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International Socialism, Spring 1963

 

Tirril Harris

Illusions from Italy

 

From International Socialism, No.12, Spring 1963, p.29-30.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.

 

Da Stalin a Krusciov
Lelio Basso
Edizioni Avanti. Milano. 1000 lire.

This is not so much a book as a collection of articles on Soviet society (by Lelio Basso) which have appeared since 1956 in various left-wing Italian periodicals: Il Mondo, Mondo Operaio, Nuovi Argumenti and Problemi del Socialismo (of which the author is editor). The author hardly atones for the resulting degree of repetition by his apologies in the not insubstantial preface. Most of his ideas are already familiar especially in the writings of the New Left, through whom he is best known in Britain. His main emphasis is upon the need for the. development of ‘democracy’ in the Soviet Union, not of the Western parliamentary, type which he finds unsuitable for socialist society (p.127), nor merely the better functioning of existing electoral institutions, but ‘participation, initiative, responsibility of all and each’ (p.128). It is this personal, moral approach to socialism, often found alongside emphasis on the phenomenon of alienation, as it is here, which leads him in the earlier articles (1956-7) on destalinization to stress the low level of ‘consciousness or ‘immaturity’ as almost more important than the low level of. economic development in causing the eruption of Stalinism. In itself his tendency to. focus attention on ideological factors as causative in sociology is not unwelcome after the exaggerated materialism of some studies; but, here it is probably the origin of the book’s shortcomings, both stylistically – there is little factual documentation Leaving the material at the level of the popular sociological generalization – and theoretically – Kruschevism is called ‘not simply a correction of the past but a break with the past’ on the basis of the 20th and 22nd Congresses alone, without evidence or analysis of changes in the actual power structure or the consciousness of his ‘analphabetic peasants’ since 1955.

When the articles are more meaty in style as are the last two (1961) they seem theoretically more inadequate. He seems to accept that the transition to communism is now possible without revolution of any sort, and to support the strengthening of the state and the party to that end on the grounds that the ‘leadership’ will fulfil their ‘duties’ and guide rather than force comrades to the new level of ‘participation’. The rub lies, as ever, in his class analysis of the Soviet Union. He does once refer (p.195) to ‘a new class arrived to power and convinced that it holds absolute and eternal values’ but there he leaves it. As a result his approach is one of dangerous optimism.

 
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