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Inclusion and Mobilization In European Leninist Regimes

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2011

Kenneth Jowitt
Kenneth Jowitt
Affiliation:
University of California, Berkeley.
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Abstract

Political development in Leninist regimes can be understood in terms of the relationships among elite-designated tasks, corresponding political uncertainties, and regime structures. The post-Stalin period has seen a crucial change in relations between polity and society. Whereas under Stalin the relationship between political-organizational status and socio-occupational status was hierarchical and mutually exclusive, after Stalin ruling Communist parties have allowed social elites to complement socio-occupational and political-organizational roles. The major political problem in contemporary Leninist regimes arises from the potential conflict between innovative attempts in this direction and the party's continued pre-emption of any potential political arena or role not coterminous with party organization and membership.

Type
Research Article
Information
World Politics , Volume 28 , Issue 1 , October 1975 , pp. 69 - 96
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1975

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References

* I wish to thank Reinhard Bendix, Gregory Grossman, Zygmunt Bauman, Kathy Humphries, and Rebecca Matthews Jowitt for their interest and criticisms.

1 The term “Leninist regimes” will be used throughout in a generic sense. Distinctions of a developmental nature will be referred to in terms of specific syndromes of tasks, uncertainties, and structures (i.e., transformation, consolidation, and inclusion regimes). Thus, in reference to the period of Stalin's rule in the Soviet Union, the term Leninist regime does not reflect a lack of appreciation of the differences between 1935 and 1925, or between Stalin and Lenin as individual leaders. The term Leninist refers to the existence of an organization-ideology which, although changing in significant respects over time, remains identifiable as a particular type of charismatic institution.

2 There is no longer a need for the regime to depend on “heroic” local cadres to secure the political support of local social constituencies against the “class enemy”; neither is there any longer the disruption that prevented the extension of central party control.

3 Revolutionary regimes differ from reformist regimes in their attempts to attack tradition comprehensively at two levels. Reformist regimes are more likely to limit their efforts at social change to changes in elite structure. Revolutionary regimes attack traditional institutions as well as traditional elites. Collectivization in contrast to land reform is a striking instance.

4 I would like to suggest the notion of “articulate audiences” in place of both “masses” and “publics” to describe a diverse set of social groups in contemporary Leninist regimes. Unlike masses, these groups are politically knowledgeable and oriented. Consequently they are capable of offering the regime support of a more differentiated and sophisticated character. Unlike publics-i.e., citizens who voluntarily organize themselves around major political issues-these “audiences” are restricted in their political behavior to those roles and actions prescribed by the regime itself.

5 For one Leninist regime's attempts to move in this direction see Jowitt, , “Political Innovation in Romania,” Survey, Vol. 93 (Autumn 1974), 132–52Google Scholar.

6 See Tucker, Robert C., “The Deradicalization of Marxist Movements,” in The Marxian Revolutionary Idea (New York: Norton 1969), 172–215Google Scholar; and Lowenthal, Richard, “Development vs. Utopia in Communist Policy,” in Johnson, Chalmers, ed., Change in Communist Systems (Stanford: Stanford University Press 1970), 33–117Google Scholar.

7 See Huntington, Samuel P., “Social and Institutional Dynamics of One-Party Systems,” in Huntington, Samuel P., Moore, Clement H., eds., Authoritarian Politics in Modern Society (New York: Basic Books 1970), 3–48Google Scholar.

8 See Brzezinski, Zbigniew, “The Soviet Political System: Transformation or Degeneration?” in Brzezinski, , ed., Dilemmas of Change in Soviet Politics (New York: Columbia University Press 1969), 1–35Google Scholar; for a restatement of this thesis, see Gitelman, Zvi, “Beyond Leninism, Political Development in Eastern Europe,” Newsletter on Comparative Studies of Communism, v (05 1972), 18–44Google Scholar.

