Brilliant but utopian

This is an undated pamphlet published by Solidarity, a small British group of libertarian socialists (the group is now defunct). The pamphlet is undated but probably printed around 1970. It contains an English translation of a text by Cornelius Castoriadis, a French left-wing intellectual of a libertarian socialist bent. Castoriadis, who often wrote under the pen name Paul Cardan, was the leading light of a small group with the dramatic name Socialisme ou Barbarie (Socialism or Barbarism). Solidarity seems to have been the main conduit of Cardan's ideas in Britain.

“From Bolshevism to the Bureaucracy” was originally Cardan's preface to a French edition of Alexandra Kollontai's famous pamphlet “The Workers Opposition”. The so-called Workers' Opposition was a dissident group within the Bolshevik Party, mostly known for its intervention at the tenth party congress in 1921. The opposition argued that the working class was in danger of losing power due to excessive bureaucratization, and that the management of Soviet industry and trade should be handed over to the trade unions rather than being the exclusive preserve of the Party. V I Lenin and Leon Trotsky weren't convinced (nor amused), and the infamous ban on “factions” was to a large extent aimed at silencing Kollontai and her supporters. This episode is important, since it shows that the bureaucratic degeneration of the Russian revolution started already under Lenin and Trotsky as a result of conscious Party decisions. Trotskyists, by contrast, still argue that all bureaucratization under Lenin was the result of strictly “objective” factors (such as the Civil War), that Lenin and Trotsky opposed it, and that it wasn't until Lenin's death and Trotsky's ouster that the bureaucracy finally took power (headed by a certain Joseph Stalin). The irony of Trotsky being hit in the head by the same “ban on factions” used by himself to silence Kollontai is usually lost on these people.

Cardan's text is obviously a polemic against Trotskyism, and is liberally sprinkled with quotations from Trotsky's notorious work “Terrorism and Communism”. Cardan rejects purely “objective” explanations for the bureaucratization of Soviet Russia. The Civil War, the international isolation of the revolution and the economic dislocation were real, to be sure, but they might just as well have led to the fall of Bolshevism and the victory of the White Guards. (I would add other possibilities to the list: a populist regime, a Menshevik government, the division of Russia into a dozen nationalist-controlled republics, foreign occupation or complete chaos.) Instead, the revolution defeated its enemies, only to succumb to bureaucratic degeneration from within. Why did the defeat of the working class take *this specific form* rather than some other? Objective factors alone cannot explain it. There is an additional X factor somewhere. What is it?

The X factor is, Cardan argues, the entire prior practice of Bolshevism. This is really a no-brainer, but trust me, Trotskyists really don't get it! Bolshevism was always an authoritarian movement with the ultimate goal of creating a one-party state, a movement which converged with the revolutionary workers only temporarily. During the revolutionary year 1917, workers and peasants often took radical action without the prior consent of the Party, indeed, sometimes against its wishes. As a libertarian socialist, Cardan puts his emphasis on the Bolsheviks' top-down view of the economy and attendant exclusion of workers' self-management. Somewhat idiosyncratically, he regards Bolshevik practice as “capitalist” since it included the Taylor system and piece work at factory level, appointments rather than elections of plant managers, etc. Why should authoritarian party leadership of this type lead to any other results than the bureaucratization of the revolution? Why expect a party completely beholden to “capitalist” methods to reproduce anything else than “capitalist” social relations? Note also that other civil wars in history didn't lead to one-party states and centralized planning. Perhaps because, ahem, they weren't fought and won by Bolsheviks…

