reviews

REVIEWS

The Soviet Union Today - A n Interpretive Guide, edited by James Cracraft,

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (Distributed by the University of

Chicago Press), 1983, 348 pp.

As James Cracraft states in his preface, this is "a book on the Soviet Union written by experts but addressed to the general reader." Accordingly, the twenty-six articles in the areas of history, politics, the armed forces, geo- graphy and environment, the economy, science and technology, and culture and society do a very good job of providing a great deal of factual informa-

tion without presupposing much knowledge of the U.S.S.R. The articles, all by experts, are quite good for a book addressed to non-

specialists. Particularly good, to my mind, is Eugenia Osgood's article 'Military Strategy in the Nuclear Age' which explains Soviet nuclear policy, including the Soviet doctrine of deterrence as "reliance on a pre-emptive or a launch- under-attack posture in response to a nuclear strike, rather than riding out

the attack and then inflicting unacceptable punishment on the aggressor". Mikhail Tsypkin, a former member of the Red Army, gives an insider's view

of life as a Soviet soldier, which differs somewhat from the life of an Ameri- can G.I. Pay is about $30 a month, possession of a copy o f Playboy may be regarded as a serious political offense, and even though Soviet soldiers are frequently exhorted to show more "initiative", this means simply "the more

precise implementation of orders and regulations". Another quite interesting article, also an insider's view, is the physicist

Vladimir Z. Kresin's account of 'Soviet Science in Practice'. Much important and first-rate research is done in the Soviet Union - Kresin discusses the

search for high-temperature super-conductors and the attempt to produce metallic hydrogen - but Soviet science attracts many incompetent bureau- crats as well as brilliant scientists and anti-Semitismoften hinders the work of Jewish scientists. There is also little computerization and only poor communi- cation between Soviet and Western scientists, not only because of governmental restrictions on contacts but also because of a paper shortage in the

Studies in Soviet Thought 31 (1986) 321.

322 REVIEWS

Soviet Union. Scientific articles, even those published in English, must be so

brief that the reader cannot understand exactly how the experimental results were obtained.

The section on politics includes articles on dissent and on the KGB. In the

former Joshua Rubenstein recounts the Kafkaesque response of the psychia-

trists to Vladimir Bukovsky's assertion that it is perfectly legal in the Soviet Union to express disagreement with the government: "You keep talking

about the Constitution and the laws, but what normal man takes Soviet laws seriously? You are living in an unreal world of your own invention; you react inadequately to the world around you." John Carlson's article on the KGB also discusses the practice of handing dissidents over to the tender mercies of Soviet psychiatry. Carlson quotes, without much comment, Dr. Walter Reich's argument that since dissidents are deviants it is quite likely that "in many and perhaps most instances of diagnosis of mental illness in dissident cases not only the KGB and other responsible officials, but the psychiatrists themselves, really believed that the dissidents were ill". Given what is known

about Soviet society in general and the workings of Soviet psychiatry in

particular, including torture by drugs, and considering the psychiatrist's

statement to Bukovsky, this hypothesis seems altogether naive.

There are also some quite informative discussions of current trends in literature and the theater, on religious belief, on the problems of women in

Soviet society, on economic and agricultural problems, and on social prob-

lems such as alcoholism. The drawback of such a book is that it attempts to cover a wide range of topics without attempting to provide a comprehensive account of any of them. Although the articles have been compiled "for anyone wanting to understand the Soviet Union today", there is little delving

into the past to help the reader understand how the Soviet Union got to be the way it is today. And, comprehensive as the book is, there are a few signifi-

cant omissions. For instance, there is no discussion of the Soviet legal system and very little discussion of Soviet education.

However, considering the overall quality of the articles, these are minor problems. Although The Soviet Union Today is not intended to be a text- book, it could, I think be quite profitably used as supplementary readings in a course on the Soviet Union. It is extremely well written and provides a great deal of information on life in the Soviet Union not readily available elsewhere.

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Decline o f an Empire - The Soviet Socialist Republics in Revolt , by H616ne Carr6re d'Encausse, translated by Martin Sokolinsky and Henry A. La Farge,

Harper Colophon Books, 1981,319 pp.

Certainly Marx never envisaged a "communist" empire in which one national-

ity would rule over and seek to impose its language and culture upon more

than a hundred others. Communist ideology predicts that, like religion, nationalism will vanish, giving way to class as the proper group identity for

human beings. From the standpoint of the future, communist internationalism really means a-nationalism. However, as H61~ne Carrbre d'Encausse makes

clear in her excellent study, nationalism persists as a serious internal problem for the rulers of the Soviet empire.

Lenin's goal was the replacement of nationalism with class solidarity. Since, theoretically speaking, this could not be achieved until nationalism reached its highest stage of development, and, practically speaking, there was an upsurge of nationalism in the subject peoples after the Revolution, the policy of the 1920s was one of "indigenization", rule of the national republics by their own cadres and the promotion of national cultures, even to the point of creating national languages and cultures where they had not previously existed. According to theory, all cultures and nationalities were equal, but as Stalin was to demonstrate unequivocally, one was more equal than the others.

In the 1930s the Cyrillic alphabet was imposed on nearly all the other nationalities and the Leninist notion of a federation of equals gave way to the

supposedly obsolete idea of a Russian empire, with the Russian nation serving as "elder brother" to the other nations. History was rewritten once again, and

the Russian domination of the conquered peoples before the Revolution was

no longer seen as an evil but as an "absolute good", because the Russians bestowed their superior civilization upon the "younger brothers". Russian

nationalism is too strong, according to Carr6re d'Encausse, to be compatible with true equality among Soviet national groups.

The 1977 Soviet Constitution fosters the notion that the forces of integration in Soviet society are overcoming the forces of divergent nationalisms, and, indeed, the Soviet Union is pursuing policies designed to eliminate nationalism - by absorbing all the other nationalities as much as possible into the Russian. Integration is through Russification, and one of the most important means of achieving this goal is the Soviet Army. Although the Soviet Union maintains such a large army for the sake of its perceived military

Studies in Soviet Thought 31 (1986).

324 REVIEWS

needs and goals, there is no doubt that universal compulsory military service

is also intended as a means of uprooting soldiers from their own cultures and

homelands and forcing them to speak Russian for two years. As Brezhnev put

it in 1972:

Our army is a special one. It is a school for internationalism, instilling sentiments of fraternity, solidarity and mutual respect for all the nations and nationalities of the Soviet Union. Our armed forces form a single family, the living embodiment of socialist internationalism.

Indeed, this instilling of fraternity, solidarity, and mutual respect is so important that universal compulsory military service is stipulated by Article 31 of the Soviet Constitution. (Of course, another reason, besides fraternal solidarity, for sending recruits to distant parts of the Soviet Union is that Latvian soldiers, say, are more likely to fire on unruly Kazakhs than are Kazakh soldiers.)

Carr6re d'Encausse includes copious statistics, some going back to the nineteenth century, that analyze such aspects of Soviet demography as the

rate of population growth of each national group (fairly rapid in the Moslem republics, almost zero in the Baltic region), the number of Russians in each

republic, estimated increases in the labor force by the year 2000, comparative levels of urbanization in different regions of the country, and how the popu-

lation migrates between republics and between urban and rural areas, and

birth rates for each republic. (Because the book was originally published, in France, in 1978, it does not include Murray Feshbach's more recently un-

earthed statistics that indicate an increase in the infant mortality rate.) According to the statistical evidence, although there have been gains for Russification, and although a few nationalities are declining, the Soviet Union is a long way from either universal Russification or a non-national class

identity. There are in the Soviet Union three groups of "Stateless Citizens", peoples

that, unlike all the other national groups, are not automatically attached to a particular "homeland" in the USSR - the Volga Germans, the Crimean Tatars, and the Jews. The Germans and the Tatars were among the nationalities Stalin uprooted and deported to Siberia during World War II. The others have been allowed to return to their homelands, but the Germans and the Tatars for some reason have not. The Germans are becoming assimilated and many have been able to emigrate to Germany, but the 300 000 Tatars'

REVIEWS 325

constant peti t ions to the government for the right to return to the Crimea

are to no avail. There is no sign that their nationalism is dying out. The Jews

technically have an "autonomous region", Birobidzhian, in the far eastern

part of the country, but very few Jews live there, for obvious reasons. The

increasing Jewish self-consciousness conflicts with Soviet expectations about

the progress of history - as societies develop, all sense of national ident i ty

should wither away permanently. Zionism is a national aspiration which the

Soviet Union finds it in its interest to contest for ideological as well as anti-

Semitic reasons.

Aside from this there are several other serious problems for the Soviet

Union in Ukrainian and Georgian nationalism, the close relation in Lithuania,

as in Poland, between Catholicism and national identi ty, and, perhaps most

disturbing of all to the Soviet authorities, Islam.

