Political Legitimation in Communist States

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 compara-
tive 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) LATIN 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 LATIN 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 Agnes

Heller 45
4 Paternalism as a Mode of Legitimation in Soviet-type

Societies Ferenc Feher 64
5 Overt and Covert Modes of Legitimation in East European

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 Robert

F. Miller 126
9 The State, Marxism and Political Legitimation R.N.

Berki 146
Index 170
v
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 frame-
work 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 arrange-
ments 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 Kolchosor-
dnung (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 Re-
gierungs/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 pro-
ceeded 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, Serbo-
Croatian 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 so-
called '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 co-
author 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 appoint-
ment 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 1917-1922 ( 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).
1 Introduction: Political
Legitimacy, Weber and
Communist Mono-
organisational Systems
T. H. Rigby
The expectation of political authorities that people will comply with

their demands is typically based not only on such considerations as the
latter's fear of punishment, hope of reward, habit or apathy, but also on
the notion that they have the right to make such demands. This notion
both inheres, explicitly or implicitly, in the claims of the authorities, and
is reciprocated, to a greater or lesser extent, in the minds of those of
whom compliance is demanded. This is what we mean by the
'legitimacy' of political power and authority, a concept of ancient
pedigree whose modern usage we owe largely to Max Weber. Both the
term and the phenomenon have given rise to much argument, and some
of the matters at issue will be touched on in what follows, but this
account will suffice to launch our discussion. 1
The grounds on which claims to legitimacy may be made are varied,
Max Weber's three 'pure types' of legal (rational), traditional, and
charismatic legitimacy offering only one of several possible typologies.
It will be immediately obvious that while 'legitimacy' as understood here
has in common with 'legality' that both refer to claims held to be validly
asserted and binding on those to whom they are addressed, the two
concepts are not identical: legitimacy may be based on legality, but it
may be based on grounds of a completely different order. To be sure, the
legitimacy-legality distinction is at odds with some earlier understand-
ings oflegitimacy, and is still contested by some contemporary writers. 2
It is arguable that we should find a different term for the phenomenon
we are dealing with in this book, but since most relevant discussion of it
2 Political Legitimation in Communist States
is now conducted, as Wilhelm Hennis has aptly put it, 'under the spell of
Max Weber' 3 only greater confusion would be caused by our doing so.
It would be utterly misleading, of course, to suggest that this
phenomenon was quite unknown to theorists and practitioners of
politics before Weber drew attention to it. Aspects of it have been
considered from various angles by writers from Plato and Aristotle on,
and an extensive literature exists within intellectual traditions other than
the empirically-oriented political science and political sociology with
which I am mainly concerned here, discussing it in terms of such
concepts as 'consent', 'authority', 'political obligation', 'compliance'
and 'obedience', etc., and representing such diverse disciplines as
history, political philosophy, jurisprudence, anthropology and
sociology. 4
Throughout history usurpers have perceived the importance of
legitimating their rule and established rulers of maintaining the symbols,
rituals and beliefs in which their legitimacy is enshrined, while con-
tenders for power and for conflicting concepts of rule have sought to
build up support and control of institutional resources by pressing
alternative formulas oflegitimacy. The matter was well understood over
three millenia ago by Pharaoh Amenhotep IV, in the early years of whose
reign (at least according to one reading of the evidence) the long-
standing power struggle between the imperial household and the Thebes
establishment came to a head. The latter's dominance over priestly and
administrative appointments and therewith their great political and
economic power was centred on the temple of the imperial sun-god
Amon, whose cult had been vital to the Pharaoh's authority. Amen-
hotep challenged this dominance at its focus by promoting the new cult
of the life-giving, sun-disc Aton and asserting his direct relationship with
the god through changing his name to Akhenaton and propagating a
corresponding new iconography. The ensuing struggle, largely played
out as a competition between the rival cults and their conflicting
concepts of legitimacy, ended in the victory of the Pharaoh, who then
proceeded to purge the bureaucracy and shift the political system of the
empire decisively, if briefly, in the direction of a personal despotism. It
requires no great straining of the imagination, incidentally, to perceive
parallels here with certain aspects of Soviet political history in the 1920s
and 1930s, analysed in this volume by Graeme Gill.
More familiar examples of the interplay between structures of power
and legitimating doctrines are the care taken by the Emperor Augustus
to conceal his essentially monarchical revolution in Roman government
behind the outward forms of the Republic, the elaboration of concepts
Political Legitimacy and Communist Systems 3
of the divine right of kings as the feudal order gave way to royal
absolutism in early modern Europe, and the subsequent development of
doctrines of popular sovereignty as the growth of commercial and then
industrial capitalism brought ever wider social groups to assert a say in
government. In Europe in the nineteenth century and more widely in the
twentieth national myths and symbols have proved a potent force in
legitimating political authority in new states. Myths have likewise been
fostered by power-seeking radical movements of Right and Left as well
as forming a legitimating 'resource' competed for in the normal politics
of democratic communities. 5
These few examples remind us of the diversity of legitimating
formulas, 6 which vary vastly in form, complexity and content, in the
nature of their appeal to reason, belief or feeling, and in the extent and
manner in which they tie into wider belief-systems. Nor as a rule does the
political system of a complex society operate with only one legitimating
doctrine, or on only one level oflegitimation. Overtly, as Georg Brunner
shows in Chapter 2, the claims to legitimacy of communist regimes rest
on quite elaborate rational argumentation embedded in a systematic
world view. However, this 'overt' legitimation is supplemented by other,
more or less 'covert' forms of legitimation, as Maria Markus argues in
Chapter 5 and the most significant of these are explored by several
contributors to this volume.
There are two extreme views on the role of Marxist-Leninist
doctrines in the political legitimation of communist countries. The first
sees this official ideology as the dominant social force, determining both
the content of policies and the structure of power, with the communist
party figuring as a kind of priesthood thoroughly indoctrinated in
'Marxism-Leninism' and in turn indoctrinating the population at large,
and thereby 'mobilising' them in pursuit of the party's communist
programme. The second view regards the official ideology as a mere
smokescreen, or at best a source of ex post facto justification of policies
determined on purely pragmatic grounds, and considers that neither it
nor any other beliefs play any significant part in securing the compliance
of the population, which is a consequence simply of fear, of coercion
exercised by the political police and militia, by judges armed with
arbitrary powers, backed by the internal security troops and the regular
army. Thus in the first view legitimating beliefs explain everything,
while in the second they explain nothing.
Such notions in their raw form have rarely been held by close
observers of communist systems, though some combination of the two,
seeing these systems as based on a blend of ideology and terror (or naked
power), has had a considerable currency, underlying in particular some

earlier conceptions of communist 'totalitarianism'. Such a picture is not
to be dismissed too lightly, since it is scarcely open to dispute that
communist systems are dominated by a single highly centralised party,
which tolerates no opposition, which directs all the institutions of
society, and which had its origins in Marxist-Leninist doctrines and
continues to justify all its actions in terms of these doctrines. Yet one
conclusion that emerges from this volume, I believe, is that this two-
dimensional view is also inadequate, that the reality of political
legitimation in communist countries is considerably more complex.
It is time to turn to a closer examination of Weber's analysis of
political legitimacy, since this provides the starting-point for the
consideration of political legitimation in communist countries which I
shall be offering later in this chapter and some familiarity with it is also
assumed in several other chapters in this book. Weber discusses
legitimacy in two contexts: in relation to normative social 'orders' or
arrangements ( Ordnungen) and in relation to systems of rule
(Herrschaft -often translated 'domination' and sometimes 'authority').
These discussions are not as mutually consistent as they might be
expected to be (since a system of rule is after all a species of'order' as well
as a sub-system of a total social 'order') 7 but their contradictions are not
very pertinent to my argument and need not detain us here.
The 'legitimacy' of an 'order' resides in its participants believing its
demands, 'no matter to what actual extent', to be properly binding upon
them, whether or not they in fact comply with these demands and
whatever other motives they may have if they do so comply. 8 It is
important to recognize that Weber is very far from explaining the
effectiveness of a system of rule or other 'order' simply in terms of its
legitimacy.
Naturally, the legitimacy of a system of authority may be treated