There is much truth in this, and some paragraphs in this pamphlet are simply brilliant. It's simply amazing how much Leninists, including Trotskyists, have managed to mystify these issues. However, there are also some problems with Cardan's analysis. On the one hand, he tends towards a kind of idealism: “In so far as ideas play a role in historical development, and, *in the final analysis*, their role is enormous, Bolshevik ideology (and some aspects of the Marxist ideology underlying it) were decisive factors in the development of the Russian bureaucracy”. On the other hand, when discussing the bureaucracy as such, Cardan treats it as a product of objective material factors, not “ideas”. Thus, he believes that there are two types of bureaucracy in the modern world. The first type is the managerial-administrative stratum made necessary by large scale capitalist production and societal complexity. The other is the type of bureaucracy found in the Third World, which takes political power in place of a weak bourgeoisie, and attempts to modernize society through centralized planning. He mentions China as an example of this. (The Russian bureaucracy is closest to the second type, but is unique since it took power during the degeneration of a working class revolution.) Here, Cardan is clearly talking about objective conditions. So why does he emphasize “ideas” in the Bolshevik case? How “final” is the “final analysis” in which ideas are “decisive”?

I think the problem is Cardan's utopianism. On some level, he probably does believe that Kollontai and the Workers Opposition could have saved the Russian revolution and create some kind of self-managed proletarian utopia. Hence, if the leadership (or non-leadership) of the revolution just had the right ideas, they could presumably have pulled themselves up by their bootstraps. In reality, workers' self-management and libertarian socialism were the least likely outcomes of Red October, but you probably need to break more decisively with leftist dogma to realize that…

The meaning of life

“The Meaning of Socialism” is a pamphlet published by Solidarity, a now defunct British leftist group with a libertarian socialist orientation. The pamphlet was first published in 1961. My copy is from 1969. It was quite popular in its day, and has been translated to a number of foreign languages, including Japanese and Norwegian. It has also been translated into French, which is pretty ironic, since the pamphlet contains an article written by the French leftist intellectual Cornelius Castoriadis. Apparently, “The Meaning of Socialism” was originally an English-language article written by Castoriadis for the magazine International Socialism (associated with Tony Cliff's group in Britain). Castoriadis, who often used the pen name Paul Cardan, was the leader of a small group in France, Socialisme ou Barbarie. Solidarity seems to have been Cardan's foremost admirers in the Anglo-Saxon world.

“The Meaning of Socialism” is a relatively short text, in which Castoriadis alias Cardan explains his basic approach to socialism, revolution and the workers' movement. It has a family likeness to anarcho-syndicalism, anarcho-communism and council communism, although Cardan never uses those terms. The main contradiction within capitalism goes between authoritarian management of production and the attempts of workers to free themselves from such. Capitalist production is fundamentally irrational. At several points, Cardan implies that the kind of large scale production dominated by machines which characterize the modern economy is irrational, too. One cannot therefore simply “take it over”, or hand it over to state planners, and expect workers' paradise to follow. Since the Soviet Union and similar societies are just as marked by the contradiction between workers and irrational production/dead machines/authoritarian management as the Western nations, these supposedly “socialist” systems are fundamentally capitalist, too.

Cardan also attacks the meaninglessness and anomie of modern life, how people despite their higher living standards nevertheless feel alienated, how capitalism tries to “solve” the problem by ever-changing and ever-increasing consumption, which is really just as empty, etc. (Here, he sounds like the later hippies or Situationists!) The task of the revolutionary organization isn't to act as a sectarian vanguard in order to “lead” the proletariat. That will simply reproduce the hierarchic relationship the revolution is supposed to get away from. Instead, revolutionaries should practice direct democracy and local autonomy within their own organizations. They should also concentrate their efforts at factory level and the level of everyday life, since it's there most workers actually are. Abstract slogans or programs of the type beloved by small Trotskyist groups are to be avoided. The “meaning of socialism” and the ultimate goal of the struggle is workers' self-management of production.