From its assessment of the situation in the Third World, particularly the

Moslem countries, the Soviet Union has decided to present itself as not only

in favor of Islam but as a Moslem nation. The policy of the Soviet Union is to

stress the "compat ib i l i ty" of Marxism and Islam. For their part, the Moslems

in the Soviet Union seek, like the Orthodox Church, an accommodat ion with

the Kremlin.

The Moslem dignitaries sa id . . , at the 1970 Tashkent Moslem confereace: 'Soviet leaders who believe neither in God nor his Prophet.. . nevertheless apply laws that were dictated by God and expounded by his Prophet.' They went on to say: '(We) admire the genius of the Prophet who preached the social principles of socialism. (We are) pleased that a great number of socialist principles implement the orders of Mohammed.

The Soviet government wants both to control the forces of Islam within its

borders, as it seeks to control everything else within its borders, and to mani-

pulate Islam elsewhere as a force to counteract the western democracies.

However, events in the Islamic world have not always accorded with the

Soviet Union's wishes. Khomeini denotmces communists as vehemently as he

condemns America. And, given the Islamic sense of community , an increase

in Islamic influence in the world might well encourage Moslems in the Soviet

Union. To minimize internal Moslem unrest, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan:

The USSR obtained several advantages by invading Afghanistan. A militant Islamic presence was pushed away from its borders. It impressed upon Iran, with whom she doubled her border, an implicit threat which would discourage her from too much Moslem activism toward Soviet subjects, or from seeking a pro-Chinese alliance.

326 REVIEWS

But to the extent that the Soviet Union sought to present itself as an Islamic country in its "satellitizing" and invasion of Afghanistan, it failed and was condemned by Moslem states at a conference in Islamabad. Nevertheless, the

U.S.S.R. continues to try to present itself as a good friend of Islam, even as it slaughters Moslems in Afghanistan.

Although Carr~re d'Encausse provides a great deal of evidence of discontent and unrest among the subject peoples and of the seriousness with which the Soviet government views the problem, the title of the book (in French, L'Empire bclatO) seems a slight exaggeration. I once asked the Soviet defector Arkady Shevchenko at one of his lectures how great a problem

nationalism is for the Soviet Union. His answer was that although the Baltic nations would prefer to secede the other nationalities are not so discontented.

On the whole Carfare d'Encausse's book bears this out. Although she argues quite cogently that "every policy after 1917 was marked by an underestima-

tion of the national problem and an inadequate knowledge of the facts

involved", and although there is considerable evidence of discontent with the policy of Russification, all in all there is no evidence that the Soviet Union

is in a state of revolt or in danger of disintegration. We can, however, certainly assume that the Kremlin's foreign policy will

continue to be influenced by the need to control the nationalities within the

Soviet borders. Carr~re d'Encausse's book is a considerable contribution to the understanding of the Soviet empire's nationalities problem.

The U.S.S.R. in Worm Politics, by,Nikolai Lebedev, Progress Publishers,

Moscow, 1980, 319 pp.

Once you know that this book was written by the rector of the Moscow Institute of International Relations and was published in Moscow you already know the essentials of what it has to say. Despite the book jacket's assertion that Nikolai Lebedev "specializes in world history", this book is not history but Soviet apologetics.

There are several notions which Lebedev seeks to convey, usually indirectly rather than by explicit statement. The main ideological notion is that at bottom the world is really a very simple place in which good and evil, totally separate and easily discernible (by those who have the correct point of view), are locked in a titanic struggle, with the Communist good slowly but nonethe-


REVIEWS 327

less inexorably emerging as the victor over the capitalist-imperialist evil. I

emphasize the slowness because Lebedev prudently refrains from suggesting

that the radiant heights o f communism will be reached in the near or even foreseeable future, although there is o f course no doubt that full and world-

wide communism will be attained eventually. A second theme, which is, I think, meant to be the real point of the book,

is that, unlike all other nations on earth, the Soviet Union never has made and

never will make a mistake - is, in fact, by its very nature incapable of doing

anything in the least worthy of criticism or reproach. The Soviet government,

by virtue of the truth of communism, has superseded the ordinary human

condition o f fallibility, doubt, weakness, and selfishness. This is the point, for

example, of Lebedev's defense o f Soviet "fraternal assistance" to Afghanistan,

a subject he takes up three times in the book. He presents the standard Party

line about rescuing the Afghan people who, by late 1979, were within an ace

of losing their independence to the imperialists. The point o f his discussion

is best expressed in his conclusion.

Today, when some time has elapsed since the entry of Soviet troops into the country, the peoples of the world have been able to see that Soviet action has no selfish ends and that it is part and parcel of d6tente.

A third theme is that the Soviet Union, as the incarnation o f Truth, is the

most important, the historically central nation in the world. The opening

statement of the book is that the 1917 Revolution ushered in "a new his-

torical epoch" with "a new type o f civilization" that would bring about "the

revolutionary renewal of the world" and "the spiritual emancipation of the

popular masses". The world has now entered into the final, decisive period

of struggle between evil and good, a transition marked by the Soviet Union's ascension to central importance in world affairs.

One of the historical phenomena of recent times is the constantly growing role and significance of the U.S.S.R. in world politics. At the outset of Soviet power Lenin pointed out with brilliant perspicacity that after 1917 not a single international occur- rence could be understood correctly without reference to the paramount importance of Soviet Russia. The whole subsequent development of international pofitics confirms the correctness of Lenin's words.

The paramount importance of the U.S.S.R. was increased by World War II, better known in the Soviet Union as the Great Patriotic War, because the war

gave to the Soviet Union "a task o f world-wide historic significance", to save

328 REVIEWS

human civilization from fascism, which it was able to do because of its

superior social system. Needless to say, the Soviet Union deserves the lion's

share of the credit for the defeat of Japan as well as of Germany.

The reason for the constantly increasing power, prestige, and importance

of the U.S.S.R. is "its huge ideological ascendancy", which seems to mean

that the "wide masses" all over the world look to the Soviet Union as the

source of truth and salvation. Therefore, Lebedev argues, after the Soviet

victory in World War II, "no just solution o f international problems was

possible without Soviet participation and without taking Soviet interests into

account". Sadat's foreign policy provides a telling example of the terrible,

self-destructive consequences of renouncing "friendly relations" with the

Soviet Union.

After the canceUation of the Soviet-Egyptian Treaty of 27 May 1971 and rejecting the policy of strengthening friendly relations with the Soviet Union, the Sadat regime greatly weakened its position in the Middle East conflict, made one concession after another to the Israeli aggressor and ultimately became the accomplice of imperialism and zionism in the Middle East and Africa.

The topic that receives most of Lebedev's attention - two full chapters - is

d6tente. Ideologically, the "essence o f d~tente" is "the practical realisation

of Lenin's conception of international relations in the period of transition

from capitalism to socialism". To the Soviet Union d~tente means nothing

more than a weakening of imperialist resistance to Communism. It certainly

does not include anything like "the old imperialist notion of 'a free flow of

information'". As implicit answer to the objection that there can be no basis

of co-operation between social systems that are diametrically opposed and

have irreconcilable conflicts o f interest, Lebedev offers the following ideologi-

cal obfuscation:

The two social systems constitute two poles in world politics, two opposite facets of the basic contradiction of the present day that is determining the course of world history. Struggle between them is inevitable in all spheres of relations, including that of international polities; therefore, elements of cooperation dialectically intertwine with elements of confrontation. Cooperation and confrontation comprise major aspects of peaceful coexistence and facets of a single process.

However, lest the ideological ascendancy and wonderful unselfishness inspire

the wide masses of the third world to demand of the Soviet Union, as of the capitalist nations, an obligatory transfer to them of a certain part of its GNP

REVIEWS 329

as economic aid, the Soviet government prudently issued a statement in 1976

pointing out that since the Soviet Union has never exploited any colonies it is not obliged to share its wealth. Soviet foreign aid "is given to those coun-

tries in the joint struggle against the common foe - imperialism, colonialism and neocolonialism. It is rendered on the basis of the real possibilities of the

socialist community." That is, it is rendered only after the most careful calculations of Soviet self-interest.

Finally, this is indeed a discussion of the U.S.S.R. in world politics, that

is, it is really not concerned with Lenin, Stalin, Khrushchev, or Brezhnev (let alone any lesser lights) as individuals making decisions and acting. Lenin and

Brezhnev are quoted frequently but are rarely spoken of as doing anything. Stalin is mentioned only three times, all in connection with World War II, and the non-person Khrushchev is not mentioned by name at all, being re-

ferred to only once as the "head of the Soviet government". Important historic events, such as the Berlin crises of 1948 and 1961 and the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 (here referred to as the "Caribbean crisis", without any

compromising reference to Soviet missiles) are briefly mentioned without either a single detail to explain what exactly the crises were or an explanation

of whose policies and decisions precipitated them. In short, the book conveys

the notion that, although there have certainly been a very few wise Soviet leaders whose words are eminently worth quoting, history is in the move-

ments of broad, and anonymous masses, the equally anonymous Soviet

government being merely the representative or the agent of the faceless masses of the Soviet Union. The constant invocation of the force of mass

movements and the accounts of anonymous governmental actions may create an impression of the relentless, impersonal forces of nature and history, but they make for very dull reading.

