COMMUNISM IN PRACTICE
ALAN BULLOCK
LAST week, in an article on Communist theory, I pointed out that the most important question which the Communist thinks you can ask about any society is : What is its economic structure? Who owns the means of production? But when you come to analyse Com- munism itself in practice, the most obvious fact about it is a political fact—the exercise of political power by the Communist Party. The group of Communist-controlled States in the world today exhibit great differences in their social structure and wide variations in their economic practice. They share, however, one coinmon characteristic : in all of them, from Albania to Mongolia, the Communist Party exercises a monopoly of real power.
This choice of a political rather than an economic feature by which to characterise Communism in practice is not so surprising as it might appear at first sight. For Communist doctrine has always taught that it is only by the seizure and maintenance of a power without checks that a radical prograriune of economic and social reform can be carried out. Moreover, according to the classical- Marxist view, none of the countries in which the Communists have seized power (including the Russia of 1917) was ripe for such a development. All of them were peasant countries, in which industry was little developed and an industrial working-class represented only a small minority of the population. The Communists, far from being swept into power by a class-conscious proletarian revolution in any of these countries, in fact staged a coup d'itat in the confusion of war and collapse, and seized power for themselves. In Russia in 1917 their programme showed an opportunist disregard for Com- munist orthodoxy and was limited to three main points—Peace, Bread, and the Land for the Peasants, Lenin's brilliant improvisation to win the peasants' support. In Rumania and Bulgaria after this last war the coup d'etat was carried out with the assistance of the Red Army. What mattered was to get power ; the dialectic could be left to catch up with events.
The recent pattern in Eastern Europe has certain familiar features. First, the National or Patriotic Front, the facade of national unity to disguise the fact of rule by a small minority. Second, the plebiscite, the demonstration of the popular will, always resulting in an over- whelming vote for the new regime. Third, the nationalisation of industries and the expropriation of foreign capital. Fourth, much- publicised measures of land reform and peasant settlement. Fifth, a new democratic constitution, often with federal features and always with universal suffrage—the same ornaments with which Bismarck tricked out the constitution of the German Empire in 1871. Sixth, the display of popular justice in the People's Courts for crimes against the People's State.
It is unnecessary to prolong the list. Some of these measures certainly represent real reforms and advances, but none of them=and this is the real point—is allowed to impinge upon Communist control of the key positions of power in the State. The instrument of this control is the Party. The Party's Central Committee decides State policy, and its agents, placed in every branch of the administration, ensure that the whole apparatus of government—including national assemblies, people's committees and people's courts—acts in accordance with Party directives.
Through the Ministry of the Interior the Party controls the militia and the security police, through the Ministry of Justice the Courts. The old Army is replaced by a new People's Army (Trotsky's Red Army and Tito's Partisans are examples), the old officer-class by new men. The reliability of the Army is guaranteed by political corn-; missars. The old ruling class is pushed to the wall and liquidated, either by imprisonment or economic need. The next generation is secured by control of the schools and youth organisations. What people read and hear and think is controlled by the Ministry of Propaganda and Enlightenment, the Censorship and the Paper Control. All contacts with the outside world are closely watched. It is of particular importance to keep any elements of discontent and opposition isolated and broken up. This explains the hostility shown to all organisations which might serve as a focus for such elements, notably the Church and the old political parties. The
campaign against Mikolajczyk in Poland and the trial of the Arch- bishop of Zagreb are illustrations of this hostility. The Party tolerates no rival organisations and no rival elites, realising that discontent only becomes dangerous when it is organised and finds leaders.
All this is no More than a generalised picture of conditions in the Communist-controlled states of Eastern Europe. Chapter and verse can be found for it in a hundred different accounts from corre- spondents who have lived and travelled in the Soviet Union, Yugo- slavia and Bulgaria. But one point is often missed in these accounts. The real Communist would neither dissent from nor be shocked by the account I have given. For tactical reasons, the propaganda designed for sentimental " fellow-travellers " in the West is pitched in a different key, but the comment of the convinced Communist would be this : " Admittedly, we have to use rough methods, but we use them with a purpose. What does the suffering of a few individuals matter when it is a case of laying the foundations of a new order of Society, and of securing social justice for whole classes hitherto denied it? The present regimes in Eastern Europe, even in the Soviet Union, do not represent Communism in practice, but the temporary dictatorship which is the necessary preliminary to establishing Com- munist society. The suffering and injustice inevitable in a revolu- tionary upheaval are justified by what we are attempting to do, which is nothing less than to refashion the whole of human society and its relationships."
That is a strong argument—if you accept the Communist's two assumptions—the materialist assumption that the way to solve human problems is by solving the problems of social and economic organisation, the revolutionary assumption that you can take short cuts in human development and impose solutions by force. Here is the crux of the matter. For if you accept those assumptions, you may very well accept the Communist's claim that Communism in practice means for the moment a transitional period of dictatorship, but eventually a free, just and equal society. Suppose, however, that you ' don't accept those assumptions. Then you will take a very different view of what Communism means in practice. Roughly, it is this. The difficult business with a revolution is not to start it, but to bring it to a successful end. The Communist never feels sure enough of the success of his own revolution to relax the pressure from above and trust people to keep the pattern of behaviour he wants of their own accord. The moment the pressure from above is relaxed the old pattern of behaviour reappears. This happened in the Ukraine and in some of the Russian collective farms during the war. The only answer the Communist has is to tighten up control, as the Communists are doing in Russia today. The revolutionary emergency has to continue, because the Communist cannot bring it to a successful end. Meanwhile the taste for power grows, and the Communists are no more willing to surrender power voluntarily than any other ruling class in history. Some fresh reason is always being found (encircle- ment by the Capitalist States, if no better is to hand) to justify the strengthening of the Party's rule.
On this view, therefore, Communism means° in practice, not a temporary dictatorship by the Party as the prelude to a Golden Age, but such a dictatorship indefinitely prolonged. Instead of the aboli- tion of all classes, a new differentiation of classes begins to take place, a new hierarchy of power crystallises. Instead of the abolition of the State, the pdwer of the State is vastly increased, and checks upon its exercise are removed. Instead of self-government a rigidly centralised bureaucratic control is established. Such a dictatorship may well carry out enlightened reforms. (After all, Napoleon established the carriere ouverte aux talents and the Code.) In certain circumstances, it may well win popular support. In Russia, for instance, where the Soviet regime has raised the general standard of living and education, and is associated with a great development of national self-conscious- ness and national power, it clearly has Yvon such support.
At its best, then, Communism in practice is an enlightened despotism ; at its worst, a corrupt and oppressive gang rule. But all the time it is faced, like every form of arbitrary rule, with the problem of how to stabilise itself. How the Communist regimes in Russia and Eastern Europe will solve that problem—by compromise, by war, by collapse, or (as the Communist believes) by the establishment of a really just society—is one of the most interesting and urgent questions of the age.
Previous page
