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Crisis in Socialism or Crisis of Socialism?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 June 2011

Ellen Comisso
Ellen Comisso
Affiliation:
University of California, San Diego
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Abstract

The immediate causes of the current crisis in socialism are the highly authoritarian and extremely hierarchical political and economic structures created by Leninism. Yet the collapse of state socialism also appears to be part of a more general crisis of socialism, a crisis that includes even its potentially more democratic variants. At the core of this broader crisis lies the diminishing appeal of the publicly owned enterprise, an institution that has always been central to the very definition of socialism, but whose economic advantages are called into question by the recent and rapid development of global markets in factors of production and especially in assets. Consequently, communism's demise by no means signifies a victory for either democratic socialism or even social democracy.

Type
Review Article
Information
World Politics , Volume 42 , Issue 4 , July 1990 , pp. 563 - 596
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1990

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References

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7 Certainly, the availability of Soviet support for the traditional apparat in Poland in 1981 and its unavailability in 1989 is a key factor that explains why events in East Germany, Czechoslovakia, and to some degree even Romania had such dramatically different denouements. That is, the possibility of Soviet intervention was an important element in the Polish declaration of martial law: one reason why Jaruzelski could rely on the loyalty of the Polish army was, presumably, the very real threat that the Soviets would otherwise do the job. Such a threat could not be made in Czechoslovakia in 1989, with the result that the Czechoslovak armed forces could not be counted upon by the regime; as for the DDR, the Soviet-controlled command structure of the army meant Honecker could not even issue orders to it over Soviet objections. In Romania, where Ceausescu, without a Warsaw Pact backup, did call out the army against demonstrators, the result was military desertion.

8 Compare also Jenson, Jane and Ross, George, The View from Inside (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984)Google Scholar with Hahn, Werner, Democracy in a Communist Party (New York: Columbia University Press, 1987)Google Scholar.

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11 The “dissolution” of the Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party and the formation of the Hungarian Socialist Party from its reform-wing ashes was, of course, a predictable part of the strategy aimed at positioning the party on the center-left. So, too, was the (unsuccessful) demand of radical reformists within the party to expel its more conservative elements openly, an action that would have made the new party's claim to the center more credible by, in effect, creating a party on its left.

12 It is important to note here that success in becoming a socialist party in terms of internal organization and programmatic commitments is by no means equivalent to achieving electoral victory as one. In fact, the “new” Hungarian Socialist Party is likely to be forced into opposition, following the springtime parliamentary elections, for several reasons: (1) If the reemergence of the Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party on its left in late 1989 has had the benefit of giving some credibility to the HSP's claim to be in the center, it has also meant that the latter's control of ex-HSWP organizational resources is subject to challenge at precisely the moment it needs to mobilize these resources for the election. (2) It is difficult to imagine an electorally successful socialist party anywhere without a working class constituency at its core, no matter how eclectic and moderate its program may be. Yet one of the peculiarities of the current political climate in Hungary is the illegitimacy of attempts to mobilize voters on the basis of class—particularly for a party seeking to disassociate itself in voters' minds from its communist past. (3) Finally, although the HSP is campaigning against communism as hard as every other party is, the political history of its leaders makes that claim somewhat unconvincing. Equally important, it makes the HSP uniquely unacceptable as a coalition partner to its rivals and hence unlikely to be included in a future government.

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15 The impact of government policies on private entrepreneurship is carefully outlined in Rupp, Kalman, The Red Entrepreneurs (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1983)Google Scholar.

16 See Comisso, Ellen and Marer, Paul, “The Economics and Politics of Reform in Hungary,” International Organization 40 (Spring 1986), 421–54CrossRefGoogle Scholar; also Comisso, , “Introduction: State Structures, Political Processes, and Collective Choice in CMEA States,” International Organization 40 (Spring 1986), 195–238CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