St. John's University, MICHAEL HENRY Jamaica, NY, 11439, U.S.A.

Terrell Carver, Marx and Engels. The Intellectual Relationship, Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1983. pp. 172 + xv. $22.50.

Gerard Bekerman~ Marx and Engels. A Conceptual Concordance, (trans. by Terrell Carver), Totowa, NJ, Barnes and Noble, 1983. pp. 205 + xxxi. $33.50.


330 REVIEWS

Cecil L. Eubanks, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. An Analytical Bibliography~

New York, Garland, 1984. pp. 299 + 1.

Terrell Carver's readable book attempts to do justice to the complexity of the

relationship between Marx and Engels, in the face of the traditional image of the single-minded twin founders of Marxism. Carver's book by no means

exemplifies the thorough and profound study the topic deserves, but it is worth reading as an introduction to the problem. While Carver is not the first to study this question, it is a remarkable tribute to the power of Marxist ideology that it has not had the extensive and detailed investigation that a matter so apparently central to the understanding of both men would require. As Carver ~ points out, while our understanding of Marx's ideas, and our evaluation of any political movement's or doctrine's claim to embody them,

must ultimately rest on our interpretation of Marx's writings, "how his works are interpreted depends very much on what view of the Marx-Engels rela-

tionship is adopted" (p. 153). This is especially the case because Engels came to take on, and to be generally accepted in, the role of definitive expounder of Marx's thought.

Carver takes a position on the Marx-Engels relationship at odds with what

he describes as the three main views of the matter: that the two were at all times in complete agreement; that "in considering Marx, Engels may be safely

ignored"; and that Marx after 1859 accepted his friend's "determinist" views (p. xiv). Against these Carver argues that Marx and Engels differed at various times on important matters; that Engels's independent work at at least one point had a major effect on the development of Marx's thought; and that

Marx can by no means be assumed to have shared Engels's views on history,

natural and social, as the working out of dialectical necessity. (It is unfortunate that there is no mention or discussion of a fourth view, advanced by

Marx-specialists such as Maximilian Rubel and Margaret Manale, which sees Engels at variance with Marx's ideas precisely in his invention of "Marxism" as a general philosophy, especially as Carver's own position is a version of this one.)

Carver's study is ordered chronologically, with three chapters taking the story up through 1848, and two more covering the rest of the tale. The story falls roughly into three parts. The first meeting between the future collabora- tors was a "false start", with Marx, already characterized by theoretical rigor and political seriousness, less than enchanted with a young Engels "given to


REVIEWS 331

revolutionary rumblings and lofty Hegelian visions" (p. 25). 1843, however,

brought convergence: Marx's growing interest in political economy was stimulated and shaped by the Outlines o f a Critique o f Political Economy submitted in that year by Engels to the Deutsch-Franz6sischer Jahrbficher. Engels's book on The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844 also made a great impact on Marx, according to Carver, both for its exploration of empirical sources and for its use of them to demonstrate "a discrepancy between the generalisations and prescriptions of the political economists and the real world of capitalist production" (p. 45). This second phase of the relationship led to the collaboration of the two men on the German Ideology and the Communist Manifesto. The first with its attack on abstract theorizing laying the groundwork for the direct critique of capitalist society summarized in the second.

The third part of the story, as Carver tells it, is one of differentiation of paths. While Marx continued his work of the 1840s to its culmination in Capital, Engels more or less abandoned the theoretical and empirical work he had pioneered for the role of defender and popularizer of Marx's ideas. "Engels found his vocation in 1859, rather unfortunately, as systematising philosopher, setting Marx's work in an academic and philosophical context, drawing out its implications as a universal methodology and adding . . . a positivist account of natural science" (p. 156). In doing this, Carver argues, Engels seriously distorted his friend's work in ways which were of great importance for the future development of Marxism.

First, "Engels elevated method to a level of importance far higher than it assumed in any of Marx's very sparing comments on the subject" (p. 116), with "method" identified as based on the dialectical logic of Hegel. In contrast, "neither 'dialectic' nor any other methodological formula represents a 'master-key' to Marx's work" (10. 115). From Engels, however, we can trace traditional Marxism's idea of Marx as the heir to classical German philosophy and of method as the center of "orthodox Marxism". Second, since the Hegelian dialectic was flawed by the idealism of its inventor it required, in Engels' eyes, replacement by a philosophical materialism which would place social history in the framework of a Naturphilosophie showing the centrality of the categories of "interpenetration of opposites" and "negation of the negation" to the scientific understanding of all phenomena. Here again, Marx's thinking remained more faithful to the joint project of their younger selves, running to the end "quite counter to the notion that a metaphysics

332 REVIEWS

as such was indeed necessary at all" (p. 140). In contrast, Engels' recasting of Marx's thought, as represented by the Ant~'-Diihring and the unpublished Dialectics of Nature, involved a return to the sort of abstract philosophizing which the two of them had attacked in The German Ideology.

Carver's account is not original, though points are often stated in felicitous and suggestive ways. It seems to me basically correct. At the same time, it is incomplete in ways that involve a degree of distortion of the highly complex developments described. In particular it seems wrong to tax Engels with aban-

doning involvement with the actual political struggle of the time to place Marx's thought in "an academic and philosophical context". This is both to misunderstand the meaning of philosophy in the late 19th century and to misportray Engels' efforts. "Philosophy" was not yet completely enclosed

within the academy, although this process was certainly well under way, but was still the property of all intellectually active people (for an outstanding

example, see the writings of the working man Joseph Dietzgen). Engels's

philosophical writings, therefore, must be considered not in the context of today's Ph.D.s but in that very different one which included the writings of Comte, Proudhon, and Herbert Spencer. Engels was writing for the move-

ment, not primarily for professors, and indeed it was the movement and not

the academic world which honored him as the official spokesman for the new

Weltanschauung. In general it must be said that Carver's book is itself overly "academic", in that it treats the matters it discusses largely from the stand-

point of the history of ideas, to the neglect of the social and political developments which were the main focus of Marx's and Engels's attention. For this reason, he leaves not only unanswered but even unasked the fundamental

question: how was it that the Marxism to whose invention Engels contributed

so much took precedence over Marx's actual work in the development of the social-democratic movement?

Gerard Bekerman's book is a curious example of the state of affairs Carver argues against: treating Marx and Engels as halves of a single intelligence. Indeed Bekerman himself warns that "to hear Marx correctly, to comprehend him as precisely as possible, to find in the text what he actually said, we must forget subsequent Marxisms" (p. ix) - without applying this admirable dic- tum to the Marxism of Engels. The book is a collection of quotations, from a phrase to several paragraphs in length, arranged alphabetically by topic. Given its small size and wide range of topics and the detachment of the quotations from their contexts, we seem to be presented with a compendium

REVIEWS 333

of extracts of the "Marxist system" of which Engels was the founder. Engels

himself, notably, is relegated to the role of official philosopher and expounder of the system; there are no quotations from his critique of political economy

or other writings, but he is represented by dicta on such concepts as "con- tingency" and "concept".

Apart from a number of real errors (Verwertung, valorization, appears as

"realization"; perhaps as a result there is nothing for the important concept of "realization"), the choice of extracts is often puzzling. "Fetishism", surely

a central concept in Marx's work, is represented only by "fantastic form of a relation between things", with no citation of the rich and basic discussion

of fetishism of commodities, and the extension of this concept to money and capital. "Form" appears only in a phrase from a youthful letter to Marx's father - we have nothing on "form of value", "form of appearance", "money

form". Under "essence" we read of the human essence, but not of the essence of capital. On the other hand, under "life" we are given "the expression of

an intellectual activity which develops in all directions, in science, art, and

public matters" (from the same letter to his father) and "the mode of exis-

tence of protein bodies" (Engels). We are given the definition of a bank note

and informed that "nourishment" is "a form of consumption", but the cita-

tion under "monopoly" does not mention rent or surplus profit. The book is not completely useless, specially from the standpoint of a reader already

well-acquainted with Marx's ideas. As with almost any anthology of Marx

quotations, one encounters passages, brilliant and perhaps useful as citations, which one had forgotten or never noticed. But it is too slight to function as a real "conceptual concordance", and the quotations too poorly chosen, short, and isolated from their contexts to serve as a useful study aid (as does Samezo Kurama's excellent Marx-Lexi k on zur politischen Okonomie).

