Michael A. Lebowitz - The Contradictions of Real Socialism: The Conductor and the Conducted

Praise for The Contradictions of Real Socialism

The owl of Minerva only flies at duskit was Hegels old maxim that seemed confirmed when in 1991 the Socialist Register published Michael Lebowitzs article on the nature of real socialism amid its very demise. This new book takes off from there, but its wings are buoyed by Lebowitzs work since then, from Beyond Capital to The Socialist Alternative. The profound understanding in this new book of why twentieth-century attempts at constructing socialism failed must be an essential element in the socialist renewal emerging amid the first great capitalist crisis of the twenty-first century. It thus appears that the old wise owl also flies at dawn.

LEO PANITCH, editor, Socialist Register

If we want socialism for the twenty-first century, we need to understand why the real socialisms of the last century so often ended in capitalism. In this book, Lebowitz shows, theoretically and historically, that the socialism practiced in the Soviet Union and Central Europe was doomed because vanguard relations of production weakened the working class, ensuring that it would have no primary role in the battle ultimately won by the logic of capital (represented by managers) over the logic of the vanguard (represented by the party). We must, he concludes, reject vanguard Marxism and embrace a Marxist vision of socialism in which, from the beginning, the full development of human capacities is actively promoted. There is a lot to learn here.

MARTIN HART-LANDSBERG, professor of economics,
Lewis and Clark College

One doesnt have to agree with all the theses presented in Michael Lebowitzs latest book in order to acknowledge that this is a major contribution to the international debate on socialism of the twenty-first century. Drawing lessons from the dramatic failure of so-called real socialism, he argues, with powerful and persuasive logic, that a new society, based on values of solidarity and community, cannot be created by a state standing over and above civil society: only through autonomous organizationsat the neighborhood, community, and national levelscan people transform both circumstances and themselves.

MICHAEL LWY, co-author, Che Guevara: His Revolutionary Legacy
(with Olivier Besancenot)

What would Marx have thought had he lived to see the Soviet Union? Nobody has interpreted Marx to greater advantage to answer this question than renowned Marxist scholar Michael Lebowitz, who explains in The Contradictions of Real Socialism why Marx would not have been pleased!

ROBIN HAHNEL, professor of economics, Portland State University

We need this well-written book to understand that socialism did not die with the fall of the Berlin Wall.

FRANOIS HOUTART, Executive Secretary of
the World Forum for Alternatives

Where fresh insights are rare, indeed, Michael Lebowitz provides a bundle of them. Although no one will (or perhaps should) agree with everything here, the book provides rich material for badly-needed discussion.

PAUL BUHLE, author, Marxism in the United States

A riveting exploration of what can be learned from the first attempts to create socialist systems, specifically the period from 1950 through the 1980s. Lebowitz convincingly demonstrates that the distortions of the model developed in the Soviet Union and copied in eastern European countries (real socialism) were caused by setting in motion two contradictory forcesending up with the worst aspects of both capital and leadership and control by a vanguard. He examines the development of real socialism as a complex system, with the various parts explained and scrutinized in their interactions and interrelations as part of the system. Required reading for those interested in avoiding diversions and pitfalls in a post capitalist alternativeon the path to creating a system under social, instead of private, control in which the goal is meeting everyones basic needs and encouraging and allowing the full human development of all.

FRED MAGDOFF, professor emeritus of plant and soil science,
University of Vermont

The Conductor and the Conducted

byMICHAEL A. LEBOWITZ

Copyright 2012 by Michael Lebowitz

All Rights Reserved

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Lebowitz, Michael A.

The contradictions of real socialism : the conductor and the conducted / by Michael A. Lebowitz.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-58367-256-3 (pbk. : alk. paper) ISBN 978-1-58367-257-0 (cloth: alk. paper) 1. Communism. 2. Socialism. I. Title.

HX73.L4163 2012

335dc23

2012019992

Monthly Review Press

146 West 29th Street, Suite 6W

New York, New York 10001

www.monthlyreview.org

5 4 3 2 1

For friends in Cuba, Venezuela,
and everywhere people are struggling to build a new world.
Hasta la victoria siempre!

This is not a book for those who already know everything important there is to know about Real Socialism. For those fortunate souls who have inherited or adopted the eternal verities of particular political sects on the left, empirical footnotes that strengthen their claim to leadership are the principal tasks of scholarship. As a result, the central question about this book for them is likely to be, Is he with us or against us? In short, is this book good for the chosen?

I presume, however, readers who begin with questions rather than answers. What was this phenomenon known as Real Socialism, or Actually Existing Socialism, a concept created in the twentieth century by the leaders of countries in order to distinguish their real experience from merely theoretical socialist ideas? What were its characteristics? How was this system reproduced? And why did it ultimately yield to capitalism without resistance from the working classes who were presumably its beneficiaries?

I didnt plan to write this book. My original idea was to include a few chapters on Real Socialism in my book The Socialist Alternative: Real Human Development, published by Monthly Review Press in 2010. The point I wanted to make is that the socialist alternative is an alternative not only to capitalism but also to Real Socialism. However, after drafting a few chapters based in particular on the experience of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, I realized that this section of the book was taking over and demanded a book of its own. So, as I indicated in the Preface to The Socialist Alternative, I decided to shift this material plus a discussion of the Yugoslav experience with market self-management to a separate project, which I called studies in the development of socialism.

In my attempt to apply Marxs methodology to the study of Real Socialism (hereafter noted without quotation marks), however, I found myself constantly surprised because the subject under investigation continually revealed new sides that had to be explored, sides that I hadnt considered in my years of teaching the subject. As a result, the book grew in size and took much longer to complete than anticipated. And, its scope was reduced. First to go was the discussion of the Yugoslav experience, now put off to a future project. But in addition, the discussion of Real Socialism as such was itself truncated.

Originally, my plan was to analyze Real Socialism as a system that consolidated in the period after 1950 and then to follow that with a section on its historical development. My model in this respect was Marxs treatment of capitalism in