17 See Janos Kis, “Társadalmi Szerzödés” [Social compact], samizdat ms., 1986.

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20 The dynamics of the political opening outside Hungary and Poland were somewhat different and, with the exception of Romania, were cases of “external push” rather than of “domestic pull.” That is, in East Germany, Czechoslovakia, and Bulgaria, the economic situation was not nearly so serious as in heavily indebted Hungary and Poland; economic reform was on the agenda only to the degree the Soviet Union had been able to put it there. Nor was the top leadership of the communist parties in those states seriously divided about the undesirability of liberalization. Consequently, if a split in the elite was to come, it had to be engineered from outside, and it was here that Mikhail Gorbachev and the CPSU provided the spark—whether by supporting (and possibly even encouraging and eliciting) the Hungarian decision to allow East Germans to cross the border into Austria, by (one must assume) denying hardliners in the DDR access to the kind of force a “Chinese solution” might have required, or by reprimanding the Czech party for its intransigence to the point where its leaders permitted the student demonstration that started the opposition ball rolling and, once it was in motion, by publishing Soviet apologies for the 1968 invasion. The result was indeed internal party strife, but it was less within the top leadership than between it and lower-level elites based in local party organizations. Thus, while there is clearly no denying the importance of broad social forces in sweeping away the ancien regime, one must also acknowledge the role that forces within the communist parties themselves played in eliciting and channeling those pressures. Bulgaria was perhaps the extreme case: there, the Communist Party literally abandoned its leading role before the opposition requested it to do so. Even in Hungary, it can be argued that the militant reformist wing of the HSWP—with the implicit support of Moscow—did more to destroy the party than did all the opposition groups together.

21 It may, however, be correct to say that once a ruling Leninist party abandons its leading role, a centrally planned economy cannot be maintained. Such a proposition need not assume—as does Brzezinski—that authoritarianism is limited to Leninist forms, nor that economic alternatives are limited to central planning and free enterprise.

22 Nuti, “Pcrestroika: The Economics of Transition between Central Planning and Market Socialism,” paper presented at the 7th Panel meeting of Economic Policy, London, April 21–22, 1988, p. 28.

23 Analogously, plans to sell state assets to private investors are much less pronounced in Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Bulgaria, and even Romania—states where debt levels remain manageable (for how long, of course, is an open question).

24 See Szelenyi (fn. 14).

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28 See Oskar Lange, “The Economist's Case for Socialism” and “Marxian Economics and Modern Economic Theory,” in Howe (fn. 27), 699–736; Brus (fn. 5); Horvat, Branko, The Political Economy of Socialism (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1982)Google Scholar.

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32 See, for example, Milenkovitch, Deborah, Plan and Market in Yugoslav Economic Thought (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1971)Google Scholar; Comisso, Ellen, Workers' Control Under Plan and Market (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979)Google Scholar; Burkett, John, The Effects of Economic Reform in Yugoslavia (Berkeley, CA: Institute of International Studies, 1983)Google Scholar; Estrin, Saul, Self-management: Economic Theory and Yugoslav Practice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983)Google Scholar.

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34 See Bajt, Alexander, “Efikasnost samoupravnog privredjivanja” [Efficiency in a self-managed economy], Privredna kretanja Jugoslavije, no. 147 (1977), 29–49Google Scholar.

35 Alexander Bajt, personal communication to the author. See also Lydall, p. 112.

36 This thesis is elaborated at length in Comisso, Ellen, “Market Failures and Market Socialism: Economic Problems of the Transition,” Eastern European Politics and Societies 2 (Fall 1988), 433–65CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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38 Estrin (fn. 32), 91.

39 See Comisso (fn. 36), 445.

40 See, for example, Yair Aharoni's discussion, in Vernon, p. 131, of investment dilemmas in British nationalized firms. The problem is also examined in Vernon, Raymond and Aharoni, Yair, eds., State-Owned Enterprises in Western Economies (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1981)Google Scholar.

41 See Tardos, Marton, “The Conditions of Developing a Regulated Market,” Acta Oeconomica 36, no. 1–2 (1986), 67–89Google Scholar.

42 Readers should bear in mind, of course, that the political constraint of maintaining a socialist economy, under which most of these schemes were originally floated, no longer exists in most cases. Nevertheless, the discussion retains its theoretical interest and relevance to the debate on the viability of market socialism outlined above.

43 See Marton Tardos, “Property Rights in Hungary,” paper presented to the conference on “Plan and/or Market,” Institut fur die Wissenschaften vom Menschen, Vienna, December 15–18, 1988 (mimeo).

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45 A New York Times report discussing the effects of global linkages between national stock exchanges reveals that “since 1980, foreign trading in United States securities has increased by 19 percent annually. … American purchases of foreign equities have increased by about 30 percent annually. …” Nevertheless, international trade in equity shares still remains a relatively small proportion of total equity exchanges. See “The Realities of ‘Friday the 13th’,” New York Times, October 22, 1989.

46 Wlodzimierz Brus, “Evolution of the Communist Economic System: Scope and Limits,” in Stark and Nee (fn. 14), 276.

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