FAREWELL TO MARXISM? - 3

FAREWELL TO MARXISM? - 3

Internal history andexternal history are mutually

constitutive -the collapse of the one leads

to the collapse of the other. While analytical

Marxism insulates itself from historical challenges,

post-Marxism abandons Marxism's distinctive

theoretical autonomy. The result is the

same in both cases -a limited capacity to first

recognize and then digest anomalies. Neither have

had much to say about the most profound challenge

to Marxism, namely the collapse of state

socialism. The momentous events of 1989 and

1990 call for a new branch of Marxism that UDholds

the mutual interdependence of historical

challenge and theoretical growth, one that reflects

back on earlier branches as well as on the

Marxist core.

We could do worse than return to those "dissident"

traditions within Marxism that have focused

on the unstable and dynamic aspects of the

Soviet Union. Trotsky and his followers, for example,

regarded the Soviet Union as a transitional

form between capitalism and socialism and

therefore inherently unstable. Concluding his

analysis of the degeneration of Soviet society

Trotsky wrote: "The fall of the present bureaucratic

dictatorship, if it were not replaced by a

new socialist power, would thus mean a return to

capitalist relations with a catastrophic decline of

industry and culture" (Trotsky 1193611972, p.

251).

Others have insisted on the sui generis character

of the Soviet Union and tried to work out its

dynamics. Komad and Szelenyi (1979) theorized

state socialism as a society based on the central

appropriation and redistribution of surplus. The

dominant class of "teleological redistributors"

legitimated their appropriation in the name of a

collective interest. The definition of such a collective

interest is an inherently intellectual activity

and, therefore, they argued that intellectuals

were on the road to class power.

Anticipating the contemporary crisis of what

he calls "actually existing in socialism," the dissident

Marxist Rudolf Bahro showed how central

ownership of the means of production fettered the

forces of production and at the same time generated

"surplus consciousness" with revolutionary

potential(P2and P3). Technological advance calls

for higher levels of education among all classes,

which in turn creates its own opposition.

The longer the present state of affairs continues,

the more the apparatus brings the thinking elements

of society to despair, the more consistently it

obstructs them from understanding for themselves

the possible changes, then the more do all the

energies focus simply on destroying this apparatus,

and the greater accordingly must be the initial chaos

of conceptions, the greater the danger of mere

disorganization (1978,p. 308).