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The Contemporary Doctrine of the Soviet State and its Philosophical Foundations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 September 2013

Vernon V. Aspaturian
Vernon V. Aspaturian
Affiliation:
The Pennsylvania State University
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Extract

“The problem of the ‘dying away’ of the state,” observed A. Y. Vyshinsky rather sarcastically in a recent monograph, “is a purely theoretical problem.” Within the context of contemporary Soviet political theory, the accuracy of this observation is beyond question, although Vyshinsky would have been the first to admit that a “theoretical problem,” no matter how pristine, always reflects a practical quandary within the methodological precepts of Marxist-Leninist ideology. This particular theoretical problem conceals an important chapter in the profound transmutation of Marxist political theory and its philosophical substructure in the Soviet Union, for it was the failure to cope adequately with this utopian legacy which led to the abandonment of the eschatological categories of the Marxist doctrine and the erection of a totally new theoretical edifice supported by new philosophical foundations.

Contrary to widespread impression, the theoretical problem of the Soviet state was not satisfactorily resolved at the 18th Party Congress in 1939, although the view is prevalent that Stalin was able to provide an adequate rationalization for the existence of the state in Soviet society. It was on this occasion that the late Soviet leader explained that the state was a necessary institution because of “capitalist encirclement” and that it would persist in socialist and communist society until this encirclement was finally liquidated.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 48 , Issue 4 , December 1954 , pp. 1031 - 1057
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1954

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References

1 Vyshinsky, A. Y., The Teachings of Lenin and Stalin on the Proletarian Revolution and the State (London, 1948), pp. 115–16Google Scholar.

2 Stalin, J. V., Leninism: Selected Writings (New York, 1942), p. 474Google Scholar.

3 See Stalin, , Political Report to the Sixteenth Congress (London, 1930), pp. 171–72Google Scholar; Leninism: Selected Writings, pp. 77–133 (for Stalin's attacks on Bukharin's views on the withering away of the state), and pp. 267, 340–41, 395 (for the various reservations introduced into the withering away theory between the years 1930 and 1939).

4 Engels, Friedrich, The Origin of the Family, State and Private Property (New York, 1942), p. 155Google Scholar.

5 Lenin, V. I., Selected Works, 12 vols. (New York, various dates), Vol. 7, p. 8Google Scholar.

6 Stalin, , Leninism: Selected Writings, p. 395Google Scholar.

7 Ibid., p. 470.

8 Ibid., pp. 473–74.

9 It will be recalled that Soviet society was not purged of class distinctions, but of class antagonisms. Two classes, peasants and workers, and one “stratum,” the intelligentsia, are officially recognized. See Stalin, , Leninism: Selected Writings, pp. 382–84Google Scholar.

10 Ibid., pp. 468–74. See Kelsen, Hans, The Political Theory of Bolshevism (Berkeley, 1949)Google Scholar, and Hoover, Calvin B., “The Soviet State Fails to Wither”, Foreign Affairs, Vol. 31, pp. 114–27 (Oct., 1952)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, for extended discussions of Stalin's pronouncements on the theory of the state before the 18th Party Congress.

11 Engels, , The Anti-Duehring (New York, 1939), pp. 309–10Google Scholar. Bukharin writes that “some bourgeois scholars inferred that Engels meant that determinism would lose its validity in communist society,” but he maintains that “this view is based on a crude distortion of Marxism,” Historical Materialism (New York, 1925), p. 42Google Scholar.

12 Marx, Karl, “Theses on Feuerbach”, Selected Works, 2 vols. (New York, n.d.), Vol. 1, p. 473Google Scholar. This work also contains selections from the writings of Engels.

13 Kelsen, , The Political Theory of Bolshevism, p. 19Google Scholar (cited in note 10).

14 See Engels', letter to Bloch, J. in Selected Correspondence of Marx and Engels (New York, 1942), p. 477Google Scholar.

