POLITICAL LEGITIMATION IN COMMUNIST STATES

Earlier notions that political power in Communist states rested simply on coercion, on the Marxist -Leninist ideology of the ruling Communist Party, or on some combination of the two, are now seen as misleadingly incomplete by most students of these systems. Among the several factors making for the effectiveness of Communist rule is some measure of 'legitimacy', that is of belief on the part of the rulers, their officials, and some at least of the ruled, that the regime's demands for obedience rest on some valid basis.

But what does political legitimacy amount to in Soviet-type systems? How far and in what way does it rest on Marxist -Leninist doctrine? Is it the same thing for members of the Politburo, for local Party and Government officials, and for ordinary working people? Has it changed over time? Does it differ in any important way from political legitimacy in Western liberal systems? Is it the same in the USSR itself as in those countries where Communist Parties came to power with Soviet help? How do Soviet-type regimes go about legitimating their rule?

These are the central questions explored in this book. Since the study of political legitimation in Communist states is only beginning, the authors have set out to illuminate it from a variety of intellectual standpoints rather than prematurely attempting 'definitive' answers. In the process they not only throw new light on the nature of Communist systems but offer several original concepts and approaches relevant to the compara­tive and theorotical study of political legitimation.

St Antony's/Macmil/an Series

General editor: Archie Brown, Fellow of St Antony's College, Oxford

This series contains academic books written or edited by members of St Antony's College, Oxford, or by authors with a special association with the College. The titles are selected by an editorial board on which both the College and the publishers are represented.

Titles already published or in the press are listed below, and there are numerous further titles in preparation.

S. B. Burman CHIEFDOM POLITICS AND ALIEN LAW Wilhelm Deist THE WEHRMACHT AND GERMAN REARMAMENT Ricardo Ffrench-Davis and Emesto Tironi (editors) LA TIN AMERICA AND

THE NEW INTERNATIONAL ECONOMIC ORDER Bohdan Harasymiw POLITICAL ELITE RECRUITMENT IN THE USSR Richard Holt SPORT AND SOCIETY IN MODERN FRANCE Albert Hourani EUROPE AND THE MIDDLE EAST

THE EMERGENCE OF THE MODERN MIDDLE EAST Paul Kennedy and Anthony Nicholls (editors) NATIONALIST AND

RACIALIST MOVEMENTS IN BRITAIN AND GERMANY BEFORE 1914

Richard Kindersley (editor) IN SEARCH OF EUROCOMMUNISM Gisela C. Lebzelter POLITICAL ANTI-SEMITISM IN ENGLAND, 1918-

1939 C. A. MacDonald THE UNITED STATES, BRITAIN AND APPEASE­

MENT, 1936-1939 Patrick O'Brien (editor) RAILWAYS AND THE ECONOMIC DEVELOP­

MENT OF WESTERN EUROPE, 1830-1914 Roger Owen (editor) STUDIES IN THE ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL

HISTORY OF PALESTINE IN THE NINETEENTH AND TWENTIETH CENTURIES

Irena Powell WRITERS AND SOCIETY IN MODERN JAPAN T. H. Rigby and Ferenc Feher (editors) POLITICAL LEGITIMATION IN

COMMUNIST STATES Marilyn Rueschemeyer PROFESSIONAL WORK AND MARRIAGE A. J. R. Russell-Wood THE BLACK MAN IN SLAVERY AND FREEDOM

IN COLONIAL BRAZIL David Stafford BRITAIN AND EUROPEAN RESISTANCE, 1940-1945 Nancy Stepan THE IDEA OF RACE IN SCIENCE Guido di Tella ARGENTINA UNDER PERON, 1973-76 Rosemary Thorp and Laurence Whitehead (editors) INFLATION AND

STABILISATION IN LA TIN AMERICA Rudolf L. Tokes (editor) OPPOSITION IN EASTERN EUROPE

POLITICAL LEGITIMATION IN COMMUNIST STATES

Edited by

T. H. Rigby and Ferenc Feher

A legitimate government has no need of propaganda Guglielmo Ferrero

in association with Palgrave Macmillan

© T. H. Rigby and Ferenc Feher 1982

Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1982 978-0-333-31511-8

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means,

without permission

First published 1982 by THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD

London and Basingstoke Companies and representatives

throughout the world

ISBN 978-1-349-05983-6 ISBN 978-1-349-05981-2 (eBook)DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-05981-2

