The decline and fall of communist systems.

Rotten Foundations: The Conceptual Basis of the Marxist-Leninist Regimes of East Germany and Other Countries of the Soviet Bloc, by Peter W. Sperlich, Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2002, xii + 244 pp.

THIS IMPORTANT BOOK is not likely to receive the attention it deserves since its findings and propositions will arouse the enmity of the guardians of the prevailing conventional wisdoms in the social sciences. It will especially displease those who continue to believe that some variety of socialism inspired by Marx's ideas remains both desirable and viable and who refuse to draw the opposite conclusion from the collapse of Soviet communism and from the ample evidence available well before the collapse.

Professor Peter W. Sperlich will also no doubt antagonize the left by his exposure of the flaws of Marxism as a theory, let alone a "scientific" one--as distinct from the disasters which resulted from its attempted realization. His fully justified emphasis on the utopian and religious aspects of Marxism will certainly not be well received also by those who continue to cling to it as as the repository of truth and hope.

Finally, Rotten Foundations will be dismissed by those who recoil from acknowledging the numerous structural-institutional similarities between Nazism and Communism and especially the considerable moral equivalence between them. The major theoretical device recognizing and building upon such similarities has, of course, been the concept of totalitarianism, debunked since the late 1960s, as a by-product of cold war propaganda by American "revisionist" historians and political scientists.

Rotten Foundations is one of the very few books attempting to determine in what ways the character and the collapse of Soviet communism related to its theoretical-ideological foundations. By contrast most discussions of the collapse avoid this question--the collapse, more often than not, is explained as the outcome of economic difficulties, mismanagement, an ossified bureaucracy, geriatric leaders, unhelpful historical traditions, conditions of underdevelopment, geographic isolation, a wide range of social problems, the economic burdens of the pursuit of imperial ambitions, and the clinging to the super-power status. Many of these problems have some connection with the shaky ideological foundations upon which the system was built. The matter of the ideological foundations is often dismissed either by the claim that there was never a serious attempt to realize the ideals of Marx, or by the venerable suggestion (almost a century old) that Russia was not the right place for trying to create a socialist society that Marx envisioned.

The findings of this volume, the first in a three-part series dealing with the former "German Democratic Republic," are by no means limited to communist East Germany. As the subtitle indicates, it is a wide-ranging inquiry into the relationship between "theory and practice," that is to say, the ideological foundations of communist systems and their actual practices with special reference to East Germany and the Soviet Union. East Germany, as some readers will recall, designated itself as "the German Democratic Republic" (GDR), thereby calling instant attention to the fraudulent relationship between political rhetoric and practice. It was a "democracy" that literally walled in its population in order to prevent becoming depopulated by its citizens voting with their feet.

It is a great paradox that communist systems cannot be properly understood without a thorough knowledge of their theoretical foundations, although the relationship between those foundations and the policies pursued has always been problematic. Almost invariably these policies were subordinated to the imperatives of maintaining and enlarging their power and to the idiosyncratic beliefs and attitudes of particular leaders. The enormous power of these leaders was a reflection of the irrelevance of Marxism to the political practices of such systems since Marxism de-emphasized the importance of particular individuals in the historical-political process.

Nonetheless Marxism and its ideals were relevant to understanding communist systems in other ways. For one thing, their routinized and vulgarized regurgitation contributed to widespread popular aversion and cynicism toward the regimes that persisted in reaffirming and propagating these ideals without realizing them. This revulsion and cynicism in turn contributed to their decline and eventual collapse.

The official theories and ideals further help to understand these systems because they permeated the motivation and belief of the rulers, whether or not they faithfully applied theory to practice, or sought the realization of the ideals entailed. These leaders, no matter how ruthless, did believe that they were engaged, in some fashion, in realizing the promises of the theory; that they were acting in the spirit of the theory and--most important--pursued glorious ends, including those which ultimately discredited the theory, the ideals, and their promises.

What were the major flaws of the theory which turned it into "rotten foundations" for the the construction and maintenance of the socialist states? The most fundamental, in the author's opinion, was the "inability to accept disorder arising from human individuality and diversity,... aversion to non-conformity and opposition, and ... craving for order, harmony and community." It claimed scientific credentials while it was, in essence, a set of religious beliefs. The flaws also included an organic conception of society in which the character, sense of identity, and welfare of the individual were supposed to be dependent on the larger collectivities. The theory, far from being a guide to action, was a legitimation device. Its economic determinism predisposed to overlook important social-political forces such as religion, ethnicity, the varieties of group interest, and the historic role of specific individuals.

An oversimplified conception of human nature and needs further weakened the predictive power of Marxism and its use as a guide to action and policy. Utopian elements imbued the theory, and those upholding it, with unrealizable aspirations, which in turn helped to create and legitimate intolerance and the repressive policies employed in pursuit of the realization of these elusive goals: classless society, disappearance of specialization, the withering away of the state and religion, the decline and disappearance of ethnic and national distinctions, the merging of individual and social or collective interests, the vanishing of alienation and anomie, unlimited material abundance, and universal access to unobstructed realization of all human potentials.