sociologically only as the probability that to a relevant degree the
appropriate attitudes will exist, and the corresponding practical
conduct ensue. It is by no means true that every case of submissiveness
to persons in positions of power is primarily (or even at all) oriented to
this belief. Loyalty may be hypocritically simulated by individuals or
by whole groups on purely opportunistic grounds, or carried out in
practice for reasons of material self-interest. Or people may submit
from individual weakness and helplessness because there is no
acceptable alternative. 9
If this is so, why does Weber accord such centrality to the discussion of
legitimation in his analysis of political systems? The continuation of the
same paragraph provides the answer.
But these considerations are not decisive for the classification of types
of imperative coordination [i.e. rule]. What is important is the fact
that in a given case the particular claim to legitimacy is to a significant
degree and according to its type treated [my italics] as 'valid'; that this
fact confirms the position of the persons claiming authority and that it
helps to determine the choice of means of its exercise. 10
It is in the elaboration of these last points, and specifically in the claim

that there is a substantial degree of congruence between types of
legitimacy claims and structures and methods of rule, that Weber's most
original and valuable contribution to the sociology of power lies. It is
true that the reasons for this congruence are not fully clarified by Weber
and the causal relationship he suggests remains problematical. Never-
theless a strong tendency to such congruence is in my view empirically
observable and an exploration of its ramifications can provide in-
valuable insights into the character of socio-political systems, not least
those of the communist countries.
Weber's typology of legitimate rule (legitime Herrschaft- 'legitimate
authority' in the translation from which my quotations are taken) is well
known, but it will be useful here to recall its main propositions. He
distinguishes three 'pure types' (which in practice may occur in various
'combinations, mixtures, adaptations and modifications') in terms of
the three main grounds on which the validity oflegitimacy claims may be
based, namely:
1. Rational grounds - resting on a belief in the 'legality' of patterns of

normative rules and the right of those elevated to authority under
such rules to issue commands (legal authority).
2. Traditional grounds- resting on an established belief in the
sanctity of immemorial traditions and the legitimacy of the status
of those exercising authority under them (traditional authority); or
finally,
3. Charismatic grounds- resting on devotion to the specific and
exceptional sanctity, heroism or exemplary character of an
individual person, and of the normative patterns or order revealed
or ordained by him (charismatic authority). 11
The terms on which people may consider they have an obligation to

obey their ruler's commands differ according to the type oflegitimation.
In the case of legal rule it is the legally established order rather than the
persons of those holding office under it that is owed obedience. In a
system of traditional rule, by contrast, obedience 'is a matter of personal
loyalty within the area of accustomed obligations'. Under charismatic
rule obedience is likewise personalised, based however not on the
leader's occupancy of a traditionally sanctioned position but on a
personal trust in him and his extraordinary capacities. 12
Furthermore, each type of legitimate rule is served by a distinctive
type of 'administrative staff'. In a legal system this is a 'bureaucracy' of
appointive, salaried officials, selected on the basis of educational
qualifications, and making careers within a hierarchy of offices each
charged with a legally defined sphere of competence. 13 Their distinctive
mode of operation is the application of intentionally established
abstract rules to particular cases. 14 A traditional ruler recruits his
administrative staff either from within his household (kinsmen, slaves,
clients etc.) or from others in a relation of personal fealty or dependence
('vassals', favourites, etc.), they are usually directly supported within the
ruler's household, and are charged with an arbitrary and shifting range
of responsibilities. The traditionally-prescribed limits within which the
ruler and his staff are free to command vary greatly as between different
sub-types ('patrimonialism', 'sultanism', 'feudalism' etc.). 15 The ad-
ministrative staff of a charismatic ruler or leader consists of 'followers'
or 'disciples', 'summoned' by the leader on the basis of their charismatic
qualification, and bound 'in an emotional form of communal
relationship', supported typically by voluntary gifts and operating
without formal hierarchy and formal rules. 16 Charismatic rule being of
its nature revolutionary and therefore transitory, it is subject to
'routinisation' as the charismatic community seeks to stabilize and
perpetuate its existence through adopting regular organisational struc-
tures and as its administrative staff 'seek and achieve the creation of
individual positions and the corresponding economic advantages for
[its] members'. Thus charismatic rule is transformed in either a rational
(legal) or traditional direction, but may leave a residue in the form of
'hereditary charisma' or a 'charisma of office'. 17
While the applicability of this typology to communist systems of rule
may not be immediately obvious, I propose to argue shortly that it
provides a starting point for grasping the character and significance of
political legitimation under these systems. First, however, we will need
to identify and try to resolve certain problems implicit in Weber's

analysis.
This analysis has provoked a considerable critical literature. Much
comment has focused on Weber's methodology and the logical status of
his operative concepts: the difficulties involved in his attempt to create a
value-free Verstehen-sociology, in the construction and use of 'ideal
types', and so on. This class of problems must be put to one side in the
present discussion, but our attention is claimed by certain others which
relate to the content of his concepts and their applicability to social and
historical reality.
We have already noted that the detailed discussion of legitimacy
outlined above relates to what Weber calls legitime 'Herrschaft'. This
earthy German word, evoking images of the paterfamilias, the 'lord and
master', the dominus, owes its currency in modern German scholarship
and quasi-scholarly discourse primarily to Weber's appropriation and
adaptation of it to his analytical purposes. 18 The difficulty of rendering
it adequately in English speaks to the culture-specific colouration of
Weber's terminology, despite his aspirations to 'value-freedom'. Stern-
berger will allow only 'dominion'; I employ 'rule', a modern approxim-
ation to this archaic term, but something is lost. 19 The Herr (lord) or
Herrscher (ruler) gives the orders: he is the boss (the Russian khozyain
catches something of it). In choosing 'rule' as his central analytical term
for the exercise of legitimate political power, rather, for instance, than
leadership, authority, government, etc. Weber immediately focuses on
one kind of relationship within the political system- namely the
command-obedience relationship- while marginalising others. In
doing so he displays a view of the salient and the normal which seems to
reflect a particular socio-political reality, namely the authoritarian-
bureaucratic order of post-Restoration Europe- an order still largely
intact in the Germany of Weber's day; and this despite Weber's highly
critical attitude towards it. The effect is sometimes to play down if not to
obscure what is most salient and normal in other socio-political systems,
both historical and contemporary.
In traditional systems, rulers do indeed issue commands, but this is a
less distinctive aspect of their role than that of maintaining, defending,
implementing and interpreting customary obligations and expectations,
in which the content of what is demanded is often determined more by
precedent than by the ruler's deliberate choice. In the case of modern
Western systems, the decisions of political leaders do indeed come down
to the citizen in the form of enforceable 'commands', but again
'command' scarcely catches the distinctive role of these leaders- which

is why we rarely speak of them as our 'rulers' unless with a strong dash of
irony or theatrical indignation. The leader's role is much more one of
presiding over- albeit while seeking to steer and orchestrate- an
institutionalised process of reaching compromise agreement on compet-
ing and often conflicting aspirations and claims. While elsewhere in his
work Weber deals at length and with great perception and sophistication
with both custom and agreement as modes of structuring social action
and culture, these central features respectively of traditional and
modern Western political systems recede into the background in his
ideal types of traditional and legal rule. It is for such reasons that I have
argued elsewhere for a typology of socio-political systems in which
custom, contract and command figure as alternative structuring
principles. 20 Weber's concentration on legitimate rule defined so as to
focus attention on the command-obedience relationship leads him to
adopt some curious positions. For instance when the corporations of
medieval towns come into conflict with their local lords or princes he
sees them as exercising 'non-legitimate domination' even when they are
defending rights and privileges hallowed by tradition. 21 Even more
striking is Weber's oft-noted failure to discuss modem 'bourgeois'
democracy in the context of his analysis of the rational-legal system, and
its relegation to an appendix to his treatment of the routinization of
charisma. The reason is that the central feature of democracy as he sees it
is simply the people's choice of those who will rule them. This is
epitomised in a comment addressed by Weber to Roberto Michels in
1908: 'Any thought ... that forms of "democracy" however inge-
niously elaborated can eliminate the Herrschaft of men over men is a
utopia'. 22 But it is agreements or contracts that form the essential
building blocks out of which both the institutional arrangements and
substantive political outcomes of a 'bourgeois' democratic order are
constructed, just as customs are the essential building blocks of the
institutional arrangements and political outcomes of a traditional order.
If, then, it was not in the liberal democracies of his day that Weber saw
the 'pure type of rational-legal rule with bureaucratic administrative
staff' historically most closely approximated, where was it? The answer,
as has frequently been noted, is of course the bureaucratic Rechtsstaat,
and specifically that of Wilhelmine Germany. And the latter, despite its
residue of traditional Herrschaft focused on the Kaiser's person, and
despite its incipient parliamentary democracy, did indeed elevate the
bureaucratically-administered and law-bound command-obedience re-
lationship to the dominant political reality. It was a reality that Weber
contemplated not without profound anxiety both as to the future of

