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selflessly committed to improving the life of humanity and erecting the
"Crystal Palace"
here and now
is not extinct.
It
explains the nature of
the transitions, where the initiatives from below are still marginal, and
the center of power remains as conspiratorial, secretive, and undemoc–
ratic as it was in pre-Leninist and Leninist times. Is this bound to stay
the same? No; after all, the monolith was broken, the dream of com–
munism as the secular kingdom of God has failed. The challenge
remains, however: coming to terms with Lenin's legacies, admitting that
Sovietism was not imposed by extraterrestrial aliens on an innocent
intelligentsia, but rather found its causes, origins, and most propitious
ground in the Russian political culture.
The twentieth century was one of revolutions and counterrevolu–
tions, and the Bolshevik takeover of power in October 1917 inaugu–
rated a period of ideological warfare that may have come to an end only
with the collapse of the U.S.S.R. in 1991 (the "age of extremes," as Eric
Hobsbawm calls this epoch). I will refer here to a recent volume by
Claude Lefort, the distinguished French political philosopher, author of
important studies on modern bureaucracy, fascist and communist total–
itarianisms, and the Jacobin tradition, as well as Machiavellian thought.
In his important new book
La complication: Retour sur Ie commu–
nisme,
Lefort proposes a deliberately controversial thesis: engaging in a
polemic with both Franc;:ois Furet
(Le passe d'une illusion)
and Martin
Malia
(The Soviet Tragedy),
Lefort maintains that Bolshevism (or, in
general, twentieth-century communism) was not simply an ideological
mirage. Ideology mattered enormously, as Solzhenytsin, on whom
Lefort wrote extensively, had demonstrated. But the ideological passion
alone, or the frantic will to impose a utopian blueprint, cannot explain
the longevity and intensity of the communist phenomenon. In the spirit
of French sociology (Emile Durkheim, Marcel Mauss), it would be fruit–
ful to regard communism as "total social fact." In other words, the
totalitarian system cannot be seen only as an emotional-intellectual
superstructure, but as an institutional ensemble inspired by these pas–
sions. In other words, it is not the original Marxism, as constituted in
the Western revolutionary tradition, that explains the Soviet tragedy,
but rather the mutation introduced by Lenin.
There is, undoubtedly, a dictatorial propensity at the heart of the
Marxist project, but the idea of the ultra-centralized, sectarian,
extremely militarized party, a minority of knowledgeable "chosen ones"
who know the esoteric gnosis while preaching the egalitarian rhetoric to
the masses; this idea is directly linked to Lenin's intervention in the evo–
lution of Russian and European social democracy. In this respect, Lefort
