THE FUTURE OF SOCIALISM
25
which I have discussed at length elsewhere.* Validity, insofar as it is
not a purely logical notion, is a matter of degree and shifts with the
critically evaluated findings of experience. In the light of historical
experience a major revision in the conception of socialism seems nec–
essary. It was a mistake to conceive of a socialist economy as planned
in its entirety. There is good reason now to believe that some form of
mixed economy can more reliably secure the goals of democracy
without the inefficiency, bureaucracy, and evasion of responsibility that
seem attendant upon a completely planned system of production.
From my point of view, one may be a democrat without being
a socialist or a Marxist. But one cannot be a socialist or a Marxist
without being a democrat-without that passion for human freedom
and equality which suffuses the writings and actions of the founders
of the socialist movement. One may be a socialist without being a
Marxist, but not conversely.
For the last twenty years I have presented an interpretation of
Marx which has run counter to customary views and conceptions of
his fundamental doctrines. Orthodox Marxism, either in its social–
democratic variety or in its more grotesque distortions, Leninism–
Trotskyism-Stalinism, seems to me to be an elaborate series of myths,
confused in idea and vicious in consequence. It would appear that
if I were justified in my interpretation of Marx's meaning, I would
be perhaps the only true Marxist left in the world. This is too much
for my sense of humor, and so I have decided to abandon the term
as a descriptive epithet of my position-all the more willingly because
I am interested in the validity of ideas rather than in their historical
derivation. Certainly, if the Stalinists and their international salon of
fellow-traveling litterateurs and totalitarian liberal politicos-whose
ignorance of the subject is as broad as their dogmatism is deep--are
Marxists, then I am cheerfully resigned to being non-Marxist.
So pervasive is the influence of orthodox Marxism that it has
affected the formulations of the questions by the editors of PR. We are
asked what reasons we have for thinking that socialism is not "bound"
to raise to power a new class of oppressors. We are asked
if
we still
retain belief in the "inevitability" of progress, in the view that social
change will "necessarily" produce socialist consciousness, in the doc–
trine that the proletariat is "destined" to be the carrier of the socialist
*
Cf. "Naturalism and Democracy" in
NaJuralism and the Human Spirit
(N. Y., 1945);
Reason, Social Myths and Democracy
(N. Y., 1940 ); Chapters
XI
and
XII
of
The Hero in History: A Study
in
Limitation and Possibility
(N. Y,.
1943); "The Moral Force of Socialism" and "Freedom and Socialism,"
The New
Leader,
1944-5.
