SOCIALISM
AND LIBERATION
503
production, do not employ others and hence cannot exploit their
labor, would have to be called socialistic!
The very conception of "different roads to socialism" gives rise
naturally to the notion of "national Communism" so much feared
by the Kremlin and therefore even by Tito and Gomulka. For "na–
tional Communism" is just as much a departure from the classic
views of international communism as "national socialism" is from
the socialism of the Communist Manifesto. And in a genuine sense
the first expression of national Communism is to be found not in
Titoism but in Stalinism, under which the concluding line of the
Communist Manifesto was in practice made to read: "Workers of
the World Unite-to Defend the Soviet Union."
I am well aware of the fact that our century can be charac–
terized as the era of "the degradation of the word" and that the
use of the term "democracy," for example, among Fascists and Com–
munists designates the precise opposite of the commonly accepted
meaning of the term. In a sense this is true of almost every key
term in the Communist handbook of agitation and propaganda.
Nevertheless, the actual doctrines which are believed by those who
make the important decisions in the Communist world cannot be
reduced to a phenomenon of this character. Even those who lie
must believe that they know some truths in order to lie effectively.
We must remember that fanatical sincerity of belief is not incom–
patible with cynicism and opportunism in the means used to impose
the belief on others.
The question I wish to raise is whether, in terms of the official
ideology and in the light of incontestable realities, the totalitarian
integument of Communist doctrine can be shattered by uncovering,
developing and re-interpreting the rich legacy of ambiguities in the
intellectual and social movement of Marxism. The existence of these
ambiguities is obvious from the fact that both the Social Democrats
and the Communists invoke the Marxist traditions which are actually
far more ambiguous than even the Social Democrats imagine. The
existence of these ambiguities is revealed in the accounts given by
former ideological functionaries of Communist parties, such as Wolf–
gang Leonard, of the process by which their difficulties developed
into cancerous doubts, and Stalin was gradually rejected in the
name of Lenin, and Lenin finally rejected in the name of Marx. I
am
rwt
raising the question of whether any profound institutional
