‘New Class’? by Tom Kemp

[p022] ‘New Class’? Tom Kemp For those who have broken, or are breaking, with the view of Russian and east European society presented by its propagandists, and for other socialists as well, a book which purports, with the benefit of inside ex- perience, to tear away the veil and set up a new and more truthful picture necessarily demands full consider- ation. Djilas’s book! is the longest and most preten- tious of the analyses made in recent years, and the one which has created the most stir. This, it must be said, arose as much from the fact that it confirmed what many people wanted to hear as from the fate which its '1The New Class (Thames and Hudson, 21s.). Milovan Diilas was a member of the supreme headquarters of the National Liberation Army of Yugoslavia during the partisan war. Later he became president of the Federal National Assembly, was a Minister without portfolio and secretary of the Yugo- slav Communist Party. At the time of the break with the USSR he was one of the leading writers and theoreticians and his articles in Borba and other journals were circulated through the Yugoslav Telegraph Agency and gave him an international reputation. His theories then received official endorsement and Tito himself declared that the Soviet Union had abandoned socialism in favour of ‘State capitalism run by a bureaucratic caste’ whose imperialist policy was ‘a primary factor contributing to the present tension in the world’. From about 1954 Dijilas began to run into trouble with articles which averred that a ‘caste system’ had grown up among party functionaries and members of the govern- ment. He called for the dissolution of the League of Com- munists, arguing that the degree of socialist consciousness reached by the Yugoslav people made it unnecessary. The rapprochement between Belgrade and Moscow cooked his goose. His denunciation of Soviet intervention in Hungary in articles in the foreign Press had already led to a sentence of three years’ imprisonment and for The New Class he re- ceived a further seven years. , growth of technology and science, and in the creation, by capitalism itself, of a working class_capable_of _ organization and the recognition of its real interests. the working class in the period of its assault on capital- ism and its victory over property. Christian Utopian- ism was the hopeless expression of a class doomed to be used by others in the destruction of one system, only to fall victim to a new type of exploitation. But here is ‘the negation of the negation’. The bourgeoisie of Europe came to power on the backs of workers and peasants who were often inspired by the Christian mil- lennium. Once entrenched, the bourgeoisie turned against the people who made its victory possible. But its own interests have driven the bourgeoisie to create an industrial system with a new type of working class, the first in history to be able to achieve scientific under- Standing of its interests and aims, and, on the basis of this understanding, fo advance to socialism on the ~~ foundations Taid by its exploiters. ae een author has suffered. It is, as the dust-cover claims, ‘the documentary record of a political soul in the agonies of intellectual liberation’. But that does not automatic- ally excuse it from the normal processes of criticism, rebuttal and polemic, however unjustly the author may have been treated by his former cronies of the Tito régime. . The value of this book as a political document arises from the circumstances of its creation. It bears witness to the fissures arising within a political régime and the wounds inflicted even on those who were once its un- qualified adherents. But a political document does. not of itself constitute a contribution to political science: for that learning and hard thinking, experience, a sense of direction and a gift for systematic exposition are necessary qualifications. It is not disparagement of Djilas’s integrity to report that he falls short in these respects. When its current interest is exhausted it will undoubtedly be forgotten. In the meantime it provides a point of departure for examining some of the prob- lems and principles involved in the analysis of the States described by Djilas as ‘communist’. He is aware of the anomaly of this usage, which has no scientific value, its only justification being that they are ruled by self- styled ‘communist’ parties. Certainly Djilas does not discredit communism, but the set of procedures, ideo- logies and policies which are better described as ‘Stalinism’: a profound gulf lies between the two. The central feature of Djilas’s book is the contention that in Russia and the east European countries a new ruling class has come on the scene as the pinnacle of a new social formation, historically distinct from all others. In saying so he follows in the footsteps of numerous theorists of whom he appears to be unaware. Indeed there is little in the essential arguiment which has not already been stated many times and anyone ex- pecting that, from his personal experience, Djilas con- tributes ‘revelations’ or new material for forming a judgment will be disappointed. The argument is on theoretical lines, but the theory is a hodge-podge of half-remembered echoes from half a dozen philosophies; holy relics from his Stalin days jostle with the com- 83

