Taking Care of the People
RUSSIA has evolved into a competitive society. No one will contest this fact, but its immense implications for the future of Communism are easily forgotten in the current preoccupation with the palace revolutions, real or imagined, which have engaged the attention of the journalists.
Even the most ardent Communist will not deny that there are now substantial and increasing differences in personal rewards under the Soviet economy. The whole life of the totalitarian or popular democracies is now dominated by the image of the Stakhanovite who outstrips all others in his exertions, and inevitably reaps the highest prizes. Now nothing could be more opposed than this to the original ideal of Communism, the vision that inspired the eighteenth-century pioneers like Babeuf. To them the principle of absolute equality extended not only to advantages 'and enjoyments, but also to burdens and contributions to the common pool. All competition stood condemned. They taught that a person who is able to do the work of several should be considered a 'social pest' and annihilated as a public danger. They held a belief prevalent among the rationalist thinkers of the eighteenth century, who were the parents of the modern progressive move- ment, that there were no great inequalities between men, and that such appaient inequalities as there were were generally due to defects in education and environment which it was the business of the state to remedy.
Marx belongs to this tradition: seeing the inevitability of economic inequalities in the immediate future, he justified them merely as necessary steps towards the attainment of a final goal of universal equality in the stateless paradise which was to be the consummation of history. This, then—the claim that the inequalities which now dominate the life of the Soviet Union are provisional, that they will eventually wither away—is the first line of defence against the charge that Russia has parted company with Communist orth.odoxy.
The answer is, of course, simple and familiar: in this, as in other things, n'y a. que lc provisoire qui dure.' Nothing is calculated to have a more lasting influence on the structure and spirit of a society—in brief to shape, what Montesquieu called the esprit des lois of a civilisation—than the values incul- cated by education, example and legislation in the infancy of that civilisation, particularly where these values accord so well with the natural penchants, whereas the values of the remote future are so much at variance with them. -If this is so, the achievement of the Soviet Union (and it is no small one) can now be reduced to that of having accomplished an in- dustrial revolution in an unbsually short period of time. Beside this, the achievement of having placed all the means of pro- duction and distribution under the control of the state pales into insignificance, for, if this control is merely used to create a new and harsher system of economic inequalities, and if it is maintained at the cost of destroying liberty and installing totalitarianism, on what ground, except that of superior economic efficiency, can it justify itself'? almost entirely to talk about 'transitional inequalities.' Their line of argument is that there is nothing bad in Socialist com- petition so long as it does not lead to the crystallisation of classes, a development which they claim to be impossible in Soviet conditions. There is, they say, in Russia, perfect equality of opportunity, and everything depends on individual merit since there is no inheritance of private property.
This argument requires much more scrutiny than it generally receives in the West; in the first place, it is necessary to dis- tinguish between a class and a caste. The essence of a caste system is that it is rigid; people cannot move into and drop out of a caste. The essence of a class system is that it is flexible; a class is open to receive newcomers and ready to discard existing members, its continuity being preserved by a small, hard core of hereditary succession. Communists assert that. because they have abolished inherited property. no such hereditary core can come into being. Is this claim valid?
The amount of inherited property permitted under Soviet law, particularly of property in moveables, is competently held to be continually increasing; but even if it were negligible, I do not believe that the Soviet claim to be in process of creating a classless society based entirely on merit could be upheld by the evidence. Far more important than the legal provision for the inheritance of property is the increasing emphasis in Soviet law and custom on the importance of the family. The children of the privileged in the Soviet Union are bound to get an easier start than others; in the nature of the case, they will be bred on a special tradition and style of life, which they will pass. on to their own children.
Contemporary Communist apologetic is thoroughly con- scious of this dilemma, and it has devised a method of solving it in theory. It is to postulate the permanent existence of a Communist Party which will always embody the principle of social justice and will be the vanguard which guides the activities of society, apportioning praise and blame, reward and punishment. The assumption is that this party will suc- ceed in governing while maintaining its own integrity. Stand- ing in a society ruled by envy and avarice, gluttony and fear, it will itself remain immune from those laws of economic and social activity which, according to Marx, ruled the conduct of every other class. to combat Communism should concentrate on the one central point of orthodoxy which remains, the belief in the special mission of the Communist Party, the claim that this van- guard, unlike all others before it, will priwe incorruptible. To this claim, the best answer is that given by Richard Cobden in 1859: 'If the people are not fit to take care of themselves, who are to be trusted to take care of them? That is the question ,which I have asked myself in many countries. I have asked it of myself where they are governed as they are-in Russia, in Austria, France; 1 have asked myself the question : where will you find a resting place, how will you ever establish a system by which the people can be governed unless you come to this, that they must be left to govern themselves?'
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