The Socialist Phenomenon

Introduction

I am going to embark on a series looking at The Socialist Phenomenon by Igor Shafarevich (1923-2017), first published in 1975 under the title Sotsializm kak iavlenie mirovoi istorii by YMCA Press. My intention is to offer summaries only - I cannot hope to provide robust commentary (nor would you want me to), as Shafarevich provides a masterful historical analysis of socialism in a rare systematic and scientific manner. He also lived in it, being a Russian mathematician of some significance he had first hand experience of what it was like to live in a large scale socialist experiment. I have no such phenomenological experience, and as you will read in the Foreword, such experience is required to approach this topic with a degree of authority.

As a mathematician Shafarevich obviously applied his disciplined and objective approach to his study of socialism. His treatise on socialism is matter-of-fact, yet absorbing, and like any good historian he helps us make the vital links from past to present that demonstrate the socialist phenomenon has been with us for a very long time and has both evolved and adapted to each age it finds a footing. He, like Solzhenitsyn, believed that socialism was ultimately nihilistic and motivated by a death drive that rejects God (the reason Solzhenitsyn gives for the horrors of the gulags and the inhumanity of the Soviet era) and destroys individualism.

The Foreward is by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and worth reproducing here:

It seems that certain things in this world simply cannot be discovered without extensive experience, be it personal or collective. This applies to the present book with its fresh and revealing perspective on the millennia-old trends of socialism. While it makes use of a voluminous literature familiar to specialists throughout the world, there is an undeniable logic in the fact that it emerged from the country that has undergone (and is undergoing) the harshest and most prolonged socialist experience in modern history. Nor is it at all incongruous that within that country this book should not have been produced by a humanist, for scholars in the humanities have been the most methodically crushed of all social strata in the Soviet Union ever since the October Revolution. It was written by a mathematician of world renown: in the Communist world, practitioners of the exact sciences must stand in for their annihilated brethren.

But this circumstance has its compensations. It provides us with a rare opportunity of receiving a systematic analysis of the theory and practice of socialism from the pen of an outstanding mathematical thinker versed in the rigorous methodology of his science. (One can attach particular weight, for instance, to his judgment that Marxism lacks even the climate of scientific inquiry.)

World socialism as a whole, and all the figures associated with it, are shrouded in legend; its contradictions are forgotten or concealed; it does not respond to arguments but continually ignores them – all this stems from the mist of irrationality that surrounds socialism and from its instinctive aversion to scientific analysis, features which the author of this volume points out repeatedly and in many contexts. The doctrines of socialism seethe with contradictions, its theories are at constant odds with its practice, yet due to a powerful instinct – also laid bare by Shafarevich – these contradictions do not in the least hinder the unending propaganda of socialism. Indeed, no precise, distinct socialism even exists; instead there is only a vague, rosy notion of something noble and good, of equality, communal ownership, and justice: the advent of these things will bring instant euphoria and a social order beyond reproach.

The twentieth century marks one of the greatest upsurges in the success of socialism, and concomitantly of its repulsive practical manifestations. Yet due to the same passionate irrationality, attempts to examine these results are repelled: they are either ignored completely, or implausibly explained away in terms of certain "Asiatic" or "Russian" aberrations or the personality of a particular dictator, or else they are ascribed to "state capitalism." The present book encompasses vast stretches of time and space. By carefully describing and analyzing dozens of socialist doctrines and numerous states built on socialist principles, the author leaves no room for evasive arguments based on so-called "insignificant exceptions" (allegedly bearing no resemblance to the glorious future). Whether it is the centralization of China in the first millennium B.C., the bloody European experiments of the time of the Reformation, the chilling (though universally esteemed) utopias of European thinkers, the intrigues of Marx and Engels, or the radical Communist measures of the Lenin period (no wit more humane than Stalin's heavy-handed methods) – the author in all his dozens of examples demonstrates the undeviating consistency of the phenomenon under consideration.

Shafarevich has singled out the invariants of socialism, its fundamental and unchanging elements, which depend neither on time nor place, and which, alas, are looming ominously over today's tottering world. If one considers human history in its entirety, socialism can boast of a greater longevity and durability, of wider diffusion and of control over larger masses of people, than can contemporary Western civilization. It is therefore difficult to shake off gloomy presentiments when contemplating that maw into which – before the century is out – we may all plunge: that "Asiatic formation" which Marx hastened to circumvent in his classification, and before which contemporary Marxist thought stands baffled, having discerned its own hideous countenance in the mirror of the millennia. It could probably be said that the majority of states in the history of mankind have been "socialist." But it is also true that these were in no sense periods or places of human happiness or creativity.

Shafarevich points out with great precision both the cause and the genesis of the first socialist doctrines, which he characterizes as reactions: Plato as a reaction to Greek culture, and the Gnostics as a reaction to Christianity. They sought to counteract the endeavor of the human spirit to stand erect, and strove to return to the earthbound existence of the primitive states of antiquity. The author also convincingly demonstrates the diametrical opposition between the concepts of man held by religion and by socialism. Socialism seeks to reduce human personality to its most primitive levels and to extinguish the highest, most complex, and "God-like" aspects of human individuality. And even equality itself, that powerful appeal and great promise of socialists throughout the ages, turns out to signify not equality of rights, of opportunities, and of external conditions, but equality qua identity, equality seen as the movement of variety toward uniformity.

