56
LESZEK KOLAKOWSKI
torical experience. Basically, the bureaucratic socialist despotism is
caught in insoluble contradictions that weaken its cohesiveness.
The mechanisms that seem to prove that socialist despotism is
not subject to reform are indeed part of the system.
It
is therefore
logical to assume that in the absence of resistance, repression will
increase and the system will develop into an Orwellian model. How–
ever, one cannot conclude that
no
resistance movement can resist
these tendencies, and produce at least a viable form of socialist or–
ganization, if not a perfect society. The reformist posture would in–
deed be absurd if all it relied on were the goodwill of the exploiting
class, the philanthropy of the apparatus of oppression, or any self–
generated action by the system.
It
is not absurd, however, if one en–
visions an active resistance taking advantage of contradictions in–
herent in the system.
In this respect, an analogy could be drawn with capitalism.
As
Marx observed, capitalism was torn by a growing class polarization,
pauperization of the proletariat, decrease in profits, anarchy, periodic
crises of over-production, mass unemployment, and the disappear–
ance of the middle classes; and reforms could not abolish the funda–
mental laws of the system, which are rooted in "the wolf-like hunger
for surplus value," and which define all productive processes. The
only reforms that could affect the system were primarily political,
such as strengthening proletarian solidarity and training it for the
final showdown. For Marx one of the most important forces against
capitalist accumulation was the resistance of the working class.
It
was
impossible, however, to predict the strength of these forces; that is
why, although Marx's analyses were empirical,
his
conviction that
the laws of capitalism would "ultimately" turn out to be stronger
than the resistance of the exploited classes, was ideological.
If
his
expectations of an increasing degradation and pauperization of the
proletariat as well as a growing anarchy of production were not con–
firmed, it was because of long years of struggle and confrontation,
which forced bourgeois society to make certain compromises.
Analogies of this kind are, of course, not fully satisfactory.
It
is
clear that the socialist bureaucracy has learned from the bourgeoisie
how dangerous freedom can be. Hence resistance to oppression and
exploitation in a Soviet-style despotism must be carried out under
more diffic,ult conditions than in the past: no exploiting class in
his-