Western man generally and the fate of his native land in particular. For
on the one hand while it represented the ultimate development of a
distinctive Western type of rationality it also involved a spiritually
impoverishing 'disenchantment of the world'. And on the other Weber
doubted whether the purely bureaucratic order of this 'authority state'
(Obrigkeitstaat) would be adequate to Germany's political needs, a
doubt that came to a head as the tide of war turned against Germany in
1918, a fact which Weber attributed to the advantages accruing to the
Western democracies from having a 'working parliament' (rather than a
mere 'parliament of the ruled') which subjected the bureaucracy to
political direction under a charismatically-coloured political leadership
enjoying the institutionalized consent and support of the people. But he
had no patience with 'democracies without leaders' (fiihrerlose
Demokratien) which sought to reduce Herrschaft to a minimum, and in
his growing pessimism he found his one hope in a new form of
charismatic rule which he termed 'plebiscitary leader-democracy'
(plebiszitiire Fiihrerdemokratie). 23
History has vested these views with several levels of irony. Firstly and
most obviously, when Germany did indeed acquire, and all too soon, its
Fuhrer, it proved to be one from whom Weber would certainly have
recoiled and who brought disaster upon his fatherland. Secondly,
bureaucratically-structured command-obedience Herrschaft has turned
out not to be the wave of the future in Germany, whose political
development over the past century, if we ignore the brief interlude of the
'Thousand-Year Reich' and (for the present) the G.D.R., has been
marked by the growing dominance of those institutionalised processes
for reaching agreement or accommodation of competing claims which
characterise the democratic, 'market' polities of the industrialised West
generally: even if 'bureaucratisation' has proceeded apace in the
constituent public and private sub-systems of these societies. And the
final irony is that the apotheosis of bureaucratically-structured com-
mand-obedience Herrschaft appeared, and within a very few years of
Weber's death, not in Germany, and not even on the soil of the Western
rational-legal order at all, but, of all places, in Russia.
In explaining this last proposition I shall be repeating and developing
arguments recently published in Authority, Power and Policy in the
U.S.S.R. 2 \ a procedure prompted Jess by an overdeveloped scholarly
narcissism than by the underdeveloped state of our topic. For this
volume is the first ever to focus on political legitimation in the communist
countries and its contributors must perforce attempt the ungainly task
of pulling themselves up by their own bootstraps. It is not that nothing

has been written about political legitimation since Weber. Indeed after
years of relative neglect it has received a greatly increased scholarly
attention over the last decade or so, mainly in response to the alleged
'legitimacy crisis' in the 'capitalist' democracies in the late 1960s and
early 1970s. As early as 1971 McWilliams was able to write that
'"legitimacy" is a new master word in political science' 25 and in 1975
discussion of it took up the whole conference programme of the German
Political Science Association. Some of this recent literature contains
insights of more general applicability that will reward consideration by
the student of communist politics, but for the most part it is preoccupied
with specific aspects of Western politics and precious little has been
written directly on the communist countries. 26 This latter neglect is
striking, as Peter Graf Kielmannsegg has pointed out, when one
considers that the legitimacy of communist regimes in the eyes of their
subjects is on the face of it at least as questionable as that of Western
regimes in the eyes of theirs. 2 7
There are three main points I would like to argue in summarising my
own position:
1. The Soviet type of socio-political order consists of a complex

pattern of command-structures (or 'bureaucracies') bound to-
gether into a single all-embracing structure by the communist party
machine: it is a mono-organisational society.
2. The predominant orientation of these command-structures is
towards goal-achievement, rather than towards the application of
rules, which Weber correctly identifies as the predominant orien-
tation of the public bureaucracies of Western 'capitalist' societies.
3. Consonant with this, the legitimacy claimed for the commands
issuing from this system and for those holding office under it is
framed in terms of 'goal-rationality' rather than the formal-legal
rationality of Western 'capitalist' systems.
There is little that need be said in elaboration of my first point. Apart

from the family and to a degree the churches, all officially tolerated
social units in the USSR and other communist systems modelled on it
take the form of hierarchically-operating organisations transmitting
centrally-formulated commands ultimately to the operative levels
throughout the country. The party integrates these into a single
structure partly through the controlling and coordinating role exercised
by its apparatus at each level, and partly through ensuring that party
Political Legitimacy and Communist Systems II
members subject to party instruction and discipline are in charge of all

significant units of 'non-party' organisations. These features character-
ise not only formally 'bureaucratic' bodies but also organisations which
are professedly and formally democratic or associational in structure,
such as the soviets and trade unions. 'Elections' constitute not a choice
between alternative candidates and their policies, but rather a coerced
ritual of legitimating intent but little legitimating force. Politics, in the
sense of competition between ambitions, interests and values, denied an
open, institutionalised arena, flourishes covertly in the 'informal
organisation' of the system.
My second and third points call for some explication. This is not the
place to review the extensive critical literature on Weber's 'ideal-type' of
bureaucracy but there is one aspect of the latter which has received little
attention but which is of crucial importance to my argument, namely the
view that bureaucracies are primarily oriented towards the application
of abstract rules to particular cases. This is certainly true of many
modern bureaucracies, such as welfare, customs or licensing agencies,
but it is misleading with respect to others, notably military and
industrial bureaucracies, for in these the primary orientation is towards
the achievement of specific assigned tasks rather than the application of
rules. 28 On this basis it is essential to distinguish between what might
be termed 'rule-applying bureaucracies' and 'task-achieving bureau-
cracies'.
Now despite the increasing intrusion of the Western 'capitalist' state
into task-achievement activities, the predominant mode of its
bureaucracy, at least in peace time, is still the rule-applying mode. The
reason is that the state does not set out systematically to prescribe the
goals and specific tasks of the constituent units of society, but rather,
while engaging in substantial steering, controlling and redistributive
activities, primarily to provide a stable framework within which those
units may pursue their autonomously-generated goals. Accordingly the
central role in the political system is played by institutions concerned
with facilitating these autonomously-generated goals and directing the
inevitable competition and disagreement into channels where accom-
modations may be reached and destructive conflict avoided. Consonant
with this, the legitimacy claims of the political system, of those holding
office under it and of the latter's commands, are validated in terms of
freedom within an impersonal legal order and government by agreement
and resting on consent.
Not so in the communist system. Here the political authorities do set
out not only to prescribe the goals and specific tasks of the constituent
units of society but indeed directly to manage their implementation

