INVEST IN THE FUTURE. FUND YOUR PAPER writing The Alternative in Eastern Europe.
of the book German authorities are so anxious to avoid.
FOR anyone whose Marxist education was in the canonical formulas of 'dialectical materialism' this must appear a suspect, if not un Marxist* bool After all, the author discounts the possibility of a classical" socialist revolution in the capitalist insists that the Bolshevik revolution of 1917 doomed to lead to a social formation" entirely different from the expectations of Lenin and Trotsky. relects the toring role of the Most working class' Indeed, Bahro Come no longer soficien be a "Marxist" in the traditional sense"
Yet what has become of *Marxism In the traditional sense! in the hands of burcaucratic pigones of the revolution? Wha does it mean to the oppressed masses in actually existing socialism'?
Scientific socialism become the science of the objective i governing history, against which only petty bourgeois subjectivists and countervolutionaries can reb best aderstoo ualified exercise - the Polburo and Cente of the proletaria Committee.
These latter have a dusy to protect the gullible masses the siren calls subjectivists and counter-revolutionaries → who therefoenal disorder see. Sore disorders treated with the latest psychiatric methods and their imperialist paymasters exposed.
Orthodox Marxiam becomes the science of social manipula tion and bureaucratic domination.
It is against this back-interest restoring Marxism's moral credentiais, that Bahro sets out retrieve the humanistic dimension of communism. The aim is the general emancipation" bumunity liberation of individuais from all socially determined limita tions on their development' not catching up with the West in the competition between the systems.
The risk of exposing himself to charges of "utopianism" "petty bourgenis idenlism" and revisionism — particularly those who distigured Marxise in the first place - is hardly a serious consideration when faced with the task of Easing *to a higher level MANY TIMES have we drawn attention to the imprisonment of Rudolf Bahro in East Germany for of the best forms of solidarity is a critical discussion - a discussion of the type that the East This contribution by GUNTER MINNERUP is in preparation for a Bahro solidarity conference to be held on Friday evening and Saturday 18-19 May at Conway Hall, Red Lion Square, London WCI.
Marx's own legacy, the most developed theory and method of social science that we have, and (transforming) it into the communism of the present.
THE vertical division labour which Babro identifies as the real source of class and divisions is not simply Twits manual ideologists on the one hand and those occupied partial, repetitive, ised and de-humanising activiAs long as humanity exist under conditions of material scarcity and the emancipation of all individunis From their servitude to nature is an objective impossibility hoth rulers and ruled the themselves caught dialectic of what Bahro calls Laws those the of their emancipatory needs (the striving for liberation) *the compensatory needs (compensating lor the lack liberation).
The state is both the HOLESSI agent reproduction and a means by which the rulers satisty their compensatory need for power over their fellow people. The coonomy is both the necessary motor of human towards the abolition scarcity and a way of satistving ever-growing needs.
These features persist even But one of the intellectual de-humangeneral find up in the after private property has beer and abolished, so that Bahro ca summarise 'the historical task of which I have In mind' as the abolition of the vertical division of labour, and the revolution of the structure of bound up with this.
His slogan of the cultural revolution' stands radical change in all customary modes of procedure in sociely and ibe economy compensatory Bahro's method of viewing history as the rise and fill of the social division of labour traditional the abolition entire independent needs that is exploitation of women, our OVer the institutions and mental worker.
of and fatalism.
revolution quences.
correctly productive Czarist The tus establishing This Immediate backward facing determined necessary Usable of psycholog that alienated class producers, division "itself"
hegentony chables him to focus sharply on all the forms of oppression and exploitation that are not automatically eliminated with capitalism because they arose prior to and L1: 'the and oppressior the overall patriarchal family structure... the dominance of the town.
