ANTON DONOSO

S T A L I N I S M IN M A R X I S T P H I L O S O P H Y *

Although much has been written about Stalinism as practical politics in Communism, very little has been devoted to its contribution to, and influence on, the philosophy of Marxism. It will be the attempt of this paper to examine this neglected area. The treatment, followed by critical observations, will be divided into two parts: an examination of Stalin's contribution to Marxism as seen in four of his works, two minor and two major, and a survey of his current influence, or lack of it, as seen in selected philosophical works from the Soviet Union, East Europe, and the People's Republic of China. It will be seen that Stalin's two major contributions to Marxism as philosophy are his emphasis on the role of ideas in changing a society, the basis for revolution from above, and his contention that a form of consciousness, language for example, can belong neither to the base nor to the superstructure but to society as a whole. Even when these contributions are still retained by Marxist philosophers there is no acknowledgement of their source.

Prior to 1924, and the death of Lenin, Stalin had written very little. Only his articles on Anarchism or Socialism? of 1906-07, published in Georgian Bolshevik newspapers, had even a remote significance for philosophy. Besides, it was written in the Georgian language, which neither Lenin nor his leading associates could read. In combating the anarchists Stalin contributed to the 'diffusion of dialectical and historical materialism in his native Georgia, but the series is very much the work of a novice in Marxism, as Stalin later acknowledged. When Lenin's study on Materialism and Empirio-Criticism appeared two years later (1909), Stalin characterized Lenin's fight against Machism as a "tempest in a glass of water"} Lenin had attempted to destroy the efforts of Marxist philosophical revisionism to combine the epistemology of Ernst Mach (1836-1916) with the social theory of Marx. Mach's aim was to create an epistemology which preserves all the advantages of empiricism without any
Studies in Soviet Thought 19 (1979) 113-141. 0039-3797/79/0192-0113 $02.90 Copyright 1979 by D. Reidel Publishing Co., Dordreeht, Holland, and Boston, U.S.A.

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ontological implications, be they idealistic or materialistic. For Lenin the ontology of Marxian social philosophy must be materialism. The attempt to remain neutral in ontology degenerates into idealism. That a theory of knowledge and of matter can be developed from the principles of Marxism was Lenin's point. In certain letters Stalin acknowledged that Lenin's criticism of Mach was a "unique summary of its kind of the theses of the philosophy (epistemology) of Marxism", but he thought that the book also contained 'certain errors'. Stalin even expressed a sympathy for Bogdanov's attack against Lenin. His position, at that time, was that of an eclectic, aiming at the combination of the 'positive aspects' of Machism with dialectical materialism, a position that Lenin declared revisionistic. Stalin's debut as a theoretical writer actually came in 1913 when he contributed an article on 'The National Question and Social Democracy', later to be retitled 'Marxism and the National Question'. He had been given a leave of absence as editor of Pravda to devote himself to theoretical matters so as to be able to articulate his experiences in the Caucasus on the problem of nationalities. The article was printed a year later as a booklet and contributed to Stalin's standing as a Bolshevik expert on nationalities. However, while Lenin lived, Stalin played a very limited role in high-level discussions on theory within the Party, being outshone by Lenin himself, Trotsky, Zinoviev and Bukharin, among others. Three months after Lenin's demise, a series of lectures was delivered by Stalin at Moscow's Sverdlov University in an effort to recruit new members to the Communist Party as a memorial to Lenin. The lectures, published as Foundations of Leninism, were the extent of Stalin's participation in the philosophic activities of the times. The study constitutes Stalin's first work on philosophy that I shall consider. In this minor work he devoted his time to discussing only those new points that Lenin contributed to the 'general treasury of Marxism'. Leninism, as Stalin viewed it, is more than just an application of Marxism to the peculiar conditions of Russia; it is an international phenomenon. It is more than just a revival of the revolutionary elements in the early writings of Marx; it is Marxism developed under the new conditions of imperialism. In the last analysis Leninism, in the words of Stalin, is: the theory and tactics of the dictatorship of the proletariat ... Marx and Engels pursued their activities in the pre-revolutionary period..., when developed imperialism did not yet exist, in the period of the proletarians' preparation for a revolution, in the period when the proletarian revolution was not yet a direct, practical inevitability. Lenin,
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the disciple of Marx and Engels, pursued his activities in the period of the unfolding proletarian revolution, when the proletarian revolution had already triumphed in one country, had smashed bourgeois democracy and had ushered in the era of proletarian democracy, the era of the Soviets.2 According to Stalin, Lenin's method is pervaded from beginning to end with the critical and revolutionary spirit that Marx himself used. "But Stalin continued - it would be wrong to suppose that Lenin's method is merely the restoration of the method of M a r x . . . ; it is also the concretization and further d e v e l o p m e n t . . , of Marx (FL 27)". Armed with this method "the fundamental problem of Leninism" can be tackled, namely the realization of the conditions under which the dictatorship of the proletariat can be achieved and consolidated. As such, "Leninism is a school of theory and practice which trains a special type of Party and state worker, creates a special Leninist style in work (FL 125)". The characteristic features, the peculiarities, of this style are two: (1) the Russian revolutionary sweep and (2) American efficiency. The Russian revolutionary sweep is an antidote to inertness, routine, conservatism, mental stagnation and slavish submission to ancestral traditions. The Russian revolutionary sweep is the fife-giving force which stimulates thought, impels things forward, breaks with the past and opens up perspectives. Without it no progress is possible (FL 125). If only this revolutionary sweep is present, revolutionary action degenerates into 'Communist vanity' in which a man imagines, in the words of Lenin, " . . . that he can solve all his problems by issuing Communist decrees (FL 126)". In other words, the Russian revolutionary sweep by itself is hollow and pompous phrase-mongering. What is needed to prevent the one-sided degeneration is plain everyday work. This Stalin likens to 'American efficiency' and sees it as an antidote to fantastic (far.fetched) revolutionary improvisation. American efficiency - Stalin says - is that indomitable force which neither knows nor recognizes obstacles; which with its business-like perseverance brushes aside all obstacles; which continues at a task once started until it is finished, even if it is a minor task; and without which serious constructive work is inconceivable (FL 125). If only American efficiency is present, revolutionary action degenerates into narrow and unprincipled commercialism. Such degenerate revolutionaries " . . . 'function' very 'energetically', but without vision, without knowing 'what it is all about' . . . " , and therefore stray from the path of revolutionary

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activity. This 'narrow-minded practicality' and 'brainless commercialism', as Lenin refered to this 'disease', should be contrasted with vital revolutionary work and the necessity of having a revolutionary perspective in all our daily activities. In other words, American efficiency by itself is action without theory, even as the Russian revolutionary sweep is theory without action. The combination of the Russian revolutionary sweep with American efficiency is the essence of Leninism in Party and state work. This combination alone produces the finished type Leninist worker, the style of Leninisrn in work (FL 127). Although the essay by Stalin 'On Questions of Leninism', written in 1926, is sometimes mentioned as a philosophic work, it is more political than philosophic - a discourse on theory written after Stalin's victory against various opponents in the ruling circles of Leningrad. Its reputation as a work on philosophy comes solely from the fact that it was included along with the more philosophic Foundations o f Leninism in an anthology entitled Problems ofLeninism, the basic reference work on Stalinism. It was to be four years before Stalin again became involved in philosophical issues. In 1929 he stepped into the dispute concerning the interpretations of dialectical materialism, complaining in a speech that theoreticians did not keep pace with the practical developments of Marxism in the Soviet Union and were dragging their feet (minds?) in the two-front battle against right and left deviationism. By 1931 he was instrumental in having these positions condemned by the Central Committee, for by then he had consolidated his control, which double condemnation marks a decisive turning point in the history of philosophy in the Soviet Union. In the words of Gustav Wetter: Whereas previously there had at least been a continuing opposition between rival tendencies within Soviet philosophy, and a resultant conflict of schools and opinions, with discussion and controversy, all such contention is from this time forward abolished . . . . 3 Philosophy's course flowed through the narrow channel of official positions, while controversy was directed outward against the class enemy of 'bourgeois' ideology and inward against deviationists. Philosophic activity, not surprisingly, declined more and more. What did occur was associated with the name of Stalin, giving the impression that he was the only productive philosopher in the Soviet Union. With the birthday message on December 21, 1929 in Pravda honoring Stalin, he ceased to be praised as a loyal disciple of Marxism-Leninism and was called "the true continuator of the cause of Marx and L e n i n . . . the staunch fighter for the purity

