Britannica Book of the Year 1989 [antikvár]

From Marx to Madison: Socialism's Cultural Contradictions BY JAMES O'TOOLE Marx-Lenin: Groucho Marx and John Lennon -Graffito on a wall in Prague Arevolution is taking place here. Not everyone realizes it, but that's what it is-a revolution!" Those words were proclaimed in Moscow (significantly, at an American-style press conference) by Mikhail P. Vyshinsky, deputy justice minister of the U.S.S.R., on the eve of the June 1988 extraordinary meeting of the Soviet Communist Party. Over the next four momentous days-days that may not have "shaken the world" but certainly did send tremors throughout Soviet society-party General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev engineered sweeping reforms of his country's economic and political institutions which, he claimed, constituted "a revolution without bullets." In 1985 Gorbachev's Chinese counterpart in all but title, Deng Xiaoping (Teng Hsiao-p'ing), had dubbed similar changes being wrought in his own Communist country "China's second revolution." Today, the drift of events in the Soviet Union and China so threatens orthodox Marxists in both countries that they are sounding alarums about the danger of "creeping capitalism." Meanwhile, in the West, conservatives have come to power during the last decade in such welfare states as Britain, West Germany, The Netherlands, Canada, and Finland. Indeed, throughout the Western world, longterm voting trends have been running against the left. For example, the French Communist Party, which once commanded 28% of the vote, now considers itself fortunate to garner a tenth of the ballots east. In recent European elections the totál vote for the left (including Socialists, Communists, and Greens but excluding the centrist Social Democratic parties of Britain and Portugál) has exceeded 50% only in Spain, Greece, and Sweden. More significant, perhaps, has been the unprecedented right turn by the socialist parties of Francé, Spain, and Italy. Once Marxist in orientation, their policies now sound much like those of the U.S. Democratic Party. As we shall see, the key to understanding the different dilemmas of both Communism and democratic socialism is found in the recent ascendancy of political pluralism, the advantages of which were first noted by James Madison 200 years ago. The failures of democratic socialism in Europe, coupled with the retreat from Marxist orthodoxy in China and the U.S.S.R., have led many observers to conclude that James O'Toole is university associates' chair in the Graduate School of Business, University of Southern California. socialism in all its forms is in a state of terminál decline. Indeed, the editors of Fortune magaziné already have announced the "Death of Socialism." In this view, socialism is a bumt-out case, ready for Trotsky's "ash heap of history." After a century and a half in which socialism has been the world's preeminent intellectual idea, what, in Lenin's name, is happening? New Look in the East. Current happenings in the world's two dominant Marxist countries look very much like the stuff of revolutions-perhaps even democratic, capitalist revolutions complete with "bourgeois" American pizzás for sale in Moscow's Red Square, "spiritually polluting" rock concerts disturbing the serenity of Beijing's (Peking's) Forbidden City, "parasitical" entrepreneurs launching "new ventures" right across the Eurasian landmass, and signs of "subversive" political pluralism aborning from Leningrád to Shanghai. It would be revolutionary, indeed, if the two largest centrally planned economies were to give way to the dictates of free markét supply and demand, and even more revolutionary if the polities of these two singleparty nations were to become rooted in laws debated and enacted by democratically elected officials, implemented by government agencies free of Communist Party "guidance," and upheld by independent judiciaries willing-finally- to enforce the freedoms of press, assembly, religion, and unión organization long "guaranteed" by Marxist regimes. There are hints of such in Gorbachev's vaunted glasnost (openness) and perestroika (restructuring). Nonetheless, most Western observers remain skeptical, if not cynical, and are prudently adopting a wait-and-see attitűdé. But even if the current reforms ultimately fali short by Western standards, recent events in the U.S.S.R. and China constitute the most significant alterations of Communist ideology and practice since that fateful October in 1917 when V. I. Lenin's Bolsheviks seized power in the world's first Communist revolution. In these two nations, where the practice of Communism has come to be equated with ruthless totalitarianism, the current repudiation of Stalinism, the tentative dismantling of doctrinaire Leninism, and the questioning of Marxist fundamentalism is the cover story not only of the year but of the era. One can now buy designer jeans with a Visa card in China (in the U.S.S.R., Mrs. Gorbachev uses American Express), and such pragmatic changes are news if for no other reason than that they may herald the formation of a truly global economy. But, more important, the changes alsó might presage an end to the cold war (could it be mere chance that the Moscow reforms have coincided S