Eubanks' book is a good deal more useful. It contains bibliographies of

English translations of the writings of Marx and Engels, and of English- language books, articles, and doctoral dissertations on and about their work. These are preceded by a lengthy introduction giving summary descriptions of the main works and commentaries, and followed by name and subject indexes. Inevitably in a work of this sort, there are omissions; for example, while Marc Linder's dissertation is here, his more important Anti-Samudson is not. More surprisingly, there is no mention of the new Penguin/Vintage translation of Volume III of Capital, published in 1981 (and so before the

cutoff point for Eubanks' entries, which appears to be 1982). The notes on

334 REVIEWS

Capital in the introduction make no mention of the (significant) differences between the varying translations. There are a number of minor errors, such as

the listing of Max Raphael as "editor" of his Proudhon, Marx, Picasso, or the description, in the introduction, of Korsch's Karl Marx as a biography. Nonetheless, the student of Marx and Engels may certainly be advised to consult this work in search of useful references, or even just to contemplate

the enormous mass of material devoted to the Zweimgnnerpartei.

Center for the Social Sciences, Columbia University, New York, NY 10027, U.S.A.

PAUL MATTICK, JR

Stalinism: Its Impact on Russia and the World, ed. G. R. Urban, St. Martin's Press, 1982 (published in Great Britain by Maurice Temple Smith), 454 pp.

G. R. Urban has edited a series of eleven excellent interviews on Stalin,

Stalinism, and its repercussions in Communist parties outside the Soviet system. The interviewed include Boris Bazhanov, who was secretary to Stalin

and the Politburo in the late 1920s, as well as Averill Harriman and George Kennan. American and British scholarship is represented by Roderick Mac-

Farquahar (writing on China), Leonard Schapiro, Robert S. Tucker, and Adam Ulam. Milovan Djilas, Leszek Kotakowski, and the Austrian economist

Theodor Prager speak from personal experience of European Communist

parties. Bao Ruo-wang (Jean Pasqualini) writes of his experience of thought reform in Mao's prisons.

The difficulties involved in arranging for interviews with personages of the

calibre of the men listed here make it almost ungracious to point out that Russians are under-represented, that there is no Stalinist, or that two essays on China are perhaps disproportionate. The China material, however, does have some bearing on the debate between those who believe that Stalinism is a basic outgrowth of Leninism and Marxism itself, and those who see Stalinist excesses as something due to an Asiatic streak in the Russian character. Kolakowski essentially holds the first position (forcefully urged by Solz- henitsyn) whereas the British and Americans tend to the second.

Another thread of debate runs between Bazhanov, who regards Stalin as an


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intellectual incompetent, who totally lacked experience as a popular leader, suffering from an inferiority complex along with vicious anti-Semitism and ruthless ambition, and the English speakers, who affirm Stalin's considerable ability as a tactician, manipulator, and even leader. Bazhanov's wealth of lived anecdote more than compensates for his passion.

In a different vein, Averill Harriman's loyal attempts to defend or excuse Roosevelt's incomprehension of Stalin are more damning than would have been an outright attack.

George Kennan, through his work as ambassador and his writings, was a major actor on the American side during the Stalinist period, who certainly merits inclusion here. Some of his obiter dicta here betray an astonishingly Tory cast of mind: that the U.S. is highly overpopulated and overindustrial- ized, that direct elections of U.S. Senators should be abolished, that state universities are by and large social rather than educational institutions, or his cavalier distinterest in Marxism-Leninism. It almost makes one think that perhaps Stalin knew what he was doing when he declared Kennan persona

non grata in 1952.

Ernst Nolte, Marxism, Fascism, and the Cold War, Humanities Press, Atlantic Highlands, N.J., trans. Lawrence Krader, xi and 348 pp.

Ernst Nolte has collected seventeen articles on three apparently disparate topics. His object is to study, not so much events and movements, as to lay bare the ideology in their interpretation and to stress that Marxism, fascism, and the cold war grow on the same modern ground, and are inextricably, though dialectically, linked.

Marxism has far more in common with the conservative critics of the industrial revolution than it cares to admit, while fascism has less to do with capitalism than the standard Marxist analysis holds. Fascism, of course, is anti-Marxist, but as is apparent in Mussolini's personal history, it carries many leftist characteristics. Both Marxism and fascism, Nolte contends, can only appear in a society, when there has already been achieved at least some freedom of discussion and social change. So, they are against the prevailing liberalism, but also against the old order put on the defensive by liberalism, the order which came down from the Middle Ages and whose last great defender was Metternich.


336 REVIEWS

Pace the revisionist historians, the cold war was the response to Marxism of liberals rather than conservatives. The theory of Marxism and fascism as two varieties of totalitarianism was liberalism's way of understanding these

movements: interestingly enough, one of its earliest proponents was Don Sturzo, founder of the Partito Popolare.

The ninety-page 'Cold War and German Eastern Policy' is by far the

longest article in the book and entails a detailed review of the revisionist

bibliography, its critics, and a re-examination of the primary sources for the period. Although less lively than some of the other pieces, the long article

on the cold war has more than simply erudite significance, since the revi-

sionist view was dictated by an ideological bias that at times takes liberties

with the facts. By contrast, the selections that integrate the section on Marxism are gems

dealing with topics like the English controversy about the industrial revolu-

tion as written by its contemporaries, Bonapartism, and the ideality of Marxist social science. For the future, Nolte projects a full-scale study of Marxism and the industrial revolution.

Nolte, of course, stands in a class by himself in his attempt to develop a theory of fascism. He points out that unlike liberalism and socialism, which developed their self-conceptions over a considerable period of time before being criticized, fascism was analytically challenged even as it took shape. The polemic concerning fascism (aggravated by its somewhat hybrid nature) was well-defined during the 1920s and early 1930s. Curiously, socialists like Felippo Turati and"Hendrik de Man had a much clearer view of the possibilities of the spread of fascism than German social democrats, who seem to have blissfully regarded fascism as an Italian quirk, right up to the eve of

Hitler's ascent to power. Nolte's sources are vast materials published in the United States and both

the German Federal and German Democratic Republics. His direct use of Soviet sources is minimal.

Nolte characterizes as unphilosophical the grasp of Soviet history by

Charles Bohlen, some time U.S. ambassador in Moscow. This defect is shared by many others. It is to be hoped that Nolte's work will philosophically sensitize some who heretofore have not seen beyond the mechanics of power.

The editors have let more than a few typographical errors slip by and a fair number of oddities, like translating Trotsky's first name as "Leo" but not transliterating "He 13", or citing works that appeared in English by their

REVIEWS 337

German titles cure English translations. These, however, are trivial flaws in a

splendid book.

Rafael Calvo Serrer, Eurocommunism, presidencialismo y cristianisrno, Uni6n

Editorial, Madrid, 1982, 327 pp.

Rafael Calvo Serrer is a Spanish philosopher of history and journalist, distin-

guished as a persistent Catholic critic of the Franco regime and sometime exile. He gained a certain prominence as a co-founder along with Santiago

Carrillo and the leader of the Caflist Party of the Junta Democrhtica, a temporary coalition in the mid-1970s aimed at easing the post-Franco transition.

Briefly put, he thinks that PCE and PCI Eurocommunism is a genuine

response to the democratic climate of western Europe, and that democracy is the way to cut communism down to size as opposed to fascist repression, which stimulates the conspiratorial side of Marxism-Leninism and makes the Marxist-Leninist parties look more important than they are.

Calvo Serrer also recommends the lesson of De Gaulle's presidentialist Fifth Republic to all of Latin Europe. Presidentialism is treated journalis-

tically in the book, and Eurocommunism is hardly explained at all, so that there is not even new anecdotal material about Carrillo. The notion of a presidential regime is not adequately analyzed. Calvo Serrer does not advert

to the fact that the transition Prime Minister Adolfo Su~rez (whom Calvo regards as something of a Francoite imposter) built a substantial curb against

unbridled parliamentarism with a provision in the current Spanish Constitu- tion requiring that a vote of no-confidence include the designation of the

replacement o f the rejected government. Calvo Serrer takes what appears to be a straightforward liberal, American

view of communism and presidency. The key to the book is rather the third

element in its title. The book is, I take it, directed at Calvo Serrer's fellow Spanish Catholics, who, when they have not been radicalized, sometimes look with a bit of nostalgia at the late Generalisimo's era.

What makes the book interesting is that this is not explained. As I grasp it, present Spanish intellectual etiquette requires that one should never speak badly of other Spaniards, unless one is a man of the left, when one may call conservatives "fascists", or else a reactionary, in which case one may call leftists "communists". In doubt, it's better not to name names at all. This,


338 REVIEWS

naturally, is in striking contrast to the crudity of Anglo-Saxon (as they call it in Spain) practice. To get the feel of this practice, suffice it to explain that one Portuguese bishop who opposed Salazar is named repeatedly here; the Portuguese hierarchy is generically described as supportive of Salazar, but there is no discussion of the similar relation of the Church hierarchy to the chief of state in the adjacent country where the book was published.