9 During the consolidation period, Leninist regimes typically attempt to invidiously distinguish regime supporters from nonsupporters and to socially isolate the former. In short, at the social level as well as in the relations between society and polity, insulation is the major characteristic at this stage of development. Social “elites” are forced to forsake their social-occupational identities in order to share in political status and responsibilities. Inclusion regimes are characterized by attempts to integrate social and political roles. On the “insulative” tendencies of consolidation regimes, see Bendix, Reinhard, Work and Authority in Industry (New York: John Wiley & Sons 1956), 400–434Google Scholar.

10 On this central point, see Ludz, Peter C., The Changing Party Elite in East Germany (Cambridge: MIT Press 1972), 40–42, 126, 185Google Scholar; Meyer, Alfred G., The Soviet Political System (New York: Random House 1965)Google Scholar.

11 Obshchestvennikj are party members who, while active as consultants and even as officeholders in the party organization, are not full-time party apparatus workers. I have attempted to analyze their significance in terms of national development in my paper, “State and National Development in Contemporary Eastern Europe” (un-pub.).

12 See Jowitt, , “An Organizational Approach to the Study of Political Culture in Marxist-Leninist Systems,” American Political Science Review, Vol. 68 (09 I 1974)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13 In this connection, see the points made on pp. 79–80 and 87–88.

14 On the extent of rights of dissent in the Romanian party, see Statutul Partidului Communist Roman (Bucharest 1959), 40Google Scholar.

15 See, for example, the interesting article by Baylis, Thomas, “East Germany: In [Quest of Legitimacy],” Problems of Communism, xxi (03-04 1972), 46–56Google Scholar.

16 Influence over routine issues must not be confused with influence over insignificant issues. Routine issues may well be significant; they differ from defining issues in the order of significance. The resolution of defining issues has a direct impact on the basic character of the major institutions, values, and/or behaviors that provide a social system with its distinct identity.

17 Baylis (fn. 15), and Ludz, Peter C., “Continuity and Change Since Ulbricht,” Problems of Communism, xxi (03-04 1972), 56–57Google Scholar. Ludz has provided an ex-icellent and succinct analysis of development in the D.D.R. in The German Democratic Republic from the Sixties to the Seventies (Occasional Papers in International Affairs, Center for International Affairs, Harvard University, 11 1970)Google Scholar; see also Johnson, Ross, “Poland: End of an Era,” Problems of Communism, xix (01-02 1970), 28–40Google Scholar.

18 See, for example, Donaldson, Robert H., “The 1971 Soviet Central Committee: An Assessment of the New Elite,” World Politics, xxiv (04 1972), 382–409CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

19 Halberstam, David, “The Programming of Robert McNamara,” Harper's Magazine, Vol. 242 (02 1971), 7–21Google Scholar. The term “model” should not suggest that “managerial” cadres in Leninist regimes consciously have McNamara in mind.

20 For Weber's comparison, see The Protestant Ethic (New York: Charles Scribner's: Sons 1958), 69–78Google Scholar.

21 Central Committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, , “The Action Program of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia,” in Remington, Robin Alison, ed., Winter in Prague (Cambridge: MIT Press 1969), 88–137Google Scholar.

22 For the East Germa n reform, see Baylis (fn. 15), and “Economic Reform as Ideology: East Germany's New Economic System,” Comparative Politics, III (01 1971), 211–31Google Scholar. See also the fine article by Kovrig, Bennet, “Decompression in Hungary: Phase Two,” in Toma, Peter A., ed., The Changing Face of Communism in Eastern Europe (Tucson: University of Arizona Press 1970), 196–202Google Scholar, for an analysis of the upgrading of economic-managerial personnel that attended the Hungarian reforms.

23 On recruitment patterns during the sixties, see Parkin, Frank, “Class Stratification in Socialist Societies,” British Journal of Sociology, XX (12 1969), 355–75CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

24 Unger, Aryeh L., “Politinformator or Agitator: A Decision Blocked,” Problems of Communism, XIX (09-10 1970), 31Google Scholar.

25 Ibid.

26 See Kovrig (fn. 22); also Racz, Barnabas, “Political Changes in Hungary after the Soviet Invasion of Czechoslovakia,” Slavic Review, XXIX (12 1970), 633–51CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and in particular Robinson, William F., The Pattern of Reform in Hungary (New York: Praeger 1973), 238–45 and 326–42Google Scholar.