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of Marxism-Leninism...-.4 This change eventually showed itself as MarxismLeninism-Stalinism. In a book on dialectical materialism that appeared in 1933, the Soviet philosopher Mitin, Stalin's prot~g6, underlines the new attitude toward Stalin's role in Soviet philosophy with these words: The further advancement of Marxist-Leninist theory in every department, including that of the philosophy of Marxism, is associated with the name of Comrade Stalin. In all Comrade Stalin's practical achievements, and in all his writings, there is set forth the whole experience of the world-wide struggle of the proletariat, the whole rich storehouse of Marxist-Leninist theory, s The most important philosophical work to appear in the Soviet Union between the new Soviet Constitution of 1936 - which was marked by a general political and social housecleaning and criticised philosophy as being 'out of date', too abstract, too scholastic in its presentation, too polluted with quotations from such deviationists as Trotsky - mad the end of the Second World War, was the short essay by Stalin 'On Dialectical and Historical Materialism'. It was his major contribution to philosophy, appearing in 1938 as section two, chapter four of The History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolshevik), Short Course. Although the history was listed as having been edited by a Commission of the Central Committee headed by Stalin, the entire work was attributed to his personal authorship by 1948. No doubt he supervised the volume, if only to ensure that his role in the Bolshevik movement and revolution was worthy of his being the successor of Lenin. Soviet philosophical circles greeted the history as an epoch-making event, as having raised dialectical and historical materialism "to a new and higher level" and as being "one of the pinnacles of Marxist-Leninist philosophical thought". 6 In the first ten years of its appearance at least thirty-six million copies were printed. The essay on philosophy was reprinted in periodicals, as a brochure, and later as part of the Stalin anthology entitled Problems of Leninism to increase its printing to many more millions. It was mainly upon this essay that Stalin's claim to fame - and theoretical ominiscience - rested. At' any rate, it is easy reading, clear and concise, all the better for use in teaching, its main function in the Soviet Union until a few years after Stalin's death. For the purpose of a brief summary, the essay can be divided into three parts: dialectical method, philosophical materialism, and historical materialism. In discussing dialectical method Stalin lists its four principal features: (1) nature is an integral whole; (2) nature is in a state of continuous change;

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(3) quantitative change leads to qualitative change; and (4) natural phenomena contain internal contradictions. These four principles are next applied to the study of the history of society and show that: (1) each society must be studied contextually; (2) societies are not eternal; (3) a change in the way we make our living leads to a change, called 'revolution', in our thinking; and (4) the contradictions in society are between the economic classes of exploiter and exploited. Three principal features are listed by Stalin when he presents philosophical materialism: (1) the world is material, not spiritual; (2) matter or nature exists outside and independent of our consciousness of it; and (3) the world and its laws are fully knowable, i.e., there is no 'thing-in-itself' forever barred to the human mind. He then applies the materialism to the study of society and history to show that, just as it is possible to have a science of living things, or biology, and to predict and control by means of its laws, so it is possible to have a science of the history of society, called socialism, whose laws enable us to predict and control. The science of society shows that there are two aspects to society: the spiritual and the material. The spiritual aspect includes a society's political, moral, religious, philosophical, and cultural ideas or ideals. This aspect is secondary in origin to the material aspect, which includes all the factors that enter into the way a society makes a living. Nevertheless, the spiritual aspect is the most important. The old social ideas are significant because they hamper the development and progress of society, while new social ideals are important because, once they have emerged from the material conditions, they hasten the further development of these material conditions. For example, modem technologically advanced capitalism, having engendered a cooperative and social mode of working by bringing together a great number of individuals to work in huge corporations, has given rise to new socialistic ideals. Once they have emerged they must be re-applied in an orderly manner by the Party of the Proletariat to bring into balance the basis or foundations of the society with the superstructure. This is what became known as 'revolution from above'. With this as background Stalin presents an examination of the "conditions of material life of society", in an effort to discover what precisely determines the ideals and views of a given society. He lists three determining factors of the material life of society: (1) geography, (2) population, and (3) mode of production. Of these, the mode of production, or the method of procuring the means of life necessary for human existence, is the chief factor that ulti-

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mately determines the way a society thinks, its ideological superstructure. A change in the mode of production will generate, eventually and necessarily, a corresponding change in ideology in an effort to yield a synthesis of the contradictions existing between antithetical superstructure and foundation. There have been in the course of history five main relations of production or ideological superstructures: the primitive communal, the slave, the feudal, the capitalist, and the socialist systems. In each case, the change in the system occurred because of a change in the mode of production, which change began with a modification of the old productive forces. It was twelve years before Stalin personally found it necessary to take pen in hand and lay down the law on matters philosophic. During the period from 1938 to 1950 the many incursions of the Party into the philosophic sphere were made by subordinate officials or Party institutions. Between 1946 and 1952 the bulk of Party and state workers underwent a 'refresher' course to destroy the "survivals of bourgeois views and ideas". On the initiative of the Central Committee discussions were held on philosophy in 1947. What were considered serious shortcomings in Marxist-Leninist philosophy were revealed and criticized. These were disregard of Party principles, attempts to gloss over the contradictions between Marxism-Leninism and philosophical trends alien to it, isolation from urgent problems of the day, and manifestations of scholasticism. The occasion for Stalin's personal intervention was the then current 'free discussion' in linguistics, i.e., the open debate on those matters upon which the Party had not pronounced definitively. On May 9, 1950 such a discussion was opened in Pravda on linguistic problems, an area hitherto dominated by N. J. Marr's (1864-1934) theory of language. The theory maintained that language is part of the superstructure of society, along with religion, art, ethics, etc. Accordingly, language is the result of class struggle, class structure, and exhibits class divisions. Before the rise of classes there had been a system of hand-signals or gesture-language which passed into articulate speech, reflecting formal thinking, which, in turn, reflected the division of society into classes. Once the classless society is reintroduced, "thought will gain(s) the upper hand over language, and will continue to gain it, until in the new classless society not only will the system of spoken language be done away with, but a unitary language will be created, as far, and even further, removed from articulate language as the latter is from gesture". 7 Thought itself will replace language, gaining independence of its material expression in phonetics.

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The 'free discussion' on linguistics took place for more than a month before Stalin entered, 'invited' by a group of young students to answer several pointed questions bearing on the controversy. This he did on June 20, 1950 in a letter sent to Pravda, followed by four others published on July 4 and August 2; later that month the letters appeared for the first time in booklet form under the title of Marxism and Linguistics, the other work by Stalin that I consider major. According to him, language does not belong to the superstructure of society, for it is not the outcome of the mode of production. Language is created by society in general, for the benefit of all of society, and not in the interests of any one class and at the expense of another class. In fact, words that are class-conditioned comprise no more than one percent of our total vocabulary. Because of this, language may serve both the old, dying, social system as well as the new, nascent, social system, both the exploiters and the exploited. Language grows according to the developmental laws of society as a whole and not by the laws of either the superstructure or the base. Unlike ideology, which develops by sudden eruptions, language grows by way of gradual accumulation or diminution. Moreover, to separate thought from material language implies that thought is immaterial, resulting in idealism. A soundless and immediate communication of thoughts is no language at all. The last work bearing on philosophy that Stalin wrote was published originally in the periodical Bol~evik in October, 1952 and afterwards appeared as a booklet under the title Economic Problems of Socialism in the U.S.S.R. It purports to be Stalin's concluding comments on a 'free discussion' begun in 1951 on a new textbook on political economy. "The discussion revealed the serious consequences of the prolonged isolation of the economic sciences from the actual development of "socialist society". 8 The 'subjectivist and voluntarist' views of those who, ignoring the objectivity of economic laws, suppose the Soviet government can do anything it wishes were condemned. Stalin, in rebuking the impatience of "certain youthful party-members", emphasized that the Soviet regime is bound by objective economic laws existing independently of the will of man. Even under socialism the laws of economics retain their objective, necessary character as they do in other sciences. As in physics, so in economics, man can only recognize objective laws, utilize them by guiding their operation into particular channels of his willing, and "impart a different direction to destructive action of some of the laws". Published as it was prior to the XIXth Party Congress that met the same month,