There are several problems with Cardan's text. It feels extremely narrow with its almost exclusive orientation towards the shop floor. It's also Euro-centrist. Most workers, of course, never experienced a higher standard of living after World War II. Third World workers, to be exact. Indeed, Cardan says literally *nothing* about the Third World, and this in a text on “the meaning of socialism” published in 1961! Cardan's text is also extremely vague and contradictory once he attempts to describe how workers' self-management should really work. Suddenly, there is central planning with the aid of computers (I assumed the dead labor of the machines was supposed to be abolished?) and a centralized distribution system, with the workers in each factory simply deciding on *how* the plan should be put into effect in their little corners. The plan itself is supposedly the result of a collective decision of the whole working class…and, I suppose, its computers. (Compare the later musings by Murray Bookchin.)

Finally, I must say that the cover of this pamphlet is priceless. At least the 1969 cover. It shows a comics character in the form of a smiling heart, with a tool in one hand and a flower in the other. This funny little guy shows up in several other Solidarity pamphlets, too. The whole thing feels so “love summer”! Perhaps this says something about how this particular group wants us to interpret the meaning of Cornelius Castoriadis?

Marxism wins, I'm afraid

Marxism meets reality 

Although I'm not a Marxist, I must say that Brian Moseley's "Marxism versus Reality" is extremely bad. The author is otherwise unknown, but seems to have been a member or hang-around of the British libertarian socialist group Solidarity. At the very least, he uses a similar terminology.

The pamphlet was published in 1983 to "commemorate" the centenary of Marx' death. Most of the author's arguments are Anti-Marxism 101: What about Russia? Does the labour theory of value really make sense? Why can't the superstructure influence the base? And, honestly, what about Russia?

Yet, the author nevertheless comes up short in the end. Thus, while dropping Marx' theory of crisis, he never offers an alternative theory of his own. On the contrary, he believes that capitalism has overcome its crises, at least in the "advanced capitalist nations". And this in Britain in 1983! No crisis, huh? He also completely forgets the little detail about, shall we say, the less advanced capitalist nations. They are hardly even featured. Why is there a crisis *there*? "Class struggle" is between order-givers and order-takers, not capitalists and workers, most workers are on the same side as their bosses, and most workers do what they do completely voluntarily?! Well, at least in the advanced capitalist nations. For some reason, however, a revolution is just as impossible in the Third World, making everything look pretty bleak.

Somehow, this all sounds rather familiar. Yepp, it's really a restatement of the theories of Cornelius Castoriadis (a.k.a. Paul Cardan), who at least had the good graces of putting them forward about 20 years earlier, when they seemed to make *some* kind of sense (and even that, only barely). In 1983, they made no sense at all. "Marxism versus Reality" is Castoriadis on downers. In this battle with Reality, I'd say Marxism wins.

And now, sports...

Strange victories

"Vietnam: Whose Victory?" is a pamphlet published by the now defunct libertarian socialist group Solidarity in Britain. I haven't seen this particular edition. I have the original edition, which hit the streets back in 1973. Solidarity opposed both sides in the Vietnam War, and hence refused to call for a North Vietnamese or NLF victory. This may have been *the* most unpopular position on the far left at the time!

The bulk of the pamphlet contains an analysis of the war by Bob Potter, whom I presume was a member of Solidarity. Despite opposing both the DRV and the Republic of Vietnam, Potter's analysis still sounds "Trotskyist". Thus, he places a strong emphasis on Ho Chi Minh's deadly attacks on Ta Thu Thau's Trotskyist movement in Saigon during the 1940's. He claims that both Stalinists and Trotskyists are class collaborationist and popular frontist, and that Stalinism seeks to betray the revolution in favour of capitalism and imperialism. In many ways, Potter's spin is "more Trotskyist than Trotsky".

As a counter-weight, the editors have appended the official analysis of Solidarity, according to which the Stalinists (and presumably the Trotskyists) aren't betraying anyone. Rather, Stalinism represents the interests of a new, state capitalist class which *actively* attempts to take power by smashing traditional capitalism or colonialism. The editors also argue that Stalinists and nationalists *can* "carry out the tasks of the bourgeois revolution", something Trotskyism (and by implication Potter) considers impossible or unlikely.

