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ABSTRACT. The article studies the implications for historical materialism of the failure
of the socialist project in the Soviet Union. The author demonstrates that the said failure
broadly confirms central historical materialist theses, which would have been difficult to
sustain if the Russian revolution had succeeded in its goal of superseding capitalism and
establishing a socialist society.
What is the significance, for Marxists, of the failure of the socialist project
in what was the Soviet Union? And what is the significance, for socialists,
of the failure of that project? I separate the two questions not merely for the
formal reason that Marxists and socialists designate (overlapping but
nevertheless) distinct categories, but also for the more substantial reason
that the significance of the Soviet failure is, in my view, very different in
the two cases. For reasons to be explained below, the Soviet failure can be
regarded as a triumph for Marxism: a Soviet success might have embar-
rassed key propositions of historical materialism, which is the Marxist
theory of history. But no one could think that the Soviet failure represents
a triumph for socialism. A Soviet success would have been unambiguously
good for socialism.
I treat, here, the significance of the Soviet failure for Marxism.1 Now,
as I said, had the Soviet Union succeeded in building socialism, that might
have embarrassed historical materialism. It might, in particular, have posed
a serious challenge to these central claims of historical materialism:
(1) No social formation ever perishes before all the productive forces for
which there is room in it have developed . . .
(2) and new higher relations of production never appear before . . . [they]
have matured in the womb of the old society itself.2
1 I discuss its significance for socialism in my Self-Ownership, Freedom, and Equality
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 255264.
2 Preface to Karl Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, in
Marx/Engels, Selected Works in Two Volumes, Volume I (Moscow: Foreign Languages
Publishing House, 1958), p. 363.
It follows from the passage on exhibit that a capitalist society does not give
way to a socialist one until capitalism is fully developed in that society, and
that socialism does not take over from capitalism until the higher relations
which characterise socialism have matured within the antecedent capitalist
society itself. What, however, is imposed by the requirement that relations
constitutive of the future socialist society must mature under capitalism? A
complete answer to that question might be difficult to supply, but, whatever
else is required for such relations to have matured within capitalism, there
surely must exist, for such relations to have matured, a large and developed
proletariat within the capitalist society in question.3
Now, against the background of the two exhibited historical materialist
theses, I want to discuss a criticism of historical materialism which is often
made by anti-Marxists. I draw attention to this criticism because I believe
it to be instructively incorrect.
The criticism is that, whereas Marx predicted that socialist revolution
would first break out in advanced capitalist countries, it in fact occurred
first in a relatively backward one, one so backward that one might even
refuse to call it a capitalist country. And this predictive failure was not just
of the man Karl Marx himself, but of historical materialism, because of its
commitment to theses (1) and (2) above. For here was a socialist revolution
in an incompletely capitalist country in which further development of the
(1) and (2) (my numbers) constitute a single sentence in the text of the Preface. I have
taken a certain (in my view, justified) liberty with part (2) of this key sentence, which
reads, in full, as follows: . . . new, higher relations of production never appear before the
material conditions of their existence have matured in the womb of the old society itself.
So the sentence does not expressly say that the relations of production of the forthcoming
society, as opposed to the material conditions of their existence, must have matured
within the old society itself. But Karl Marx undoubtedly also believed the former, and
here unasserted, associated thesis, as he shows he did elsewhere. One such place is Karl
Marx, Wages, Price and Profit (Marx/Engels, Selected Works in Two Volumes, Volume
I), p. 446, where he says that capitalism simultaneously engenders the material conditions
and the social forms necessary for an economical reconstruction of society: social forms
surely include relations of production. Another text in evidence of the relevant belief is in
Karl Marx, Grundrisse (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1973), p. 159: . . . if we did not find
concealed in society as it is the material conditions of production and the corresponding
relations of exhange prerequisite for a classless society, then all attempts to explode it [that
is, society as it is] would be quixotic [Relations of exchange (Verkehrsverhltnisse)
in this Grundrisse passage are identical with what the Critique Preface more aptly calls
relations of production (Produktionsverhltnisse)]. For further support of my use of
part (2) of the Preface sentence in its truncated form, see the reference to The Poverty
of Philosophy at footnote 3 below.
3 See Karl Marx, The Poverty of Philosophy, in Marx/Engels Collected Works, Volume
6 (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1976), pp. 177178, for strong confirmation of this
interpretation.