Even though, as this book shows, socialism has always successfully avoided truly scientific analyses of its essence, Shafarevich's study challenges present-day theoreticians of socialism to demonstrate their arguments in a businesslike public discussion.

ALEKSANDR I. SOLZHENITSYN

Shafarevich was inspired to write this book because he saw a radical shift in the course of history - a shift from economic individualism to a new world (driven by socialism) that obliterates the individual, and God, in a nihilistic death drive. He wanted to unveil the socialist phenomenon so people could see its true nature and, hopefully out of an instinct for self-preservation, be repelled by such philosophy that is so well masked by utopian fantasies.

The old argument that “we cannot judge or make a critical evaluations of socialism because of past failures” can no longer stand - proof is in the pudding and Shafarevich presents us with the whole pudding, sliced and diced for a thorough examination (and he has done the taste testing - something I’d rather not have to do!). He considers the fundamental function of socialism as it has played out experientially, not just theoretically, here he explains…

In attempting to break out of this vicious circle, it is useful to compare socialism to some other phenomenon which has had an influence of similar magnitude on life; for example, religion. Religion may have a social function, supporting or destroying social institutions; it may have an economic function (as the temples of the ancient East did with their landholdings, or as in the case of the Catholic Church in the Middle Ages); or it may have a political role, and so on. But this is possible only because there are people who believe in God and because there is a striving for a union with God which religion creates.

Without taking this fundamental function of religion into account, it is impossible to understand how it influences life generally. It is this aspect that must be clarified before one can examine the question of how it interacts with other spheres of life.

It is natural to suppose that socialism, too, contains a fundamental tendency which makes possible its phenomenal influence on life. But it is unlikely to be identified by studying, for example, the Western socialist parties, in which basic socialist tendencies are hopelessly entangled with practical politics. It is necessary, first, to study this phenomenon over a sufficiently long time span in order to ascertain its basic characteristics and, second, to examine its most striking and consistent manifestations.

These manifestations, we find, are almost always contrary to the theory - promising justice, equality, and freedom, the socialist manifestation is injustice, inequality, and bondage (while continuing to espouse utopia in a bizarre, almost schizoid, perception of what is actually going on). Orwell summed it up well with the Party slogans on the Ministry of Truth:

The Ministry of Truth–Minitrue, in Newspeak–was startlingly different from any other object in sight. It was an enormous pyramidal structure of glittering white concrete, soaring up, terrace after terrace, 300 metres into the air. From where Winston stood it was just possible to read, picked out on its white face in elegant lettering, the three slogans of the Party:

WAR IS PEACE

FREEDOM IS SLAVERY

IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

(George Orwell, 1984)

Compulsory labor, according to the Communist Manifesto, was to lead to a society where “the free development of each will be the condition of the free development of all”. But has it? You know a tree by it’s fruit, and it’s the fruit that Shafarevich details so well in this work as he separates vision from reality. Contradictions are everywhere in the socialist theory and manifestation as it truly does reach for justice by great injustice, and equality by great inequalities, and freedom through severe bondage, death and destruction. Here’s Shafarevich again..

It would seem that socialism lacks that feature which, in mathematics, for example, is considered the minimal condition for the existence of a concept: a definition free of contradictions. Perhaps socialism is only a means of propaganda, a set of several contradictory conceptions, each of which appeals to a given group? The entire history of socialism speaks against such a view. The monumental influence it has had on mankind proves that socialism is in essence an internally consistent view of the world. One needs only to uncover the true logic of socialism and to find that vantage point from which it can be seen as a phenomenon without contradiction. The present book is an attempt to accomplish such a task.

The book is in three parts, the first two cover the history of socialism (teachings and manifestations), and part three is the analysis and conclusions. Of course, being the impatient and time-poor guy that I am, I raced to the final part to get the final word on socialism. This has momentary satisfaction but there’s a lot, obviously, missing in my appreciation of the conclusions, not having travelled the historical road with Shafarevich. In this Substack series you will get to (actually forced to, unless you read the book yourself, or jump across to Political Ponerology where Harrison Koehli is letting the cat out of the bag - highly recommend you follow Harrison by the way) step through the history, albeit in a summarised form, and gain a good understanding of where this socialist phenomenon has come from. And then, in good time, we will work our way through the analysis and conclusions.

Shafarevich was right to be concerned in the mid-20th Century about where the world is going and his personal call to warn us of the consequences of a global, socialist inspired, State run serfdom (which F. A. Hayek so eloquently warned us of back in 1944). It’s happening all around us, at a rapid pace, fuelled by the most powerful propaganda the would has ever been subject to.

Join me each week for this exploration of the socialist phenomenon.