Sperlich makes an especially strong case for the religious qualities of the Marxist theory. These include "the type of exclusivity claims more typically associated with dogmatic religion ..."; "a specification of ultimate ends; the prediction of Armageddon; the concept of a paradise ... a doctrine of salvation ... an explanation of the meaning of life; a set of absolute standards to guide conduct and judgement; a definition of good and evil; church fathers, saints, holy scriptures...." The "cults of personalities" had an especially striking religious connotation culminating in the worship of the preserved remains of the leaders (Lenin. Stalin, Mao).

The affinity between totalitarianism, utopia-seeking and Marxist-Leninist theory is another major and instructive theme of this work. Sperlich argues that, in the final analysis, "most utopias are totalitarian in spirit and most totalitarian systems include ... utopian elements.... The key aim of utopias is harmony--which finds expression in communist ideas such as the classless society...." In other words, the utopian elements of Marxism, unrealizable yet highly appealing, legitimate coercive policies created to implement the unattainable vision. The totalitarian domination and regimentation of society are a reflection of the pursuit of secular-religious goals and the compelling pressure they exert on the elite groups which internalized them.

While this book is strong and persuasive in explicating the flaws of the theoretical structure (the "rotten foundations"), it does not confront and explore the problematic and contradictory relationship between the flaws of the theoretical structure and the "disunity of theory and practice," the other major theme of the book. The rotten foundations could only have an impact on the system if they were relied upon. If, on the other hand, there was a divergence between theory and practice, these foundations were irrelevant. One may wonder how much the flaws of the theoretical foundations mattered if they were disregarded, if the practice was wholly opportunistic, driven by considerations of power and the personality of a leader? The question also arises: were these systems doomed to fall because of their rotten foundations or because of the disunity between theory and practice? I think that a case can be made that both played a part: the foundations were indeed rotten, even as there were also numerous and striking gaps between theory and practice, ideal and reality, promise and fulfillment.

There is illuminating discussion in the book as to why the theoretical foundations, especially their utopian aspects, were unworkable and how they contributed to the decline and demise of the system. But at the same time there were other theory-driven policies faithfully implemented that are given little attention. The ideologically-determined belief in the manifold redeeming results of abolishing the private ownership of the means of production was one. As Leszek Kolakowski wrote in Main Currents of Marxism (1978): "Marx seems to have imagined that once capitalists were done away with the whole world could become a kind of Athenian agora; one only had to forbid private ownership of machines or land and, as if by magic, human beings would cease to be selfish and their interests would coincide in perfect harmony." No theory-practice gap exists here, but the results of these policies hobbled the Soviet economy (agriculture in particular).

More generally, Marxism rested on and nurtured high expectations of the perfectibility of human beings and partly for that reason failed to concern itself with devising safeguards to protect against the accumulation and corruption of power. Such unrealistic expectations were in shocking contrast with the actual qualities and behavior of the human beings who seized power and represented a yawning gap between theory and practice. These idealized notions of human nature also failed to appear in the attitudes and behavior of the masses who rarely displayed the kind of political consciousness the leaders sought to instill.

Unrealistic conceptions of human nature also interfered with creating greater material abundance by preventing people from engaging in activities that elicit some degree of self-interest. Mistaken conceptions of human nature and behavior also accounted for the spectacular failure of socialist systems to eliminate "the root causes" of crime and criminal behavior, as well as other social problems such as alcoholism, drug addiction, and the disintegration of families in modern urbanindustrial settings.

Seeking a balance between an emphasis on the unsoundness of the theoretical bases of these systems and the evident discrepancy between theory and practice, I have suggested in my book Political Will and Personal Belief (1999) that "the discrepancy ... existed between the promises and ideals entailed in the theory ... and the results of the attempts to implement it ... but not between the theory and the official policies and institutions built to implement the policies and ideals." That is to say, nationalizing the means of production was congruent with the theory, its promise and intention, but the theory itself was in error as to the expected beneficial consequences of this measure.

It may also be proposed that communist systems made various attempts to realize certain aspects of Marxist theory (overlooking its inherent flaws and contradictions) and these efforts produced a proliferation of unintended consequences that undermined these systems. Communist leaders, and especially their earlier generation, believed that theory actually guided their actions. Such belief was not entirely opportunistic, though it provided excellent justification for making the retention and the maximization of their power the most important goal.

In sum, Sperlich sheds new light here on complex and contentious issues within the confines of a remarkably compact volume, greatly improving our understanding of the origins, decline, and disintegration of communist systems. He also demonstrates the courage to wrestle with the timeless questions of the relationship between religious and utopian impulses, the pursuit of power, and the difficulty of gratifying the great variety of contradictory needs and aspirations human beings harbor.

PAUL HOLLANDER is Professor Emeritus of Sociology at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and author, mostrecently, of Discontents: Postmodern and Postcommunist (Transaction, 2002)