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this work, minor though it is, exercised even more influence than it otherwise would have. Within five months Stalin was dead, having passed away on March 5, 1953. II The downgrading of Stalin began openly at the XXth Party Congress when Khrushchev delivered his now famous attack on the last day, February 25, 1956. This was the same subordinate of Stalin who had proclaimed Stalin " . . . the greatest genius o f mankind, teacher and leader, who leads us victoriously to Communism" at the XVIIIth Party Congress in 1931. According to the new edition in 1960 of the History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, the issue at stake was ... the overcoming of the personality cult, alien to Marxism-Leninism, and of eliminating its consequences, . . . the mistakes brought about by the cult of Stalin... guided by the well-known propositions of Marxism-Leninism on the role played in history by the masses, parties and individuals, and on the impermissibility of the cult of the personality of a political leader, no matter how great his services.9 During all his criticism Khrushchev was emphatic on one point: that Stalin, for all his 'many defects', was "a devoted Marxist-Leninist, a devoted and steadfast revolutionary". 1 Indeed, he went so far as to make it his 'prayer' that "God grant that every Communist will be able to fight as Stalin fought", n The de-Stalinization never meant to deny that Stalin was "an outstanding theoretician". 12 Nevertheless, there began to occur significant changes in theory and its presentation in Soviet texts as a result o f this de-Stalinization, as well as a changed attitude to the 'genius' o f Stalin in the entire Communist world. The most valuable Soviet source for discovering these changes is the post-Stalin History of Philosophy, in seven volumes under the general editorship of M. A. Dynnik, as it is the only work that addresses itself directly to an evaluation of Stalin's contribution to philosophy. I shall supplement this work with references to a number of current studies from the Soviet Union, East Europe and the People's Republic of China. Of the early work on Anarchism or Socialism? ( 1 9 0 6 - 0 7 ) , the History of Philosophy points out it contains 'grave errors', the most serious being Stalin's concession to idealism where he affirmed that we cannot image the material without the ideal, and vice-versa. 13 The definition of Leninism in Stalin's Foundations of Leninism (1924), with its apologia for the coming of the

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proletarian revolution to relatively backward Russia, continues to dominate ideology even when he is not acknowledged by name, which is usually the case. In the basic textbook, edited by Fedor V. Konstantinov, on The Fundamentals of Marxist Philosophy the only reference to Stalin by name is to this work, in connection with an attempt to show the indissoluble unity of Marxism-Leninism, with " . . . Leninism as the direct continuation of Marxism in new historical conditions...".14 The greatest change in the attitude towards Stalin's contribution to philosophy has been in connection with this famous essay on Dialectical and HistoricalMaterialism (1938). Less than a year after his death, even before the deStalinization, reviewers of textbooks on Marxism, which books had been following the method of exposition inaugurated by Stalin, now declared that it would have been more to the purpose of pedagogy if the presentation had begun with a description of Marxist philosophical materialism before the dialectic was discussed. One critic, B. M. Kedrov of the Moscow Academy of Social Sciences, went so far as to recommend that textbooks disassociate themselves completely from Stalin's exposition since the dialectic listed as having four characteristics omits a whole series of important problems, the foremost of which is the "law of the negation of negation", upon which Lenin placed much emphasis in his admiration of Hegel's method. Immediately after the XXth Party Congress there appeared a text on Categories of Dialectical Materialism, edited by M. M. Rozental' and G. M. gtraks, in which the law was recognized as fundamental but not examined, is Shortly after that, a book on Principles of Dialectical Materialism, by M. M. Rozental' alone, devoted a section of a chapter to an explanation of the law, while still another book, Manual of Dialectical Materialism, edited by A. D. Makarov, A. V. Vostrikov and E. N. ~esnokov, gave an entire chapter to the law. 16 In all cases references were to Engels and Lenin, with no mention of Stalin. This is also true for the lengthy bibliography in the study on Matter as a Philosophical Category, by F. T. Arxipcev. The presentation of materialism before the dialectic is now standard procedure as can be seen in the lengthy Fundamentals of MarxismLeninism, the shorter Fundamentals of Dialectical Materialism, edited by G. Kursanov, and the well-named even shorter A Brief Course of Dialectical Materialism, by V. Podosetnik and O. Yaxot. t7 The current attitude toward Stalin's much lauded work on Dialectical and Historical Materialism is summed up in the sixth volume of the History of Philosophy where it says that it was 'an error' to have proclaimed the study

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a 'master work' o f Marxist philosophy, for - although it stated certain well. known theses o f Marxism - it contained 'grave defects' which impoverished dialectical and historical materialism, presenting it in an oversimplified and sketchy manner. TM The essay was omitted from the new edition of the History o f the Communist Party o f the Soviet Union and nothing comparable was put in its place, thus altering the Stalinist epoch's efforts to give an 'official' Party interpretation to philosophy. Although Stalin has lost all his recognition as a 'classic' in Soviet philosophy, he has not been discounted as a valuable contributor. Note the following: After Lenin, the philosophy of Marxism was developed and carried forward by his disciples, among them including the eminent Marxist J. V. Stalin. Except for a series of statements and errors, in relation to the cult of the personality, into which Stalin slipped during the last period of his life, his works constitute a valuable contribution to Marxist thought. 19 Stalin's study on Marxism and Linguistics (1950), greeted as a "new worldhistorical contribution to the treasury o f Marxism", was not considered much of a reference work by the authors, D. P. Gorskij and others, o f the text on Thought and Language. 2 Of the six essays that constitute the b o o k only two mention Stalin. The contribution on 'Language and Knowledge' by D. P. Gorskij quotes Stalin when discussing the transmission o f thought by language, while V. Z. Pant'tlov brings in Stalin in his contribution 'On the Correlation Existing between Language and Thought', agreeing with him on two points but disagreeing on another. While there is no reference at all to Stalin in the Fundamentals o f Political Economy, his last work on Economic' Problems o f Socialism in the U.S.S.R. (1952) is referred to approximately eight times in the earlier and more lengthy Soviet Manual o f Political Economy. The only reference of significance is when Stalin is credited with 'clarifying' certain issues as well as expounding certain errors. F o r example: . . Stalin expounded some important problems of Marxist-Leninist theory: of the objective character of the economic laws of socialism, of the taw of planned and proportional development, and others It must be pointed out, nevertheless, that in this work and in certain others by Stalin are contained erroneous theses, such as, for example, that the mercantile traffic already represents, in actuality, a curb for the development of productive forces and that the time already has come for the necessity of a gradual passage to direct exchange of products between industry and agriculture; an insufficient appreciation of the force of the law of value in the sphere of production, in particular that touching on the means of production, etc. 21

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The changes since the XXth Party Congress produced a creative environment in the U.S.S.R. in comparison to the days of Stalin and stimulated activity in the field of philosophy. Research increased in variety and deepened in content. Quality had no place to go but up. The greatest evil o f the Stalinist cult of the personality had been the fact that commentaries were elevated to the first place in fear o f saying something contrary to Stalin. Philosophic writhags degenerated, in the words o f one Soviet, into 'gray' works "in which elementary declarations and philosophic definitions were repeated ad nauseam in place of profound study and analysis o f . . current reality". 22 This 'citationism' separated theory from practice by cutting philosophy off from current issues and led to dogmatism because o f the fear o f innovation The de-Stalinization freed philosophy from the dictatorship of one individual, with its resulting 'quotation-mongering', to subordinate it to the dictatorship of the proletariat, i.e., to the Party. In the words of one Soviet: "Today, more than at any previous time, the problem is the rendering o f philosophy a moral weapon in the struggle o f the Soviet people for the construction of Communism" .23 The best example o f the cooperation and efforts to be creative that Soviet philosophers have exerted since the XXth Party Congress is the basic textb o o k entitled Fundamentals o f Marxist Philosophy, which has no references to Stalin. How much care went into the authoring of the text by a board of thirteen can be seen from the 'Prologue'. The manuscript of the book was read by many scientific workers and professors of Marxist philosophy, and discussed in a full session of the Institute of Philosophy of the Academy of Sciences of the USS.R with participation of the most active philosophic section, by the professors of the establishments of higher learning. It also was submitted to a discussion in the chairs of philosophy of the higher schools of Moscow and Leningrad.z4
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Even more information is given on the history of the b o o k in another source: A very important step in the stimulation of work in philosophy has been the holding of competitions for the writing of textbooks on philosophy These contests have received active support from our scholars. It is well known, for example, that about 100 groups of authors entered into the competition to take part in the writing of the popular book entitled Fundamentals of Marxist Philosophy . . . . It may be assumed that in the years immediately ahead competitions will become one of the most important means of bringing out interesting and creative works in philosophy.25 The East-European philosophers who have been called the 'creative' Marx-

