502
PARTISAN REVIEW
Plenum of the Central Committee of the Polish Communist Party
in October, 1956, Gomulka spoke of the construction of the best
model of socialism and of improving the design of the model by using
better spare parts. The metaphor is different but the point is the
same. By the method of replacing spare parts with better ones, mod–
ern technology can make a standard Ford coupe go faster than a
Cadillac.
Today, under the name of Communism and Marxism, we find
considerable differences in the theory and practice of "socialistic so–
ciety" in four different regions-the Soviet Union, China, Yugo–
slavia, and Poland. Some of these differences reflect, so to speak, the
historical and geographical landscape and the accidents attendant
upon origin. The differences in theory may turn out to be even more
momentous because to the extent that theory is a guide to action–
and it is often only a rationalization of action-differences in doc–
trine can lead to the intensification of differences in social, economic
and cultural behavior. Thus, when Mao-tse Tung says that socialism
is a garden in which many different theories can be permitted to
grow, he has said something of which Krushchev cannot approve
without the danger of letting the "thaw" get out of hand. Even
though, as seems likely, Mao-tse Tung will destroy as a poisonous
weed any doctrine he does not like, his words may meanwhile inspire
programs of liberalization in other countries-programs hesitant and
tentative, to be sure, but still possible bases for further development.
Even more significant, when Gomulka proclaims that "the best defini–
tion of the social contents inherent in the idea of socialism is con–
tained in the definition that socialism is a social system which abol–
ishes the exploitation and oppression of man by man," and that,
"what is immutable in socialism can be reduced to the abolition of
the exploitation of man by man," these pronouncements constitute
a more radical revision of traditional Marxism-Leninism-Stalinism
than do Titoism and Maoism. Its sweep is as radical as Ockham's
intellectual transformation of Aristotle. For it follows at once from
this conception of socialism that it is absent in the Soviet Union and
the alleged people's democracies-since it is not difficult to show
that their populations, as they very well know, are exploited and op–
pressed economically, culturally, and politically. It follows that even
a Jeffersonian community of small landowners who till their own
soil and one of individual craftsmen who own their instruments of
