Authoritarian Collectivism and 'Real Socialism': Twentieth Century Trajectory, Twenty-First Century Issues by Jose Mauricio Domingues

Author:Jose Mauricio Domingues [Domingues, Jose Mauricio]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Political Science, General, History & Theory
ISBN: 9781839980770
Google: JHxKzgEACAAJ
Publisher: Anthem Press
Published: 2022-01-04T06:31:25+00:00

Chapter 7

DEVELOPMENTAL TRENDS

Social systems like those of authoritarian collectivism, which constitute a multifaceted civilization and enjoy long-term existence, all have a genesis, exist for a good while – in this case decades – and eventually disappear. Marx ([1867] 1962; [1894] 1964) pointed to capitalism’s historical developmental trends – its ‘laws of movement’ – and the mechanisms that presided over them: original accumulation, evolution towards the concentration and centralization of capital and simplification of the class structure as well as, eventually, he believed, the expropriation of the expropriators with the proletarian socialist revolution. Other trends were related to the falling rate of profit and capitalism’s stagnation – or collapse (Zusammenbruch), as Engels and some others read it. The political dimension of modernity – together with capitalism a central component of modern civilization – can be framed according to the same sort of developmental process and mechanisms, implying the strengthening of the state and the political autonomization of individuals (Domingues 2019a, chs 5–6). Can we say the same about authoritarian collectivism? As already observed above, Marcuse (1958, 86–90, 265–67) suggested that the tension between, on the one hand, the emancipatory elements harboured in Marxism, which were present in the ritualized ‘Aesopian’ language of Soviet Marxism and furnished the ideological linchpin of oppression, and the actual repressive and unequal nature and workings of the whole system on the other, might have eventually proven fatal to it and led to socialism. This did not happen, at least certainly not to the extent necessary and eventually not in a direction which enhanced freedom while preserving socialism.

When the Soviet Union left its satellite states in Eastern Europe, which were much more unstable and were already actually starting to shed the motherland of socialism’s model, to their own devices, they quickly turned back to capitalism and traditional forms of the modern liberal state (the latter came about in Russia only very partially, though). Other countries, where the ruling nomenklatura had no intention of following in Gorbachev’s footsteps and exiting from history, some of which were already trying to adapt, decided to keep their political systems and political regimes, while at the same time embracing a sort of state capitalism (see Nolan 1995; Anderson 2010). This seemed the only way to avoid extinction.

It is true that Soviet-type societies could have kept developing, had they not faced severe competition with advanced capitalist and politically liberal countries. They could neither force Trotsky’s ‘permanent revolution’ nor keep Stalin’s ‘socialism in one country’, nor even advance with Nikita Khrushchev’s ‘peaceful coexistence’, especially because their competitors and adversaries simply did not take the offer. Mao and Zhou Enlai could afford to be smarter and reach some kind of agreement that eventually allowed, though that was not their intention, for the defeat of the Soviet Union and a return of China to capitalism under Deng Xiaoping a decade later. We thus have trouble identifying inherent tensions and trends within authoritarian collectivism beyond an accumulation of more empirical and disparate elements, even though they can

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