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ists, in contradistinction to the 'scientific' Marxists of the Soviet Union and the 'critical' Marxists of the Frankfurt School, 26 make no distinction between Stalinism as practical politics and Stalinism in Marxist philosophy. As a group they view Stalinism in philosophy as an aberration and, seemingly, ignore even the possibility that Stalin could have contributed something positive. Those in the forefront of the attack on Stalinism in any form are, without doubt, the Yugoslavs, especially those connected with the internationally influential journal Praxis.27 Yugoslavia's split with political Stalinism in 1948 paved the way for theoretical alternatives. In rejecting the Soviet doctrine of parti]nost' (partisanship or party-mindedness), whereby philosophy was to be the handmaiden of politics, the Yugoslavs have considered themselves 'liberated' from Stalinistic dogmas, wherein the individual was excluded and could not take a direct and active role in the building and managing of socialism. Gajo Petrovi6, in his Marx in the Mid-Twentieth Century, maintained, as seen in his 'Preface' of 1964, that his critique of the work of Soviet philosopher Rozental', published in 1950, " . . . was the first extensive Yugoslav criticism of Stalin and Stalinism in philosophy". ~8 In an essay originally published in 1961 and entitled 'Marxism versus Stalinism', included as the first chapter of his book, Petrovi6 asserted that "Stalin simplified, distorted and made rigid philosophical views contained in the works of Engels and Lenin, while almost completely ignoring Marx's own philosophical inheritance (MMTC 10-11)", looking with contempt on all pre-Marxist philosophy as well as on contemporary non-Marxist philosophy. The result was a concept of man as an economic animal rather than man as praxis, by which is meant man as social and historical, participating freely in the creation of his future. Thus, Stalin's conception of Marxist philosophy differs essentially from that of Lenin, Engels and even Marx. The return to these thinkers reveals that their conception of the all-important dialectics is considerably different from. Stalin's who, in fact, borrowed his systematization of dialectical traits from Bukharin. Lenin (like Hegel) does not reduce dialectics to only four traits. In PhilosophicalNotebooks, for example, he at one point enumerates sixteen elements of dialectics. And, the negation of negation, the idea by which the dialectical concept of development differs most decisively from a mechanistic one, disappeared from Stalin's systematization (MMTC24).
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Furthermore, Stalin ignored Lenin's correction of his own earlier view of the absolute opposition of idealism and materialism to make it one of the basic

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characteristics of Stalinism. Did not Lenin say in the PhilosophicalNotebooks that "an intelligent idealism is closer to an intelligent materialism than is a stupid materialism (MMTC28 quoted in no. 20)"? "Stalinism as a complete system of established dogmas required its adherents to 'stand firmly', always in the same place; Marxism as a theory that contains unsettled questions can be held only through a creative effort and progress (MMTC 11)". "Marxism is a philosophy of freedom, and Stalinism a 'philosophical' justification for unfreedom (MMTC31)". Although Petrovi6 states that "I do not think Stalin and Stalinism are an exclusively 'negative' historical phenomenon (MMTC10)", he never mentions anything positive that Stalin contributed to Marxist philosophy. Above all else, for Petrovid, Stalin is responsible for canonizing in a simplified form dialectical materialism as developed by Engels, Plekhanov, and Lenin so that it does not logically complement Marx's own 'naturalistic humanism' (MMTC58, 94, 155). Every effort must be made to cease reading Marx through Stalinist glasses (MMTC 160). The book entitled Between Ideals and Reality of 1969 (German edition of 1970 and English edition of 1973) by Svetozar Stojanovid of Yugoslavia is "primarily an attempt to make a contribution" to the critical process of destroying the "terrifying nightmare of Stalinism" in order to develop socialism. 29 This critical process involves a demystification of the dogmatic statist socialism, rather than merely state capitalism or bureaucratic socialism, into which Stalin converted Marxism (BIR 5). 'Stalinized Marxism' is an ideology that is not even a degenerate form of Marxism; it is "a wholly different theory which only uses the same phraseology (BIR 8)". It is debatable whether it is even socialism at all. The essence of Stalinism is oligarchic statism, a supercult of the personality of Stalin resting on "an entire pyramid of cults of the personality, on the one hand, and of cults of impersonality on the other (BIR 164)", something Georg Lukhcs had observed in 1966. It was not a necessary result of the socialist revolution. Had the necessary subjective factor been present, namely, the failure of the Stalinists to impose their views on the rest of the Party, a form of social self-government would have developed. The most distressing failure for socialism under Stalinism has been its moral failure. Stalinism illustrates how people can so degrade their faith in their historical mission that they will use any means, the most brutal, to attain the most human of ends. "Contemporary Marxism's struggle with Stalin i s . . . therefore largely centered upon the dispute on the end-means relationship (BIR 179)".

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Another Yugoslav, Mihailo Markovi6, in his b o o k From Affluence to Praxis, 'Philosophy and Social Criticism', sees Stalinism as a vulgar, dogmatic and formalized version o f Marxist dialectics, completely excluding the so-called principle o f the negation o f negation that prevents it from being essentially a m e t h o d o f critical t h o u g h t ) As a result, Stalin could easily be put into the role o f the Grand Inquisitor in Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov, with Marx substituted for Jesus. Stalin turned the dictatorship o f the proletariat into the dictatorship o f the leader, with a bureaucracy that needed a cult o f an impersonal leader to survive. This theme is developed further b y Markovi6 in a paper on 'Stalinism and Marxism', in which he attempts to answer the question: 'Does Stalinism have any roots in Marxism and, if it does, how strong and significant are they?' His answer: Stalinism and Marxism differ essentially both in their critique of capitalist society and in their approach to socialism. However, Stalinism has some roots in Marxism, not only genetically but also insofar as it offers a simple and invariably conservative, :ahistorical interpretation of a number of puzzles present in Marx's theory . . . . For several decades Stalinism was able to preserve the appearance of the legitimate heir of Marxism not only because of similar rhetoric but also because it offered easy and simple solutions to some inherent contradictions of Marxism or built up its specific theories on issues where Marx remained vague and ambiguous. . . . In Stalin everything is quite simple. There are no contradictions because there is no longer any interest in historical development. . . . Stalin comes up with simple solutions following Lenin's realism but devoid of Lenin's humanist and democratic perspective. . . . But the truth is that Stalinism - born as the product of an unfinished proletarian revolution amidst a backward peasant society encircled by a hostile capitalist environment - degenerated into a totally oppressive, dehumanizing ideology, expressing the interests of a gigantic international bureaucratic elite which nowadays constitutes a formidable obstacle to any genuinely revolutionary movement of the working class,a 1 The philosopher in Poland who first presented a critique o f Stalinistic Marxism was Leszek Kolakowski. In 1957 he published two essays that were to have great impact on "creative' East-European Marxism. 'Responsibility and History' n o t only showed the influence o f Sartre's existentialism but also Kotakowski's disdain for Stalinists who refuse to accept personal responsibility for their political actions, hiding behind History. Labeling all social criticism counter-revolutionary, Stalinism as a political movement surrounded itself with Stalinism as an impenetrable ideological fence. 32 Its thought was 'idealistic in nature', constantly reiterated b y slogans (TMH 102). It justified and sanctioned everything b y generalities about historical necessity tied to socio-economic progress, obliterating the distinction between the 'historically

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progressive' and the 'morally right'. The point is that rules for moral behavior cannot be derived from any theory of historical change. The other essay of 1957 was'Permanent vs. Transitory Aspects of Marxism', in which Kotakowski pointed out that Marxism under Stalin had become a doctrine defined purely formally, "its content being in every case supplied by the decrees of the Infallible Institution which, during a certain phase, was the Greatest Philologist, the Greatest Economist, the Greatest Philosopher, and the Greatest Historian in the World (TMH 174)". In this way Marxism lost its intellectual character, becoming an ideology and ceasing to be a philosophy. "Stalinism created a socially vital concept of Marxism that was an institutional and not an intellectual phenomenon, and this concept did function successfully in reality (TMH 181)". For Kotakowski himself, at that time, Marxism was not a set of doctrines but an attitude (rational, critical and unsentimental), a method (historical and 'deterministic', probing the interdependence of social happenings), and a set of analytic categories (including 'class', 'ideology', 'consciousness', 'relations of production', etc.). The early writings of Kotakowski helped spread an interest in existentialism in Poland and brought a stinging response from Adam Schaff, then the most politically influential philosopher in the country, being a member of the Central Committee. Schaff was convinced that to oppose existentialism was not only a theoretical but a political necessity. The growing influence of existentialism - especially that of Sartre, due to his 1957 article in a Polish journal on 'Marxism and Existentialism' - came on the heels of the disclosure of 'mistakes and distortions' connected with the cult of the personality of Stalin. Without mentioning Stalin by name, Schaff maintained that socialism was a humanism and did not need existentialism to set it on that path, as seen in his essays, collectively entitled A Philosophy o f Man. 33 Schaff was explicit about the defects of Stalinism in his book in 1965 on Marxism and the Human Individual. 34 He refers to the Stalinist period as having a 'chilling influence' on the problems of the individual, the philosophy of man and humanism, asserting that the time has come to face these problems. The cult of the personality which ignored these issues "had its roots in social phenomena and not in the personal character of an 'individual' " (MHI 208). The formation of "libertarian attitudes and habits of democracy" were, at the very least, checked during the years of revolution when it was thought that the class enemy must be stamped out by terror" (MH1 212). "It is no accident that the thinking of the Stalinist p e r i o d . . , was usually clothed in

