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New World Disorder
The Leninist Extinction
By Ken Jowitt University of California Press
Copyright © 1992 Ken Jowitt
All right reserved. ISBN: 0-520-07762-8
Chapter One
The Leninist Phenomenon This essay originally appeared in 1978 in The Leninist Response to National Dependency, Institute of International Studies Research Series, no. 37 (Berkeley: Institute of International Studies, University of California, 1978). It is reprinted here in slightly edited form.
In both liberal and Leninist regimes (in contrast to peasant-status societies), social action is primarily oriented to impersonal norms. What is particular about Leninist regimes is that impersonality is not expressed in procedural values and rules (i.e., due process), but rather in the charismatic impersonality of the party organization. The novelty of Leninism as an organization is its substitution of charismatic impersonality for the procedural impersonality dominant in the West.
The concept of charismatic impersonality is not readily digested, because it seems to be a contradiction in terms. The reaction to it is likely to be simple rejection, or a redefinition in terms that are more familiar, such as the routinization of charisma. But routinization is not what I am talking about. My focus (at least at this point) is on the unit designated as having extraordinary powers and being "worthy" of loyalty and sacrifice. In Leninism, that unit is THE Party.
As a means of demonstrating that the Leninist party is novel in character, I shall offer a new and operational definition of charisma, contrast Leninism with Nazism, and develop the notion of the "correct line" as a character-defining feature of Leninist organization.
Charisma is not a concept that has suffered benign or any other kind of neglect. Nor should it. Discussion of it continues because it is a central feature of behaviors that recur and are seen as politically and socially significant.
For me there is one striking and defining quality of charismatic leaders. A charismatic leader dramatically reconciles incompatible commitments and orientations. It is in this sense that the charismatic is a revolutionary agent-someone who is able in certain social circumstances institutionally to combine (with varying degrees of success for varying degrees of time) orientations and commitments that until then were seen as mutally exclusive. It is the extraordinary and inspirational quality of such a leader that makes possible the recasting of previously incompatible elements into a new unit of personal identity and organizational membership, and the recommitment of (some) social groups to that unit.
Christ created a new unit-the Church-through his recasting of elements that had before been mutally exclusive-namely, commitment to Judaism as a corporate and parochial ethnic identity and incorporation of the Gentile world. For a significant range of social groups, Christ recast the terms of personal identity and organizational membership. To argue this is not to suggest that historical events did not play a critical role in the evolution of this doctrine and organization. Events after Christ's death make the importance of historical contingency quite clear. One does not have to slight history or sociology in order to make the central point: for the comparativist (in contrast to the theologian), Christ's innovation was to combine in an inspirational fashion elements that had previously been mutually exclusive. He created a new unit of membership.
Hitler did with German nationalism and "Aryanism" what Christ did with Jews and Gentiles. The tension between Hitler's commitment to German nationalism and "Aryanism" is a defining quality of his movement. Hitler's orientation was not simply or exclusively to the German nation. Rather, he brought together in ideology and organization (e.g., in the SS) orientations and commitments that had been in critical respects and under different auspices highly conflictual-the exclusivity of ethnic nationalism and racial, supra-ethnic exclusivity.
If this conception of the defining quality of a charismatic leader is correct, one would predict that upon such a leader's death, his movement would be subject to splits representing the individual conflicting elements the leader had been able to unite. Thus, on Christ's death, his movement should have split into "Jewish" and "Gentile" factions. It did. The circumstances of Hitler's death make a parallel observation difficult. But even during his lifetime, one could observe some groupings more oriented to German nationalism (e.g., army factions) and others to a transnational "Aryan" line (e.g., SS members).