Philosophically, Calvo Serrer calls conservative Spanish Catholic attention to the wisdom of the liberal Ortega y Gasset, but since Ortega was anti-clerical and since Spanish Catholics are presently thoroughly demoralized, Calvo Serrer also calls attention to the work of mainly American sociologists regarding the vitality of religion.

Calvo Serrer seems right in his major contentions, and one wishes that there were more Spanish intellectuals occupying the ground he has taken. That conceded, however, one might suggest that the author could study Jimmy Carter as well as De GauUe, deal with the Catholic Marxists in addition to the Catholic silent majority, consider that the charming Ortega y Gasset was a complete elitist, and reflect upon the fact that the eventual internal democratization of the PCE unleashed the old pro-Soviets.

Santiago Carrillo,Memoria de la transici6n: la vida politica espaaola y el PCE,

Grijalbo, Barcelona, 1983, 257 pp.

Calvo Serrer gets a kind word for his role in Junta Democrhtica from Santiago Carrillo, who also thinks highly of Adolfo Su~rez. The redoubtable Carrillo was 70 on January 15,1985. He resigned as secretary general of the PCE after the 1982 election, which reduced his party's deputies to the point where, under the rules of Spanish parliamentary order, they could not organize as a separate entity but had to form part of the grupo mixto. Carrillo, nevertheless, remains a deputy and indeed the spokesman for the grupo mixto.

The last year of CarriUd s secretaryship saw intraparty revolts in Catalonia, the Basque country, Madrid, and Andalusia. His memoir settles accounts with the rebels, with the Spanish socialists (PSOE), with his critics like Fernando Claudin, and with the Spanish right, whose members he considers unrecon- structed Francoites.

He tends to dismiss critics as petty bourgeois or izquierdista, which is petty bourgeois mixed with anarchist. He maintains that the PSOE has made


REVIEWS 339

a pact with Spanish conservatives (tacitly or even explicitly) to create biparty alternation in government, and that the PSOE leadership has substituted social- democratic policies for a true leftist program to purchase bourgeois tolerance.

Within the PCE, Carrillo regards himself as having been made a scapegoat in a fashion reminiscent of the Stalinist period. Some critics (notably Fernando Claudin) are alleged to have been inspired by personal animosity, incapable of understanding that the clandestine PCE could not be democratically run like the large, legal PCI, which Carrillo admires and repeatedly cites.

CarriUo, cast in the role of pre-revolutionary Lenin ready to compromise, gives an account of his cordial relations with Subxez during the transition.

However, granting that many of Carrillo's policy criticisms are defensible, it is notable that in his mind the other side adopts policy not on merit but for crass, tactical reasons, whereas he makes strategic changes for reasons ff not of principle, at least of broad, historic, statesmanlike perspective. Thus, the PSOE is regarded as having broken its promise to get Spain out of NATO (although in fact the socialists guaranteed a national referendum on the subject - which Carrillo does not mention); Carrillo, on the other hand, shifted his policy of tolerance toward American bases in Spain, because he had supposedly adopted it as a response to abstention from entrance to NATO, and dropped it only when others broke the equilibrium.

Facts do not always impede the flow of Carrillo's discourse. NATO is described as an organization which in peacetime serves as a barrier to anti- capitalism and as a market for American weapons. The rise of the U.S. dollar has not only benefited the U.S., but has been manipulated to punish leftists (i.e. the French)' and reward rightists (i.e. the British) - news that no doubt will be a welcome relief to Mrs. Thatcher.

On the more general side, Carrillo favors territorialization of the Party to integrate workers and intellectuals, although he toys with a Gramscian notion that every Party member is ipso facto an intellectual - this in low- key response to what he perceives as a problem caused by a greater number of intellectuals than workers in what is supposed to be a class oriented party. He, furthermore, favors some sort of regional European arrangement (euroizquierda) to offer a third way between Soviet and American imperialists, although he does affirm that since World War II, the socialist system has triumphed in 14 countries, which presumably endorses the East European regimes, not to mention Cambodia.

There is a tendency already visible in Eurocomunismo y el Estado to take

340 REVIEWS

as a firm option the pious wish to avoid the realities of alignment with one

of the two super,powers. If one may read into CarriUo's intentions as he does with others, this evasion leaves him free to deal with the reality of choice at

a later date without contradicting himself,

Carrillo briefly acknowledges the possibility that science rather than work may create value in the near future. This, nevertheless, is not a theoretically

strong book, but rather one filled with vigorous invective about heroic

Palestinians, imperialists, and social democrats. Pondered expression is not always Carrillo's strong suit; Stalin is termed a paranoid and common mur-

derer (vulgar asesino) - to which one can only respond that psychiatry is not a proper Marxist tool to analyze major historical phenomena, and that Stalin

was certainly not common.

Cole Blasier, The Giant's Rival: The U.S.S.R. and Latin America, University

of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, 1983, xvi and 214 pp.

Cole Blasier is a professor of political science at the University of Pittsburgh and a former U.S. Foreign Service Officer. The present work combines two of his areas of expertise - Latin America and Eastern Europe. Part of his research took place in 1979 at the Institute of Latin America in Moscow, which has a staff of 100 researchers and was founded in 1961. Its first direc-

tor, S. S. Mikhailov, became ambassador to Brazil in 1965 and was succeeded by V. V. Vol'skii. The Institute of Universal History in Moscow also has a group of Latin Americanists, who primarily study the period before 1945. Several other institutes, like those dedicated to the study of the U.S. or of the International Workers Movement touch on Latin America to a certain

extent. M. F. Kudachkin heads the Latin American section of the Central Committee of the CPSU and has oversight of interparty relations and Soviet poficy for the area. Blasier's account of his experience and of the strengths and weaknesses of Soviet research are interesting in their own right: he sees the Soviets as extremely cautious in problematic areas, as freer in ideologically neutral topics, and as able to mobilize several researchers to do exhaustive work on issues of interest.

According to Blasier, the Soviet interest in Latin America has been mainly economic. Indeed, the Soviets were quite happy to purchase grain from Videla's Argentina and were prepared to sell the Videla government arms, as they had done extensively for General Velasco's government in Peru. On the whole, the Soviets have a trade deficit with most of the area countries, the


REVIEWS 341

egregious exception being Cuba, which the Soviets subsidize via interest

deferred credits, purchases at prices well above the world market, and sales

of oil at artificially low prices. The Soviet approach to the establishment of economic relations falls into

a predictable pattern of general government-to-government framework agreement, followed by specific accords on purchases and sales. The Soviets like

to begin their work in a new country with an industrial exhibit and have a certain fondness for embarking early on major construction projects (e.g., hydroelectric plants) as showpieces.

Cuba, while valuable to the Soviet Union as an outpost, port, and source of surrogate troops, is also not only an economic, but a strategic fiability, which would be difficult to defend. In general, Blasier depicts cautious Soviet comportment in a sphere of vital U.S. interest, with local communist parties preferring peaceful means and only joining revolutions already started. Blasier regards the present generation of Soviets (as opposed to the original represen-

tatives of the International) as too bureaucratic to be effective revolutionaries, and without even much leeway to bid on economic projects, which are their

primary concern in the area. The early Cuban adventures in exporting revolution were not, according to Blasier, altogether pleasing to the Soviets.

Although Alexandra Kollontai was ambassador to Mexico for a time in the 1920s the Soviets have had uninterrupted diplomatic relations with Mexico,

Argentina, and Uruguay only since World War I1, and with the majority of countries in the area only since 1970 or after.

Although Blasier regards the prevention of the establishment of Soviet military bases in the western hemisphere as a proper and important aim

of American policy, otherwise he recommends nonqnterference in Latin

America. He does not undertake the study of individual Communist Parties, although he points out that they are small, weak, and thus dependent on the U.S.S.R., the exception with a certain personality of its own again being Cuba.

The account of Soviet economic activities in Latin America is readable and informative. It does seem to me, however, that a picture of a purely

pragmatic and rather innocuous Soviet economic activity is created partly by the methodological concentration on economic statistics and exclusion from consideration of ideological activity and material.

Fitchburg State College, Fitchburg, MA 01420, U.S.A.

JAMES G. COLBERT

342 R EV IEW S

Leonardo Salamini, The Sociology o f Political Praxis: An Introduction to

Gramsci's Theory, Boston, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1981, x + 258 pp., with an index. N.P.