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(such) military language" (MHI 215). as The "psychological reaction to the narrow, dogmatic, Marxism of the Stalinist era" (MHI 255-256) has been that appreciation of the individual and progress in the socialist movement can be achieved only by going beyond Marxism. To Schaff, "the opposite is true: it is only on the basis of Marxism that the philosophy of man can be cultivated in a consistent and effective way - in compliance with common sense and in close touch with practice" (MHI 255). Ivan Svitak of Czechoslovakia calls Stalinism a mockery of the internationalism and humanistic ideology of socialism, representing a contradiction between intentions and results. During the Stalin era, philosophy was transformed into both an instrument for controlling the masses and an irrational mythology. 36 With the Soviet invasion and occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1968 it was discovered that the rigid ideology had not changed; now it is neoStalinism. As early as 1956, Svitak had written an essay entitled 'The Art of Philosophy' in which he addressed himself to "the philosophy of the cult of personality". It had been his contribution to a philosophical discussion held at the Institute of Philosophy of the Czechoslovak Academy of Science. When it came to be printed it was confiscated; attempts to print it in 1963 and 1967 also led to its confiscation. In the essay he anticipates Schaff's contention that "the cult [of the personality] will have to be analyzed as a social phenomerion and not as a question of the psychological make-up of a prominent personality". 37 Only then will we come to grips with the serious issues. In a lecture delivered in 1966 at Charles University in Prague on 'The Meaning of Marxism', Svitak had the following to say about Stalinism: Stalinism brought about a decisive change [in Marxism], in that first the [Party] apparatus created, seized and enforced their monopoly to interpret Marxism. From that time on, the aims of socialismwere determined purely pragmatically, in relation to the immediate situation of the Soviet state. Principles became puppets to be freely manipulated in the interests of power (MHW 148). Karel Kosik, another Czech, simply ignored Stalin in his writings, especially in the monumental Dialectics of the Concrete that was not received favorably by the Party apparatus. The absence of any reference to Stalin's cult of the individual is conspicuous in his lecture on 'The Individual and History', given at the International Symposium on 'Marx and the Western World' held at the University of Notre Dame in April, 1966. 38 This is likewise true of the lecture on 'The Individual and Community' delivered in Vienna in 1966, by Agnes Heller, the Hungarian philosopher who is the best-known disciple of Georg

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Luk~cs. 39 In this they are quite unlike the Soviets who take every opportunity to use Stalin as an example of how an individual ought not to act in society in making history. Georg Luk~cs wrote an essay 'On Stalinism' in 1956, immediately after the XXth Party Congress, and devoted essays to 'Reflections of the Cult of Stalin' in 1962 and to 'Stalinism and Art' in 1964. 40 For my purposes, the 1962 essay is the most important. It was originally a letter to Alberto Carocci who asked Luk~cs to address himself to eight questions on the significance of the XXIInd Party Congress of the U.S.S.R., to which the issues 1957-58 of the Italian journal Nuovi Argornenti were dedicated. It must be remembered that Luk~ics has been highly regarded as a philosopher, even by his enemies, ever since the publication of his History and Class Consciousness in 1923, but containing essays that appeared already in 1919 and 1922. That work has been the most influential revisionist study of Marx from that day to this. During the Vth Congress of the Comintern (Third International) in 1924 it was attacked as revisionistic by Zinoviev, one of the 'troika' who controlled the Soviet Union, immediately after the death of Lenin, with Karnenev and Stalin. Lukhcs acknowledged his errors and eventually wrote: "Only Lenin and Stalin, and the Bolshevik Party they founded and led, were ableto sweep away the so-called theories of revisionism in all domains of Marxism". 41 He spent 1933 to 1944 in the U.S.S.R., being imprisoned briefly by Stalin. He had an unconcealed admiration for Stalin because of Stalin's position on socialism in one country. It was during that time that Lukhcs acquired the reputation of being a 'Stalinist' literary critic, his case being described as one of "genuine surrender to Stalinism". 42 He greeted Stalin's work on linguistics as a landmark in the philosophy of art. He went as far as to say: Only the sharp criticism to which Lenin and Stalin subjected the entire theory of the Second International, the genius with which they applied the principles of Marxism to the era of imperialism, world wars, and proletarian revolution, made possible the future development of Marxism in the field of aesthetics . . . . Stalin's work on linguistics analyzes the decisive problems of aesthetics in such a fundamental manner as to enable one to perceive the right development which the age of Lenin and Stalin represents in the history of aesthetics (GL 78,104). Following Khrushchev's denunciation of Stalin in 1956 and Luk~tcs' own participation in the short-lived regime of the Nagy government after the Hungarian uprising of 1956, for which he was exiled to Rumania, Lukhcs wrote in a preface to the 1957 Hungarian edition of his works that he had come to the

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conclusion that, while Stalin's 'positive achievements' would be remembered, it was necessary to subject Stalin's do~rlatism and that of his period "to the most relentless criticism". He said that this dogmatism had done severe damage to Marxism, assuming as it did that the answers to all problems were to be found in the Marxist classics and, above all, in the writings of Stalin, who had made Marxism into a mere ideology - a pseudo-theoretical justification of purely tactical measures. Under the influence of Stalin an idea became "a link between two quotations". In the letter on the cult of Stalin for the Italian journal, Luk~cs attributed the existence of the cult to 'sectarianism', by which he meant the Stalinist tendency (is) always to abolish, wherever possible, all intermediate factors, and to establish an immediate connection between the crudest factual data and the most general theoretical propositions. The contrast between Lenin and Stalin is particularly obvious here. Lenin distinguished very scrupulously between theory, strategy and tactics and always examined meticulously and took into account all the mediating factors between them . . . . 43 Furthermore, that Stalin had little appreciation for the dialectic can be seen from the question that got round in the Soviet Union: 'What is the difference between Hegel and Stalin?'. The answer is: "In Hegel there are thesis, antithesis and synthesis; in Stalin report, counter-report and organizational measures". One was 'courting ideological condemnation' and prohibition to publish his research if he ventured to quote Lenin's Philosophical Notebooks rather than 'Stalin's propagandistic simplifications (open vulgarizations)' from the famous Chapter IV of the Short Course. The latest indication that Stalin is still held in high regard in the People's Republic of China is that its government bookstores, with outlets in the United States, are making available a reprint of the Works of Stalin, of which volume one recently appeared. These writings are not available in the Soviet Union or Soviet-dominated areas. The edition is a photographic 'reprint' of the Moscow edition in English published by the Foreign Language Publishing House in 1952; it is being reprinted by the Red Star Press of London, England. Also available in new translations in English in Peking are Stalin's The Foundations of Leninism (1975) and Problems of Leninism (1976), containing the essays 'Concerning the Questions of Leninism' and 'Dialectical and Historical Materialism'. Ivan Svitak thinks that Maoism, like Stalinism, is an ideological tool used

