in the
philosophical-historical course of human development.
In class-divided societies, human beings are alienated from their
essential human nature as free social beings. Socialism is the overcom-
ing of this alienation. In it, human beings recover their own essential
natures. But if socialism is an overcoming of human alienation, it must
also be an overcoming of the gap between social reality and the
understanding of this reality. Cohen says, &dquo;For there is a sense, diffi-
cult to make clear, in which I am alienated from myself and from what
I do to the extent that I need theory to reach myself and the reasons
governing my actions. The need for a theory of the social processes in
which I participate reflects a similar alienation from those processes.&dquo;45

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 195

From this viewpoint, the transparency of socialism is essential to its

historical and philosophical task of overcoming alienation. Cohen
puts this point in the form of an argument: &dquo;When social science is
necessary, men do not understand themselves. A society in which men
do not understand themselves is a defective society. Socialism is not a
defective society, and therefore social-scientific theory is foreign to it.&dquo;~
This rooting of the transparency assumption in Marxist philosophy
depends on transporting the Hegelian dialectic of alienation into the
core of Marxist philosophy. Cohen is himself clear about this. He says
that
Marxian socialism is, in its epistemic aspect, the fruition of Absolute
Knowledge, since to have that knowledge is to know immediately,
without ratiocination, the nature of the total spiritual world. Marx runs
this conception to earth by projecting a community of human beings
who appreciate without theory the sense of both their own actions and
the actions of other men. 47

Although expressing his own conviction of the desirability of trans-

parency and his own belief in the possibility of overcoming the opacity
of market relations, Cohen concludes that &dquo;it is futile to hope for the total
transparency contemplated in the Hegelio-Marxian tradition.&dquo;48
Cohen’s reasoning connects the naive features of Lenin’s charac-
terization of the first phase of socialist society to deep philosophical
aspects of the Marxist conception of socialism. Cohen’s position re-
flects a philosophical conception of socialism that is found in diverse
Marxist thinkers. (It is, for example, central to Georg Lukics&dquo;s concep-
tion of revolutionary socialism as the union of subject and object in
history.) I believe that historical experience strongly suggests that this
philosophical conception of socialism is deeply flawed. But I also
deny that such a conception of socialism is a necessary feature of
Marxist philosophy
To begin with, Cohen’s grounding of the transparency assumption
in Marxist philosophy depends on the importation of the Hegelian
dialectic of alienation into Marxism. Such an importation reflects an
underestimation of the importance of Marx’s break with Hegel. Spe-
cifically, for Hegel, this dialectic is supported by a historical teleology.
But Marx and Engels subject this teleology to sustained and funda-
mental criticism.49 Attention to this Marxian critique of teleological
explanation blocks the importation of the Hegelian dialectic of alien-
ation into the Marxist conception of socialism.
Further, even if such an importation can survive the Marxist cri-
tique of teleological explanation, I do not think it need support the

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196

assumption of the transparency of socialism. For Hegel, the surpass-

ing of alienation that is achieved in knowledge of the Absolute is not
a return to the immediacy of pre-alienated consciousness. It is instead

a recovery of the object that is richly mediated by reason. To the extent

that the Marxist conception of socialism incorporates the Hegelian
dialectic of alienation, the overcoming of alienation by socialism
could only be achieved by the mediation of reason. To recognize this
is to see that social science may be necessary even under socialism.
It follows then, that Cohen’s attempt to ground the transparency
assumption in the philosophical foundations of Marxism fails. To be
sure, there may be some other root of this assumption in Marxist
philosophy, but I have yet to see any such philosophical grounding of
it. I am inclined to think that the transparency assumption is not
essential for a Marxist perspective. Indeed, there is evidence that
neither Marx nor Engels assumed that the immediate postcapitalist
world would take the form of Stalinist central planning.5° I conclude,
then, that there is no deep reason to regard perestroika as anti-Marxist.
Whether a restructuring that preserves what is valuable in Marxism
is now historically possible is, of course, another question. But this is
a question of politics and not of philosophy.

NOTES

1. Zbigniew Brezezinski, The Grand Failure (New York: Collier, 1990).

2. V N. Shevchenko. "The Social Philosophy of Marxism: The Founders and the
Present Day," Soviet Studies in Philosophy 29 (Fall 1990): 69. Elsewhere in this article
Shevchenko notes that "the mere affirmation that Stalin distorted and falsified the views
of the founders of Marxism can hardly satisfy us any longer" (p. 52).
3. Leon Trotsky, The Revolution Betrayed (New York: Pathfinder, 1972).
4. Leszek Kolakowski, The Main Currents of Marxism (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1978), 3: 193.
5. Milovan Djilas, The New Class: An Analysis of the Communist System (New
York: Praeger, 1957).
6. Svetozar Stojanović, Perestroika: From Marxism and Bolshevism to Gorbachev (Buf-
falo, NY: Prometheus Books, 1988).
7. Ibid., 42.
8. George Konrád and Ivan Szelényi, The Intellectuals on the Road to Class Power (New
York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1979).
9. There is some waffling on this point. For example, on p. 147, Konrád and Szelényi
speak only of the "class character" of "the social group which exercises a monopoly
over the redistributive process." And, although they often speak of the "intellectual
class," their analysis makes clear that there are significant differences between the
technical intelligentsia, free intellectuals, and the dominant party and state elites, all of