Lenin took the fundamentally conflicting notions of individual heroism and organizational impersonalism and recast them in the form of an organizational hero-the Bolshevik Party. His "party of a new type" was just that: a recasting of orientations that remained conflictual but were no longer mutally exclusive. Lenin's innovation was to create an organization and membership effectively committed to conflicting practices-command and obedience with debate and discussion; belief in inexorable laws of historical change with empirical investigation of social development; heroic action with a persistent concern for the scientific and sober operation of an economy and society; and an emphasis on individual revolutionary heroism with an emphasis on the superordinate impersonal authority of the Party, itself the central heroic actor and focus of emotional commitment.
The manner and extent to which these different elements have been institutionally combined have varied significantly in the developmental history of the Soviet and Soviet-type regimes. Yet crucial as the variations are, any attempt to grasp their significance depends on an appreciation of the central element in Lenin's innovation: the conflictual but effective recasting of charismatic-heroic and organizational-impersonal orientations in the form of a party in which heroism is defined in organizational, not individual, terms.
To argue that the novelty of Leninism as a political form is that it effectively recasts the mutually exclusive elements of individual heroism and organizational impersonalism is not to say there have not been historical precedents; nor is it to say that such an institutional amalgam of charismatic and modern orientations is constantly weighted in the same fashion. Religious organizations such as the Jesuits and Benedictines and military organizations such as the U.S. Marines are in certain respects instances of charismatic impersonalism. And as I have suggested at several points, Leninist regimes weigh and define charismatic and modern orientations quite differently over time. What is distinctive about Leninism as an instance of charismatic impersonalism-that is, as an institutional amalgam of charismatic and modern orientations-is that both these orientations are central to its definition. This contrasts with religious organizations whose secular-empirical orientations are ideally subordinate to nonmaterial, supernatural rationales. This argument obviously does not apply to a military organization, such as the Marines, that combines heroic orientations and technical-secular ones. However, the central place of war as a defining orientation for such an organization differentiates it from a Leninist party. To be sure, the revolutionary commitments of a Leninist party can be seen as comparable-and at certain points identical-to a war orientation. However, the Party's equally strong commitments to industrialization, scientific development, and economic planning as more than adjuncts to a war mission suggest an organization of a different order.
As suggested, it lies in the greater consistency that characterizes the place and role of modern elements in the Leninist amalgam. In ideal terms, these elements are less ad hoc, less instrumental, and more central to Leninism as a form of charismatic impersonalism.
To sustain an argument that Lenin's innovation as a charismatic leader was to create a political organization whose defining feature was charismatic impersonalism, one must come to grips with two outstanding and central "challenges" from Soviet history. The most obvious challenge to the argument presented here is Stalin's personal charismatic role from the time of the Seventeenth Congress in 1934 through 1953. However, there is a prior challenge, and that is the personal charisma Lenin possessed vis-à-vis his Bolshevik followers.
More than anyone, Robert Tucker has convincingly outlined the features of Lenin's personal charisma. In Tucker's words, "to be a Bolshevik in the early years was not so much to accept a particular set of beliefs as it was to gravitate into the orbit of Lenin as a political mentor, revolutionary strategist, and personality." The Bolshevik colony in Geneva "proved to be a group of people who regarded themselves as Lenin's disciples and were worshipful in their attitude towards him. Although he was then only 33 years old, they habitually referred to him as the 'Old Man' (starik ), thereby expressing profound respect for his Marxist erudition and his wisdom in all matters pertaining to revolution." Lenin's charismatic status was, of course, enhanced and confirmed by his personal role in the October Revolution. Tucker makes a very strong case for what he terms the "leader-centered movement."
Without denying the significance of Lenin's personal charisma or the extent to which Leninism was and remains a movement with a strong leader orientation, I feel Tucker's argument is somewhat misleading. This is not because he fails to recognize elements in Lenin's behavior that are inconsistent with personal charisma, but rather because Tucker does not systematically relate Lenin's personal qualities to the defining features of the party he created.
In contrast, in a study entitled "The Great Headmaster," Edmund Wilson describes Lenin in terms that are quite literally coincident with those I have used to describe his Party. The core of Wilson's description is contained in the following passage:
Though he [Lenin] was susceptible... to very strong personal attachments which survived political differences... [he] could no more allow these feelings to influence his political action than the headmaster can allow himself to be influenced in the matter of grades or discipline by his affection for a favorite pupil.