[p023] LABOUR REVIEW monplaces of American college textbooks. Ideas and phrases are unwarrantedly attributed to Marx, Lenin and—inevitably—Trotsky, without a shadow of justi- fication. If his editors ever considered checking such references it is evident that they very soon discovered that it was an impossible task. It is as well to warn the unwary reader that Djilas throughout plays fast and loose with the ideas which he wishes to discredit, by associating them with the monstrosities of Stalinism (or Titoism). Already, after the break between Tito and Stalin in 1948, Djilas, as a leading theorist of the Yugoslav Com- munist Party, was given, or took on, the task of proving that the social system of the USSR was not ‘socialist’ but ‘State capitalist’. He only needed to realize the bitter truth that basically there was little to choose between the régime of Stalin and his heirs: and that of Tito, to make possible a further extension of that theory to Yugoslavia. . The basis for an understanding of the nature of the social structure in any country is its history in relation to the history of other countries. This involves detailed examination of the actual course of events, the relation of these events in the historical process and a grasp of the determining forces in history, Merely contem- plating a social structure and commenting upon it can result only in a subjective evaluation of it, with an exaggeration and distortion of some of its aspects, while others are underestimated or ignored. Even if we do not agree with the interpretation behind such a historical treatment we are placed in possession of the evidence upon which it rests: we are then free to reinterpret it, to claim that this or that part of the evidence was over-weighted or under-weighted or that the dossier is incomplete because such and such facts have not been included. Applying this principle to the study of Rus- sian and east European society means that any de- signation of its nature must rest upon a full considera- tion of its development in relation to world history. For Marxists it further involves the use of the materialist method to trace the working out of the forces of de- velopment in their interaction with the ‘superstructure’ of ideas, institutions, laws and so on. When examined from this standpoint the deficiencies of Djilas’s book are readily apparent. It is disconnected and contradictory, and often superficial. It isolates some causes as being main ones with no valid reason. It con- tains a multitude of statements which, in themselves, are probably true and sometimes are incisively made. They are not built into a solid structure of reasoning but lodged here and there in a mush of wordy and pompous confusion. The crux of the matter, however, is whether there is a new ruling class in these countries. Now for non- Marxists this is not a very crucial point since almost any social group may be loosely described as a ‘class’. In Marxist terminology, however, class has a precise significance; without the concept of class Marxist sociology would lose its compass. Important as it is, a concept can always be refined. No doubt the Marxist concept of class stands in need of refinement, and there is plenty of room for discussion among Marxists, and between them and others, about the matter. At the same time Marxists are not merely sociologists, but people seriously engaged in political action. Any sliding on the question of class, and more ‘especially on the. 84. May-June-July 1958 ruling class, will have wide ramifications for thought and action. If there is a new ruling class in the USSR etc. then there must be, as Djilas and others assert, a new social formation. If that is so then this ruling class receives a historical justification and this new type of society occupies the stage as the régime for our epoch, at least in the countries concerned so far, and perhaps as an inevitable stage after capitalism. Since the work- ing-class movement has no interest in promoting the cause of a new class of exploiters it can detach itself wholly from the USSR, which deserves no more regard than, say, the USA in the determination of policy. On the more pessimistic assumption that a new era of dom- ination by such a ruling class is likely, the very need for a working-class movement could be called into question. If, on the other hand, as seems to lie nearest to Djilas’s view, revolutions carried through in the name of the working class inevitably degenerate in this way, the best hope lies in some refurbished capitalist democracy which will save us from totalitarianism. For Djilas the new class took its origin in the profes- sional revolutionaries who led the Communist Parties before the taking of power and later hardened into a bureaucratic ruling group of exploiters. The revolution took place in backward countries which were in desper- ate need of industrialization. Disputes within the party were resolved and ‘the group that emerges victorious is the one that is the most consistent and determined supporter of industrialization along communist prin- ciples, i.e., on the basis of total party monopoly, par- ticularly of State organs in control of production’.? Historically this is a travesty, at least as far as the USSR is concerned. The earliest and most consistent advocates of industrialization were hounded from the party in the 1920s. This is presumably covered by the statement that ‘revolutionaries who accepted the ideas and slogans of the revolution literally, naively believing in their materialization, are usually liquidated’. A half- truth at most. Not only would it apply, in the USSR, to the largest proportion of the ‘professional revolution- aries’, who found themselves in prison camps or before the firing squad instead of in the ranks of ‘the new class’, thus destroying Djilas’s own explanation of its origin, but there is no description of the domestic and inter- national context in which this liquidation was carried on. Without some examination of the social forces at work the whole process becomes fortuitous, or a con- firmation of the essentially Stalinist argument that the iron fist was absolutely indispensable in the accomplish- ment of industrialization. In any case Djilas’s conclu- sion that ‘the communist revolution is the first to be carried out to the advantage of the revolutionaries’ stands condemned. Many of the leading administrators, diplomats, jurists and party officials in the Stalin era had been lukewarm in 1917, or had even fought against the Revolution (Martynov, Vyshinsky, Maisky etc.). While this disproves Djilas’s assertions about the origins of the ‘new class’ it leaves untouched his desig- nation of it as a class. For Marxists a given class occupies a specific place in relation to the means of production: but it also includes all those strata which are tied together by common material interests and ideological outlook without necessarily occupying a “The New Class, p. 28. All quotations are. from this work, unless otherwise stated.