27 See the very perceptive piece by Hough, Jerry, “The Soviet System: Petrification or Pluralism?” in Problems of Communism, XXI (03-04 1972), 25–46Google Scholar.

28 For a report of the meeting of economic managers, see Scinteia, February 18, 1972.

29 The rapid and visible rise of sociological studies in Leninist political systems is easily documented. For an interesting analysis of this rise, see Gouldner, Alvin, The Coming Crisis of Western Sociology (New York: Basic Books 1970), 447–78Google Scholar.

30 For the Romanian position, see “Statement on the Stand of the Rumanian Workers Party Concerning the Problems of the International Communist and Working Class Movement (April 1964)” in Griffith, Wm., Sino-Soviet Relations, 1964–1965 (Cambridge: MIT Press 1967), 269–97Google Scholar.

31 See Remington (fn. 21), 133–34. On Bulgaria, see Brown, J. F., Bulgaria Under Communist Rule (New York: Praeger 1970), 173–301Google Scholar; Costello, Michael, “Bulgaria,” in Bromke, Adam, Rakowska-Harmstone, Teresa, eds., The Communist States in Dis-i array 1965 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press 1972), 135–58Google Scholar; Pundeff, Marin V., “Bulgaria under Zhivkov,” in Toma (fn. 22), 89–121Google Scholar.

32 Costello (fn. 31), 155.

33 For the comparison of Calvinist and Lutheran attitudes toward man on which I this image is based, see chap. 4 of Weber (fn. 20), esp. 137–38.

34 The character and role of publics in national development is a neglected topic in I the field of comparative studies, particularly in the study of Leninist systems. The no tion of publics and public domain has been bypassed, as has the more general and related f focus of national development in the study of Leninist systems, in favor of attention I to interest groups and the possibility of multiparty democratic systems. Such attention I has in part reflected and in part contributed to the tendency to implicitly confuse national development in Leninist systems with movement toward liberal political orders.

35 For an analysis of a development of this order, see Jowitt, , Revolutionary Breakthroughs and National Development (Berkeley: University of California Press 1971). 221–24, 280–82Google Scholar.

36 Golan, Galia, “The Road to Reform,” Problems of Communism, XX (05-06 1971), 11–22Google Scholar.

37 See Constantinescu, Miron, “Valorificarea critica a mostenirii culturale,” in Lucea-farul, 05 6, 1972, and Remington (fn. 21), 131–32Google Scholar.

38 On East Germany, see Baylis (fns. 15 and 22); on Bulgaria, Costello (fn. 31).

39 As Neil Smelser has pointed out in “Mechanisms of Change and Adjustment to Change,” in Hoselitz, Bert F., Moore, Wilbert E., eds., Industrialization and Society (Paris: UNESCO, Mouton 1968), 32–57Google Scholar, the process of differentiation places a premium on effective integrative processes. Social disturbances are often the result of discontinuities between differentiation and integration. One may view the reassertion of a mobilization posture in many Leninist regimes as the party's attempt at an integrative response.

40 On this point, see the discussion in Parkin, Frank, Class Inequality and Political Order (London: MacGibbon & Kee 1971), 137–86Google Scholar; on the conflict between workers and managers in Hungary and on the increasing status of managers under the N.E.M., see Kovrig (fn. 22), and Racz (fn. 26). The place of China in all of this is complex. I would suggest that the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution was both an attack on the “new class” (i.e., against a Stalinist consolidation structure) and an attack on a Soviet-type inclusion structure with its emphasis on “political” integration with a new professional class and exclusion of the mass of the population. China offers the student of Leninist regimes conceptions and definitions of both consolidation and inclusion that differ from those of the Soviets.

41 Kovrig has characterized the contemporary social ethos in Hungary as “collective and intergenerational alienation… obsessive materialism and a partial breakdown of traditional morality…” (fn. 22), 208. He notes that young people in Hungary “are reluctant to be transformed into obedient factors of production” (p. 21). There is evidence that young people in Bulgaria, Poland (under Gomulka), Romania, Yugoslavia, and the Soviet Union are estranged in many respects from the structure and ethos of party rule.

