59~
LESZEK KOLAKOWSKI
agement and so on). The author criticizes the traditional Trotskyist
concept which lays the blame for the postrevolutionary degeneration
upon exceptional circumstances, in particular the backwardness of Rus–
sia and her isolation. He points out that the very revolutio.nary process,
with its inevitable subsequent exhaustion, lays the ground for the seizure
of power by an apparatus which step by step manages to free itself
from the control of the class it is supposed to represent. To. think about
historical development in terms of class division only and consequently
to imagine that with the abolition of private property, social conflicts
and alienation will natu.rally disappear (except for extraordinary cir–
cumstances) means, according to the author, to abandon the proper
content of the Marxian notion of socialism as defined by the free cre–
ativity of all individuals making up the society.
Neither is Trotsky's concept of "Bonapartism" as applied to. Stalin's
regime defensible, Mr. Arthur goes on, since Bonapartism, historically
speaking, is a phenomenon resulting from a stalemate in a sharp class
struggle giving a temporary autonomy to the political apparatus; no
similar schema is applicable to the rise of the Soviet bureaucracy as an
independent power. Still, the author argues, the new bureaucratic sys–
tem cannot be simply identified with the capitalist restoration; it is an
entirely new form, unparalleled by any past structure. He recalls
Michaels's law of oligarchy - the classless society is in principle un–
thinkable - but he believes that the emergence of new oligarchies from
any revolutionary movement is only a constant danger, not an iron
necessity. About the class character of ruling groups in Soviet-type
societies the author thinks that, in spite of their estrangement from the
society, these groups are less class-structured than o.wner classes in the
capitalist world because the relation between a person and his social
position is less rigid (no. inheritance of privileges; no institutionalized
ties between personal and social functions). Thus Mr. Arthur believes
that the Soviet Union, its primitive character
notwithstandin~,
"is a
crucial step beyond capitalism and is still worth defending." The dis–
tinction between rulers and ruled there is not as sharply structured as
the distinction between propertied classes and the proletariat in capitalist
societies. Therefore we have to do with a transitional regime, "in which
the program of socialist revolution remains the consciousness of the
masses" and which awaits the new proletarian revolution.
I t may be noted that the author, though he does not share some
traditional Trotskyist dogmas, is still deducing his description of exist–
ing socialist societies from an a priori Marxist schema rather than from
an empirical knowledge. I do not argue against his criticism of the
theory which simply interprets these societies as a kind of capitalist