15 Ibid., pp. 475–76 (Engels to Bloch); pp. 483-84 (Engels to C. Schmidt); pp. 516–19 (Engels to Starkenburg).

16 Lenin, , What Is To Be Done? (New York, 1929), p. 31Google Scholar.

17 Plekhanov, George, The Role of the Individual in History (New York, 1940), p. 23Google Scholar.

18 Ibid., p. 61. See also his Materialist Conception of History, in which he draws a distinction between “economic materialists” and “dialectical materialists,” the chief distinguishing factor being the denial of the “conscious” element by the former; and his In Defense of Materialism (London, 1947)Google Scholar. Plekhanov constitutes a “voluntaristic bridge” between the later views of Engels and those of Lenin.

19 See especially pp. 31–44; 105–6; 117–19.

20 What Is To Be Done? pp. 43, 119.

21 Lenin, , Selected Works, Vol. 9, p. 54Google Scholar.

22 Stalin, of course, ascribed the “theory of socialism in one country” to Lenin, but as his opponents were to point out, Lenin's position was ambiguous on this point. Cf. Stalin's, Problems of Leninism (Moscow, 1947), pp. 156–66Google Scholar and Lenin, , Selected Works, Vol. 5, p. 141Google Scholar; Vol. 9, p. 403.

23 Stalin, and Wells, H. G., Marxism vs. Liberalism (New York, 1934), pp. 14, 20Google Scholar.

24 History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (New York, 1939)Google Scholar. Hereinafter cited as History. This particular edition notes that it was “edited by a commission of the Central Committee of the C.P.S.U. (B),” whereas since 1946, with the inclusion of the entire book in Stalin's collected works [Sochineniya], complete authorship has been ascribed to Stalin. The section on Dialectical and Historical Materialism was from the beginning attributed to Stalin personally. However, the idea of "revolution from above” does not appear in this section. Since what was at first considered to be the work of collective anonymity has been converted, mutatis mutandis, into Holy Writ, the effort must be viewed as the integrated work of a single mind and is so treated here.

25 History, p. 305.

26 History, p. 115.

27 Zhdanov, A., Essays on Literature, Philosophy and Music (New York, 1950), p. 82Google Scholar. Hereinafter cited as Essays.

28 History, p. 116.

29 History, pp. 116–17.

30 History, p. 130.

31 History, p. 117.

32 History, p. 305.

33 The impossibility of denning “revolutions from above” within Marxist categories is demonstrated by the following rationalization by Rudolph Schlesinger: “Action may be taken with the intention of changing the social framework (or, if some ‘gradual’ change in the existing framework has taken place, to adapt the institutional framework to the changed needs). Such action is usually described as a ‘revolution’ only if it originates from groups other than the ruling one, so that its success results in a change not only of institutions, but also of that ruling group. Marxism argues that ruling groups are characterized by their very place in economic structure and therefore are unlikely to initiate changes in the structure from which they profit. However, we must allow ample space for possibilities of ‘revolution from above’ where such procedure provides the only chance for the ruling group to survive as such.” (My italics.) Marx, His Times and Ours (New York, 1950), p. 6Google Scholar. Schlesinger's conception of ‘revolution’ becomes a tool for preserving the political status quo, rather than overturning it. This line of argument compels him to accept any reform taken by the existing political system to preserve itself, such as the “reforms from the top” carried out by the Tsars, and the overthrow of the Japanese Shogunate, to be “revolutions from above.” While this conception may have validity, it is a non-Marxist one, and certainly is not the type of “revolution from above” defined by Soviet theorists, who maintain that revolutions of this nature can materialize only in a society divested of all class antagonisms. Furthermore, it should be noted that the Stalinist conception of “revolution from above” is not a mere amplification of the theories of “permanent” and “uninterrupted” revolution advanced by Trotsky and Lenin. Both revolutions visualized the state as an instrument of class rule and as a weapon in the hands of the masses against the exploiters. For Lenin, revolution was a sort of continuum, whereby “bourgeois democratic” and “national-colonial” revolutions could be converted into proletarian upheavals, if the revolutionary momentum were maintained. Trotsky's theory of “permanent” revolution pertains to the use of the proletarian state to support revolutions in other countries. In both cases, the revolutions referred to are proletarian in nature and do not constitute a point of departure from which to rationalize fundamental socioeconomic changes wrought by a state which does not represent class interests. The theories of Lenin and Trotsky are not incompatible with the view that it is the function of the new proletarian state to continue the economic revolution by eliminating the old classes and laying the foundations for a socialist society, but by doing this, the state prepares the conditions for its automatic abolition, whereas for Stalin, once socialism is achieved the state enters into a higher phase of development.