Contents

Preface Vll

Notes on the Contributors X

Introduction: Political Legitimacy, Weber and Communist Mono-organisational Systems T. H. Rigby

2 Legitimacy Doctrines and Legitimation Procedures in East European Systems Georg Brunner 27

3 Phases of Legitimation in Soviet-type Societies Heller

Agnes

4 Paternalism as a Mode of Legitimation in Soviet-type Societies Ferenc Feher

5 Overt and Covert Modes of Legitimation in East European

45

64

Societies Maria Markus 82

6 Personal Dominance and the Collective Principle: Individual Legitimacy in Marxist-Leninist Systems Graeme Gill 94

7 Political Legitimation in the German Democratic Republic Henry Krisch 111

8 Eurocommunism and the Quest for Legitimacy F. Miller

9 The State, Marxism and Political Legitimation Berki

Index

v

Robert 126

R.N. 146

170

Preface This book is the first published collection of essays on political legitimation devoted specifically to the communist states. The reason is not at all obvious. It is certainly not that the legitimacy of communist regimes and systems is seen as unproblematic either within the countries concerned or by Western scholars. Nor is it that the latter are uninterested in problems of political legitimation generally. Indeed, after a period of relative neglect the subject has become a matter of intense debate over the last fifteen or twenty years, to such an extent that Paul Bastide could expostulate as early as 1967 that '!'extension demesuree donnee aux contreverses sur Ia legitimite et l'illegitimite des gouvernements est une caracteristique facheuse de notre temps, liee au desordre general des esprits'*. Be this as it may, the scant attention so far paid to questions of political legitimation in communist states has encouraged the authors to combine their efforts to produce this volume, in the hope that it will stimulate wider discussion of the topic- albeit at the risk of contributing further to the intellectual confusion of which Bastide complains.

The book had its origins in a 'workshop' conference held at the Australian National University in July 1979. Most of the chapters are based on papers presented at that conference, although in several cases subsequent rethinking and rewriting has left little of the original version. Out of considerations of length and coherence, the editors made a selection of papers sharing a focus on the USSR and Eastern Europe and on the legitimation of systems and regimes rather than of policy. China gets extensive attention only in Graeme Gill's comparative paper and the European focus is also underlined by the inclusion of Robert F. Miller's paper on 'Eurocommunism'. To this core have been added two essays, those of Georg Brunner and Henry Krisch, which consider aspects not dealt with at the conference; Professor Brunner's is an updated translation of his chapter in Peter Graf Kielmansegg and Ulrich Matz (eds), Die Rechtfertigung politischer Herrschaft

* Annales de Philosophie Politique, vol. vn(Paris, 1967) p. 10.

vii

viii Preface

(Freiburg/Miinchen, Verlag Karl Alber, 1978), and Professor Krisch's is based on a paper he presented to the 1980 Annual Conference of the (British) National Association for Soviet and East European Studies.

The essays in this volume do not represent a single theory or school of thought either about political legitimation or about communist political systems. On the contrary, the editors have deliberately set out to illuminate different aspects of their subject by having it approached from a variety of viewpoints formed within several distinct intellectual traditions. At the same time we have sought to achieve substantial complementarity of subject-matter as well as approach, and this is reflected in the order of chapters as well as their selection. Chapter 1 (Rigby) introduces the topic and some of the relevant literature and then outlines a conceptual approach which owes much to the work of Max Weber. Chapter 2 (Brunner) describes the official legitimating doctrines and institutionalised procedures of communist states within the frame­work of an original typology. The. next three chapters all lie within a broadly Marxist tradition of critical social analysis, that by Heller offering a theoretical basis for the periodisation of political legitimation in the USSR and Eastern Europe, the chapter by Feher analysing the emergence of the contemporary mode of legitimation in these countries, which the author characterises as one of 'paternalism', and that by Markus exploring those distinctive features of communist systems which underlie the simultaneous deployment of 'overt' and 'covert' modes of legitimation. Gill's Chapter 6 discusses the conditions under which leader cults may assume major political significance in communist systems, and their ambiguous impact on the sources of political legitimacy. Chapter 7 (Krisch) presents a case study of political legitimation in a communist state, namely the one most susceptible to comparison with a 'Western' state, the German Democratic Republic. This is followed by Miller's analysis of the efforts of the communist parties of Italy, France and Spain to win legitimacy in terms of West European democratic values, and the attendant conflicts both with their own entrenched practices and traditions and the legitimacy needs of the USSR and other communist states. In the final chapter Berki returns us to a broader historical and philosophical perspective, arguing that while political legitimation in liberal-democratic systems rests on an elevated conception of the state, Marxism elevates society and dethrones and degrades the state, 'and hence, in its prevalent Marxist-Leninist form at any rate, has no coherent doctrine of political legitimation at all'.

