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Dissent and Consent under State Socialism
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 July 2009
Extract
Professor Bauman's article is certainly a welcome contribution to the analysis of state socialist societies. He succeeds in breaking away from the myopic Kremlinological study of individuals and he also conducts his argument on a comparative sociological plane transcending the Sovietologist's ideographic viewpoint. However, he may be criticised at many points: it is very doubtful whether the state under capitalism is as ‘autonomous’ an institution as Bauman suggests; distinctions should be made between the socialist states of Eastern Europe, for what may be true of Poland and Rumania may not be true of the Soviet Union; international relations, particularly those between the U.S.S.R. and Eastern Europe and between East and West, have important effects on the political culture and significantly restrict the possibilities for social change; the diachronic development of the societies under consideration needs to be given more prominence, for what may have been the case in Soviet Russia in 1920 or in Poland in 1948 may not be so for either society in 1971. Here, I shall have to leave on one side such general criticisms to concentrate on a number of specific points in Bauman's argument relating to stratification in Eastern Europe which seem to me to be debatable.
- Type
- Permanent non-Revolution
- Information
- European Journal of Sociology / Archives Européennes de Sociologie , Volume 13 , Issue 1 , May 1972 , pp. 36 - 44
- Copyright
- Copyright © Archives Européenes de Sociology 1972
References
(1) The comparative figure for Germany was 38 per cent. See Taylor, J., The Economic Development of Poland 1919–1950 (New York 1952), p. 83Google Scholar.
(2) Fikus, D. and Urban, J., Szczecin, , Polityka, 6 02. 1971Google Scholar.
(3) Of 83 workers' delegates elected to meet Gierek in Gdansk, 40 per cent were party members. Kozicki, S., Polityka, 13 01. 1971Google Scholar.
(4) The occupations of 115 full members elected to the central committee at the VIth Congress of the PZPR in December 1971 were as follows: only 2 were farmers, there were 27 manual workers, 75 partygovernment and other officials, and II other non-manuals. Of the 93 candidate members: 2 were farmers, 17 manual workers, 52 officials and there were 21 other non-manuals, the occupation of I is unknown. The major sources for these data are newspaper biographical articles.
(5) See my book, The End of Inequality? Stratification under State Socialism (London 1971), pp. 122–126Google Scholar.
(6) Barton, Allen H., Determinants of Leadership Attitudes in a Socialist Society, (Munich, IPSA, 1970), p. 16Google Scholar.
(7) Zagorski, K., Social Mobility and Changes in the Structure of Planning Society (Warsaw 1970) p. 14Google Scholar.
(8) Unlike Kolakowski, I find Bauman's definition of a revolution useful and unexceptional: he means (i) a structural change involving, for instance forms of family, ownership, patterns of work) and (ii)a break in the ‘legitimacy’ of a political structure (by this he means something wider than changes of constitution, including the values and institutions enshrined in the constitution).
(9) Note the direct election of workers from large factories to the VIth Congress of the PZPR held in December 1971. At present 18 of such factory delegates are full members of the central committee and 9 are candidates.
(10) In the 1908 Olympics, Russia came fifteenth equal with Austria; in the Games held since 1952, the U.S.S.R. has three times totalled more medals than any other nation and has been runner-up twice. In the Mexico Games (1968), the seven East-European nations (excluding the U.S.S.R. and Albania) with a population of 117 millions won 120 medals, whereas the seven leading West-European countries with a population of 260 millions, accumulated only 81. Data cited by Riordan, J. W., The Olympic Games as a Mirror of Society, Anglo-Soviet Journal, XXIX (1969), p. 9Google Scholar.