COMMUNISM NOW
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Some American liberals may not understand this, but Khrushchev
does; and that
is
why he keeps insisting that the party must be
"master," which is to say, that the ruling class must retain its power.
Whether one can speak of a ruling class in Russia that has gained
the stability of the bourgeoisie in the early capitalist era, is not an
immediately vital question. What
is
important is that Russian society,
far from being a mere deformation of the socialist ideal, is an ex–
ploitative class society, and that in this society political domination is
the means toward economic oppression. The ruling class or stratum,
which functions through the party but is not confined to it, estab–
lishes the conditions and relations of production; it enjoys a mode of
existence that sets it apart from other social classes; it determines the
way in which the surplus national product is to be used, and does so
with a freedom and ruthlessness no capitalist class has ever been able
to command. So that if one identifies Stalinism with certain political
characteristics that are not essential to this society, one can say that
the recent changes involve the dissolution of Stalinism; but if one
identifies Stalinism with a system of social relations, a totalitarian
collectivism, then it makes sense to speak of Russia today as Stalin–
ism without Stalin. For the essence of the recent changes is an effort
to re-establish the authority of the dominant strata of the Communist
party, that is, to consolidate and "legitimate" the position of the ruling
class by repudiating the system of personal rule that helped bring it
into being.
4. The death of political Stalinism leaves the vulgar kinds of
anti-Stalinism without a future. Just as it will become harder to op–
pose Russian power, so will it become harder to oppose the intellectual
claims of its apologists. Analytically this will require more flexibility;
morally, a greater intransigence. Most of all, it will require a greater
political independence, a greater readiness to think radically than
most American intellectuals have recently shown. For now we shall no
longer have Stalin helping us.
(This discussion of Communism after Stalin will be
continued in future issues of
PR.)