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by the Party apparatus to manipulate the masses rather than as a philosophical method for objective, truthful and historically valid interpretations (MHW 168). By this interpretation it is understandable why the Chinese Communists have reacted so negatively to Khrushchev's speech at the XXth Party Congress and his policy of 'peaceful co-existence'. Georg Lukhcs, who sided with the Soviets in the quarrel, sees the Stalinist brand of sectarianism with its cult of the personality among the Chinese. He criticizes the Chinese position as based on 'subjectivist dogmas', of exhibiting the "formally closed pseudo-theoretical style of the Stalin period" (MHL 72, 73). Stalin's statement on theory from his Foundations of Leninism is quoted by Man Tse-tung in his work On Practice. 44 No reference to Stalin is made in Mao's On Contradiction but there are references to Lenin. The few other references to Stalin in the five volumes of the Selected Works of Mao are to writings that are non-philosophic. Mao's 'Stalin Is the Friend of the Chinese People', in honor of Stalin's sixtieth birthday on December 21, 1939, made no mention of him as a continuator of the philosophy of Marx, Engels and Lenin. Leaving aside the controversy over whether or not Mao wrote the two essays, upon which his claim to be a philosopher rests, when he said he wrote them, On Practice was published originally in 1950 in China and afterwards in Moscow. On December 18, 1950Pravda praised the work as creative in that it "develops basic concepts of Marxism-Leninism on dialectical materialism".4s The Pravda tribute probably was sanctioned by Stalin himself, anxious as he was to gain Mao's goodwill after years of neglecting the cause of the Chinese Communists. The Chinese assessment went far beyond the Soviets' modest praise. Mao was installed as a genius in philosophy, in terms reminiscent of Stalin's praise in 1938. Mao's contribution On Contradiction appeared in 1952. It was greeted in Peking as a work that "develops the dialectical materialism of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin . .. deeply expounds every phase of the law of the unity of opposites.., and in particular (he) expounds the particularity of contradiction" (CMT 14). No Soviet praise was forthcoming. "Moscow apparently decided to avoid the effusive tributes to Mao, probably from concern that the Chinese leader had started to rise to Stalin's level as a theorist in the world Communist movement" (CMT 15, n. 24). When the first volume of Mao's Selected Works appeared, Soviet theorists attempted to show his dependence on Lenin and Stalin; in 1953 and 1954, after Stalin's death, they were more praiseful. But, there is more to it than meets the eye. Mao had maintained that On Contradiction was written in August 1937. If

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this is so, and there is no way o f proving it other than his own word, he seems to have anticipated Stalin's own emphasis on the decisive role of the superstructure as expounded in Dialectical and Historical Materialism of 1938. In any case, it agrees with Stalin. The Chinese apparently saw Khrushchev's attack on Stalin and his cult of the personality as a veiled attack on Mao Tse-tung. Reaction was swift against the Soviets and their European allies, and they accused them o f being revisionists. On September 13, 1963 the pamphlet On the Question of Stalin appeared, authored by the editorial department of People's Daily (Renmin Ribao) and Red Flag (Hongqi). It stated: "The Communist Party o f China has always held that when Comrade Khrushchev completely negated Stalin on the pretext o f 'combating the personality cult', he was quite wrong and had ulterior motives". 46 The Chinese reproached Khrushchev for n o t consulting the fraternal Parties in advance on the issue and afterwards accused him o f trying to foist his evaluation on others, o f defending the cult o f the personality and of interfering in the internal affairs o f the Communist Party o f the Soviet Union if they disagreed. The Chinese Communist Party has consistently maintained that the question of how to evaluate Stalin and what attitude to take toward him is not just one of appraising Stalin himself; more important, it is a question of how to sum up the historical experience of the dictatorship of the proletariat and of the international Communist movement since Lenin's death (QS 2) . . . . The Communist Party has invariably insisted on an overall, objective and scientific analysis of Stalin's merits and demerits by the method of historical materialism and the presentation of history as it actually occurred, and has opposed the subjective, crude and complete negation of Stalin by the method of historical idealism and the willful distortion and alteration of history. The Communist Party of China has consistently held that Stalin did commit errors, which had their ideological as well as social and historical roots. It is necessary to criticize the errors Stalin actually committed, not those groundlessly attributed to him, and to do so from a correct stand and with a correct method. But we have consistently opposed improper criticism of Stalin, made from a wrong stand and with wrong methods (QS 3) . . . . In his way of thinking, Stalin departed from dialectical materialism and fell into metaphysics and subjectivism on certain questions and consequently he was sometimes divorced from reality and from the masses (QS 5). The leaders of the CPSU have accused the Chinese Communist Party of 'defending' Stalin. Yes, we do defend Stalin. When Khrushchev distorts history and completely negates Stalin, naturally we have the inescapable duty to come forward and defend him in the interests of the international Communist movement. In defending Stalin, the Chinese Communist P a r t y . . . defends the theory and practice of Marxism-Leninism (QS 7) . . . . While defending Stalin we do not defend his mistakes (QS 8).

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The editorial goes on to say that, in abusing Stalin, Khrushchev is in fact denouncing the Soviet system, forgetting that Lenin said "abuse in politics often covers up the utter lack of ideological content". Moreover, his memory is not too long, for he forgets his speech in Moscow in January of 1937 when he rightly condemned those who attacked Stalin, saying: "In lifting their hand against Corrirade Stalin, they lifted it against all of us, against the working class and the working people! In lifting their hand against Comrad Stalin they lifted it against the teachings of Marx, Engels and Lenin (QS 13)!" The Chinese editorial gives quote after quote of Khrushchev as a subordinate of Stalin agreeing with him and carrying out his orders, ending their expos6 with the hope that he wilJ become aware of his errors and return to the path of Marxism-Leninism. The last line is: "Long live the real revolutionary teaching of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin (QS 23)!" The same year saw the publication of an editorial from Red Flag on 'Leninism and Modern Revisionism', one from People's Daily on 'Whence Differences? - A reply to Thorez and Other Comrades' as well as 'The Differences between Comrade Togliatti and Us', while Red Flag came out with another editorial on 'More on the difference between Comrade Togliatti and U s Some Important Problems of Leninism in the Contemporary World'. 47 All were defending the Chinese disagreement with the Soviets over Stalin. In a speech on 'The Fighting Task Confronting Workers in Philosophy and the Social Sciences' at the Fourth Enlarged Session of the Committee of the Department of Philosophy and Social Sciences of the Chinese Academy of Sciences held on October 26, 1963, Chou Yang brought up the negation of Stalin, and the repudiation of all his "theoretical writings under the slogan of 'eliminating the consequences of the personality cult' ,,.4s He accused the Soviet revisionists of replacing materialism by subjective idealism, revolutionary dialectics by vulgar evolutionism and sophistry and the Marxist-Leninist theory of class struggle by the hypocritical bourgeois theory of 'supraclass' human nature (FT 24-25). Moreover, in political practice the modern revisionists have replaced "proletarian dialectical materialism with the imperialist and bourgeois philosophy of pragmatism" (FT 25), that subjective idealism originating in the United States in the later nineteenth century that became the philosophy of the bourgeoisie in the era of imperialism. Ten years later the Chinese Communists were still as much against Soviet revisionism as ever. A pamphlet entitled Three Ma/or Struggles on China's Philosophical Front (1949-64) was published, containing four articles written by the Revolutionary Mass

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Criticism Writing Group of the Party School under the Chinese Communist Party Central Committee and appearing first as editorials, enlarged slightly, in People's Daily, Red Flag and Kwangming Daily (Guangming Ribao). It criticized Khrushchev as a revisionist, posing as a savior, for declaring that "The world is whole and indivisible in [the] face of the threat of nuclear disaster. That is where we are all the human race". His "academic title-holding servants" then clamored that the law of the unity of opposites was 'outmoded', shamelessly describing this "renegade revisionist philosophy as creatively developing Marxism-Leninism".49 The ambivalent attitude toward Stalin that the Soviets exhibited in the years immediately after his death has continued. It is a policy of "now we mention him, now we don't", even when his contributions are used. When Stalin's name is mentioned favorably by the Soviets, as seen in those references given in the body of this essay, it is always modified by saying his works also contain 'certain errors' and 'grave mistakes', which - more often than not - are not mentioned. In this way the Soviets can acknowledge Stalin's fallibility in matters theoretical while still using his innovations that are beneficial to the Party and its members. No mention of him is seen in Marxist Philosophy by V. Afanas'ev, despite its emphasis on the active role of ideas in social development that Stalin introduced in his Dialectical and HistoricalMaterialism. Likewise there is no mention of Stalin in Scientific Communism by V. Afanas'ev in the section on the 'Development of Scientific Comnmnism after Lenin', although "Stalin's personality cult" is mentioned, "when democracy was restricted and social legality violated", and a list is given of some of the factors that led to the cult, such as "Stalin's incivility, lack of tolerance for people, fickleness...,,.so There is no mention of Stalin by name in Historical Materialism, Basic Problems, edited by G. Glezerman and G. Kursanov, or the very brief A Glance at Historical Materialism by V. Podosetnik and A. Spirkin. The latest study on the area, ABC of Dialectical and Historical Materialism, by B. M. Boguslavskij, V. A. Karpu~in, A. I. Rakitov, V. Ja. ~ertixin and G. I. Ezrin, has no mention of Stalin even when discussing 'The Role of Outstanding Personalities' in history. Stalin is not mentioned as a continuator of Marxism in the very interesting book on Problems of the History of Philosophy by Theodor Ojzerman. He should have been included in section 1 on the 'Role of the Personality in the Development of Philosophy' in chapter 7 on

