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mand). But the process failed to do that crucial trick which the "Protestant
ethic" achieved in some parts of the Western world, that is, to provide an in–
centive for saving, and for that deferred gratification which is a condition of
early industrial success. People must be prepared to allow an accumulation of
capital which sets the growth machine in motion. They may do so voluntarily
- because they believe it is morally right, or because they can see the light at
the end of the tunnel- but
if
they do not, they must be compelled to consume
less than they produce. This is how forced labor came to be an indispensable
ingredient of really existing socialism, as well as shortages and queues and in
the end a huge and useless "overhang" of worthless money. The logic of
Communist regimes made exploitation and suppression as inevitable as
scarcity and pretense.
The promise of socialism of the Communist variety was a quick and
painless way out of authoritarian rule and preindustrial poverty. Modernity
without Napoleon and the ginhouses, as it were. In fact, the peoples ofthe
third world, including the Soviet Union, got both, dictators and misery. Above
all, they got what Milovan Djilas first called a "new class" of party officials.
This class increasingly hardened into a large
nomenklatura.
The more rigid it
became, the less sustainable was its rule. The combination of ineffectiveness
and suppression eventually set in motion the process of self-destruction which
we have watched in recent years. In other words, socialism is not only a
developing-country phenomenon, but it is also one which cannot be upheld
beyond the initial stages of development. Sooner or later it has to give way
to more open and effective modes of economic advancement and probably
political involvement as well. Really existing socialism cannot last.
There are those in the Soviet Union and elsewhere in the post–
Communist world who speak today of a "return to capitalism." They are
wrong in more ways than one, but above all inclining
to
Marx's mistaken
assumption that socialism succeeds capitalism. In fact, the opposite is the case.
Market-oriented economies based on incentives rather than planning and
force represent an advanced stage of modern development. In this sense
capitalism succeeds socialism - in those countries where the socialist option
was the chosen method of entering the modern world. This is of course not
the case in your country, let alone in East Germany and Czechoslovakia,
where really existing socialism was the result of the hegemonic aspirations of
the Soviet Union and stunted the hopeful saplings of the process of
modernization. One can understand that, faced with the rubble left behind by
the Second World War, large numbers of people were prepared to embrace
any promise of progress on offer, including
nomenklatura
socialism, but after
forty years the balance sheets of the regimes under its yoke show almost
exclusively red figures. Soviet-style socialism in the advanced countries of
East Central Europe was a tragedy without relief
The year 1917 had more than one effect. It established really existing