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 197

whom are located within the intellectual class. On these differences, see, for example,
Konrád and Szelényi, 184-92 and 207-15. Stojanović identifies the ruling class in the
Stalinist models with the elites within the Party and State bureaucracies. See Stojanović,
43 and 144.
10. Konrád and Szelényi, xvi.
11. Ibid., 133-34.
12. Pavel Campeanu, The Origins of Stalinism (New York and London: Armonk,
1986), 14.
13. Stojanović and Djilas differ in that they do not hold deterministic theories of
history.
14. Karl Kautsky, The Dictatorship of the Proletariat (Ann Arbor: University of Michi-
gan Press, 1964) ; Rosa Luxemburg, The Russian Revolution and Leninism or Marxism (Ann
Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1977).
15. Luxemburg, 71-72.
16. Jane Burbank, Intelligentsia and Revolution (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1986), 19, 22-23, 25.
17. Ibid., 19.
18. Ibid.
19. Ibid., 64, 20.
20. Ibid., 20.
21. Ibid., 36-37.
22. Ibid., 39.
23. Ibid., 44.
24. Ibid., 48.
25. For discussions of some of the reasons for denying any Marxist laws of historical
development, see Daniel Little, The Scientific Marx (Minneapolis: University of Minne-
sota Press, 1986),40-67, and Richard Hudelson, Marxism and Philosophy in the Twentieth
Century (New York: Praeger, 1990), 85-97.
26. Marx, "Letter to the Editorial Board of the Otechestvenniye Zapiski [Fatherland
Notes]," in Lewis Feuer, ed., Marx and Engels: Basic Writings on Politics and Philosophy
(Garden City, NY: Anchor/Doubleday, 1959),439.
27. Ibid., 440-41.
28. Ibid., 439.
29. Karl Popper, The Poverty of Historicism (New York: Harper Torchbook, 1957). For
discussion of Popper’s arguments on this point, see Richard Hudelson, "Popper’s
Critique of Marx," Philosophical Studies 37 (1980): 259-70.
30. Stojanović, 137.
31. Martov appears to have had such a possibility in mind for Russia. See Burbank, 16-17.
32. Stephen Cohen, Bukharin and the Bolshevik Revolution (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1971).
33. Marx, Capital, vol. 1, "The Fetishism of Commodities and the Secret Thereof"
(New York: New World, 1967), 79-80.
34. V I. Lenin, State and Revolution (Moscow: Progress, 1972), 92.
35. I. Pantin and E. Plimak, "The Ideas of Karl Marx at a Turning Point in Human
Civilization," Soviet Studies in Philosophy 30 (Summer 1991): 43.
36. For discussions of these difficulties and various proposals for dealing with them,
see Alec Nove, The Economics of Feasible Socialism (London: Allen & Unwin, 1983) and
Marshall Goldman, Gorbachev’s Challenge (New York: Norton, 1987).

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198

37. A. P. Butenko, "Is Karl Marx to Blame for ’Barracks Socialism’?" Soviet Studies in
Philosophy 29 (Fall 1990): 45.
38. A. Tsipko, "The Sources of Stalinism," Soviet Studies in Philosophy 29 (Fall 1990): 16.
39. Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party (Moscow:
Progress, 1977), 66-67.
40. For example, Hjalmar Branting, Ernst Wigforss, and Gustav Möller are among
the founding giants of Swedish social democracy, each of whom acknowledged a debt
to Marx. On this, see Tim Tilton, The Political Theory of Swedish Social Democracy (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1990). One should also keep in mind that it was not until the
mid 1950s that German Social Democrats officially shed their self-identification as
Marxists. Even so centrist a figure as Helmut Schmidt once advised politicians to study
not only Marx but also Popper (see World Press Review, August 1981, 34).
41. Gerald Cohen, Karl Marx’s Theory of History: A Defense (Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 1978), appendix 1.
42. Marx, Capital (Moscow: Progress, 1962), 3 797.
43. Cohen, 339.
44. Ibid.
45. Ibid., 343.
46. Ibid., 338.
47. Ibid., 341.
48. Ibid., 343.
49. Marx’s criticisms of teleological explanation can be found in The Holy Family in
Karl Marx and Frederick Engels: Collected Works (New York: International Publishers,
1975), 479; The German Ideology (New York: International Publishers, 1966), 38; and in
Marx’s letter to Lassalle, January 16, 1861, in Correspondence of Marx and Engels (New
York: M. Lawrence, 1934), 125.
50. Neither the specific proposals of the Manifesto for the postrevolutionary society
(Moscow: Progress, 1977), 75, nor the Erfuhrt Program endorsed by Engels envisage
this. In this regard, see Boris Kagarlitsky, The Dialectic of Change (London: Verso, 1990).
Kagarlitsky (p. 13) argues that antimarket views are characteristic of the late but not the
early Marx.

Richard Hudelson is an assistant professor of philosophy at the Llniversity of Minne-

sota-Duluth. In addition to various articles and reviews, he is the author of Marxism
and Philosophy in the Twentieth Century: A Defense of Vulgar Marxism (Praeger,
1990) and The Rise and Fall of Communism (~h~tp, 1993).

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