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'Philosophy as the Self-Consciousness of the Historical Epoch' .59 The acceptance by Soviet and East-European Marxists of Stalin's emphasis on the more active role of the superstructure, in contradistinction to classical Marxists, has not led to a Marxist reevaluation of the monism to which they adhere. Nineteenth-century philosophy was either dualism or monism; Marx, following Hegel, emphatically rejected dualism. This left the dichotomy of idealism or materialism as the only alternatives. This nineteenth-century attitude has led to oversimplification in Marxist materialism, with an effort to plug up the holes by referring to the dialectic as if it were some magic 'mediating' principle between loose ends. Dialectical materialism is put forth as the opposite of idealism when, in fact, it is closer to the opposite of both idealism and materialism. A reappraisal of alternative ontologies would lead the contemporary Marxists to acknowledge this and enable them to enter the twentieth century and face its problems, a century that needs an ontology that goes beyond the dualism and monisms of the last century. Instead, Marxists have adopted Stalin's emphasis on ideas to ensure continuation of philosophy as the handmaiden of statist politics based, if not on the cult of the individual as with Stalin, on the cult of the Party. Even as every pronouncement and action of Stalin was connected with a scientific law, so with the words and acts of the Party. Philosophy, in this manner, becomes an ad hoc rationalization of the status quo, pragmatic in the worst possible sense. Stalin's most important contribution to philosophy was, in my estimation, his detachment of language from both the base and the superstructure. This seems to be accepted by Soviet and East-European Marxists but with no acknowledgement of Stalin. I do not maintain that Stalin's contribution was due to any great philosophic ability on his part; his philosophic acumen was so slight as to be almost nonexistent. I think he relied on his common sense as a practical person to see that the previous explanation of language made no sense. His observations on linguistics led to its being freed from the ideological control of the Party. Since then it has been decided that mathematics, sym. bolic logic, and the facts of science all fall outside the superstructure/base dichotomy. Soviet and East-European specialists in these areas have availed themselves of their greater freedom of research and expression without word of how it originated. No one has taken the next step, as I see it, by asking: Is it possible that other forms of social consciousness, including religion and philosophy, belong to society as a whole and not to a certain class? Some of

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the East-European 'creative' Marxists come close to answering 'yes' in regard to philosophy in their distinction between philosophy and ideology. No one has suggested, thus far, that religion may be the result of society as a whole, as necessary to social life as is language, even if a social product that sometimes is used by one class to justify its exploitation of another. There has been no suggestion that, once politico-economic exploitation o f class by class is eliminated, religion can be seen for what it is, the means by which the individuals and groups in a society are brought together to work for the common good by reaching for common ends. The 'baptism' o f Marx by Christians already has begun in practice. When a philosophic grounding is given for this practice, I am confident it must come from the direction in which Stalin pointed: a form of consciousness previously thought to be class determined is the result of society as a whole. The two contributions by Stalin to philosophy which I have discussed were made despite Stalin's lack o f philosophic ability. Stalinism above all else is, as Lukfics observed, the tendency to abolish all intermediate factors in discussing matters, the establishing of an immediate connection between the crudest factual data and the most general theoretical propositions, the jumping to conclusions from insufficient evidence. This is the mark o f the shallowest of philosophic minds, resulting in dangerous oversimplifications and the justification o f an action - regardless of how inhumane - as 'scientific' by an appeal to overarching 'laws' o f nature, society and history. The parallel in religion is all too familiar: the 'gnostic' who knows how to fit any action or event into Divine Providence.

University o f Detroit

NOTES * The portion of this essay dealing with the content of Stalin's works and Soviet criticism of them in the first decade after his death is a summarization of my 'Stalin's Contribution to Soviet Philosophy', International PhilosophicalQuarterly 5 (1965), 267-303. The research for the updating of Soviet critique and criticism of Stalin in East Europe and the People's Republic of China was undertaken, in part, at the Summer Seminar (1976) sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities on 'Contemporary Marxism' under Professor Richard T. De George, Department of Philosophy, University of Kansas. 1 M. A. Dynnik y Otros (eds.), Historia de lafilosofia, Tomo V. 'Desde finales del siglo hasta la revoluci6n socialista de octubre de 1917', Grijalbo, Mexico, D.F., 1963, p. 156.

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The Russian edition was published in 1957. 2 Josef Stalin, Foundations of Leninism, International Publishers, New York, 1939, pp. 10-11. Hereafter indicated as FL. 3 Gustav A. Wetter, Dialectical Materialism, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1958, p. 175. 4 Cited in R. H. McNeal, The Bolshevik Tradition, Englewood Cliffs, N.J., Prentice-Hall, 1963, p. 102. s M. B. Mitin, Dialektt~eski] materializm, Moscow, 1933, p. 347; English translation in Wetter, op. cir., p. 177. Also see Mitin's J. K Stalin, korife] marksistsko-leninistsko] nauki (J. V. Stalin, a Coryphaeus of Marxist-Leninist Science), Voprosy filosofii (Problems of Philosophy), 1949, 2, 1 7 - 3 9 and Stalin i materialisti~eskaja dialektika (Stalin and the Materialist Dialectic) no source listed in Wetter, op. cit., 179, n. 1. 6 Josef Stalin, A Short Biography, London, 1943, p. 56. See: M. B. Mitin, Rol' i

zna~enie raboty tovarz~a Stalina '0 dialekti~eskom i istori~eskom materializme' v razvitii marksistsko-leninsko] filosofsko] mysli (The Role and Significance of Comrade Stalin's Dialectical and Historical Materialism in the Development of Marxist-Leninist Philosophical Thought), Bol~evik, 1949, 1, 9 - 3 8 .
The above essay is especially interesting in the light of the fact that there is disagreement as to whether Stalin even wrote the work. Soviet and East-European Marxists, from what has been told to me, think Mitin himself is the author. When questioned further for documentation of this, the attribution is seen to rest on similarities of style and Stalin's lack of philosophical insight. To the best of my knowledge no one has tried to make a case in print for the Mitin authorship of Stalin's works. Certainly no Soviet philosopher has had as long and successful a career as Mitin for, despite the periodic attacks launched by the Party against his writings, he always hastened to acknowledge his transgressions. For a short biographical sketch, see: Heinrick E. Sehulz and Stephen S. Taylor (eds.), Who's Who in the U.S.S.R. 1961/62 (Intercontinental Book and Publ. Co., Ltd., Montreal, 1962, 517b-518a), where Mitin is listed as being one of the authors of a short biography of Stalin which Khrushchev labeled the expression of the most depraved cajolery. Among Mitin's honors from the Soviet Union was the Stalin Prize in 1949. That Stalin's Dialectical and Historical Materialism was written entirely by a ghost writer is disputed by Robert H. McNeal, Stalin's Works, An Annotated Bibliography (Stanford University, Stanford, 1967, p. 151), where he points out the following: "The essay is long and weighty (at least, leaden) enough to suggest that no busy politician would have written it without a good deal of help. Nevertheless, this writing was attributed to Stalin personally in his own time and afterwards" (italics his). McNeal's main evidence is that, even when in 1956 Khrushchev explicitly stated that the Kratki] kurs was composed by a committee, he did not mention the essay. McNeal's conclusion is: '~rhe implication of Khrushchev's statement is that the amount of ghosting that went into the essay on materialism was not so great as to deprive Stalin of credit as the author, whereas the history book was so much the work of specialists that Stalin should not be given credit for it, even though this particular work is Stalinist in the extreme and represents his point of view as directly as many ghost-written works represent their alleged authors". 7 N. Ja. Mart, Izbrantiye raboty (Selected Works), III, p. 118; English translation in Wetter, op. cit., p. 196. 8 B.N. Ponomaryov et at, History o f the Communist Party o f the Soviet Union, Foreign Language Publ. House, Moscow, 1960, p. 633. Hereafter H.C.P.S. (1960).