42 This has been quite evident in Czechoslovakia in the discussions that have been going on since 1967, and in Romania since 1970. On e can also find it, not unexpectedly, in consolidation-oriented regimes such as Nort h Korea with its ideological notion of “working-classizing” society, and in Albania.

43 In this light the concern expressed by several Leninist regimes to develop studies of leadership, to create a “science of leadership” in order to analyze the dimensions of the leadership task in industrial societies can be seen as an adaptive (ho w successful is a question of a different order) response to the uncertainty over what is currently meant by the “leading role of the party.”

44 For example, see the Romanian party's statement on November 4, 1971 (Scinteia); the emphasis on ideological preparation in Hungary manifested in county-level “educational directorates” (Racz, fn. 26, p. 638); the thrust of the Chinese Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution; the emphasis in North Korea on the ideological revolution; the emphasis on consciencia in Cuba, and recent developments in Yugoslavia.

45 Gitelman (fn. 8), is a case in point.

46 Azrael, Jeremy, “Varieties of De-Stalinization,” in Johnson (fn. 6), 135–53Google Scholar.

47 Though important, the changes in these regimes, particularly the North Korean, I were quite limited. On Bulgaria, see Brown (fn. 31); on North Korea, see Chung, Joseph Sang-hoon, “North Korea's Seven Year Plan (1961–1968): Economic Performance and Reforms,” Asian Survey, XII (06 1972)Google Scholar.

48 See Unger (fn. 24).

49 Thus, at the point of their initial encounter, tradition and modernity are antithetical. They can and do form amalgams but their viability depends on one or the other establishing a de jure or de facto superordinate position. As Halpern has argued, “the two things that cannot be combined at all are the best in traditional society and the best in modern society. Indeed before anything significantly traditional can be combined with anything significantly modern, a revolution must first have torn apart the closed system of tradition so that it may not merely add or substitute the new, but become capable of assimilating it.” See Halpern, Manfred, “The Revolution of Modernization in National and International Society,” in Jackson, Robert J., Stein, Michael B., eds., Issues in Comparative Politics (New York: St. Martins Press 1971), 52Google Scholar; also Jowitt (fn. 35), Part 1, esp. n. 5, pp. 63–64.

50 See Bendix, Reinhard, Max Weber: An Intellectual Portrait (Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Books 1962), 383–416Google Scholar.

51 Here, as in many other basic respects, my conception of development in Leninist regimes differs from that proposed by Huntington who sees the current stage of development (which he terms “adaption”) as one where the conflict between specialists and political generalists is “one between complements” (fn. 7, p. 33). I see the tension between the legal-rational thrusts of inclusion and the sustained charismatic preferences of the apparatus and leadership as much more consequential.

52 See Field, Mark, “Soviet Society and Communis t Party Controls: A Case of ‘Constricted’ Development,” in Treadgold, Donald W., ed., Soviet and Chinese Communism: Similarities and Differences (Seattle: University of Washington Press 1967)Google Scholar, for an analysis that confuses liberal modernity with modernity. In spite of that, Field's analysis of regime-society relationships and developments is very acute. For a more complex appreciation of the character of Soviet development, see Nettl, J. P. and Robertson, Roland, “Industrialization, Development, or Modernization,” British Journal of Sociology, XVII (09 1966), 274–91CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

53 For an excellent and insightful analysis of the conflicting emphases in the American tradition and the character of its resolution, see Jacobson, Norman, “Political Science and Political Education,” American Political Science Review, LVII (09 1963), 561–69CrossRefGoogle Scholar; for the Mao-Liu conflict, see the revised edition of Schurmann's, FranzIdeology and Organization in Communist China (Berkeley: University of California Press 1968), 501–93Google Scholar, as well as Schwartz's, Benjamin “The Reign of Virtue: Some Broad Perspectives on Leader and Party in the Cultural Revolution,” in Lewis, John Wilson, ed., Party Leadership and Revolutionary Power in China (Cambridge, Mass.: Cambridge [England] University Press 1970), 149–70Google Scholar.