I'm not a big fan of North Vietnam myself (nor of South Vietnam, for that matter), but I must say that Solidarity's pamphlet is marred by a kind of (perhaps unconscious) First World chauvinism, probably derived from Cornelius Castoriadis' idea that a genuine socialist revolution is impossible in the Third World. (Castoriadis was a leftist intellectual whose ideas had influenced Solidarity.) Surely, only Solidarity could write something as silly as the following: "It was as if at least some students were learning what workers had instinctively known for years, namely that the jockeying of power between the various Vietnamese bureaucrats, North and South, and their search for `recognition' by and even `partnership' with imperialism (all in the name of `national' revolution) had absolutely nothing to do with the problems of ordinary people".

No? What "ordinary people" are we talking about? Sure, maybe Sunday shoppers in London or jaded intellectuals at a café in Paris didn't care about the Christmas bombings of Hanoi, but please... What about "ordinary people" in, say, Hanoi? Or in Saigon, for that matter? Weren't they at least tangentially interested in "the jockeying for power between the various Vietnamese bureaucrats"? What about ordinary people in the United States, who could be drafted? And why should the "instincts" of "workers" count, especially since Solidarity usually seems to reject them? (See "The Irrational in Politics". No pandering to the working-class instincts there!)

Sometimes, the parochialism of the British libertarian left is simply amazing...

Cliff hanger

Cornelius Castoriadis was a Greek-French philosopher, psychoanalyst and political activist. In leftist circles, he is mostly known for having founded the post-Marxist group Socialisme ou Barbarie (“Socialism or Barbarism”), which inspired a similar group in Britain, Solidarity. For some reason, Castoriadis often wrote under pseudonym. His most well known pen name was Paul Cardan.

“History as Creation” has a pretty strange publication history. It consists of two chapters of a larger work called “Marxisme et Théorie Révolutionnaire”, published in instalments between 1961 and 1964 in the journal Socialisme ou Barbarie. In 1975, Castoriadis reused this work as an introduction to an even larger opus, “L'Institution Imaginarie de la Société”. As for Solidarity, they translated the original chapters of “Marxisme et Théorie Révolutionnaire” on an on-off basis as a series of separate pamphlets. One of them, then, is “History as Creation”. Thus, this is simply a small portion of a far larger project, and could therefore be seen as a kind of Castoriadis teaser trailer. While the author poses a lot of interesting questions, he never solves them. I suppose the denouement can be found in “The Imaginary Institution of Society”.

Castoriadis attacks on Marxist philosophy are pretty scathing. He aims his sarcasm at the Hegelian trait, the “closed dialectic” in which everything real is rational, and all of human history can be rationally comprehended, presumably by Marx and Engels writing circa 1859. Not only is human history rationally understandable en toto, its future course can be predicted with certainty, too. Strangest of all, the future course of history conforms perfectly to the value-system held by Marx and Engels circa 1859... The pamphlet contains a series of bizarre apocalyptic imagines from some unfortunate Christian tract, predicting the end of the world in 1908. It's not clear whether these are from Castoriadis' original work, or have been added by the translators. They are, of course, intended as a warning to those who claim to know the exact future of society.

Sarcasm aside, Castoriadis also have a number of serious points. Marxism claims to be materialist, but its philosophy of history sound teleological. But if history has a course and a meaning which can be rationally grasped by human minds in its totality, how can we speak of “materialism”? Castoriadis, ironically or not, calls such a notion mysterious. Of course it's mysterious – but only because Marx and Engels rejected the existence of God. If God exists, then the teleology of history makes perfect sense! To Castoriadis, the difference between Hegel's “idealism” and Marxist “materialism” is negligible. In both cases, we are dealing with a “closed dialectic” which in truly mysterious fashion claims that our (finite) minds are capable of completely grasping a rational whole. Indeed, the idealist position is more logical, since it posits that the world is a product of our minds. If so, its complete intelligibility is less of a mystery than in a “materialist” scenario.