The editors wish to express their sincere appreciation to the Research

Preface ix

School of Social Sciences of the Australian National University for the financial and logistic support that made possible the 'workshop' conference out of which this book emerged. They wish also to record their indebtedness to the many scholars whose participation contributed so much to the interest and fruitfulness of the conference, and who in several cases offered valuable comments and suggestions incorporated in certain chapters of the book, in particular to John Ballard, Brian Beddie, Stanley Benn, Vendulka Kubalkova, Peter King, Gyorgy Markus, Carole Pateman, Marian Sawer, Ivan Szelenyi and Frederick Teiwes. In view of the continuing valuable links between students of the USSR and Eastern Europe at the Australian National University and St Antony's College, Oxford it is a source of much satisfaction to the editors that this book is coming out in the distinguished St Antony's! Macmillan series. T. H. Rigby was a Senior Associate Member at St Antony's in the 1975/76 academic year. We are most grateful to the Verlag Karl Alber for their generosity in permitting us to reprint in translation Georg Brunner's chapter. Finally, we wish to thank Olga Prokopovich for her manifold and able assistance both in the arrange­ments for the conference and the production of this book, and to Mary Pearson who typed the final manuscript.

Canberra, 1980 T. H. RIGBY and FERENC FEHER

Notes on the Contributors R.N. BERKI was born in Budapest in 1936 and has lived in the United Kingdom since 1957. He was educated in the London School of Economics and Cambridge University where he was awarded a doctorate in 1967. The same year he was appointed Lecturer in the Department of Politics, University of Hull, and was promoted to Senior Lecturer in 1975. In 1978/79 he was Visiting Fellow in the History of Ideas Unit, Australian National University. He is the author of Socialism (1975) and The History of Political Thought: A Short Introduction (1977), and joint editor of The Morality of Politics (1971), Knowledge and Belief in Politics (1973) and State and Society in Contemporary Europe (1979). He has also contributed to numerous journals and symposia and lectured in West Germany and Canada; his book, On Political Realism, was published in 1981.

GEORG BRUNNER was born in Budapest in 1936 and came to Germany in 1956. After studying law at the Universities of Budapest and Tiibingen he took the first and second state exam in law and his doctorate. From 1964 to 1971 he worked at the Federal Institute for Eastern (European) and International Studies in Cologne. In 1970 he took the 'Habilitation' at the University of Cologne. Since 1971 he has been full Professor of Public Law, East European Law and Political Science at the University ofWiirzburg. He was Dean of the Law Faculty from 1973 to 1975 and Konrektor of the University from 1975 to 1977. He is the author of numerous articles in academic journals and of the following books: Die Grundrechte im Sowjetsystem (Cologne, 1963), Das Parteistatut der KPdSU (Cologne, 1965), Die sowjetische Kolchosor­dnung (Stuttgart, 1970), Die Prob/ematik der sozialen Grundrechte (Tiibingen, 1971), Kontrol/e in Deutschland(Cologne, 1972), Einfohrung in das Recht der DDR (Munich 1975, 2nd edn 1979), Politische Sozio/ogie der UdSSR (Wiesbaden, 1977) and Verg/eichende Re­gierungs/ehre (Paderborn, 1979).

FERENC FEHER was born in 1933 in Budapest. From 1952 to 1955 he

X

Notes on the Contributors xi

studied at the Lorand Eotvos University, Budapest from which he was expelled as a 'political deviationist' in 1955. He taught in a grammar school from 1957 to 1967 and was active as a literary critic. He was a disciple of Georg Lukacs from 1954 and his Ph.D. student from 1967 to 1970. As a political dissenter, he was excluded from Hungarian cultural life and after a long unemployment and harassment, left Hungary in 1978. At present he is Senior Research Fellow at the Australian National University, Canberra, in the History of Ideas Unit. He has published several works in Hungarian, German, English, French, Portuguese and Serbo-Croatian, including: Dostoevsky and the Crisis of the Individual (1970), The Theory of Needs in Marx (1972), Sartre's Last Philosophy (1975), The Frozen Revolution (A Study of Jacobinism) (1979).

