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From International Socialism, No.18, Autumn 1964, p.33.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
The Soviet Political Mind
Robert C. Tucker
Pall Mall/Praeger, 16s.
The high standard of Professor Tucker’s earlier work Philosophy and Myth in Karl Marx leads us to expect a challenging analysis of the genesis of the Stalinist bureaucracy, and the factors leading to the present so-called ‘liberalisation’. Unfortunately, this has not been done, and the reader lurches through a jungle of idealism and speculation, original only in that Tucker does not believe Stalinism to be the realisation of Lenin’s conception of the party. What he does believe is that the ‘Bolshevik revolution ... nullified the previous 65 years of Russian history, during which ... a trend of basic liberalisation had been making itself felt ... (and) ... thus created conditions for a reversion to that long period ... characterised by the state over society.’ The Russian state is seen as ‘... an autonomous force acting to create or recreate its own social base ...’ an idea borrowed from Miliukov, whom Trotsky took to task on this point in Results and Perspectives. The notion of class struggle is cavalierly rejected, and he even expresses surprise at the interest of the intelligentsia in Marxism ‘in view of Marx’s vision of history as turning on the class struggle.’ Having established a false premise, Tucker can proceed to adduce the most absurd reasons for the incidence of religion etc in Russia, which he does energetically; ‘the universal need for ritual’, etc. An entire chapter is devoted to illustrating, in a most shallow manner, that history is determined by good and bad men; bolshevism is criticised for its ‘characteristic belief in determinism’, yet were this correct there would be no need for a party. Even the chapter on the Pavlov-Michurin-Lysenko disputes contains nothing new to the novice, and on the whole the book lacks even the saving grace of new documentary material.
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