[p024] ‘NEW CLASS’? place in production relations. The core of a class is de- termined by relationships of production: by ownership or non-ownership, dependence or independence; but around the central core are grouped others whose place is determined in relation to it, rather than in their direct relationship to the production system. Thus officials, bureaucrats, do not constitute a distinct class but serve, and are intermingled with, the ruling class as determined by the production relations. Of course there are overlappings and mergings of one class into another, but usually there will be certain dominant re- lations of production, and the classes appertaining to them, which thereby define the nature of the society in question. Thus in capitalist society it is the relation- ship between the owners of capital and those who have nothing to sell but their labour power which is the dominant one. But there will be intermediate strata-— peasant, artisans, shopkeepers, some of the profes- sionals and white-collar workers—as well as residua from preceding social forms, e.g., landed nobility. In such a society the owners of capital will be the ruling class. What Djilas is saying, then, is that the bureaucrats in the USSR have become the ruling class as a result of their common ownership and their special relations to other classes. Thus he says: ‘As defined by Roman law, property constitutes the use, enjoyment, and disposition of material goods. The communist political bureaucracy uses, enjoys, and disposes of nationalized property’. Roman law, of course, was developed essentially in connexion with the growth of private property, and its principles became in part illusory in capitalist society, where titles to things increasingly took the place of the ownership of tangible assets. The real determining force was the nature of economic relations.* However, Roman law, and all those systems of law in capitalist society developed from it, were designed to protect the property owners. In the Russian and east European States the bureaucracy, while it exists as a distinct group, does not have a juridical existence. It does obtain a dispro- portionate share of the good things of life, it does have immense privileges, it does control the reins of power, it does act as though it were a ruling class; but legally it has no existence. Djilas, of course, knows this but he tries to get round it.> Thus he says that ‘the so-called socialist ownership is a disguise for the real ownership by the political bureaucracy’.® But is it real ownership, even on his own definition? He has already said: ‘The ownership privileges of the new class are the privileges of administration’ .7 That is to say, as he later explains in more detail, the monopoly of political power. Here is a ruling class which dare not give legal sanction to its 3p. 44. 4There are some illuminating passages in part i of The German Ideology by Marx and Engels, where some of their basic thinking on class is to be found. 5Though he admits that ‘The discrepancy between legal and actual conditions continually results in obscure and abnormal social and economic relationships’ (p. 65). 6p. 47. Tp. 46 (Emphasis in the original). Elsewhere he says: ‘Owner- ship is nothing other than the right of profit and control. If one defines class benefits by this right, the communist States have seen, in the final analysis, the origin of a new form of ownership or of a new ruling and exploiting class’ (p. 35). supposed monopoly of ownership. How then can Djilas say: “To divest communists [he means the bureaucracy —TI.K.] of their ownership rights would be to abolish them as a class’? For legally speaking they have no rights of which they can be divested. All that can be taken from them is their ‘privileges of administration’: their existence as a bureaucratic ruling stratum can be brought to an end without any changes in the law or in the distribution of property in the means of produc- tion. But no ruling class could be unseated this way before. This ‘new class’ is no class at all in Marxist terms. Those groups which have had ‘special privileges and economic preferences because of the administrative monopoly’ they have held have not been classes. We will pass over the trouble which Djilas has in determining the frontier of the ‘new class’. Even if we call it something else and interpret its role differently this is clearly an important problem, but for present purposes it can be left aside. Djilas at some points gives the impression that ‘the new class’ possesses unprecedented power. He says: “This is a class whose power over men is the most com- plete known to history.’* In itself this is a wild general- ization. That those who constitute the inner circle exer- cise immense power is not to be gainsaid. As Trotsky pointed out in his analysis of the same phenomenon: ‘In no other régime has a bureaucracy ever achieved such a degree of independence from the dominant class’.? He compares its position to that of the fascist bureau- cracy, and though for many that may at one time have seemed fantastic, a reading of the Khrushchev report readily shows what basis it had. Also, in Trotsky’s analysis by ‘the very fact of its appropriation of political power in a country where the principal means of pro- duction are in the hands of the State, [it] creates a new and hitherto unknown relationship between the bureau- cracy and the riches of the nation’.!° But while Trotsky left the future possibilities, as it were, open-ended, to be decided ‘by a struggle of living forces’, he was con- fident that ‘the proletariat has not yet said its last word’.!! The events of the last few years confirm this point of view, against Djilas and all the. theorists of a new, finished social formation in the USSR. — Indeed in Djilas’s book we can see some evidence of the real balance of social forces which hardly confirms his own conclusions. Not only can no member of the inner circle be assured of security of tenure, or even of life, with no right of appeal outside it, but the position of the bureaucracy as a whole is by no means assured. For one thing it ‘always acts as the champion of the working class’ and ‘it cannot ever lose its connexion with the proletariat’;!2 ‘it must take into account the mood and movement of the masses’.!3 This reflects, in other words, the fact that the working class remains the leading social force: the bureaucracy has to defend the social conquests of the Revolution—and the working class gives its support, or acquiesces, in so far as it sees no alternative but the restoration of the old system or economic collapse. There is daily confirmation of how its pressures, in diverse and often indirect ways, are making themselves felt. When it does see an alter- 8p. 69. SL. Trotsky, The Revolution Betrayed (1957), p. 248. 10Ibid. p. 249. 7 11fbid. pp. 255, 249. 2p, 41. I3p. 64. 85