34 Stalin, , “Concerning Marxism in Linguistics”, Pravda, June 20, 1950Google Scholar. For an English translation, see the booklet of the same title published in London by Soviet News in 1950. All citations will refer to the booklet, although the translations in this article may deviate in some particulars, since the rendering in the booklet appears to the author to be awkward and irregular in some instances.

35 See infra, pp. 1047–51.

36 Kedrov, B., “On Forms of Leaps in the Development of Nature and Society”, Bolshevik (No. 15), pp. 8–20 (Aug., 1951)Google Scholar.

37 Engels' view is stated with unambiguous clarity in The Anti-Duehring (pp. 309–10): “The conditions of existence forming man's environment, which up to now have dominated man, at this point [i.e., after the state withers away] pass under the dominion and control of man, who now for the first time becomes the real conscious master of Nature, because and in so far as his own social activity, which has hitherto confronted him as external, dominating laws of Nature, will then be applied by man with complete understanding and hence will be dominated by man …. The objective, external forces which have hitherto dominated history, will then pass under the control of men themselves. It is only from this point that men, with full consciousness, will fashion their own history; it is only from this point that men will have, predominantly and in constantly increasing measure, the effects willed by men. It is humanity's leap from the realm of necessity into the realm of freedom.”

38 Zhdanov, , Essays, p. 71Google Scholar.

39 Ibid.

40 See Marx, , Poverty of Philosophy (New York, n.d.), p. 93Google Scholar and Selected Works, Vol. 1, pp. 421–22Google Scholar.

41 Zhdanov, , Essays, pp. 71–72Google Scholar. All Soviet writers now stress the dichotomy between “antagonistic” contradictions and “non-antagonistic.” It is claimed that under Socialism contradictions are of the latter variety because the state is able to foresee developing contradictions and intervene so as to mitigate them and bring them into harmonious synthesis. “The Marxist dialectic recognizes two fundamental types of contradictions: antagonistic and non-antagonistic contradictions. Antagonistic contradictions are by their nature insoluble within the framework of the existing old quality; they can be solved only by the annihilation (overthrow, destruction) of the old, which is the foundation of one of the elements of the contradiction. Here the annihilation of the old begins with an explosion. Consequently, the explosion is the peculiar and typical form of the solution of antagonistic contradictions …. Non-antagonistic contradictions are of a fundamentally different character; they are perfectly soluble within the framework of the existing quality, and the solution can take place in a planned and organized manner by the gradual replacing of elements of the old quality with elements of the new …. In such cases there is no necessity whatsoever for an explosion.” Kedrov, op. cit., pp. 8–20. “Contradictions of capitalism are contradictions leading to its doom, are catastrophic contradictions …. All contradictions … in Soviet society are contradictions of growth, of progress.” Yudin, P. F., The Prime Source of the Development of Soviet Society (Moscow, 1949), pp. 30–33Google Scholar; see also pp. 34–41.

42 Published in Moscow, 1948. The more significant and relevant of the contributions are the following: F. V. Konstantinov, The Role of Socialist Consciousness in the Development of Soviet Society; P. F. Yudin, The Prime Source of the Development of Soviet Society; M. B. Mitin, Soviet Democracy and Bourgeois Democracy; M. D. Kammari, Socialism and the Individual; Ts. Stepanyan, On the Conditions and the Ways of the Transition from Socialism to Communism. Some of these works are available in English translation as pamphlets. Wherever possible, citations will be made to the translations.

43 Konstantinov, , The Role of Socialist Consciousness in the Development of Soviet Society (Moscow, 1949), pp. 7–9Google Scholar.