MARXISM AFTER THE COLLAPSE OF THE SOVIET UNION 101
productive forces, under a capitalist aegis, was surely possible [so that
(1) stands falsified], and in a country which had not generated much of
a proletariat [so that (2) also stands falsified].
Before indicating why I think that this criticism is misguided, I should
address a standard reply to it, in defence of (2), which I think unsound. The
standard reply, against the charge that the 1917 revolution occurred without
the existence of a developed proletariat, and, therefore, in contradiction of
(2) above, is that there was a highly developed and concentrated proletariat
in the huge factories of Petrograd itself, where the leading revolutionary
events occurred, and where power was seized. But, while an ample local
proletariat may help to explain, and may even have been crucial to,
Bolshevik political success, theorem (2) is, in my view, supposed to be true
not because of the exigencies of politics but because of what a new form
of economy requires for viability. So this way of protecting (2) against the
threat posed to it by the Russian revolution fails.
Despite the failure of the Petrograd proletariat gambit, I do not think
that the 1917 revolution falsifies thesis (2). The reason why I think it does
not is that it would do so only if what occurred in 1917 was indeed a
socialist revolution, one which, by definition, ushered in a truly socialist
society, in which class division is abolished under the rule of the associ-
ated producers themselves. I do not believe that Soviet society had such
a socialist character: it was not ruled by the associated producers, but by
the leaders, and sometimes just the leader, of the Bolshevik Party. Indeed,
those who criticize historical materialism in the stated fashion would be
the last to grant that the 1917 revolution succeeded in establishing what
Marxists would regard as a truly socialist society: they should therefore be
the last to lodge the criticism that they do lodge [They may think that the
Russian revolution produced the only sort of socialism that is possible,
but they should not (as they do) expect others, who may not agree with that
further claim, to accept that the Russian revolution falsifies (2)].
In a word, the 1917 revolution and its aftermath offer no difficulty
for proposition (2), since appropriately higher relations of production did
not supervene. But, all the same, the Russian revolution might still be
thought to refute proposition (1), the principle that no social order ever
perishes before all the development for which it supplies room has been
completed, for capitalism surely showed room for fuller development in
Russia in 1917. Thus, someone might say, the problem the 1917 revolution
poses for historical materialism is not that it caused socialism to succeed
prematurely but that it caused capitalism to fail prematurely.
But I believe that that judgment is also ill-considered. For historical
materialism does allow for the possibility of a premature revolution against
102 G.A. COHEN
that question, Marx learned the Russian language, so that he could study
Russias history and circumstances. And his answer to the question that
the Russians put to him was very interesting: If the Russian Revolution
becomes the signal for a proletarian revolution in the West, so that both
complement each other, the present Russian common ownership of land
may serve as the starting-point for a communist development.5
Now, how does that sit with the requirements of historical materialism,
and, in particular, with theses (1) and (2)? I believe that, as long as (1)
and (2) are taken to be true of each society separately, then Marxs advice
was heresy. But that very advice suggests a global construal of historical
materialism in which claims such as (1) and (2) are asserted not of each
society taken singly but of world-scale or at least multi-national social
systems.6 (If Marx had meant that revolution in the West was no more
than just politically or militarily required, then his answer to the socialists
does not require this construal, but I think that he thought that socialist
success in Russia needed Western co-operation for more deeply systemic
reasons.)7
Now, was Marxs advice to the Russians heresy, if we interpret (1) and
(2) in the suggested global fashion? That is a matter of judgment, and
all I can do here is set out my own. It is that, taken globally, (2) would
be consistent with Marxs advice, but that (1) would not be. (2) would be
consistent because the proletariat was sufficiently developed across Europe
as a whole for new, higher relations to count as having matured, in a global
sense, within that region. But (1) would still contradict Marxs advice,
since, as history shows, there was enormous scope for further develop-
ment under capitalism in Europe when Marx wrote his remarks. Whatever
globalism does for (2), in the face of the challenge to it posed by the
Russian revolution and you may disagree with my judgment that it helps
(2) a lot it makes (1), if anything, more difficult to defend, in the face of
that challenge.
V. I. Lenin was, of course, an erudite student of Marx, and he did
not imagine that the 1917 Russian Revolution would stand alone and
succeed. He thought that it would succeed, but only because he thought
that there would be the responsive workers revolution in the West that
Marx laid down as a requirement of a Russian success: the needed support