[p025] LABOUR REVIEW native why should it not heave the bureaucracy off its back? We find plenty of other limitations of its power, which taken together suggest that despite its ‘totalitarian’ rule it is indeed much less firmly seated than other ‘legitim- ate’ ruling classes. For instance it has not become the ‘only power in the land;!4 it ‘cannot justify itself’;!5 it suffers from ‘delusions’;!® ‘they are [not] able to subor- dinate society completely’!” and ‘it [the bureaucracy] is not able to make its ownership lawful’.!8 The last. phrase is preceded by the words ‘in spite of its historical origin’. This follows only if one accepts Djilas’s garbled account of the origins of the bureaucracy. More accurately we should have to say because of its historical origins it was not able to make its political domination lawful. No administrative group in any society can exist other- wise than by appropriating part of the surplus value. This does not necessarily make it a class, much less a ruling class. The Soviet and east European ruling groups certainly appropriate an important share of surplus value as a result of their political control of nationalized property. which is carefully disguised in the’ ‘Statistics —is ‘Tes- trained. by the passive or active resentment of the popu: lation. Even to maintain it a complex’ system of persua- sion, propaganda and oppression is needed; to increase their absolute income and preserve their dominance they are forced to build up nationalized property via capital accuniulation. In that sense they act, albeit in a con- tradictory and far from satisfactory manner, as_ the agents of the class which established this form of pro- perty and whose interests are bound: up with it. What Djilas also fails to examine is how the bureau- cracy, under the special internal ‘and international conditions of the epoch, was able: to filch away the political rights of the working ‘Glass and securé a disproportionate share in national output. There is no shred of proof in his book that the’ “buréaucracy was made necessary by the conditions’ ‘of’ technological change, or that it played an indispensable ‘Tole in indus: trialization. It was a product of specific’ historical cit: cumstances: with the passing of these objective condi- tions it finds it all the more difficult: to retain its hold. The old methods, with their heavy emphasis ‘on ‘security’ measures, had become self-defeating...i; Hence: the .up- heavals which have taken place since the death of Stalin. The:nule of the bureaucracy stands out. as a transitory Ip, 63. 5p. 54. 1p. 60. 7p. 87.. 18p. 68... May-June-July 1958 phenomenon, with the current of change running strongly against it. But when it is eventually superseded there will be no need to institute a new form of property, with new legal forms, as happens when one ruling class is replaced by another. It is part of the perversity of Dyilas’s position that although many of his own statements can be taken to support such an interpretation he persists in the dog- matic assertion that the bureaucracy is a class ruling a new social formation. Part of the secret lies in the fact that Djilas is ‘a soul in torment’ obsessed by his tor- mentors. He has lost confidence in the ability of the working class to change conditions and clutches blindly at some semi-mystical tendency in the world ‘toward greater unity, progress and freedom’.!9 Djilas lacks any real capacity for relating and ade- quately explaining the facts he cites—where they are facts—which is not surprising, because he only brings in part of the facts and because his method is defective. A good example is to be found in the pages, clearly for once reflecting personal experience, in which he tells how ‘devoted, enthusiastic and clever fighters’, aspiring ‘toward a beautiful ideal society’ become transformed into ‘characterless wretches and stupid defenders of arid formulas’.2° But one looks in vain for some convincing explanation of this degeneration—or even how or why he began to discern and resist it himself. Surely this was not due to a purely moral crisis, working itself out in a vacuum? Does he want us to believe the formula of ultimate pessimism, of which he has perhaps never heard, put forward by the historian Lord Acton: ‘All power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely’? For a Marxist this tragedy was not the result of inherent moral weaknesses, though they obviously played a ‘role, nor of the inevitable corruption of power, but of the objective pressures of particular historical circumstances which gave rise to what can be not inaccurately des- cribed as ‘Stalinism’. It was this which destroyed. these fine people either physically, where they resisted, ‘or morally, where they accepted it as an historical.neces- sity. For those who wish to understand the. nature of society in the States with which it deals: Djilas’s book alone can only be misleading and confusing. His major thesis remains unsubstantiated and much of his material argues against it. As a document in the dossier it has a place: significant for its failure, ‘rather than for its achievement. of 19p. 214. 20pp. 151f.