through official bureaucracies. Though some essentially rule-applying
bureaucracies are present, the predominant bureaucratic mode is the
task-achievement mode. Accordingly the central role in the political
system is played by institutions concerned with formulating the goals
and tasks of the constituent units of society and supervising their
execution. Consonant with this, the legitimacy claims of the political
system, of those holding office under it, and of the tatters' commands,
are validated in terms of the final goal ('communism') from which the
partial and intermediate goals set by the leadership are allegedly derived
and to which individual goals should be subordinated. The details are
spelled out by Georg Brunner in Chapter 2.
Both cases incorporate a kind of rationality, but whereas in the
former this relates to the appropriateness of the formal laws and rules to
the political process and the social order, in the latter it relates to the
appropriateness of the means used (the machinery and specific
commands) to the goals set. Hence the terms 'formal-legal rationality'
and 'goal-rationality'.
The legitimation of authority in goal-rational terms is, of course, not
unfamiliar in Western societies: it is characteristic, say, of an industrial
undertaking or a military force in action. What is peculiar to communist
systems is the organisational integration and centralised management of
the whole society as a single 'enterprise' in which authority is legitimated
in goal-rational terms. Something like this was aspired to but most
imperfectly achieved in Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, and it was also
approximated in certain Western countries, notably Britain, during the
Second World War. In communist societies the structural and ideo-
logical features of a country totally mobilised for war have been
converted into a permanent, 'normal' condition. The 'war', however, in
which they engaged, is the 'struggle for communism'. 'Our Goal is
Communism!' proclaims the enormous banner in the machine-shop,
and indeed it is in terms of this goal that the Politburo justifies its five-
year plan guidelines, that Gosplan spells these out into annual and
quarterly plans for the industry concerned, that the ministry running it
translates into specific targets for the particular plant, and the latter's
management sets the tasks of individual workshops and workers.
Let us be very clear what is meant by the 'goal-rationality' of such a
system. It does not mean that it is necessarily well-designed to achieve
the goals it proclaims, but simply that the validity of its demands for
compliance is claimed to be based on a rational relationship between the
ultimate goal of communism and the specific tasks assigned to social
units and individuals, and the dominant rationale for evaluating social
action is the achievement of prescribed tasks. The 'rationality' of the
system does not inhere in the results of the commands issuing from it,
but in the structure of the argument for justifying these commands.
There is no mystery here. On the one hand the 'rational-legal'
justification for demanding compliance with the laws passed by Western
governments is also not invalidated by the unreasonableness of the
objectives claimed for such laws or their failure to achieve the intended
results. 29 On the other hand all hierarchical organisations, and not just
the 'mono-organisational' systems of communist societies, may suffer a
disjunction between proclaimed goals and actual results, because such
goals are intrinsically unreasonable, because of 'goal displacement' as
commands are transmitted 'down the line', or because of the hypocrisy
or sheer inefficiency of their office-holders. That Nazi Germany failed to
win the Second World War or the United States the war in Vietnam may
be due to a variety of reasons, but neither the failures nor their reasons
disprove the goal-rational legitimation of commands issued in the
waging of these wars.
No complex society can function without the predictability flowing
from an elaborate system of enforceable laws, and the mono-organis-
ational societies of 'real socialism' are no exception. But the higher
legitimacy of task-achievement criteria over rule-compliance criteria in
official evaluation of performance is apparent in every facet of these
societies. If industrial managers break the law in an effort to achieve
their plan targets, they are likely to escape punishment if they succeed
but may well suffer it if they fail. When in 1962 the editors of Novy mir
published Solzhenitsyn's One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich it was
not because they had a legal right to do so but because Khrushchev
specifically authorized it with current political purposes in mind. What
may be reported and not reported in the newspapers is determined not
by law but by the current Propaganda Department guidelines embody-
ing the 'tasks' of the press. The political police enjoy wide legal powers
and since 1953 are expected to operate generally within the limits of
these powers, but they are authorized to resort to extra-legal methods
where necessary to the effective performance of their tasks of combat-
ting unorthodox views and actions. While the doctrine of the
'dictatorship of the proletariat', described as 'power unlimited by any
laws', is no longer said to apply in Soviet-type societies, the priority of
goal over law in legitimating political behaviour is still proclaimed not
only in propaganda intended for internal party use but even in national
constitutions, as when for instance they state (in Article 39 of the 1978
Soviet Constitution) that 'enjoyment by citizens of their rights and

freedoms must not be to the detriment of the interests of society or the
state! This flows logically from the teleological definition of the Soviet
state in the preamble to the constitution as 'the basic instrument for
defending the gains of the revolution and for building socialism and
communism'.
From the preceding analysis it should be plain why I place such
emphasis on certain Weberian concepts in seeking to understand the
character of political legitimation in communist countries. First and
foremost is the view that the focus oflegitimation in any system of rule is
a particular kind of command -obedience relationship, of Herrschaft. I
have mentioned reasons for questioning Weber's universalisation of this
focus and specifically its application both to traditional political systems
and to modern Western systems. But there can be no doubts as to its
centrality in Soviet-type systems, where the whole socio-political order
consists of a complex but integrated system of hierarchical command-
structures or 'bureaucracies'. It is this system of Herrschaft that is
hallowed by such legitimating doctrines and formulas as the leading and
directing role of the communist party, 'democratic centralism',
'socialism' understood as a totally state-owned and centrally-managed
economy, etc. As Georg Brunner shows below, while Soviet-type
systems also seek ancillary legitimation through purportedly popular
representative bodies, these are made to serve both in doctrine and
practice to reinforce rather than to qualify the primary legitimation of
'bureaucratically' -organised command-obedience Herr schaft.
Secondly there is Weber's stress on the congruence between the
dominant principle of legitimation and the character of the
'administrative staff'- their relationship to the 'ruler', mode of
selection, organisational structure, powers and mode of operation. In
Soviet-type systems these consist of career officials, appointed by and
responsible to their hierarchical superiors, and organised and operating
according to 'bureaucratic' principles. As I have argued, it is necessary
to qualify Weber's analysis of bureaucracy in order to bring out this
relationship fully -hence my use of quotation marks above. The
'administrative staff' through which Soviet-type systems are ruled
consists of task-oriented rather than rule-oriented bureaucracies, just as
the primary legitimating doctrines and formulas of these systems are
goal-oriented rather than rule-oriented, and the tasks assigned to
particular administrative units and officials and those under their
command are held to be derived from the goal of the system as a whole.
And here I must stress again that what is important in this connection is
that it is treated as valid. A further aspect noted by Weber is equally

important and highly relevant to Soviet-type systems: namely that even
in cases where the system of rule is so assured of dominance that its claim
to legitimacy plays little or no part in the relationship between rulers and
subjects, the mode oflegitimation retains its significance as the basis for
the relation of authority between rulers and administrative staff and for
the structure of rule. 30
The approach outlined above focuses on those aspects of political
legitimation in communist systems which seem to me most basic and
distinctive to those systems. It is, of course, only a partial view, and
others would argue that the emphasis should be placed elsewhere. As
Weber himself noted, not only may different modes and principles of
legitimation operate at different times, levels, and sections in a particular
society, they may also co-legitimate individual social acts. 31 I have
argued elsewhere the significance of rational-legal, charismatic and
traditional legitimation as adjuncts to the dominant goal-rational
legitimation of the Soviet system. 32 In Chapter 6 Graeme Gill examines
more closely the character of charismatic legitimation in communist
systems, through a comparative analysis of the cases of Stalin and Mao.
In Chapter 3 Agnes Heller presents strong arguments for a periodisation
of political legitimation in the Soviet Union which identifies different
modes of legitimation as dominant in different phases; in this view the
charismatic legitimation that prevailed in the Stalin period has more
recently been supplanted by a form of traditional legitimation.
My own approach differs sharply from the frequently encountered
view of political legitimacy which more or less equates it with positive
popular acceptance or support. 33 Nevertheless the presence or absence
of 'legitimacy' in this sense, which may rest on nothing more than
popular evaluation of a government or regime as in general efficacious
or benign, may indeed become a question of acute importance for a
political system, and this appears to have been the case in communist
Europe in recent years. This dimension is explored in Chapter 4 where
Ferenc Feher develops the concept of paternalism as the now dominant
mode of legitimation in these countries. 34 Another and complementary
element in popular acceptance clearly relevant to the communist
countries is that of familiarity: with time an imposed or revolutionary
system of rule may come gradually to seem the normal order of things
and people's life strategies become increasingly intertwined with the
expectations arising from it. One way of conceptualising this process is
to assimilate it to a model of traditional legitimation, as Agnes Heller
does in Chapter 3. Alternatively we may follow Weber in viewing it as an
incomplete 'functional equivalent' to legitimacy, 35 or again as a stage of