There are three main orientations in the study of Antonio Gramsci's life and thought. The first and oldest one is the Marxist viewpoint which examines him from the point of view of the history of the Italian Communist Party and the theory of Marxist revolution in Western democracies; to many who have second-hand acquaintance with Gramsci, and even to some who do more or less original research on him, this orientation exhausts the field. However, at least since Hugues Portelli's Gramsci et la question religieuse (1974), and certainly now that there are four or more related monographs in Italian published in 1975-83, Gramsci is being studied also from the point of view of the analysis and critique of religion; and it should be noted that this religious orientation here is additional to and independent of the indirect interest deriving from the religious dimension of Marxism itself. Gramsci was deeply and seriously concerned with the critique of Catholicism and with founding a new, lay, non-theistic religion. The third and most recent orientation empha- sizes Gramsci's thought in the Prison Notebooks and views him as a social scientist, struggling to come to grips with such questions as the nature of politics, revolution, the state, parties, intellectuals, etc. The greatest merit of Salamini's work is to be the first book in English to follow this third approach.

To be sure, the book has also elements of the Marxist orientation, insofar as the author also discusses such topics as Gramsci's interpretation of Marxism as an autonomous and independent world view, the specific features of Gramsci's sociology that make it Marxist, and the connection between Marx- ism and the concept of hegemony. However, there is no contradiction here since the comparison and contrast between Gramsci's views and those of Marx, Engels, and other Marxists (such as Bukharin, Lenin, and Althusser) is presented by the author in the same spirit in which he presents the comparison and contrast between Gramsci and such sociologists as Emile Durk- heim, Vilfredo Pareto, Max Weber, and Robert Michels. Besides these explicit discussions, there are also occasionally indirect comparisons and contrasts, as when the author sketches criticism of such sociological approaches as ethnomethodology, symbolic interactionism, and "critical sociology" from a Gramscian point of view.


REVIEWS 343

Salamini's account of Gramsci's sociology of political praxis has much

plausibility. Methodologically, Gramsci's sociology is interpreted as historicist, humanist, and anti-positivist, and yet "scientific". Substantively, the focus of his theory is the interaction of intellectuals and popular masses and the dynamics of history. The book also contains accounts of Gramsci's ("sociological") theory of science, of language, and of art. Thus we see that another merit of Salamini's book is the comprehensiveness of its treatment of the Prison Notebooks.

However, this particular quality generates one of the book's weaknesses, for the wide range of topics is somewhat disorienting to the reader, much like Gramsci's own work. I realize, of course,that the systematization of Gramsci's notes is both extremely difficult and potentially unhistorical, and so this is a minor fault at worst. Similarly one might say that we are given very little evaluation of Gramsci's views, but that this limitation is after all preferable to advancing irrelevant, unfair, or unjustified criticism. Finally, one might object that one of the book's lacunae is the fact that it lacks any comparison and contrast of Gramsci with the political and sociological theories of Gaetano Mosca, which are after all much more frequently discussed in the Notebooks

than those of the above-mentioned sociologists; but such an objection would be an expression of the dubious wish that the present work should have anticipated results established by the present reviewer.

Thus the book may be recommended for the novelty of its social-scientific orientation, the comprehensiveness of its content, and the relative familiarity of its comparisons.

Department o f Philosophy,

University o f Nevada - Las Vegas,

Las Vegas, N V 85154,

U.S.A.

MAURICE A. FINOCCHIARO

Barry Smart, Foucault, Marxism and Critique, London, Boston, Melbourne, and Henley, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1983, x and 144 pages.

Barry Smart views his work as a commentary on Foucault, but a commentary which is within a context "of a discussion of the critical problems of Marxism and associated debates and responses . . . " (p. 3). The first three of the six


344 R EV IEW S

chapters in Foucault, Marxism and Critique are given over to a discussion of the grounds for the present crisis of Marxism and to the manner in which certain thinkers have responded to existing socialist societies. The goal is to

show the extent to which Marxism has failed as an adequate approach to

understanding and transforming the modern world, through a compilation of

various contemporary approaches to critical issues in Marxism. The second

half of the book seeks to show F0ucault's relevance to several of the major concerns addressed in the first half. Foucault, Marxism and Critique often

reads as if the author wished to summarize as many salient positions as possible within the confines of a short work. I will not attempt to outdo the author here by running through a large number of these positions in an even shorter space; I will attempt to outline the principal concerns of the various chapters.

The first chapter, 'On the Limits and Limitations of Marxism', concen- trates on "the contemporary diagnosis of a 'crisis of Marxism' " (p. 4). We are told that the reality of (so-called) socialist societies has led to a refreshing re-evaluation of these societies and of Marxism in general. Many leftist the-

orists have come to realize that certain questions in the Marxist tradition "have defied resolution" (p. 29). What sort of enigmas does Smart have in

mind? One case is the question of the epistemological status of Marxism,

which has not been resolved, though much ink has been spilt over it. Smart tells us that,

the various associated forms of analysis have not only failed to resolve this [epistemological] question but, in addition, they have been identified as the principal source from which damaging analyses of the social process, and thereby of politics and political practice, have been generated (pp. 29-30).

An example of just such a damaging approach is the viewing of Marxism as a

science, for this "may be associated with the production of a form of knowledge which goes hand in hand with the development of systems of technical control and bureaucratically organized forms of administration" (p. 30). Also

considered in this chapter is the issue of the relation between "economic determination and the relative autonomy of the superstructures" (p. 30). The failure to understand the precise mechanism linking them has led to the lack of a "theory of the political level" (p. 30).

Chapter Two, 'Marxism, Theory and Politics', proceeds to "focus on the political dimension of the crisis of Marxism" (p. 32). The fact that there has

REVIEWS 345

been a "general absence of any systematic theorising of politics and power in classical Marxism is reflected within contemporary Marxist thought in a preoccupation with the problem of the state" (p. 35). This is not to say that there have not been analyses of politics and power in Marxism. It is to say that generally these have attempted "to develop an analysis of the state in Western capitalist societies. The state has thus been identified as the focus of political power and in consequence other forms of politics and power have been neglected" (p. 35). This chapter discusses different positions on the relation between the capitalist mode of production and the "state as a political form" (p. 35). Smart also takes up the concept of the Party and the failure of Marxism to offer a substantial account both of the transition to socialism and of socialism itself.

Chapter Three, 'Reaction, Revision and Criticism', addresses "responses to the question of the relationship between Marxist theory and analysis and

the reality of the socialist societies emanating from the following sources: (i) Soviet and Eastern European dissidents (ii) Eurocommunism (iii) The 'new

philosophers' " (p. 53). Smart spends a fair amount of space discussing reac- tions to the Gulag in this chapter.

Chapter Four, 'Genealogy, Critique and the Analysis of Power', is in many respects the core of the book, for here Smart sets forth those insights of Foucault that he believes can be of assistance in elucidating forms of power. His reading of Foucault "has been structured to a great extent by an interest in the possible implications of his analyses for the key theoretical and political problems at the heart of Marxism" (p. 73). Smart's discussion covers several of the basic themes, concerns, and concepts of Foucault's work, e.g.,

genealogy (descent and emergence), the scientificity of Marxism, power- knowledge, methodological rules, juridical-political theory of sovereignty, power relations and sociality. He warns us that he" neither wants simply to subordinate Foucault to historical materialism, nor to celebrate uncritically his work "as somehow constituting a clearly defined and systematic alterna- tive to Marxist theory and politics" (p. 73). As a matter of fact, Smart tells us that Foucault does not want us to view his contributions as aspects or parts of a system. "However, to acknowledge that Foucault's works do not constitute a system is not synonymous with a denial of their coherence" (p. 73).

In Chapter Five, 'Discipline and Social Regulation', Smart takes up the "question of discipline as a general formula of domination, a n d . . , the event

346 REVIEWS

described by Foucault as the emergence of a disciplinary society" (p. 109).

Chapter Six, 'Critical Analyses of Rationality', seeks to clarify Foucault 's

approach by addressing his "critical concern with the question of the relation-

ship between forms of rationality and forms of power" (p. 123), in light of

Weber's and the Frankfurt School's concern with "the effects of particular

forms of rationality" (p. 123). He notes that Foucault 's genealogical analysis

should be understood as a form of critique. And, though there are similarities

between Foucault 's use of critique and the use of it by the Marxist tradition,

there are differences centered on the nature of reason.

The thrust of Foucault's work is not to subvert one notion of rationality, as capitalistic, instrumental, and technical, with another, 'higher' form which is socialist, intrinsically emancipatory, and enlightening, but to analyse rationalities, in particular how relations of power are rationalized (p. 137).

I will refrain from providing my own summary of the details of Smart's

discussion and summary of certain themes of Foucault. I will instead make a

few general comments. Smart's book is densely packed with names and ideas

of contemporary leftist thought. He has studied much of the literature. Yet,

the very strength of Smart's book - that is, in supplying information - leads

to a weakness. In reading the book I often felt as if I were sitting in a movie

theater watching coming attractions, without ever getting to see the movie

itself. In other words, the information or survey format lent itself to a degree

of unsatisfied curiosity. However, unsatisfied desire was not my only response

to discussions in the book, for I found many reasonably self-contained and

worthwhile. Nevertheless, I wish the book were not so given to the survey

form in important places. Perhaps this criticism is not entirely fair, since I am

asking Smart to have written a book he may not have wished to write.