Another problem is that both Hegelian and Marxist teleology seems to be hidden, a “cunning of reason” (Hegel's term) where individual human actors or even whole human societies consciously strive for one goal, only to end up somewhere else entirely. Thus, the Puritans turned to worldly asceticism in the service of God, but ended up accumulating capital and thereby laying the foundations for capitalism, a system anything but ascetic and godly. Of course, it was capitalism that “the cunning of reason” wanted to create in the first place. History used the Puritans as its unconscious tool. But isn't this really the same notion as the Christian idea of Divine Providence, Castoriadis asks? Since Castoriadis is critical of the Bolshevik revolution in Russia, he uses it as a negative example of “the cunning of reason”. Perhaps History used the Bolsheviks and the Petrograd proletariat as its unwitting tools to create a world run by the state bureaucracy?

Castoriadis' project is not merely to “place Hegel on his feet” (Marx' and Engels' description of their philosophy), but to chop off his head. The author wants an “open dialectic”, which recognizes creativity, emergence and contingency, while rejecting strict teleological (and quasi-Christian) determinism. However, these points are merely touched upon in “History as Creation”, making it imperative to read all of “The Imaginary Institution of Society”, or at least the introductory chapters.

Castoriadis does point out an additional mystery in this trailer. He admits that Marx had a point when declaring that humans make their own history, but not in conditions of their own choosing. This is what makes humanity end up somewhere else than were it wants to go. Yet, despite this, human society has a fundamental coherence, not simply in the social or cultural sense, but also as a web of symbolic meanings. How is *this* possible, if we always follow the wrong routes, are subject to contingency, and lack a teleology? Of course, a Hegelian, Marxist or (in his own way) a Christian would presumably argue that this mystery proves teleology. Castoriadis cannot accept this, creating a “cliff hanger” of sorts awaiting solution in his magnum opus…

Postmodern capitalism....and still no revolution

Paul Cardan is a pseudonym for Cornelius Castoriadis, a French intellectual who passed away in 1997. His most important works were written during the 1960's, when he led a small left-wing group called Socialisme ou Barbarie (Socialism or Barbarism). Castoriadis gradually drifted away from Marxism, and his group was dissolved in 1965. Castoriadis later career is somewhat unclear to me, but he seems to have developed an interest in Freudian psychoanalysis and written a curious book about the coming of World War Three. A rather entertaining photo of the old man can be seen at Wikipedia.

"Modern capitalism and revolution" was written in 1960, translated to English in 1965 by another small leftist group, Solidarity, and re-issued in 1974 with a new preface by the author. (My copy doesn't list Black & Red as co-publisher, however, so it's possible that this is another edition than the one I have.)

Castoriadis argues that traditional Marxism has failed and have to be dispensed with. Modern capitalism can overcome its periodic crisis and even raise the real wages of the workers. Indeed, the rise of the wage levels are a necessary part of modern capitalism, since it gives the system the ability to expand through mass consumption. Capitalism can also create near-full employment, and even the unemployment benefits are substantially higher than previously. Meanwhile, the workers' organizations have been co-opted by the system and turned into instruments of capitalism. The working class has become apolitical and passive. Most people have retreated into their own private lives, and become consumers of mass produced trash. The general trend of modern capitalism is bureaucratization of all spheres of life: the factory, labour unions and political parties, recreation, consumption and culture. The state apparatus also expands. The worst example of this bureaucratization are the "Communist" nations, which Castoriadis denounces as capitalist, but the same process is at a fairly advanced stage even in the Western nations.