44 Ibid., pp. 27–28.

45 “In order fundamentally to change the old views, ethics, habits and customs … it was necessary to change the material conditions of life of the masses … to remold them on the basis of socialism, because the material conditions of life mold social consciousness. And in order fundamentally to change the material conditions of life on a socialist basis it was necessary that the masses should display … a high level of socialist consciousness. It looked as though an insoluble contradiction, a vicious circle had arisen. Various philistines and Utopians did actually think that it was an insoluble contradiction …. Historically, the contradiction … was solved in the course of the socialist revolution.” Ibid., pp. 48–49. This is hardly an explanation, much less a solution, but merely an assertion.

46 Ibid., p. 67.

47 Ibid., p. 35. The Communist party is described as “being the most advanced and most politically conscious section of the Soviet people.” Ibid., p. 95. See also M. B. Mitin, op. cit., pp. 43, 45–56; M. D. Kammari, op. cit., p. 44. According to Yudin: “The Soviet state is the principal instrument through which the Communist Party … directs society's entire development …. The planned guidance of the country's entire economic development by the Soviet State is an historical necessity …. This is a fully objective law of the development of Soviet society.” The Prime Source, pp. 20–22.

48 See Vyshinsky, A. Y., The Law of the Soviet State (New York, 1948), p. 169Google Scholar, where he expostulates: “In conditions of capitalism the so-called ‘general will,’ which Rousseau advanced as the basic motive power of the democratic state, remains and cannot but remain—a fiction.” On the other hand, “The victory of socialism … signalizes … the will of the entire Soviet people. Speaking of will in the social or political sense, we have in view neither the mechanical ‘sum total of wills’ of separate persons, nor the mythical ‘national will.’ … Following the Marx-Lenin doctrine, we have in mind the will of social classes …. In the Soviet Socialist state the single will of the people is the single will of all the peoples of the U.S.S.R. … Soviet authority in the U.S.S.R. … expresses and realizes the will of the entire multinational single people.” Ibid., pp. 171–72.

49 Somerville, John, Soviet Philosophy (New York, 1947), p. 79Google Scholar.

50 Bukharin was the ideological leader of an important group of Soviet intellectuals and jurists, who in the years immediately preceding the 16th Party Congress (1930) were preparing for the imminent “withering away” of the state. It was Bukharin's contention that in order to guarantee the state's oblivion, the working class should cultivate an attitude of hostility against all states, in principle, including the Soviet, because of the “wholesale exaltation of the bourgeois state by the Social Democrats” had insinuated itself into the psychology of the proletariat. It was apparently Bukharin's fear that exaltation of even the Soviet state might be enough to perpetuate it. Cf. Stalin, , Leninism: Selected Writings, pp. 115–22Google Scholar.

51 Vyshinsky, , The Teachings of Lenin and Stalin (cited in note 1), p. 115Google Scholar.

52 “Bourgeois Morality and Communist Morality”, Uchitelskaya Gazeta (No. 43), p. 4 (Sept. 14, 1946)Google Scholar, See also “The Role of Soviet Law in the Education of Communist Consciousness”, Bolshevik (No. 4), 1947, p. 4Google Scholar.

53 Stalin, , Marxism and Linguistics, p. 5Google Scholar. “Language … was created not by any one class, but by the whole of society, by all the classes of society, by the efforts of hundreds of generations. I t was created for the satisfaction of the needs not of one class, but of the whole of society, of all classes of society.” Ibid.

54 Ibid., p. 3.

55 Ibid.

56 Ibid.

57 “Concerning Base and Superstructure”, an unsigned commentary in Pravda, Oct. 5, 1950Google Scholar.

58 Ibid.

59 Engels, , Anti-Duehring, p. 306Google Scholar.

60 Marxism and Linguistics, p. 4.

61 Kedrov, , “On Leaps” (cited in note 36), pp. 8–20Google Scholar.

62 Ibid.

63 Stepanyan, Ts., “On the Organization of the Soviet State in Economic Organization and in Cultural Education”, Izvestiya, Aug. 3, 1950Google Scholar. Cf. Glezerman, G., “Base and Superstructure”, Bolshevik (No. 18), Sept., 1950Google Scholar. An English translation can be found in Communist Review (theoretical journal of the British Communist party), Jan., 1951.