There are also some ,lapses in the pedagogical sphere. In a few instances

the reader's comprehension would have been facilitated if Smart simply had rearranged passages or added a bit more commentary. A more general way of

stating this would be to say that the didactic thrust of the work at times

becomes frustrated by what might be termed an insider's approach to the

topic under consideration.

As to Smart's basic goal - showing the value of Foucault for assisting in

overcoming problems of Marxism - I am moved to look further into Foucault after reading this book, but I am not convinced that Foucault 's work is the answer or proper avenue of approach to many of the problems discussed in

REVIEWS 347

the first half of the book. Then again, I cannot believe Smart intended or thought a book of this nature, as informative as it may be as a survey, could (or should) convince its readers to do anything more than to examine further the questions and approaches it addresses.

University o f Houston, Clear Lake, Houston, TX 77058, U.S.A.

MITCHELL ABOULAFIA

Habermas: Critical Debates, edited by John B. Thompson and David Held. Cambridge, The MIT Press, 1982. Pp. 324. $30.00 (cloth); $12.50 (paper).

The spiralling secondary literature on the Frankfurt School and Jiirgen Habermas in particular may be divided into four headings. First, there are general historical accounts of the group's development, such as that found in Martin Jay's The Dialectical Imagination (Boston, Little, Brown and Co., 1973). Second, we find conceptual studies of key themes, the best example of which is Raymond Geuss' The Idea of a Critical Theory (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1981). Third, detailed exegetical studies of a single Frankfurt theorist's work, e.g. Thomas McCarthy's The Critical Theory of Jfirgen Habermas (Cambridge, the MIT Press, 1982). And fourth, there exist anthologies which, simply because they are multi-authored texts, are harder to typify. The anthology under review is the best representative of this fourth group, and while the essays are all primarily conceptual rather than historical, they are written from a variety of philosophical and disciplinary perspectives. (Quite appropriate for an anthology on Habermas.) Not quite a Festschrift (the contributors are not students of Habermas, and his career is certainly not over yet), the structure of the book follows roughly Paul Arthur Schilpp's idea behind the influential Library of Living Philoso- phers series insofar as it offers essays on different aspects of Habermas' work by leading scholars, a 'Reply to my Critics' written by Habermas himself, and a selective bibliography of works by and about Habermas.

There are eleven essays in all (excluding Habermas' reply), and each appears here in print for the firs{ time. The editors have tried to insure an overall unity of format in asking each contributor to probe a particular Habermasian


348 REVIEWS

theme by presenting first an exposition and then a critique, but the variety of concerns and styles represented is nevertheless great. Very briefly, the run- down of the contributions is as follows: (1) Agnes Heller, in 'Habermas and Marxism', focuses on two revisionist aspects of critical theory - the rejection of the proletariat as the addressee of theory, and the downplaying of the role of production in the theory of social change. In each case, she argues that Habermas' substitutions are naively rationalistic. (2) Rtidiger Bubner, in 'Habermas' Concept of Critical Theory', explores ambiguities in the German term Kritik, ambiguities which, he feels, continue to haunt Habermas' work and which are partially responsible for critical theory's failure to ground itself in an ideology-free manner by appealing to the ideal speech situation. (3) Thomas McCarthy, in 'Rationality and Relativism: Habermas' 'Overcoming' of Hermeneutics', urges Habermas to be more cautious in adopting Piaget- Kohlberg developmental claims for the purposes of critical theory. (4) Hen- ning Ottmann explores some themes from Knowledge and Human Interests in his essay, 'Cognitive Interests and Self-Reflection', focussing in particular on what he regards as the unstable status of "interests". (5) Mary Hesse relates Habermas' epistemological views to post-Kuhnian debates in the philosophy of science, critiquing his theories of meaning and truth along the way. (6) Co-editor John B. Thompson explores and critiques one of the central themes in Habermas' philosophy of language in his contribution, 'Universal Prag- matics'. (7) Steven Lukes, in 'Of Gods and Demons: Habermas and Practical Reason', questions (as he has done elsewhere in the case of RaMs' work) Habermas' claim to have found a neutral, presuppositionless vantage point for the critical analysis of the social world. (8) Anthony Giddens, somewhat like Heller, looks at two aspects of Habermas' reconstruction of Marxism in 'Labour and Interaction'. (9) Habermas' theory of social evolution is analyzed by Michael Schmid, with a focus on the concepts of the "organisation principle" and "developmental logic". (10) Co-editor David Held, in 'Crisis Tendencies, Legitimation, and the State', examines Habermas' analysis of advanced capitalist societies. (11) Lastly, Andrew Arato questions the relevance of Habermasian theory for the East European socialist states in 'Critical Sociology and Authoritarian State Socialism'.

The quality of the contributions is uniformly high, and each is marked by a sympathetic-but-critical attitude. However, two structural shortcomings of the text which detract from the overall usefulness of the essays should be noted. Many of the contributors quote heavily from Habermas' writings, yet

REVIEWS 349

all of the notes are stuck at the very end of the volume. The careful reader

who wishes to consult the original contexts of the quotations is thus left hopping back and forth from each essay to the rear of the book. Since

Habermas' books are referred to by initials anyway (KHI, TRS, etc.), a better arrangement would have been to incorporate these notes within the body of each essay. (Or, failing that, at least at the bottom of each page.) Secondly, while the concerns of the essays do occasionally converge on certain crucial Habermasian themes (the ideal speech situation, his relationship to classical Marxism, his theory of truth, etc.), the anthology lacks an index. As a result,

the reader who wishes to compare, say, Lukes' assessment of the ideal speech situation with Bubner's, is forced first to remember and then comb through each paragraph on his own. (It should also be noted - as often happens in

anthologies - that for the most part the contributors do not "speak to each other". They are not usually aware of the details of each others' positions.

This detracts from the interdisciplinary intent of the volume.) Finally, while the editors certainly bear no responsibility here, the publication date of the

anthology does predate Habermas' most recent work, The Theory of Com- municative Action, volume I of which was translated by McCarthy and

published by Beacon Press in 1983. Habermas' reply runs some sixty-four pages, and is, as one would hope, the

longest piece in the book. As the editors state, it does represent a "major re- statement and clarification" of his views. What immediately struck this reader

about the reply was its tone of intellectual humility and its candid confession regarding the unfinished state of many of the author's ideas. While these qual- ities are much appreciated (and sadly missing in most philosophers' writings), they also have an exasperating dimension. There is a slipperiness to Habermas' prose which is partially an inheritance from German idealism, but which also seems to stem from the "forever programmatic" tone of his work. One re- sounding criticism made by the commentators is that Habermas frequently fails to touch earth with his thoughts. Unfortunately, he does not seem to meet his critics head-on here, preferring instead to carve out yet more distinctions.

In conclusion, this anthology is a welcome and much needed addition to the secondary literature on Habermas. Buti t is not for everybody. The Haber- mas novice would be better off with the volumes mentioned at the beginning

of the review. However, for the serious scholar of Habermas, who has studied his major works, formed opinions regarding them, and who wishes to test some of these opinions against the "experts" - the book is a must.

350 REVIEWS

Anthony Giddens and David Held (eds.), Classes, Power, and Conflict." Classi- cal and Contemporary Debates. Berkeley, University of California Press, 1982. Pp. x + 646. $42.50 (cloth), $14.95 (paper).

Class analysis has weathered a number of intellectual storms over the years, and today it is enjoying a revival of interest. While no one could deny that there has been a clear shift of focus from social status to economic criteria in all modern studies of class, an obvious rift has nevertheless long existed between Weber-inspired stratificationists and those who seek to stay closer to Marx's economic theory of class. The former favor a multidimensional approach which tries to balance off a variety of allegedly independent factors (education, occupation, religion, wealth, etc.) against one another; the latter look primarily at the economic sphere in understanding class. The stratificationists held sway in the United States for many years, the most "ornery" among them claiming that classes could not even be said to exist in the land of opportunity. Meanwhile, in Europe, where Marx was taken more seriously, twentieth-century industrial society produced some embarrassing questions of its own for class theorists: where to put the technical and managerial cadres of the capitalist enterprise, who sell their labor power and often lack capital, but who do not quite seem proletarian either? How best to grasp the staying power of the state in an age of democracy, when the simplistic "tool of the ruling class" formula seems out of touch with the data? More recently, two more embarrassing questions have surfaced from civil rights struggles involving race and gender: Has the preoccupation with property blinded class theorists to the fundamental role of ethnicity in social stratification? How to account for the peculiar forms of humiliation and degradation all women are subjected to irrespective of class situation? One also detects irony in this clash between class analyses and race and gender concerns regarding inequality, for the practical motivation behind modem class theory stems largely from the struggle for human rights and economic well-being. Somewhere along the way, white male theorists became desensitized by their own conceptual predilections.