Still, Castoriadis believes that there is hope for a revolution. The fundamental contradiction within modern capitalism is between order-givers and order-takers. The order-takers are the new working class, and include both traditional blue collar workers, white collar workers, students and women. Traditional economic demands are no longer particularly useful. Instead, workers should fight for self-management at the point of production. (This sounds like an anarchist or anarcho-syndicalist demand.) Also, socialists should work for a revolution of everyday life in an anti-authoritarian direction. The revolt of youth and students against stifling morality and old-fashioned education are seen as a positive development. The goal is a libertarian socialist society with a network of workers' councils.

Today, Paul Cardan's book sounds just as anachronistic as the traditional Marxism it denounces, perhaps more so. The ability of the system to overcome its crises is shaky at best, unemployment figures are rising, and is doubtful whether all workers have gotten real wage increases. Traditional working class struggles were legion during the 1970's, 1980's and early 1990's. Meanwhile, globalization have created a vast, traditional working class in nations such as China, India or Brazil. While China (a weird state capitalist system) is successful, the most bureaucratic systems, such as the Soviet Union, have quite simply collapsed. The Internet and "flat organization" have created a less bureaucratic system. Postmodern capitalism? The only phenomenon correctly described by the author is the increasing tendency of many people to retreat into passive, private existence and become consumers of mass entertainment or useless products.

Castoriadis seems to have drawn all the wrong conclusions from the prolonged postwar boom after World War II. This boom has been somewhat shaky for decades, and might be just about to go bust at any time! Of course, it's always easy to criticize a book in hindsight. Still, it's difficult not to see the shortcomings 50 years later. One shortcoming should have been obvious already when the book was written: Castoriadis says virtually nothing about the Third World. In general, the New Left seems to have been Third Worldist, which is logical if you believe that the proletariat in the rich nations have been "bought off" and rendered passive. At this time, the Third World was teeming with left-wing and nationalist guerrillas (such as the NLF in Vietnam). Also, if the contradiction is between order-giver and order-taker, surely the "African peasants" mentioned in passing by Cardan are the ultimate order-takers or "wretched of the earth". Yet, our author seems to write off the entire Third World as of little interest, giving his book a curiously local feeling, even somewhat claustrophobic!

I don't doubt that Marxism needs to be superseded. However, it feels as if "Modern capitalism and revolution" was a step in the wrong direction...

Facing the collapse

A review of "Facing the war" by Cornelius Castoriadis (Paul Cardan). 

This issue of Telos magazine contains a text by the French intellectual Cornelius Castoriadis, "Facing the war". The text was quite notorious in its day.

Small wonder.

Castoriadis was a left-winger, but in "Facing the war" he took the position that the Soviet Union was the most dangerous superpower and militarily stronger than the United States. Castoriadis further claimed that Soviet society was a "stratocracy", an entirely new type of society ruled by the army, with no other goal than conquest for the sake of conquest. This, Castoriadis believed, is a material fact of the Soviet system: the ruling army corpse was compelled to expand its foreign power by its own inner logic. The author further claimed that the military-industrial complex in the Soviet Union was highly efficient (in sharp contrast to the civilian economy). The large number of pro-Soviet regimes in the Third World was seen as proof positive that Moscow is stronger than Washington. "Facing the war" was written shortly after the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan, which Castoriadis believed was a first step in a Russian conquest of Iran, Pakistan or perhaps both. The author emphasized that no reform of the stratocracy was possible. World War Three is inevitable! Since I only read the first part of this work (in a Swedish translation), I'm not sure what Castoriadis wanted people to actually *do* about it, but he seems to have taken a neutral position between the United States and the Soviet Union, perhaps because of his belief in some kind of libertarian socialism. (At one point, he calls the Western systems "liberal oligarchies".)

Despite this, Castoriadis was sharply criticized by many other left-wingers, since his writing sounded pro-American, repeating the arguments of the "hawks" in Washington and elsewhere (including, presumably, president Ronald Reagan). Another parallel would be the slavishly pro-Chinese Maoists, who were also superhawkish during this period, since China was allied with the United States.