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9 Ibid., pp. 669-70. Herein the reasons for the rise of StaUnism as a personality cult are given in such a manner that it is made to appear as historically inevitable. For Wetter's summary of Soviet philosophy in the first years after Stalin's death, see op. cir., pp. 234-246. 10 N, Khrushchev, 'For a Close Tie of Literature and Art with the Life of the People', Kommunist (1958), No. 12, 17; English translation in Soviet World Outlook, 44. 11 H.C.P.S.U. 1960), 671; the quote from Khrushchev appeared in Pravda August 28, 1957. 12 Ibid., p. 670. 13 Dynnik, op. cit.,V, pp. 319-20. 14 F. V. Konstantinov (ed.), Fundamentos de la filosofla marxista, Grijalbo, Mexico, D.F., 1950, p. 107. IS N. M. Rosental and G. M. Straks (eds.), Categorlas del materialismo dial~ctico, Grijalbo, Mexico, D.F., 1960. The Russian original appeared in 1957. 16 M. M. Rosental, Principios de logt'ca dial~etica, Pueblos Unidos, Montevideo, 1962. A. D. Makarov, A. V. Vostrikov, y E. N. Chesuokov (eds.), Manual de materialismo dial~ctico, Pueblos Unidos, Montevideo, n.d. 17 F. T. Arjiptsev, La materia como categor[a filos6fiea, Grijalbo, Mexico, D.F., 1962; O. V. Kuusinen (ed.), Fundamentals o f Marxism-Leninism, Foreign Language Publ. House, Moscow, 1961; G. Kursanov (ed.), Fundamentals o f Dialectical Materialism, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1967; V. Podosetnik and O. Yakhot, A Brief Course o f DialecticalMaterialism, Progress Publishers, Moscow, n.d. 18 Dynnik,op. cit.,VI, p. 141. 19 Konstantinov, op. cir., p. 110. 20 D.P. Gorski y Otros, Pensamineto y lengua]e, Grijalbo, Mexico, D.F., 1962, p. 7. 21 K. V. Ostrovitianer y Otros, Manual de econom[a politica, Grijalbo, Mexico, D.F., 1960, p. 706; Cf, P. Nikitin, Fundamentals of Political Economy, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1966, 2nd rev. ed. 22 A. F. Okulov, 'Some Developments in Soviet Philosophy since the 20th Party Congress', Soviet Studies in Philosophy 1 (1962), p. 13a. The result was books largely monotonous both in theoretical content and style of presentation. 23 /bid. 24 Konstantinov, op. cir., p. 11. 25 Okulov, op. cit., pp. 5a, 8a. 26 Richard T. De George, The New Marxism, 'Soviet and East European Marxism since 1956', Western Publishing Co., N.Y., 1968. 27 The first issue appeared in 1964; it has since been refused publication in Yugoslavia. Cf. Mihailo Markovid, 'Marxist Philosophy in Yugoslavia: The Praxis Group', in Richard T. De George and James P. Scanlan (eds.), Marxism and Religion in Eastern Europe, 'Papers Presented at the Banff International Slavic Conference, September 4 - 7 , 1974', D. Reidel, Dordrecht, Holland, 1976, pp. 63-89. 28 Gajo Petrovid, Marx in the Mid-Twentieth Century, Doubleday, Garden City, N.Y., 1970, p. 6. Hereafter MMTC. 29 Svetozar Stojanovid, Between Ideals and Reality, Oxford, N.Y., 1973, p. xiii. Hereafter BIR. 30 Mihailo Markovi6, From Affluence to Praxis, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 1974, pp. 29, 24. Hereafter AP. 31 Robert C. Tucker (ed.), Stalinism, 'Essays in Historical Interpretation', W.W. Norton,

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N.Y., 1977, pp. 304,302, 303, 312 and 319. 32 Leszek Kolakowski, Toward a Marxist Humanism, Grove, N.Y., 1968, p. 99. Hereafter TMH. 33 Adam Schaff, A Philosophy of Man, Lawrence and Wisehart, London, 1963, pp. 100ff. 34 Adam Schaff, Marxism and the Human Individual, McGraw-Hill, N.Y., 1970. Hereafter MHL Themes in this book were the subject of two lectures delivered in-English at the University of Vienna in 1969 by Schaff: 'Problem of Alienation: Man and His Products' and 'Problem of Alienation: Man and Society', both available on tape, Jeffrey Norton, (N.Y.). 3s Pavel Kovaly points out, in his review of the book for Studies in Soviet Thought 13 (1973), 112-28, that Schaff's language is no different. 36 Ivan Svitak, 'Marxist Philosophy in Czechoslovakia: The Lesson from Prague', in De George and Scanlan, op. cit., p. 45. 37 Ivan Svitak, Man and His WorM, A Marxian View, Dell, N.Y., 1967, p. 12. Hereafter MHW. 38 Karel KosJk, 'The Individual and History', in Nicolas Lobkowicz (ed.),Marx and the Western World, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, 1967, pp. 177-91 and 195-96. 39 Agnes Heller, 'The Individual and Community', in E. D'Angelo, D. De Grood, and D. Riepe (eds.), Contemporary East European Philosophy, Spartacus Books, Bridgeport, Conn., 1971, pp. 306-20. 40 Georg Lukfics, 'On Stalinism', Soviet Survey, No. 10 (1956), 15-19; 'Reflections on the Cult of Stalin',/b/d., No. 47, (1964), 22-26; and 'Stalinism in Art', East Europe XIII (1964), 22-26. 41 George Lichtheim, Georg Lukhcs, Viking, N.Y., 1970, p. 104. Hereafter GL. 42 I. Deutseher, 'Georg Luk~tcs and "Critical Realism" ', The Listener, November 3, 1966, p. 659, quoted in G. H. R. Parkinson (ed.), Georg Lukttcs, The Man, His Work, and His Ideas, Vintage, N.Y., 1970, p. 22. 43 Georg Luk~ics, 'Reflections on the Cult of Stalin' in E. San Juan, Jr., Marxism and Human Liberation, Delta, N.Y., 1974, p. 66. HereafterMHL. 44 Mao Tse-tung, Selected Works, International Publishers, N.Y., 1954, I, p. 293. This five-volume edition is based on the Chinese edition of four volumes (Peking, 1951). Hereafter SIC. 4s Quoted in Arthur A. Cohen, The Communism ofMao Tse-tung, University of Chicago, Chicago, 1964, p. 8. Hereafter CMT. 46 'On the Question of Stalin', Foreign Languages Press, Peking, 1963, p. 1. Hereafter as. 47 'Leninism and Modern Revisionism', Foreign Languages Press, Peking, 1963; 'Whence Differences?, A Reply to Thorez and Other Comrades', Foreign Languages Press, Peking, 1963; 'The Differences between Comrade Togliatti and Us', Foreign Languages Press, Peking, 1963; and 'More on the Differences between Comrade Togliatti and Us - Some Important Problems of Leninism in the Contemporary World', Foreign Languages Press, Peking, 1963. 48 Chou Yang, The Fighting Task Confronting Workers in Philosophy and the Social Sciences, Foreign Languages Press, Peking, 1965. Hereafter FT. Cf. Three Major Struggles on China's Philosophical Front (1949-64), Foreign Languages Press, Peking, 1973. 49 On Khrushehev's Phoney Communism and Its Historical Lessons for the World, Comment on the Open Letter of the Central Committee of the CPSU (IX), Foreign

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Languages Press, Peking, 1964. For the Soviet side, that Khrushchev is not 'deviating' from Stalin, see: Josef Stain, For Peaceful Coexistence, Postwar Interviews, International Publishers, N.Y., 1951. Therein is given Stalin's response to Henry A. WaUace's 'Open Letter' (May 17, 1948): "The government of the U.S.S.R. believes that in spite of differences in economic systems and ideologies, the coexistence of these system and the peaceful settlement of differences between the U.S.S.R. and the U.S.A. are not only possible, but absolutely necessary in the interest of universal peace". 50 V. Afanas'ev, Marxist Philosophy, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1965, 2nd rev. ed. and Scientific Communism, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1967, p. 183. 51 G. Glezerman and G. Kursanov (eds.), Historical Materialism, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1968; V. Podosetnik and A. Spirkin, A Glance at Historical Materialism, Progress Publishers, Moscow, n.d.; B. M. Boguslavskij, V. A. Karpu~kin, A. I. Rakitov, V. Y. ~ertizin, and G. I. Ezrin, ABC of Dialectical and Historical Materialism, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1976; and Theodor Ojzerman, Problems of the History o f Philosophy, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1973.