by Dylan Prunster

Pre-Introduction Definition

Actually existing socialism (AES): a term originally coined by Leonid Brezhnev to refer to socialist states that implement Marxism-Leninism as their guiding political theory and philosophy.

Introduction

There are many, from the ‘left’, who criticise actually existing socialist projects, past and present, for ‘revisionism’, ‘restoration of capital’, ‘state capitalism’, etc. When they cite anything at all, it is often Marx (frequently the Critique of the Gotha Programme) as though it were a checklist. Treating Marx as a checklist rather than a method is a failure to uphold Dialectical and Historical Materialism. These checklists, furthermore, tend not to consider the material conditions of capitalist encirclement, imperialism, economic backwardness, civil war, etc. These are genuine, real conditions that cause (often ongoing) crises that need to be responded to, often as a matter of urgency and without the benefit of hindsight. To abstract such actions, outside of their material reality, into the realm of purity testing against theory, is to engage in metaphysics.

The USSR: The First Large-Scale “Laboratory” for a Scientific Analysis of Actually Existing Socialism

Marxist-Leninists do not reject Marxism, of course. We do, however, recognise that Marx’s theoretical contributions were produced in a specific material time and place. His magnum opus was a critique of capitalism (Marx et al., 1990). He had no sustained point of reference for the problems, economic or otherwise, of building and defending a proletarian state, because such a thing simply did not exist in his lifetime (apart from the short-lived Paris Commune). It is contrary to the spirit of Marxism itself (Marx et al., 2001, Chapters 1-Ideology in General, German Ideology in Particular) to treat texts, especially abstract theorisation detached from the lived problems of socialist construction, as a dogmatic yardstick for legitimacy. Instead, they should be read critically and treated as analytical tools. It should also be briefly mentioned that we do not mean a ‘laboratory’ here in a literal natural-scientific sense. It doesn’t mean controlled experiments; it means society-scale practice that generates evidence and new contradictions for theory to analyse and resolve.

Stalin put the point bluntly when addressing Soviet economists (Pollock, 2001):

If you search for the answer to everything in Marx, you’ll get off track. In the USSR you have a laboratory that has existed for more than 20 years, and you think that Marx should know more than you do about socialism. You see, Marx didn’t predict this or that in his Critique of the Gotha Program! You need to work with your own heads and not string together quotations. There are new facts and a new combination of forces. Be so kind as to work with your heads.” 

This is not Stalin suggesting that Marx was “wrong”. His critique of capital still forms a fundamental aspect of Marxism-Leninism, of course. The point is not to mechanically denounce past theory as “dated”, “irrelevant”, etc; it is that we must read them critically, in context, and apply what is relevant to our own conditions while also developing the tradition dialectically. Marxism-Leninism must be treated as a method: concrete analysis of concrete conditions, tested and refined through real historical praxis. We must use our heads. To cite Marx against every AES struggle is not ‘orthodoxy’; it’s scholasticism (Marx, 1845, Section II).

Neither Marx’s nor anyone else’s writings are lookup tables for every concrete question of socialist construction.  Marxism does not start and end with Marx; the actual experience of socialist construction in practice and the theoretical works developed from those experiences have been carried out by others long after his death. These have occurred in times and places vastly different from Marx’s and under conditions he could not have, nor claimed to have been able to foresee.

Conclusion

Marx anticipated the methodological mistake here, in the 1873 Afterword to the Second German Edition of Capital (Vol. 1) (1995). Responding to critics, he notes that contradictory complaints show they have misunderstood his method:

“That the method employed in Das Kapital has been little understood, is shown by the various conceptions, contradictory one to another, that have been formed of it. Thus the Paris Revue Positiviste reproaches me in that, on the one hand, I treat economics metaphysically, and on the other hand — imagine! — confine myself to the mere critical analysis of actual facts, instead of writing receipts (Comtist ones?) for the cook-shops of the future”

In plain terms, one camp attacks him for being too abstract; another for being too grounded in analysis of existing conditions and for refusing to provide utopian blueprints. His abstractions aren’t mystical; instead, they’re analytic tools for explaining real social relations, and he explicitly rejects writing “recipes” for how a future socialist/communist society must be organised. Thus, when Marxist-Leninists adapt our theory and praxis to the economic situation of a given time and place, we are not doing “revisionism”; rather, we are applying Marxism as Marx described it.

References

Marx, K. (1845). Theses on Feuerbach. In Marx/Engels Selected Works, Volume One (pp. 13–15). Progress Publishers, Moscow, USSR, 1969.

Marx, K., Engels, F., & Arthur, C. J. (2001). The German ideology. Part one. Electric Book Co.

Marx, K., Mandel, E., Fowkes, B., Fernbach, D., & New Left, R. (1990). Capital: A critique of political economy. Penguin books in association with New Left Review.

Marx, Karl. (1995). Economic Manuscripts: Capital Vol. I – 1873 Afterword. Progress Publishers, Moscow, USSR.Pollock, E. (2001). Conversations with Stalin on Questions of Political Economy. COLD WAR INTERNATIONAL HISTORY PROJECT, (Working Paper No. 33).