COMMUNISM NOW
527
Khrushchev we have a representative of those members of the ruling
stratum who, just because they are the products and survivors of
Stalinism, now want to relax a little and savor their privileges: they
express a political equivalent of the psychology of the
nouveau Tic he.
The big question is whether a touch of relaxation will stimulate an
appetite for a great deal more of freedom, and whether the im–
mediate social impulses of the Russian rulers toward indulgence,
aggrandizement, and their own brand of "moderation" will not come
into a major clash with their basic political interests, which require
above all else the continued iron domination of the party.
The political model of totalitarianism has given us an extremely
acute sense of the quality of Russian society and has helped us main–
tain a moral response; but now, without abandoning it, we should
recognize that there have been factors at work in molding Russian
society which cannot be accounted for in terms of this model and
are not peculiar to totalitarianism. Most notably, of course, there
has .been the rapid process of industrialization which does not in–
sure any progress or liberalization, certain new apologists for Commu–
nism claim, but which does make possible new social and political
forms within totalitarianism.
So that while the concept of the "mass society," which lies
behind the work of Arendt and other writers, remains extremely valu–
able, it now becomes necessary to bring to bear the methods of class
and institutional analysis in order to understand the repressed social
formations, the hidden class alignments and struggles, that exist be–
neath the surface of Russian life. Between the theory of mass society
and the methods of class analysis there may be a conceptual clash,
but the reality of Russian society requires, I think, an eclectic employ–
ment of both.
2.
One of the theoretical possibilities that needs to be considered
is that a convergence is taking place in the characters of the major
societies in the world. Just as totalitarianism is becoming a trifle
"liberal," so the liberal world has been showing impulses in the di–
rection of totalitarianism, or at least authoritarianism. To some extent
this convergence-a convergence, I had better say, is not an identity–
is
the result of a universal breakdown of values; perhaps to a greater
extent, it is the result of an uncontrolled socio-economic process
closely related to, yet not quite the same as, the growth of industrial–
ization.