In a society where personal attachments were an integral part of social organization, Lenin's detachment was culturally revolutionary. Furthermore, this personal detachment was placed in the service of a political organization designed to mirror his own qualities. In this light, Tucker's comments on Lenin's actions as Party leader and in response to the growing cult of his person take on added meaning. According to Tucker, "As supreme leader, [Lenin] did not simply issue commands to the ruling group; he did not rule by arbitrary Diktat. Automatic acquiescence in his position was not expected." And when Lenin became aware that he was being made the object of a personality cult, he responded negatively. He summoned one of his aides in the Council of People's Commissars and asked:
What is this? How could one permit it?... They write that I'm such and such, exaggerate everything, call me a genius, a special kind of man. Why, this is horrible.... All our lives we have carried on an ideological struggle against the glorification of personality, of the individual. We long ago solved the question of heroes.
Lenin's reference to the "question of heroes" should not be treated casually. There is a sense in which both Leninism and Nazism emphasize the heroic ethic. It is not in the appreciation of heroism that Leninism differs from Nazism; it is in the designation of the heroic agent. For Lenin, the Party is hero-not the individual leader. The fact that Lenin possessed personal charisma is not as significant as the way in which he defined charisma and related it to the organization he created. As an individual, he combined forceful charismatic certainty with a genuine and persistent emphasis on empirical and impersonal modes of investigation and interaction. His party was created (so to speak) in his own image. And that image was distinctive in its novel recasting of elements-heroism, arbitrariness, and absolute certainty, along with impersonal discipline, planning, and empirical investigation.
One might well remark that perhaps there was a novel recasting of such elements during Lenin's lifetime, but certainly not afterwards-not during the period of "high" Stalinism from the 17th Party Congress in 1934 through 1953. As an observation, this remark is valuable; as a conclusion, it is superficial. In fact, an examination of Stalinism is the best way to point out the differences between Nazism and Leninism and single out the defining features of Leninism.
Certainly the formal similarities between Stalinism and the Nazi regime are striking and by no means all superficial. The cult of personality that surrounded Stalin (and that has at times surrounded other Leninist leaders) was in a basic respect every bit as intense as that surrounding Hitler. Even more significant than the cult of personality was the Stalinist "cult of cadres," captured in the saying "The cadres decide everything." Under Stalinism, the Party and regime organization might be viewed as no more than an aggregation of hierarchically ordered heroes-again quite like Nazi organization. These consequential similarities do indeed allow for and call for comparison. However, the comparison itself reveals a character-defining difference between Stalinist Leninism and Nazism that is more important than the similarities.
In a relatively (and inexplicably) ignored article on factionalism in the Nazi Party, Joseph Nyomarkey has spelled out the difference between Stalinist Leninism and Nazism quite well. Nyomarkey is intrigued by the fact that in Nazism there does not appear to have been the same incidence or type of factionalism that appears in Leninism. His explanation is that there are two types of movements-charismatic and ideological. In a charismatic movement (i.e., Nazism), "the leader claims authority because he incorporates the idea in his person," while in an ideological movement (i.e., Stalinist Leninism), "the leaders will claim authority on the basis of the dogma, and will always represent themselves as its representatives." Nyomarkey goes on to argue that in an ideological movement, it is the "dogma which ultimately holds the group together and which lends authority to the leader... [and] the dogma which can give rise to various interpretations which can in turn become the bases of factional conflicts."
The point is crucial. It suggests that even under Stalin, the formal or ideal basis of Leninist party organization, membership definition, and policy formulation was independent from his personal insight. Can it be shown to have mattered? In several ways.
Continues...
Excerpted from New World Disorder by Ken Jowitt Copyright © 1992 by Ken Jowitt. Excerpted by permission.
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