64 Stepanyan, op. cit.; cf. also Stepanyan, , “From Socialism to Communism”, Komsomolskaya Pravda, Oct. 16, 1952Google Scholar and Glezerman, G., “The Socialist State—Mighty Instrumentality for Building Communism”, Izvestiya, Oct. 12, 1952Google Scholar.

65 Stalin, Economic Problems of Socialism in the U.S.S.R. Citations are from the translation published in the New York Times, Oct. 4, 1952.

66 Ibid.

67 Ibid.

68 Yudin, P. F., “J. V. Stalin's Work ‘The Economic Problems of Socialism in the U.S.S.R.’”, Kommunist (No. 3), 1953, pp. 44–45Google Scholar.

69 Sobolev, A., “Completely Overcome Subjectiviatic Errors in Economics”, Pravda, Jan. 12, 1953Google Scholar. It was Voznesensky's thesis that Soviet war economy “was marked by the operation of specific economic laws” and that “the theory of the war economy of socialism has been created by the work of our leader, the great Stalin.” Soviet Economy during the Second World War (New York, 1949), p. 13Google Scholar. Cf. his “voluntarist” views, pp. 118–24.

70 Engels, , The Anti-Duehring, pp. 306–7Google Scholar.

71 Lenin, , Selected Works, Vol. 7, p. 9Google Scholar.

72 Stalin, , Marxism and Linguistics, pp. 36–37Google Scholar.

73 The complete text of Malenkov's address to the 19th Party Congress is reprinted in Ebon, Martin, Malenkov, Stalin's Successor (New York, 1953)Google Scholar. The quotation cited is at p. 229. Cf. Vyshinsky, , Teachings, pp. 114–16Google Scholar.

74 Stepanyan, , “From Socialism to Communism”, Komsomolskaya Pravda, Oct. 16, 1952Google Scholar; Yudin, , The Prime Source, pp. 22–23Google Scholar.

75 Cf. Stalin, , Leninism, 2 vols. (New York, 1933), Vol. 1, p. 50Google Scholar and Mastering Bolshevism (New York, 1946), pp. 21–22Google Scholar.

76 Lenin, , Selected Works, Vol. 11, p. 199Google Scholar.

77 The terms “utopia” and “false consciousness” are here used in the special sense in which Karl Mannheim employs them. “Only those orientations transcending reality will be referred to by us as Utopian which, when they pass over into conduct, tend to shatter, either partially or wholly, the order of things prevailing at the time.” Ideology and Utopia (New York, 1949), p. 173Google Scholar. “False consciousness” or “ideological distortion” occurs when “persons try to cover up their ‘real’ relations to themselves and to the world, and falsify to themselves the elementary facts of human existence by deifying, romanticizing, or idealizing them … and thereby conjuring up false interpretations of experience …. Knowledge is distorted when it fails to take account of new realities applying to a situation, and when it attempts to conceal them by thinking of them in categories which are inappropriate.” Ibid., pp. 85–86.

78 Djilas, Milovan, New Roads to Socialism (Belgrade, 1950), p. 18Google Scholar. See also p. 11.

79 See “Pravda Articles”, (London, 1950)Google Scholar, which contains panegyrics delivered on the occasion of Stalin's 70th birthday by Malenkov, Beriya, Molotov, Voroshilov, and Mikoyan, for representative illustrations of the “cult of Stalin.” For more fundamental trends in the revision of Marxist theory on the role of the individual in history, see Kron's, I. S. praise of Kammari's, book, Marxism-Leninism on the Role of the Individual in History, in Voprosy Istorii (No. 2), Feb., 1953Google Scholar. After Stalin's death, the book was severely criticized for “un-Marxist” treatment of the individual. Kammari's views were repudiated in Konstantinov's, F. V. article, “The People—Makers of History”, in Pravda, June 28, 1953Google Scholar, with the denunciation of the “great personality” theory of history which Kammari was disseminating.

80 See “Fifty Years of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, 1903–1953”, Pravda, July 26, 1953Google Scholar; Slepov, L., “Collectivity Is the Highest Principle of Party Leadership”, Izvestiya, April 16, 1953Google Scholar; “The Collegium Principle in Soviet Executive Committee Work”, Izvestiya, June 7, 1953Google Scholar.

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