the exploitation and oppression of country... the psychological the manual worker.. by the But this method also has one serious flaw which is responsible for many of the weaker of collapsing differeor modes production and full rather one dimensional anthropolozy certain This is nowhere clearer than in his analysis of the Russian and conse Since the socialist revolution presupposes, as he affirms, the bourgeois development of the forces Babro retrospectively concludes from the "Asiatic backwardness of HUSSL that the Bolshevik revolution could not possibly have led to socialism 'Lenin-Stalin -succeeded ra only Despers in astonedana Togy to the Asiatic "agricultural despotism, and themselves as the "substitute for an exploit ing class, as the labour lord of Soviet socicty".
analogy the "Asiatic mode of production' - a strong and centralised stale bureaucracy lording over fragmented producers highly problematic. However and Asiatic' the Russia of 1917 was, The casks the Bolsheviks WCTE by abstract need to industrialise the country in u vacuum, bur by the capitalist world market.
Hut Balro has little to say on the role of the historically bureauc racy in strangling the international revolution, the indispenprecondition of Sovier Union's socialist future And he dismisses the concrete political alternative to Stalin Opposition as the tearguard offered Left battle of people who 'no longer understond the process they were taking part in' IN Mark's time, particularly because this prodated the work Freud and his school, had yct reached the level of develop ment that today enables it lo declare it as simply impossible oppressed and of immediate subjected 1o the of labour, could become the ruling class and in this role exercise Over the entire cultural process of its socicty.
There is no reason for a Marxist to disregard psycho logy sumply because warx did not write about it, but surely its development was primaril concerned with the psychology of the individual, whereas the dynamic of the class struggle is essentially one of the conflict betworn collectives.
Does Bahro's emphasis on psychological change, and the meetier of the in to powe working class ground:
Ignore the need to destroy th old state apparatus and replace it with a new one? And does it not permit an elitist interpretation of the role of his new League of Communists', exer the masses that falls short of socialist democracy? ('The conception of party pluralism sooms to anachronistic picce of thought lessness.)
Whenever it translating his "cultural revolution" into concrete political categories, Hahro vacillates between reform and revolu tion, beiween a developed soviet democracy based mass instiative and politica pluralism and a form of enlightened, humanistic pater nalism.
Yet all these weaknesses and ambiguities have to be seen in their proper Bahro himself writes that the programmadi dimension. should derive, epistemological grounds, but sociological. fron collective political practice which for us in the countries of actually ine s for time still notoriously forbidden.
He might equally have added that the theoretical and historical practice of even the most gifted individual unavoidably hampered by the inaccessability of much crucial SLUTILE and thenrelical material. Symptomatic of this is Babro's vague recollection of Troesky's Betrayed "Socialism Be traved STEELEI unfortunately altered in the English version in a piece of editorial over-enthusiasm, The teriptation in attribute сусту disagreements Onc of the SCIOUS Bahro indicated above that situation should, however, be resisted. There is no reason to suppose that -Bahro would become an orthodox Trotskyist even if forced to read The Revolution Betrayed half a dozen times a day The Alternative in Fastern Europe is a genuinely original and independent attempt to revise, not to ditch, Marxism from a revohitionary stand point, to equip its theoretical arsenal for the tasks facing it in a society oppressed in the name of Marxism. Pereil provide a consane TelerenCE point discussions among East Euro pean socialists for many years and should be read. studied and criticised by every Western socialist a5 REll • TOE HI problems of the transition 1o socialism of abolishing all fornts of social oppression once capitalist private has been dealt with, will soone or later also be our problems.
The belts price charged for the NIB edition is really quite small compared with the price Bahro is paying for its writing and publication.
• The Alternative in Eastern Europe, New Left Books 1978, 19.50. SHETICT Minnerup secretary of the Rudolf Bahro Defence Committee which has recently published issue No 3 of its GDR Bulletin. Copie (sae) Iront: 24a Bellevue Road Ryde, Isle of Wight.
Sociatist Challenge J0 Muy 1979 paze T
1 HATE THE THOUGH