'pre-legitimacy'. 36
The conclusion we should draw froin these considerations is not that
we ought all to agree on a single usage of the term 'political legitimation'
and declare all other usages illegitimate. It is rather the more modest one
that different usages serve to illuminate different aspects of the political
system, but we must be clear how we are using it and what aspects we are
seeking to illuminate. Not only may the content of legitimating
doctrines, symbols, beliefs etc. differ in different contexts but so may
their functions. An important distinction here is that between the
functions of legitimation within the ruling group itself, with respect to
the relations between the latter and the 'administrative staff', and with
respect to the relations between both of these and the population at large.
It is this last that tends to be at the focus of attention in studies of ploiti-
callegitimation, including most of those in this book. My own approach,
by contrast, brings the functions of 'goal-rational' legitimation for the
position and character of the 'administrative staff' and the organisation
of power to the centre of the stage. On the same level, Stoppino draws
attention to the function of legitimating beliefs in promoting cohesion
between the diverse individuals and groups constituting the power-
holders in a system by providing principles and rules of conflict-
resolution among them. 37 Nor should we overlook the obvious point
that whether or not a political system enjoys legitimacy at the mass level
may exercise a profound influence on the character and style of the
ruling group itself. For Ferrero this was the prime significance of
legitimating principles, which were 'capable of immunizing [power]
against the most terrible evil from which it can suffer -the fear of its
subjects'. 38 The relevance of this perspective for political legitimation in
communist systems scarcely needs stressing. No less relevant, however,
is the consideration that the very need which regimes experience for
legitimacy prompts them to evolve ex post facto justifications for their
power, in the form of beliefs which in Stoppino's terms are merely
'ideological', since they are not a basis but a consequence of this power,
and thus constitute a 'false legitimacy'. 39 As Ferrero puts it, 'a legitimate
government has no need of propaganda'. 40
And here, in conclusion, we broach a further dimension of our
subject, to which, alas, space does not permit me to devote the attention
its importance warrants: namely, the significance for the legitimacy of a
regime that its policies and actions be seen to conform with the basic
values and beliefs of the society concerned. The view that they should so
conform has been an important strain in European political thought and
practice ever since the Middle Ages, when it was held that a prince with a
legitimate title to rule might lose that legitimacy by governing
'tyranically'. 41 Historically the values concerned have usually been
discussed in terms of'divine law' or 'natural law', and even Weber took
the view that 'natural law is the sole form oflegitimation that remains to
us, once religious revelation and the sacred authority of tradition have
lost their force'. 42 Normative political theory has in consequence
produced, and continues to produce, a rich literature on the subject, and
some might see it therefore as beyond the more empirical concerns of
this volume.
But of course scholars in several branches of social science also have
their ways of studying beliefs and values, and while most would applaud
Raymond Polin's assertion that 'a norm of legitimacy is a fact of
civilization, incomprehensible independently of the civilization to which
it belongs', few would follow him in the view that 'a value oflegitimacy
implies a system of values and the philosophy of this system. It is itself a
certain philosophy'. 43 The beliefs and values identified by the political
anthropologist or political scientist are too rough-hewn to be dignified
by the term 'philosophy' and if they form a system then it is more an
ecological than a logical one. One approach to organising the inform-
ation that comes to us from various research disciplines about values
and beliefs relevant to the political system of a society (and we must
remember that beliefs have a cognitive as well as a normative aspect) is
through the concept of 'political culture', and substantial beginnings
have been made in applying this approach to communist systems. 44 This
literature makes rewarding reading for the student of political legitim-
ation in communist Europe. 45
Considered dynamically, the view that the legitimacy of a regime
depends importantly on its performance conforming or not conforming
to the beliefs and values of its subjects opens up several possibilities.
One, that a regime may begin to act in such a way as to violate these
beliefs and values and thereby lose legitimacy, we have already noted.
Then there are two ways in which an originally 'illegitimate' 46 regime
may acquire legitimacy, firstly by the regime itself increasingly conform-
ing its actions to established social beliefs and attitudes, and secondly by
new beliefs and attitudes supportive of the regime's legitimacy taking
root in the society. Both these processes have been observable in greater
or lesser degree in the countries of communist Europe, as is noted by
several contributors to this volume. But there is a further possibility:
that social values and expectations, accepted views of what is 'normal'
and proper, the 'social construction of reality', may themselves change -
and sometimes quite rapidly -in ways that 'delegitimate' a regime that
fails to adapt its own performance to these changes. 47 This was clearly
an important element in the recent 'legitimacy crisis' in Western
countries, and there is no reason to believe that communist countries are
exempt from it, despite the vast efforts of their regimes to monitor,
mould and remould the minds and hearts of their peoples. Here the
unintended consequences of education, urbanisation, and technological
change may not only generate 'undesirable' indigenous changes in social
beliefs and values but render society more open and receptive to beliefs
and values current in the non-communist world, primarily those of
'bourgeois' origin, and Eurocommunism may prove, in some countries
at least, a significant channel in this respect, as Robert F. Miller shows in
Chapter 8. So far, therefore, as the conformity between social values and
beliefs and regime performance is concerned, we may well see in future
years something of a race between legitimating and delegitimating
tendencies.
NOTES
l. The best brief introduction is Dolf Sternberger's entry 'Legitimacy' in

International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, 2nd edn, vol. 9 (New
York, 1968) pp. 244-8. See also the same author's 'Typologie de Ia
legitimite' (in English) Anna/es de Phi/osophie Politique, vol. VII (1967)
pp. 87 -96; C. J. Friedrich, 'Die Legitimitiit in politischer Perspektive',
Politische Vierteljahresschrift, I (1960) 119-32 and Robert A. Dahl,
Modern Political Analysis (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1964) pp. 19-20. Until
recently structural-functional and 'systems' approaches have dominated the
treatment of legitimacy in American 'mainstream' political science. The
seminal influence here was Talcott Parsons, through ideas developed in his
The Structure of Social Action (New York, 1937), Talcott Parsons, Edward
A. Shils (eds) eta/., Toward a General Theory of Action (Cambridge, Mass.,
1951) and later articles. The proposition that political systems are supported
by congruent norms and values inculcated in their citizens by early
'socialisation' was given prominence by such works as Gabriel Almond and
Sidney Verba, The Civic Culture: Political Attitudes and Democracy in Five
Nations (Princeton, 1963) and Gabriel Almond and Bingham Powell,
Comparative Politics: A Developmental Approach (Boston, 1966). An
important correlate was the concept of 'political culture' developed by
Almond, Verba, Lucian Pye, Harry Eckstein and others. The assumptions
and methods displayed in this stream of writing have not gone
unchallenged; see, e.g., Brian M. Barry, Sociologists, Economists and
Democracy (London, 1970) ch. m. The view of legitimacy as a 'support' of
the political system acquired greater explicitness and elaboration in the
work of David Easton, especially in his A Framework for Political Analysis
(Englewood Cliffs, N. J., 1965) and A Systems Analysis of Political Life