Of course, Castoriadis' analysis was sheer hogwash. The text seems to have been written in 1980. In 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev was appointed new secretary general of the Soviet Communist Party. He launched the reform processes known as perestroika and glasnost. In 1991, the entire Soviet Union quite simply collapsed! Yet, only ten years earlier, Castoriadis was assuring his readers that the USSR is immensely stronger than the United States and cannot be reformed from the inside (nor, apparently, can it collapse). The sudden collapse of the entire Eastern Bloc in 1989-91 also revealed the completely decrepit character of the Soviet economy, not just the civilian sector but also the military-industrial complex. Indeed, one of many reasons for the collapse seems to have been the Russian inability to keep even pace with Reagan in the arms race. I'm not sure whether the author ever issued a retraction of his absurd screed, or whether somebody cared asking for one.

In reality, the Soviet Union was always the weaker superpower. When Mossadeq in Iran threw out the Americans, the CIA assassinated Mossadeq. When Sadat in Egypt threw out the Russians, the KGB did...exactly nothing. Soviet support for North Vietnam was substantially smaller than US support for South Vietnam (not to mention the military presence of US troops). Weirdly, Castoriadis admitted this, but since the US lost the war, he nevertheless saw this as evidence for Soviet strength: the Soviet stratocracy was so strong, apparently, that it could just sit idly by, watching the dominoes fall. Many other Third World regimes became pro-Soviet only *after* coming to power *without* Russian aid, Cuba being one example. Outside their East European cordon sanitaire, the Soviet Union was never strong enough to do much, unless invited by local regimes. (The United States could act even without invitation.)

Not even the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan disproves this, since the Russians regarded that nation as part of their cordon sanitaire and expected it to be "Finlandized". The idea that the Soviet Union ever had plans to invade Iran and Pakistan are absurd, and equally absurd is the notion that the best way to reach the Indian Ocean or the Persian Gulf goes through a somewhat steeper elevation in Kandahar (perhaps if the Soviet Army had invaded Tibet, the author would have seen this as the first step to take the Maldives?). Besides, the Soviet Union clearly overreached itself in Afghanistan, the loosing war being another reason why the Soviet system eventually collapsed. Note also that the Soviet Armed Forces lost the war in Afghanistan despite the lack of an anti-war movement in the Soviet Union!

Why did Castoriadis make this elementary error? I don't know, but kremlinology during the Cold War seems to have had a curious double character: on the one hand, the Soviet planned economy was seen as much worse than Western free enterprise, on the other hand, the Soviet military was supposedly stronger than NATO. This doesn't connect: if the planned economy was decrepit, why was it so efficient in the military field? Does central planning work after all...? Castoriadis, who considered himself a socialist, "solved" the problem by suggesting that perhaps central planning does work after all, with the added twist that it's not really socialist at all, but stratocratic.

The reality proved to be more mundane. The Soviet system was stagnant and inefficient *as a whole* and for that reason couldn't keep up with the United States, when that nation finally decided to play it rough. Indeed, it would probably have collapsed anyway, under its own weight.

The writer was prescient on one point only. He pointed out that the Communist Party was simply a cover for Greater Russian nationalism, and that this chauvinist nationalism was subjectively held by the Kremlin rulers and their military-industrial complex. This was confirmed during glasnost when Pamyat became the largest independent mass organization in the Soviet Union, and during the power struggles in post-communist Russia when the "hard liners" donned the Greater Russian mantle without necessarily giving up the Communist designation. Vladimir Putin's re-introduction of the Soviet anthem (albeit with new lyrics) is a symbolic manifestation of the same thing. In their own minds, many Soviet apparatchiks probably were little Czars or petty aristocrats.

However, the "red Czars" proved to be much weaker than the real thing. "Facing the war" was consigned to the dustbin of history after just five years. For good or for worse, the Russian went on facing...Gorbachev and Yeltsin.