Marxist theoretical debates in Europe during the cold war: the premises of the breakdown of the communist system.

• Author: Mottale, Morris M.

In 1965, the Polish philosopher and academician Adam Schaff, at that time a high ranking member of the Communist intelligentsia, published a book entitled Marxism and the Human Individual, in which he criticized contemporary socialist society in both Poland and the other countries of Eastern Europe. Schaff raised ontological questions such as the meaning of life, determinism and freedom, ethics and morality, questions which had been neglected in official Marxist literature. He also contended that "alienation" in the Marxian meaning of the term did exist in socialist countries. His book stimulated a lively debate in Poland, but of course he was neither the first nor the only writer to have asked such a question. Later on the question was widely discussed in Eastern European countries, especially in Yugoslavia, where it was freely admitted that alienation did exist. In the Soviet Union, on the other hand, it was officially maintained that alienation did not exist. The debate on alienation in Eastern Europe was one of the historical aspects of the theoretical problems that were besetting that body of thought known as "Marxism" and the political and economic institutions that had been established upon its ideological foundation. (i)

The ideas generally subsumed under "Marxism" were those contained in the writings of Karl Marx and a variety of other thinkers and political leaders who have all claimed at one time or another to be true "Marxists." Marxism is not very systematic, and Marx himself as an encyclopedic thinker and sometime leader did not arrive at his theoretical stands all at once. His ideas developed and changed as he faced new situations and his own interests shifted. In the 1840's, as a student of philosophy, and in his early youth, he was strongly influenced by the philosophy of idealism as elaborated by the German philosopher Hegel. But he turned against idealism and became a follower of the philosophy of another German thinker, Feuerbach, which is usually known as "materialism," a rather generic term used to cover a variety of philosophical orientations. Marx came to the conclusion that, contrary to what Hegel had expounded, it is not ideas that change the world, and became equally convinced that the world needed radical changing. Society can be changed--he affirmed--only by changing economic relationships and consequently their social structures. He consequently shifted his major theoretical orientations from philosophy to economics and sociology; as a result he wrote the Capital, which later became the gospel of organized Marxist political parties. (ii)

Yet Marx wrote much more than the Capital. His writings are voluminous and extensive. They touch a wide variety of subjects and form a huge source from which those who claim to be his followers have often made arbitrary selections. Even before his death, different interpretations of his theories had taken place. After Marx's death, his writings were systematized, explained, elaborated, and developed by his collaborator and lifelong friend, Friedrich Engels, who in the process added ideas of his own. The Russian revolutionary, Lenin, and his followers referred to the contents of the works of both authors as "Marxism," which were, in turn, commented upon in different ways, reinterpreted and applied to different social and political circumstances, modified and revised. Under Lenin's successor--Stalin--Marxist theory came to be known as Marxism-Leninism. Through the absolute monopoly of power, Stalin alone gave out the orthodox interpretations of Marxism-Leninism, ruthlessly eliminating those who disagreed. With the death of Stalin, and the partial demise of his theories and policies, the primacy of the theoretical pronouncements of Soviet ideologists came to be questioned by the Marxists of Eastern Europe, where the Soviets had established Communist regimes similar to their own after World War II.

The official, quasi-official, and unofficial interpretations of Marxism consequently proliferated. Even though national orientations gave and still give the official body of Marxism-Leninism certain national and ethnic peculiarities, in the main it is possible to distinguish certain ideological characteristics. In fact even after the demise of the Soviet Union and the collapse of the Soviet Empire, the ideology was upheld by the remnants of the communist parties in Western and Eastern Europe and in Russia and as of 2011 was still the official ideology of Cuba, Vietnam, China, Laos, and North Korea.

Armed rebels from the Middle East such as the PKK in Turkey-the Kurdish Workers Party- to Marxist-Leninist-Maoist parties and rebels in Nepal and India found inspiration in Marxian ideology. In Latin America, Peru had seen decades old revolts by Sendero Luminoso, a guerilla terrorist organization founded by Abimael Guzman who claimed to be the new Marxist prophet in the footsteps of Lenin, Stalin and Mao. Columbia was still plagued by groups that traced their ideology to some interpretation of Marxism almost half a century of Marxist inspired guerilla war. In Central America, Nicaragua was ruled by the Sandinista regime that claimed to have some of its roots in Marxism. By 2011 Wall street and other financial centers of the world were being occupied by youth some of whom were denouncing capitalism in stark Marxian rhetoric, while in Europe remnants of the communist parties could be found in many European states.

Marxism and Alienation

In 1932 some of Marx's early philosophical writings were published for the first time. They are known as his Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts. They provided the theoretical background for a debate on alienation among his followers both in the West and in Eastern Europe, and to date they are still influential in buttressing anti-liberal anti -capitalist ideological pronouncements in the international system. (iii) The original body of theories came to be defined from the very beginning of the evolution of Marxism and Socialist parties as the orthodox position, that is to say, the position official Marxist theoreticians expounded in the 19th and 20th centuries as being the true, correct, and only way to interpret social reality, and by which the various socialist governments in Eastern Europe, in Russia, and other Communist states came to "officially" abide.

At the same time there was a new philosophical movement inside institutional Marxist ideology, which came to be known as "revisionism". The term "revisionist" had a long history and was applied originally to the German Social Democrat Eduard Bernstein who, at the turn of the 19th century, argued against the opinion of other German Marxists stating that Marx's theories had certain flaws. Largely because of the controversy Bernstein aroused, the term "revisionist" came to carry negative connotations among Marxists and officially established communist governments. In time the term came to be employed by official communist theoreticians to brand those Marxists whose new interpretations of Marx do not coincide with the ideological justifications for...