(New York, 1965).
2. For the Romans legitimum imperium and /egitima potestas seem to have
meant no more than legally-constituted powers. In the Christian Middle
Ages concepts of legitimacy evolved that combined notions of the
conformity of both title to and exercise of power to law and tradition and the
consent of the governed. Later the development of natural rights and social
contract theories raised the question to a new level, but it took the French
revolutionary era with its challenge to the legitimacy of traditional rulers
and regimes to render it a major practical concern of political theory. In his
Die Legitimation einer usupierten Staatsgewalt (Heidelberg, 1863) ch. l,
Siegfried Brie identified four major theories of legitimacy, namely the
'legitimist theory', the 'theory of the inalienable sovereignty of the people',
the 'possession theory' and the 'theory of the passage of time'. On the
continent, however, the influence of Rechtsstaat concepts and 'positivist'
theories of law encouraged a widespread identification of legitimacy with
legality. The issue acquired its somewhat embarrassing locus classicus in
Carl Schmitt's Lega/itiit und Legitimitiit (Munich, 1932) and continues to
command attention, e.g. it is discussed by several contributors to L 'idee de
Legitimite (vol. 7 of Annates de Philosophie Politique, Paris, 1967) and
to the special issue (Sonderheft 7) on legitimacy of the Politische
Vierte/jahresschrift, vol. 17 (1976). There appears to be no book-length
study ofthe history of ideas of political legitimacy in English, but readers of
German are referred to Thomas Wiirtenberger's valuable Die Legitimitiit
staatlicter Herrschaft. Eine staatsrechtlich-politische Begriffsgechichte
(Berlin, 1973).
3. Wilhelm Hennis, 'Legitimitiit -zu einer Kategorie der biirgerlicher
Gesellschaft', Politische Vierteljahresschrift, 17 (1976) 13.
4. Here one can merely recommend some samples of the relevant literature in
various disciplines: P. H. Partridge, Consent and Consensus (London, 1971);
Bertrand de J ouvenal, Sovereignty. An Enquiry into the Public Will, trans. by
J. F. Huntington (Cambridge, 1977) esp. ch. 12; Carl J. Friedrich (ed.),
Authority (Cambridge, Mass., 1958); Leonard Krieger, 'The Idea of
Authority in the West', American Historical Review, 82(1977)249-70; Carl
J. Friedrich, Tradition and Authority (London, 1972); Clarke E. Cochran,
'Authority and Community: The Contributions of Carl Friedrich, Yves R.
Simon, and Michael Polanyi', American Political Science Review, LXXI
(1977)546-58; J. Roland Pennock and John W. Chapman (eds), Political
and Legal Obligation (New York, 1970); Carole Pateman, The Problem of
Political Obligation. A Critical Analysis of Liberal Theory (Chichester,
1979); H. L.A. Hart, The ConceptofLaw(Oxford, l96I)esp. ch. VIII; Henry
Orenstein, 'Asymmetrical Reciprocity: A Contribution to the Theory of
Political Legitimacy', Current Anthropology, 21 (1980)69-91; Amitai
Etzioni, A Comparative Analysis of Complex Organizations. On Power,
Involvement, and Their Correlates (New York, 1961); Peter L. Berger and
Thomas Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality. A Treatise in the
Sociology of Knowledge (Harmondsworth, 1967).
5. See Henry Tudor, Political Myth (London, 1972) chs 4 and 5. For a case-
study raising important theoretical issues, see Anthony P. Cohen, The
Management of Myths. The Politics of Legitimation in a Newfoundland

Community (Manchester, 1975).
6. Cf. Mosca's discussion of 'political formulas', but note that for him these
serve to legitimate the power of a social group, which he terms the 'political
class'. See, e.g. Gaetano Mosca, The Ruling Class. Elementi di Scienza
Politica, edited and revised by Arthur Livingston, translated by Hannah D.
Kahn (New York, 1939) pp. 70-1.
7. See Friedrich, 'Die Legitimitiit in politischer Perspektive', pp. 124-6. Cf.
Martin E. Spencer, 'Weber on legitimate norms and authority', British
Journal of Sociology, 22(1970) 123-34, Martin Albrow, 'Weber on
legitimate norms and authority: a comment on Martin E. Spencer's
account', ibid., 23, 483-7, and John Scott, 'Power and Authority: a
comment on Spencer and Martin', ibid., 24(1973) 102-7.
8. Max Weber, The Theory of Social and Economic Organisation, translated by
A. M. Henderson and Talcott Parsons, edited with an Introduction by
Talcott Parsons (New York, 1947) pp. 124-5 (referred to hereinafter as
Weber, Theory). This is a translation of part 1 of Weber's Wirtschaft und
Gesellschaft, which originally appeared posthumously as volume m of the
collaborative work Grundriss der Sozialokonomik (2nd edn, Tiibingen,
1925). An alternative translation of sections of Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft is
available in From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, translated, edited and
with an Introduction by H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills (London, 1947)
part n. The most complete translation, however, is to be found in Max
Weber, Economy and Society. An outline of Interpretive Sociology, Guenther
Roth and Claus Wittich (eds) (Berkeley etc., 1968) 3 vols. There is a brief
presentation of Weber's typology oflegitimacy in his article 'Die drei reinen
Typen der legitimen Herrschaft', Preussische Jahrbiicher, vol. 187, pp. 1-12;
this is reprinted as an appendix in Johannes Winckelmann, Legitimitiit und
Legalitiit in Max Webers Herrschaftssoziologie (Tiibingen, 1952).
9. Weber, Theory, p. 326. Cf. Hart, pp. 198-9.
10. Ibid., pp. 326-7.
11. Ibid., p. 328. The 'rational legitimacy' proposed by Rogowski is a quite
distinct concept from Weber's ideal type of rational (legal) legitimacy; it
posits that the legitimacy (support) accorded a government depends on
rational choice exercised by its subjects. See Ronald Rogowski, Rational
Legitimacy. A Theory of Political Support (Princeton, 1974).
12. Weber, Theory, p. 328.
13. Ibid., pp. 333-4.
14. Ibid., p. 330.
15. Ibid., p. 342tT.
16. Ibid., pp. 359.
17. Ibid., pp. 363-73; Weber, 'Die drei reinen Typen der Legitimen Herrschaft',
Winckelmann, pp. 117- 19.
18. The following paragraphs owe much to Dolf Sternberger, 'Max Webers
Lehre von der Legitimitiit: eine kritische Betrachtung', in W. Rohricht (ed.),
Macht und Ohnmacht des Politischen. Festschrift fiir Michael Freund
(Cologne, 1967) and to Otto Brunner, 'Bemerkungen zu den Begriffen
"Herrschaft" und "Legitimitiit'", in Festschrift fiir Hans Sedlmayr
(Munich, 1962). They have greatly benefitted, moreover, from the valuable
criticism of Professor B. D. Beddie, who, however, would not necessarily

endorse all the propositions and formulations they contain.
19. See Sternberger, p. 123. As noted, some writers translate Herrschaft as
'authority'. The difficulty here is that authority is often understood as
'legitimate power' or 'legitimate rule', whereas Herrschaft as used by Weber
needs the adjective added to make it legitimate. Accordingly Henderson and
Parsons appropriately render legitime Herrschaft as 'authority', but for
Herrschaft unqualified they use the awkward and misleading term
(borrowed from N. S. Timasheff) 'imperative control', on which see
Sternberger, p. 123. Other writers, notably Gerth and Mills and Reinhard
Bendix (Max Weber. An Intellectual Portrait, New York, 1962) prefer
'domination'. This is less problematic, but carries psychological overtones
lacking in Herrschaft. Carl Friedrich has also argued for 'rule'; see
his 'Political Leadership and charismatic power', Journal of Politics, 23
(1961)9.
20. T. H. Rigby, 'Max Weber's Typology of Authority: A Difficulty and Some
Suggestions', The Australian and New Zealand Journal ofSociology, 2 (1966)
2-15.
21. Cf. 0. Brunner, pp. 128-9, Sternberger, pp. 122-3.
22. Quoted Sternberger, p. 125.
23. See Wolfgang Mommsen, The Age of Bureaucracy. Perspectives on the
Political Sociology of Max Weber (Oxford, 1974) chs IV and v. The same
author's Max Weber und die deutsche Politik 1890-1920 is an outstanding
study of the evolution of Weber's thinking in relation to political
developments in his country.
24. T. H. Rigby, 'A Conceptual Approach to Authority, Power and Policy in
the Soviet Union', ch. 2 in T. H. Rigby, Archie Brown and Peter Reddaway
(eds), Authority, Power and Policy in the USSR (London, 1980).
25. Wilson C. McWilliams, 'On Political Illegitimacy', Public Policy, (Summer
1971)429.
26. Some recent writings on political legitimacy were directly provoked by the
political turbulence beginning in the late 1960s and in the United States
specifically in reaction to the Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal,
others were more indirect responses to the atmosphere engendered by these
developments, and others again represent the continuation of pre-existing
lines of political research and thought and many would probably have
appeared even without the 'legitimacy crisis'. Noteworthy examples of the
first category are John H. Schaar, 'Legitimacy in the Modern State', in
Philip Green and Sanford Levinson (eds), Power and Community: Dissent-
ing Essays in Political Science (New York, 1970) pp. 276-327: Wilson
McWilliams, op. cit.; and Arthur J. Vidich, 'Political Legitimacy in
Bureaucratic Society: An Analysis of Watergate', Social Research, 42 ( 1975)
778-811. Of particular importance is Jiirgen Habermas, Legitimiitimsprob-
leme in Spiitkapitalismus (Suhrkamp, 1973; English translation, entitled
Legitimation Crisis, London, 1976). This complex and many-layered essay
in 'critical theory', with its distinctive blend of empirically-oriented and
normatively-based argument, cannot be summed up in a few words; for
exposition and critical evaluation, see inter alia L. J. Ray, 'Habermas,
Legitimation and the State', Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, 8
(1978)149-63; see also Richard Lowenthal, 'Gesellschaftliche Umwan-

