Vol. 3 No. 4 · 5 March 1981
pages 3-6 | 6583 words
Revolution in Poland
Michael Szkolny
The bizarre ideological inversions which characterise the modes of expression of contemporary East European political movements serve to render invisible to the casual observer the real social character of these movements. For this reason alone most Western analysis of the recent events in Poland has conformed broadly to one of two stereotypes. First, there is the conventional wisdom of the Right according to which the two primary forces in the present surge of revolt are nationalism and religion. Second, there is the semi-apologetic view favoured by social democrats and Eurocommunists which sees the upheaval as a struggle for the ‘democratisation of socialism’. Both analyses contain of course a germ of truth: but whereas from the first standpoint it is impossible (and perhaps undesirable) to see the real social forces which express themselves faute de mieux in the traditional language of reaction, the second standpoint begs the most fundamental question about the character of the existing regimes of Eastern Europe.
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Letters
Vol. 3 No. 7 · 16 April 1981
From Peter Cramer
SIR: An inconsistency which seems important caught my eye in Michael Szkolny’s article ‘Revolution in Poland’ (LRB, Vol. 3, No 4). He makes a distinction between ideology and propaganda, arguing that ‘propaganda does not have to be believed in order to be effective.’ Two paragraphs later, he takes Kolakowski to task for his argument that Marxism-Leninism is an inconvenience to the Party in Poland, but cannot be removed because it is the basis of legitimacy of the regime! ‘What is the value of a doctrine “as a basis for legitimacy”,’ asks Szkolny, ‘if no one believes in it?’ He has already answered that question himself: doctrine does not have to be believed to be politically effective. This is an insight which Kolakowski has already put more subtly: belief in Soviet and Eastern bloc propaganda, he points out, often amounts to belief in the political power it expresses, not in the independent truth of the information.
Peter Cramer
London SW11
Vol. 3 No. 8 · 7 May 1981
From Michael Szkolny
SIR: In a letter in the last issue of the LRB Peter Cramer claims to have discovered an ‘inconsistency’ in my article ‘Revolution in Poland’ (LRB, Vol. 3, No 4). The alleged inconsistency centres on the fact that I criticise Kolakowski for his argument that Marxism-Leninism is an inconvenience to the Polish Party which cannot be removed because it provides the basis of legitimacy of the regime. ‘What is the value of a doctrine as a basis of legitimacy,’ I asked, ‘if no one believes in it?’ According to Cramer, I myself had answered this question when I previously asserted that doctrine does not have to be believed in order to be effective. I find this ‘insight’ of Cramer’s rather mystifying.
A doctrine may be effective as a means of social domination even if no one believes in it. On this we apparently agree. However, a doctrine has value as a basis of legitimacy if and only if it induces a belief that the existing social order is morally justified.
The final sentence of Cramer’s letter (‘belief in Soviet and Eastern bloc propaganda … often amounts to belief in the political power it expresses, not in the independent truth of the information’) appears to refer to Kolakowski’s observation that, hidden in the current usage of Marxist terminology in Eastern Europe, there is an implicit propaganda of terror which is quite distinct from the official doctrine of Marxism-Leninism. Yet this allusive propaganda, while it may be politically effective, also does nothing to legitimise the regime. Furthermore, the formal use of Marxist terminology would merely be an encumbrance if all that were required were a language capable of inculcating terror. It is exactly at this point in their analyses that Kolakowski and others are unable to explain the extraordinary tenacity of Marxism-Lenism as an ideology of domination.
Michael Szkolny
Paris