GRAEME GILL was born in Melbourne in 1947 and is currently a Lecturer in Political Science at the University of Sydney. After obtaining B.A. and M.A. degrees from Monash University, he pro­ceeded to the London School of Economics and Political Science where he completed a Ph.D. in 1975. Prior to taking up his present position he was a Teaching Fellow in Politics at Monash University and a Tutor in Political Science at the University of Tasmania. He is the author of Peasants and Government in the Russian Revolution (London, 1979) and of a number of contributions to scholarly journals.

AGNES HELLER was born in 1929 in Budapest. From 1947 to 1952 she studied philosophy, economics and social sciences at the Lorand Eotvos University, Budapest. From 1952 to 1955 she was a Ph.D. student of Georg Lukacs, later an assistant, and then an Associate Professor in his department of philosophy. Dismissed for political reasons together with Lukacs in 1958, she was successively Senior Research Fellow in the Institute of Sociology(Budapest), teacher in a grammar school, and 'politically unemployed'. After years of police harassment she left Hungary in 1978 and is now Reader in sociology at LaTrobe University, Melbourne. She has published some 50 books in Hungarian, English, German, French, Italian, Japanese, Danish, Serbo­Croatian and Spanish, including Aristotle's Ethics (1957), From the Intention to the Consequences (Draft of a General Ethics), Renaissance Man·(l965), Everyday Life (1968), On Instincts (1973), A Theory of Feelings (1975), Radical Philosophy (1976), A Theory of History (1979).

HENRY KRISCH was born in Berlin, Germany in 1931. He received his B.A. from The City College of New York, and his M.A. Russian

xii Notes on the Contributors

Institute Certificate, and Ph.D. from Columbia University. He is presently Associate Professor of Political Science and Director, Center for Slavic and East European Studies at the University of Connecticut at Storrs. He is the author of German Politics under Soviet Occupation (1974), and The German Democratic Republic: An Introduction. He has contributed to the volumes The German Democratic Republic: An Advanced Socialist Society ( 1978), and Drei Jahrzehnte Aussenpolitik der DDR (1979), as well as articles on GDR politics to Problems of Communism, Studies in Comparative Communism, and East Central Europe.

MARIA MARK US was born in Poland in 1936. From 1952 to 1957 she studied philosophy at the Lomonosov University in Moscow, and in 1957 gained her M.A. degree in Poland. In the same year she moved to Hungary where she worked as research fellow at the Institute of Philosophy of the Hungarian Academy and later became one of the founding members of the Institute of Sociology. She belonged to the so­called 'Budapest School' of Marxist philosophers and sociologists and as such (together with some of her colleagues) lost her job in 1973 for political and ideological reasons. Unable to work as a sociologist, she left Hungary in 1977 and in 1978 moved to Australia, where she is now Lecturer in sociology at the University of New South Wales. She is co­author of several books on industrial sociology and has published numerous articles in international journals in the field of sociology of economics, stratification, on the position of women in Eastern Europe, etc.

ROBERT F. MILLER was born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1932. After undergraduate study in engineering and history, he received an M.A. and Ph.D. at Harvard University in Soviet politics. He has undertaken extended research and field-work programmes in the USSR and Yugoslavia and shorter projects in other East European countries. After teaching at several American universities, he took up an appoint­ment at the Australian National University, where he is now a Senior Fellow in Political Science. Among his publications are One Hundred Thousand Tractors: The MTS and the Development of Controls in Soviet Agriculture (1970), Tito as Political Leader and External Factors in Yugoslav Political Development (1977), and numerous articles on politics and administration in the USSR and Eastern Europe on Eurocommunism.

Notes on the Contributors xiii

T. H. RIGBY, born in Melbourne in 1925, is Professorial Fellow in Political Science at the Australian National University. After wartime service in the Australian Army, he studied at the Universities of Melbourne and London taking his Ph.D. at the LSE in 1954. From 1956 to 1957 he was a Research Officer at the LSE, working closely with Leonard Schapiro. He served in the Research Department of the UK Foreign Office and later in the UK Embassy in Moscow. After some years as Senior Lecturer and Associate Professor of Russian at the Australian National University, he took up his present position in 1964. Dr Rigby is author of Communist Party Membership in the USSR 1917-1967 ( 1968) and Lenin's Government: Sovnarkom 1917-19 22 ( 1979), and editor or joint editor of several books, including Stalin (1966) and (with Archie Brown and Peter Reddaway) Authority, Power and Policy in the USSR (1980).