dlung und demokratische Legitimitat. Zu Jiirgen Habermas' Analyse der
Krisentendenzen im "Spatkapitalismus" ',Neue Rundschau, 86 (1975)549-
73, Werner Becker, 'Die missverstandene Demokratie. Ueber die Ideologie
der Legitimitatkrise', ibid., no. 5, 357-75, and the papers presented at the
1975 conference of the German Political Science Association, including a
summary by Habermas of his own position, in Politische
Vierteljahresschrift, Sonderheft 7, 1976. An alternative approach to the
character of political legitimation in contemporary Western society, though
one of which Habermas himself makes critical use, is presented by Niklas
Luhmann in his Legitimation durch Verfahren (Neuwied, 1969, 2nd edn
1975). This important work, unfortunately not available in English, essays a
systems-theoretical and social-psychological underpinning to the pro-
position that the operational procedures of the political and legal order
themselves generate the legitimation of this order. An earlier discussion of
political legitimation from a systems-theory standpoint was offered by
David Easton, in his A Systems Analysis of Political Life, esp. chs 18 and 19.
In this context, see also Karl W. Deutsch, The Nerves of Government.
Models of Political Communication and Control (New York, 1963, 2nd edn
1966) especially ch. 9; Richard M. Merelman, 'Learning and Legitimacy',
American Political Science Review, 60(1966)548-61; Claus Mueller, The
Politics of Communication. A Study in the Political Sociology of Language,
Socialization, and Legitimation (New York, 1973); and Edward N. Muller,
'Correlates and Consequences of Beliefs in the Legitimacy of Regime
Structures', Midwest Journal of Political Science, 14(1970)392-412. Other
authors following Muller in using survey data to test hypotheses about
political legitimacy are J. Fraser, 'Validating a Measure of National
Political Legitimacy', American Journal of Political Science, 18 (1974) 117-
34, and Bert Useem and Michael Useem, 'Government Legitimacy and
Political Stability', Social Forces, 57(1979)840-52. The 'comparative
government'- 'political development' strand of 'mainstream' American
political science has also produced relevant discussions of legitimacy,
notably Lucian W. Pye, 'The Legitimacy Crisis', ch. 4 in Leonard Binder et
al., Crises and Sequences in Political Development (Princeton, 1971) pp.
135-58, and Paul R. Dettman, 'Leaders and Structures in "Third World"
Politics. Contrasting Approaches to Legitimacy', Comparative Politics, 6
( 1973)245-69; see also Gwyn Harries-Jenkins and Jacques van Doorn, The
Military and the Problem of Legitimacy (Beverley Hills, 1976). Weber's
analysis and particularly his 'ideal types' are discussed with greater or lesser
penetration by many of these authors; of special interest in this regard is an
exchange in the pages of the British Journal of Sociology: Martin E. Spencer,
'Weber on legitimate norms and authority', British Journal of Sociology, 21
(1970) 123-34, Martin Albrow, 'Weber on legitimate norms and authority:
a comment on Martin E. Spencer's account', ibid., 23 (1972)483-7, and
John Scott, 'Power and authority: a comment on Spencer and Martin', ibid.,
24 ( 1973) l 01-6. An important new work, pertinent to many of the matters
discussed here, but unfortunately unavailable before this book went to
press, is J. G. Merquior, Rousseau and Weber: Two Studies in the Theory of
Legitimacy (London, 1980). Useful and stimulating reviews of the 'state of
the problem' are Peter Graf Kielmansegg, 'Legitimitiit als analytische

Kategorie', Politische Vierteljahresschrift 12 (1971)367--401, Peter G.
Stillman, 'The Concept of Legitimacy', Polity, 7 (1974)32-56, and Gunther
Maluschke, 'Zur Legitimitat politischer Institutionen und politischen
Handelns', Zeitschrift fiir Politik, 23 (1976)366-76; see also Uriel
Rosenthal, Political Order. Rewards, Punishments and Political Stability
(Alphen, 1978) ch. 7. These sources discuss many of the publications cited
above as well as other relevant literature which there has been insufficient
space to mention. Richard Lowenthal offers a valuable consideration of
legitimation in communist countries in his 'The Ruling Party in a Mature
Society', ch. 4 in Mark G. Field (ed.), Social Consequences of Modernization
in Communist Societies (Baltimore and London, 1976) esp. pp. 100-8. Two
collections of special interest, in containing essays on both 'capitalist' and
communist states are Peter Graf Kielmansegg and Ulrich Matz (eds) Die
Rechtfertigung politischer Herrschaft (Freiburg-Munchen, 1978) and
Bogdan Denitch (ed.), Legitimation of Regimes. International Frameworks
of Analysis (Beverly Hills, 1979), esp. ch. 3 by Joseph Rothschild, 'Political
Legitimacy in Contemporary Europe'; ch. 9 by Peter C. Ludz, 'Legitimacy
in a Divided Nation: The Case of the German Democratic Republic', and
ch. 10 by David Lane, 'Soviet Industrial Workers: The Lack of a
Legitimation Crisis?'. The only book-length study on a communist country
appears to be Bogdan Denis Denitch, The Legitimation ofa Revolution. The
Yugoslav Case (New Haven and London, 1976), though this study does not
deal extensively with theoretical issues. Alfred G. Meyer's 'Political Change
through Civil Disobedience in the USSR and Eastern Europe', ch. 17 in
Pennock and Chapman, op. cit., is largely about legitimacy, though the term
is hardly used. Jerome M. Gilison's British and Soviet Politics. Legitimacy
and Convergence (London, 1972) presents an alternative approach to those
represented in this book. Finally, for a thoughtful discussion of one
important aspect, see Thomas A. Baylis, The Technical Intelligentsia and the
East German Elite. Legitimacy and Social Change in Mature Communism
(London, 1974).
27. Kielmansegg and Matz, p. 19.
28. One can indeed discern the seeds of such a distinction in Weber, and at one
point he wrote specifically that 'it is perfectly true that "matter offactness"
and "expertness" [characteristic of bureaucracies] are not necessarily
identical with the rule of general and abstract norms'. See Weber, Economy
and Society ... Roth and Wittich (eds), vol. 3, p. 978. However he does not
appear to have developed this perception in a systematic way and the rule-
applying aspect is salient in his most influential discussions of bureaucracy.
29. If, as is often argued, there are grounds for refusing to comply with such
laws, these grounds must invoke principles oflegitimacy other than rational-
legal principles.
30. Weber, Theory, p. 327. Cf. Hume: 'The sultan of Egypt or the Emperor of
Rome might drive his harmless subjects like brute beasts against their
sentiments and inclination. But he must, at least, have led his mamelukes or
praetorian bands, like men, by their opinion'. (Charles W. Hendel (ed.),
David Hume's Political Essays (New York, 1953) p. 24.)
31. Weber, Theory, p. 125.
32. Rigby, 'A Conceptual Approach to Authority, Power and Policy in the
Soviet Union', in Rigby, Brown and Reddaway, op. cit.
33. See discussion in Rosenthal, op. cit., ch. 7. While writers such as Easton and
Almond evidently did not intend 'support' to be understood simply in a
commonsense way, the distinction is not always easy to maintain, e.g. in
research based on questionnaire surveys, and is in practice often ignored. It
is revealing that even such a writer as Rogowski, who rejects 'mainstream'
understandings of political legitimacy, nevertheless identifies it with
support. Cf. also Ted Robert Gurr, Why Men Rebel (Princeton, 1970) pp.
183-92. For a useful analysis of the distinction between legitimacy and
support, see Renate Mayntz, 'Legitimacy and the Directive Capacity of the
Political System', ch. lOin Leon N. Lindberg eta/., Stress and Contradiction
in Modern Capitalism: Public Policy and the Theory of the State (Lexington,
1975).
34. Feher's concept of paternalism has a good deal in common with George W.
Breslauer's 'image' of 'welfare-state authoritarianism', as presented in his
Images of the Soviet Future: A Critical Review and Synthesis (Berkeley,
1978). Alfred G. Meyer also discusses the 'paternalism' of communist
systems, although he gives the concept a slightly different content; see
Pennock and Chapman, op. cit., p. 422fT.
35. Weber writes: 'An order which is adhered to from motives of pure
expediency is generally much less stable than one upheld on a purely
customary basis through the fact that the corresponding behaviour has
become habitual. The latter is much the most common type of subjective
attitude. But even this type of order is in turn much less stable than an order
which enjoys the prestige of being considered binding, or, as it may be
expressed, of "legitimacy"'. (Theory, p. 125. My emphasis.)
36. The term is taken from Ferrero, whose extensive discussion of 'pre-
legitimacy' has considerable relevance to our topic. He quotes with
approval Talleyrand's view that 'A legitimate government, be it monar-
chical or republican, hereditary or elective, aristocratic or democratic, is
always the one whose existence, form, and mode of action have been
strengthened and sanctioned over a long period of years, I might even say
over a period of centuries.' For this reason, he argues, legitimacy 'is
preceded by a preparatory condition, which may be called prelegitimacy.
Prelegitimacy is legitimacy still in its cradle. Every government began by
being a government that had not yet won, but was attempting to win,
universal acceptance and had a good chance of succeeding; it became
legitimate the day it succeeded in conciliating the opposition aroused by its
advent'. (Guglielmo Ferrero, The Principles of Power. The Great Crises of
History, translated by Theodore R. Jaeckel (New York, 1942) pp. 138-9).
The view that a 'usurped power' can acquire legitimacy with the passage of
time has a long pedigree that goes back to the political theory of the middle
ages (see Wiirtenberger, ch. 1), and it retained some currency in the
generation in which Ferrero grew up. 'L' autorite du temps porte avec elle le
prejuge de Ia legitimiti:', wrote Sismondi. This 'Verjiihrungstheorie' is
critically discussed by Siegfried Brie in his Die Legitimation einer usupierten
Staatsgewalt, pp. 33-45.
37. See Mario Stoppino, 'Appunti sui concetto di autorita, Politico, 34
(1969)438. Frederick C. Teiwes has illustrated this function in his paper,