These and other topics are explored in the mammoth anthology under review, which aims "to provide a comprehensive introduction to current debates in class analysis". The book is composed chiefly of thirty readings culled from academic journals and books, and is divided thematically into eight sections. Section I, 'Classical Views', contains well-known selections


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from Marx, Weber, and (a less predictable choice) Lenin. Section II, 'Con- temporary Theories of Class and Conflict', presents a selective look at recent debates about class, and includes essays by Nicos Poulantzas, Erik Olin Wright, R. W. Connell, Harry Braverman, Anthony Giddens, and Frank Parkin. In Section III, contributors Maurice Zeitlin, G6ran Therborn, Claus Offe and Volker Ronge, and Boris Frankel explore issues concerning ownership and control ("managerialism") and the state. 'Technology, Conflict, and the Labour Market', the fourth section, includes contributions by Stephen A. Marglin, E. P. Thompson, David Stark, and Jill Rubery. The focus here is on structural changes in the workplace imposed by the rise of capitalism. Section V, 'Class Consciousness and Ideology', looks at belief systems of classes, with essays by David Lockwood, Michael Mann, and Nicholas Aber- crombie and Bryan S. Turner. Authors Elizabeth Garnsey, Heidi Hartmann, and Jane Humphries contribute pieces to the sixth section, 'Capitalism, Gender and Patriarchy' (surprisingly short, given the recent flood of material in this area), while Section VII, 'Class, Race and the City', offers readings by Robert Blauner, Erik Olin Wright, and David Harvey. Finally, in Section VIII, 'Classes in Eastern Europe', authors Frank Parkin, Alec Nove, Murray Yano- witch, and Elizabeth Garnsey examine the intriguing issue of class structure in the Soviet Union.

The editors have included very helpful descriptive introductions at the beginning of each section, along with 'Selective Further Reading' bibliographies at the end.. Both of these features increase the usefulness of the reader greatly, particularly for those who are not professional sociologists or economists. The paperback version of the text brings it within the student's price range, and the cross-disciplinary scope of selections insures a wide classroom readership. On the negative side, the anthology lacks an index.

The back cover of the book contains an interesting prediction: " . . . can be expected to become the standard text for courses in sociology and political science". Here I must express skepticism. The literature in class and stratification theory is notoriously unruly, and shows few signs of ever becoming a "normal science" with an agreed upon research program and a shared conceptual scheme. A brief comparision of the present anthology with "the standard text" of a generation ago - Bendix and Lipset's Class, Status, and Power (2nd ed, 1966; The Free Press, New York) reveals the transience and paro- chialism of many of social science's judgments in this area. The only point of agreement between these two anthologies lies in their inclusion of brief

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excerpts from Marx and Weber. The strong ideological component in class

and stratification work presents an additional problem. The Marxist flavor of many of the selections from Giddens and Held is a welcome corrective to the anti-Marxist tone of earlier American stratificationism anthologies, and it

also testifies to the intellectual richness and conceptual sophistication of

contemporary Marxist theory. At the same time, those seeking "balance" will have their doubts as to whether this text should stand alone. Furthermore,

students who are not already versed in the development of contemporary Marxism may have trouble following the ins and outs of some of the contributors' high-level debates. (There are critiques of Althusser, for instance,

but no Althusser.) Nevertheless, while the desire to produce "the standard text" in class theory appears to be a publisher's pipe dream, Classes, Power, and Conflict is definitely an important resource guide to a vibrant but conten- tious area of social science research.

University o f Southern Maine, Portland, ME 04103, U.S.A.

R.B. LOUDEN

R. N. Berki, Insight and Vision: The Problem of Communism in Marx's Thought, London and Melbourne, J. M, Dent and Sons, Ltd., 1983, x +

208 pp.

Insight and Vision is a worthwhile book, despite the author's seeming efforts to alienate the reader.

From his opening page Berki challenges our credulity with extravagant claims for the theme of communism in Marx's writings. It is, he says, "the

most important thing about Marx", "the most central and crucial concept in his entire literary output", even "the only thing that is important about

Marx's thought" (p. 1). To claim that nothing is important in Marx but a single concept, however central, suggests at the outset a kind of tunnel vision

that seems unlikely to produce a helpful interpretation of Marx's thought. Having fastened on a single concept, Berki further narrows his focus (and

deepens our suspicions) by approaching Marx's writings with a single thesis, which is wearyingly repeated throughout the book - namely, that all his life Marx sought, ultimately unsuccessfully, just one goal: to reconcile his vision


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of communism as a sublime moral ideal with his insight into (intellectual understanding of) the actual social dynamics of its coming. Accordingly Marx's works are examined from the point of view of determining which of

these two supposedly contrasting elements of his concept of communism predominates at which stages of his career, and just how the two are related, if at all. Why it is necessary to contrast the two so relentlessly is never con- vincingly shown, but some of the unfortunate consequences of doing so are readily apparent. For example, instead of finding in Marx's O'vil War in France a balanced picture of the Paris Commune, in which a generally favor- able appraisal is qualified by an acknowledgement of some negative features, Berki fmds two pictures of the Commune, at odds with each other: a favor- able ("visionary") picture (here he isolates Marx's positive comments concerning the Commune), and an unfavorable ("insightful") picture (here he catalogues only the complaints). To Berki this illustrates Marx's dualism, but why should it not indicate his judiciousness?

A third off-putting feature of the book is Berki's verbose and florid style. Nouns are burdened with strings of adjectives: Marx's insight is "maturing, sobering, cooling" (p. 33); the worker is "hard, wizened, bitter, determined, perspiring" (p. 168) - that is, when he is not "immoral, bestial, dull and deformed" (p. 49). Descriptions are inflated to heroic proportions: Marx does not simply attain his complete vision of communism, he reaches "the full extent and height and magnificence of his vision of communism, the infinite horizon which cannot be stretched any further or superseded in thought and understanding" (p. 58). Sentences roll on, clause after excessive clause, until one winces at another comma and longs for the temporary relief of a full

stop. For all these obstacles, however, the reader who refuses to give up will be

rewarded with an informed and lively analysis of Marx's writings from the standpoint of the theme of communism - an analysis that must grudgingly be admitted to have several distinct virtues.

For one thing, Berki takes a straightforward chronological approach to Marx's complex intellectual career, examining his output in discrete stages, and that is surely the only productive way to deal with it. Chapter II, 'Full Vision', is devoted to the earliest writings, especially the Economic-Philosoph- ical Manuscripts of 1844; Chapter III, 'Strengthening Insight', deals with works of the later 1840s (The Holy Family, The German Ideology, Tile Poverty o f Philosophy); Chapter IV, 'Fusion' focusses on the Grundrisse;

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and Chapter V, 'Receding Vision', examines later works (Capital, The Civil War in France, Critique of the Gotha Program). The line Berki argues should be evident from the chapter titles: having first formulated communism as a sublime ideal ("full vision"), Marx sought to understand it as an actual pro- duct of history ("strengthening insight"); the two impulses came together most fruitfully in the Grundrisse ("fusion"), which must therefore be considered the central work of Marx's career, but subsequently his maturing insight overpowered his vision ("receding vision"), and a final synthesis eluded him.

A second virtue of the book is its exhaustiveness. Given the strength of his conviction that communism is the key to Marx's thought, Berki leaves no page unturned in search of relevant remarks on the subject. Nothing significant that Marx says about communism is missing (though regrettably there is no subject index to help us locate all these items again if we wish to use them).

A final and most welcome virtue of Berki's treatment is that it exhibits no evident pro- or anti-Marxist bias. Although his conclusion is that Marx's attempted synthesis of vision and insight fails and that Marxian communism represents no coherent union of historical reality with moral ideal, that result is consistent with a fair and judicious estimate of the pluses and minuses of the doctrine.

In his conclusion, archly entitled 'Heaven and Hellas', Berki makes one last effort to disaffect the reader by assaying sweeping parallels between the tensions in Marx's views, on the one hand, and the differences between the Judaeo-Christian and Hellenic traditions, on the other. Even these giddying flights are redeemed, however, by some of the more pedestrian but suggestive points that Berki makes along the way. He observes, for example, that what Marx calls the "first phase" of communism in the Critique of the GothaPro- gram (the phase now glorified by Soviet Marxists as the "socialism" achieved in the U.S.S.R.) corresponds exactly to what he called "crude communism" in the 1844 manuscripts, and that Marx regarded it then as a moral regression, worse than capitalism. Nuggets like that repay a lot of tedious mining.

The Ohio State University, Department of Philosophy, Columbus, OH 43210, U.S.A.

JAMES P. SCANLAN

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