390
NORMAN BIRNBAUM
despite its many negative and dangerous aspects, can accelerate not
alone the development of polycentrism in the Communist movement as
a whole but of democratization within individual parties and states.
The leadership of the C.P.S.U., in its conflict with the Maoists, has
appealed to Soviet public opinion; evoked in this context, opinion may
not readily abdicate once again. The episode of the "Hundred Flowers"
in China, did have a tragic (and savage) outcome, but it suggests
that Maoism itself is not a rigidly fixed system. The margin of error
and for miscalculation in world politics is, of course, terrifyingly small:
Chinese adventurism may well precipitate a catastrophe. Is there, how–
ever, any reason to doubt that there is some awareness of this inside
the Chinese C.P. itself--or that, under certain circumstances (not least,
a remission of American pressure) it can lead to a change in Chinese
policy? In any case, awareness of this danger inside the Communist
movement as a whole is acute--with all that this implies for the open
expression of ideological conflict within it.
Meanwhile, the view that the Soviet Union is entering a "con–
servative" ideological phase and that China will serve as a model to
the under-developed countries is not entirely convincing. The Soviet
Union will have demonstrated its capacity to industrialize while China
is in the middle of the process. The critique of Stalinism may lead the
Soviet Union to proclaim part of the price paid for its own industrial–
ization as excessive and unnecessary. As the U.S.S.R. and not China
will
be
able to aid the under-developed countries, its political influence
upon them will hardly diminish. Further, the term "conservative" can
be
applied to the Soviet Union only by extending analogy improbably.
The social processes that launched the C.P.S.U. upon de-Stalinization
will not easily
be
contained within a "conservative" political formula.
In any case, the notion that the future belongs to Maoism, in the new
states, systematically under-estimates the (relatively) libertarian com–
ponents in the ideology of their political elites. The influence of Yugo–
slavia, entirely disproportionate to its size, attests the eagerness with
which large parts of the world greet deviant or heretical variants of
Communism.
There is also at least one possibility of new developments in
Western European Communism. In Italy, the opening to the Left at–
tempted by the Christian Democrats has strengthened the strong re–
visionist faction inside the Italian C.P. Designed to isolate the C.P.
from the Italian Socialist Party, the Christian Democratic move may
well begin a process in Italian politics
whic~
has the opposite effect.
By legitimating collaboration with a Marxist party not subservient to
