Politics in the Communist World [antikvár]

PREFACE Communism is a powerful force in today's world, and writers who in the past have predicted its imminent demise (for example Burnham, 1950; Guins, 1956) were clearly mistaken. More than a third of the world's population lives in communist systems—considerably more than the number of citizens who live under Western-style democracies—and the number is growing. Moreover, what happens in the communist world, especially in the USSR and China, sometimes has profound effects on ordinary people in the West. For example, poor relations between Moscow and Washington can lead to arms buildups in both the communist world and the West, which means that there is less to spend on health, education, housing, roads, etc. Some knowledge of contemporary communism is thus important and relevant to everyone. Yet there are very few books that treat communism on a comparative basis, and even fewer written by a single author; it was this gap in the Utera-ture that led me to write the present volume. The book is offered as an introductory text on politics—that is, power relationships and conflict—in what I have chosen to call 'the communist world'. The latter term is a contentious one; there has in recent years been a very lively debate on whether or not there is such an entity as 'the communist world' and, if there is, which countries should be included in it (see, e.g. Kautsky 1973, Waller 1979 and 1982, Harding 1981, and White 1983). I do not wish to become deeply involved in this debate at this point. However, the fact that I have referred to 'the communist world' reveals that I do believe that there is a more or less identifiable entity known as a communist system. This does not mean that I believe that communist systems are entirely different from other kinds of political, economic, and social system. I would argue that there are both similarities and differences between all kinds of polity, but that there are sufficient distinguishing features to render communist systems discrete. Nor would I be foolish enough to suggest that there is a stereotypical communist system—anyone who has visited, say, the GDR, Yugoslavia, China, and Mozambique will be very aware that there are enormous differences between one communist country and another. But I do maintain that there is a certain 'hard core' of commonalities—namely, a commitment to the building of socialism and eventually communism; an ideology called Marxism-Leninism; and a political system constructed on the principles of 'democratic centralism'—that distinguishes such countries from others which, in many ways, look similar. It might be objected that the term 'communist' is misleading, in that no country has yet claimed to have achieved communism, and in that the countries considered in this book for the most