SOCIALISM AND LIBERATION
515
other parties, is that if they agreed not to oppose the program of
the Communist Party in any way whatsoever after the latter seized
power, they would be permitted to exist, although it is not clear
what the point of their political existence would be. With respect to
other working-class or socialist parties, Bolshevik fanaticism led to the
same result. For the Bolsheviks believed that any serious disagreement
with the Communist Party by
definition
had counter-revolutionary
objective consequences, which led to the sardonic observation of one
of their leaders in the '20s: "Of course the Bolsheviks believe in the
existence of several working-class parties-one party in power, the
others in jail."
The Communist regimes in the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia and
some of the satellites are unabashed one-party dictatorships. In China,
Poland, Czechoslovakia and East Germany the Communist Party
rules with the device of phony coalition parties. The existence of
these parties is in part the price the Communists pay for their hypo–
critical pretenses to democracy, but under a favorable conjunction of
circumstances, especially in the satellite countries, where aspirations
to national independence are strong, conditions may compel them
to pay a higher and higher price in granting political independence
to these other parties. In some countries, as in Hungary today, such
ostensibly non-Communist parties would be betraying their people by
giving some protective national coloration to Russian puppets like
Kadar. In Poland, where the situation is in flux, another tactic may
be required.
In this connection, of course, Gomulka's regime is unique. Since
he is trying to do the impossible, to keep the dictatorship of the Com–
munist Party and to encourage the independence of the Peasant
Party, Gomulka must fail. But he and those who support him can
fail in two ways-fail in encouraging other political parties or fail
in being good Bolsheviks. In the view of democracy, the latter failure
is of course preferable. When Gomulka proclaims, "It is a poor idea
to maintain that only Communists can build socialism, that only
peoples holding materialistic social views can do so," he should cer–
tainly be applauded, and even more so when he characterizes so–
cialism in ethical terms as "the system of social justice."
When with this conception of socialism he urges "competition
between our Party and the Peasant Party as well as between all those
