Legal Marxism proved able to raise and answer a number of historico-social questions. Above all it was necessary to look into the essence and history of socialist doctrine. An important consideration was that the big question always remained ‘outside the frame’: How did it happen that, under the slogan of emancipation of labour and amid talk about ‘socialist construction’, we arrived at totalitarianism? This is the question of questions and although it is never even mentioned in so many words, it determines all the other questions. Whether writers realize this or not does not matter. A general scientific context arises which no serious scholar can avoid. The content of this scientific context consists precisely of the ‘accursed’ questions of our time, the most acute and painful social problems, and there is no getting away from them. We have to keep on coming back to them so long as life has not set new tasks before us. For this reason one can well understand A. Tsipko’s confidence when he wrote, at the end of his book, that the necessary conclusions ‘will be drawn by the reader for himself’.65
The question of socialism thus became very acute. It was necessary to analyse the history of the struggle for socialism in order to discover the roots of the ‘totalitarian degeneration’. In the seventies and eighties it was already not enough merely to say that Stalinism was inimical to Marxism: one had to track down the ideological and historical roots of Stalinism and at the same time discover the spiritual foundations, the general principles for overcoming it. For both purposes it was necessary to study the history of socialism.
What has especially attracted researchers’ interest is the concept of utopia. One can read about this in Tsipko’s Optimizm istorii, G. Vodolazov’s Ot Chernyshevskogo k Plekhanovu, Yu. Kagarlitsky’s Chto takoe fantastika? and many other books. As an example, I will take Tsipko’s writings. It has to be said that in them, as also in Vodolazov’s, we encounter some highly tendentious appraisals of certain Western thinkers. It is difficult to make out whether this is a gesture of submission to the censors or whether the two authors sincerely do not accept ideas which lie outside the framework of the ‘classical’ Marxism of the beginning of this century. However Tsipko, and M. Barg before him, raised a very pointed question: What criterion must be used to decide whether certain ideas are or are not ‘socialist’?66 According to Tsipko, ‘the criterion for the socialist character of an idea has to be sought, above all, in the degree of humanism’,67 and there can be no question of socialism where there is no humanist ideal of society. This ideal is not an ‘ultimate aim’ but accompanies the movement, becoming perfected and changing at each stage. Engels wrote that socialists ‘have no ultimate aim. We are for constant, uninterrupted development and have no intention of dictating to mankind any definite laws.’68 Tsipko notes that Marx ascribed enormous importance to trying to ‘safeguard the humanist essence’ of his philosophy.69 For this reason the democratic ideal was necessary to him, because it enables one to choose the means and tasks of the current moment and establish a criterion for self-appraisal. Forgetting the humanist ideal of Marxism or transforming it into a formal ‘ultimate aim’ (which, as we know, was what happened in the Communist movement in the 1920s) can mean that ‘the means of socialism are brought into contradiction with its aim, and thereby lose their “socialist” character.’70 Such a breach between the ideal and the means is a constant danger for any revolutionary movement and an effort to overcome it was made by Marxism, which ‘from the outset linked, in its teaching, revolutionary methods with the humanist ideal of the genuine emancipation of mankind’.71
When he turns his attention to utopias, Tsipko does not merely criticize them. Whereas Karyakin concentrated primarily on the ideas of barracks-Communism as put into practice by Stalin, Tsipko, on the contrary, stresses that democratic ideas were also present in utopian socialism. It was these that Marx utilized, while rejecting the means proposed by the Utopians. Thus the defect of the utopias is not that they are unrealizable but that their realization leads to consequences quite different from what had been hoped. In so far as the corresponding means are not available, ‘the demand for freedom of association is a declaration rather than a practical principle’.72 At the same time, Marxists must strive towards a society wherein ‘the genuine and free development of individuals ceases to be a mere phrase’.73
Tsipko’s book replied to the very questions that had been raised by Shafarevich. The censorship situation renders unthinkable either an open polemic (opposing a dissident in a legal publication means siding with the rulers) or a clear-cut formulation of one’s replies. But replies were certainly given, albeit only in descriptive form. Tsipko’s work shows that Shafarevich not only confused the Asiatic mode of production with socialism but also social utopias with socialist ones.74 Tsipko’s historical approach reveals that many utopian projects, which to us seem despotic, left the individual more freedom than did the actual society of their time. In general, he seeks to ‘rehabilitate’ the humanist utopia, defending it against Soviet dogmatists — from whom, incidentally, Shafarevich borrowed his general treatment of the problem. However, the merit of Tsipko’s book is that he neither praises nor curses utopia, but looks at the idea objectively. He shows that the ideology of barracks-Communism is formed by proclaiming extreme means as its ultimate aim, and normal socialist practice as a retreat from the ideal, and raises the question of how to avoid such ‘degeneration’. Tsipko sees the development of culture and democracy in production as guarantees against totalitarianism. The one is closely bound up with the other, and without them there can be no socialism:
An indispensable condition for the socialization of the means of production is socialization of the management of production and assimilation of all the achievements of civilization and culture by the working people themselves. Only when the direct producer takes a very active part in the organization and management of production can we count on the awakening in him of the sentiments of a master of production, and thereby the establishment of a new, direct bond between him and the nationalized means of production.75
The abolition of private property leads to socialism only if it be complemented by a ‘restructuring of society as a whole in the interests of the development of the human personality’.76 But the new socialist ‘mechanism’ will not function without a great number of civilized people, bearers of up-to-date culture. Clearly present-day Soviet society, in which there is neither self-management in production nor political freedom, fails to correspond to the principles of socialism enunciated here. In Tsipko’s opinion, however, the development of culture sharply increases the chances of a socialist transformation. Culture makes possible the overcoming of utopian illusions, which are fraught with much danger.