But on Other Terms…

Mr. Deutscher’s article provides so welcome a relief from the tedious speculations, prophecies, and ritualistic expressions of horror which nowadays pass for analysis of Russian society in the pages of American publications, that one is tempted to relax into unqualified assent. Here at least is an effort to deal with Russian affairs in terms of social and economic trends rather than personality traits and devilish essences.

Yet, despite the brilliance and persuasiveness of his thesis, I am not convinced by much of it.

Mr. Deutscher is misled in part by a traditional method of analysis by which all of us who have been raised in a Marxist tradition have at times been affected, but which needs serious reconsideration if we are to understand Russian society—in fact all contemporary societies. There is no point here in going into a discussion of What Marx Really Meant, but it seems to me that throughout the greatest part of its history the Marxist movement has had a tendency to assume that an increase in productivity and economic production would of necessity lead to an increase of the social and cultural level, of class awareness and consciousness among the masses of the population. True, the more refined Marxist theorists were wont to remark that Marx had made a difference between “Klasse fuer sich” and “Klasse an sich,” i.e., that he had stressed that classes would become history-making entities not automatically but only if and when they had become conscious of themselves. Yet in the practical day to day thinking of Marxist parties it generally was assumed that given a higher development of productive forces there would also follow a higher development of proletarian class consciousness.

This belief could clearly be vindicated by pointing to the realities of 19th Century Europe. Who could deny that the English worker at the end of the century was a very different man from the English worker at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution? Wasn’t it indeed apparent that the development of social awareness, of cultural and political consciousness, in short, of cultivation which had taken place in Europe during the 19th Century was indeed rendered possible only on the basis of a rise in the development of the productive capacities of European industrialism? Marxists criticized capitalism for hampering the development of productive forces, yet they never dreamed of denying that it was this development which had been the necessary, though perhaps not sufficient, cause of the rise of the modern Labor Movement.

In essence, it would seem to me, Mr. Deutscher still follows this mode of analysis. He assumes that “the higher level of industrial and general civilization favors a gradual democratization of Soviet political life”— though he admits that temporary relapses into Stalinism are possible. Now, I submit that clinging to the 19th Century Marxist a...