'The Legitimacy of the Leader in China: Mao, Hua and the Shifting Bases of
Authority', California Regional Seminar on China, Berkeley, March 1980.
38. Ferrero, p. 135.
39. Stoppino, pp. 44-6.
40. Ferrero, p. 200.
41. E.g. by John of Salisbury and Thomas Aquinas. See Walter Ullmann, A
History of Political Thought: The Middle Ages (Harmondsworth, 1965) p.
123, Oscar Jaszi and John D. Lewis, Against the Tyrant. The Tradition and
Theory of Tyrannicide (Glencoe, 1957) ch. 11, Wiirtenberger, ch. l.
42. Max Rheinstein (ed.), Max Weber on Law in Economy and Society,
translated by Max Rheinstein and Edward Shils (Cambridge, Mass., 1954)
p. 288. Cf. Reinhard Bendix, Max Weber. An Intellectual Portrait (New
York, 1962) p. 420.
43. Raymond Polin, 'Analyse philosophique de 1'idee de legitimite', Annales de
Philosophie Politique, VII ( 1967) 26.
44. See Archie Brown and Jack Gray (eds), Political Culture and Political
Change in Communist States (London, 1977); Stephen White, Political
Culture and Soviet Politics (London, 1979); Robert C. Tucker, 'Culture
Political Culture and Communist Society', Political Science Quarterly, 88
(1973)173-90; Archie Brown, Soviet Politics and Political Science (London,
1974) ch. 4; Lucien W. Pye, The Spirit of Chinese Politics: A Psychocultural
Study of the Authority Crisis in Political Development (Cambridge, Mass.,
1968); Richard H. Solomon, Mao's Revolution and the Chinese Political
Culture (Berkeley, 1971 ); Richard R. Fagen, The Transformation ofPolitical
Culture in Cuba (Stanford, 1969).
45. See especially Brown and Gray, pp. 23, 42-5, 49, 56, 72, 138, 154 and White,
pp. 189-90.
46. Irving Horowitz has argued that 'illegitimacy' may be the 'norm' in certain
countries; see I. L. Horowitz, J. de Castro and J. Gerassi, eds, Latin
American Radicalism: A Documentary Report on Left and Nationalist
Movements (New York and London, 1969) pp. 3-29 and Irving Louis
Horowitz, 'The Norm of Illegitimacy', in Denitch, Legitimation of Regimes,
ch. 2. Some would argue that this is indeed the case with communist
countries, and Peter Ludz has gone further and suggested that 'legitimacy is
not a primary goal of ruling Communist parties' (ibid., p. 173) arguing this
from the case of the East German regime. It is not difficult to see grounds for
considering the one-dimensional legitimacy-illegitimacy dichotomy (or
continuum) as empirically simplistic and analytically insufficiently
discriminating. Rose, distinguishing between independently varying
'support' and 'compliance' as bases of a regime's 'authority' has devised a
nine-cell matrix ranging from 'fully legitimate' to 'repudiated' regimes,
which may change in any one of four directions: towards legitimation,
isolation, coercion or repudiation. See Richard Rose, 'Dynamic Tendencies
in the Authority of Regimes', World Politics, xxi(l969) 604-28. This
schema and a number of particular propositions in Rose's article may be
found suggestive, although the few references it makes to communist states
are of limited interest and his approach leads to some odd moves, such
as including regimes destroyed by foreign invasion in the category
of'repudiated' regimes. cr. also Lipset's discussion of the interplay between

'effectiveness' and 'legitimacy' in determining the 'stability' of a regime; see
Seymour Martin Lipset, Political Man. The Social Bases of Politics (New
York, 1960) pp. 77-83.
47. 'Delegitimation' is a rather neglected term that would often be more
accurate than the overworked 'legitimacy crisis'; Branko Horvat has
recently used it, though not in relation to political systems; see his 'The
Delegitimation of Old and the Legitimation of New Social Relations in Late
Capitalist Societies', ch. 5 in Denitch, Legitimation of Regimes.
2 Legitimacy Doctrines and
Legitimation Procedures
in East European Systems
Georg Brunner
I INTRODUCTION
The term 'legitimacy doctrines' denotes doctrines prescribing the

grounds for the validity of political domination. 1 Communist systems of
rule have at their disposal an Official 'system-ideology', the Soviet
variant of Marxism-Leninism, and this system-ideology includes an
obligatory legitimacy doctrine. The latter specifies the grounds for the
postulated legitimacy of communist rule. Whether this normative
legitimacy is accompanied by a corresponding real legitimacy, in the
sense that the population considers communist rule to be legitimate on
the officially specified grounds, must remain an open question for the
present. One could answer it with assurance only on the basis of
thorough empirical investigations, which are prevented by obvious
serious difficulties. The problem of real legitimacy cannot be dealt with
within the framework of the present essay.
The political system of communist countries comprises three sub-
systems, in which political authority is exercised by different power-
holders, namely party, state and social organisations. The grounds for
validity specified by the official legitimacy doctrine for authority in the
three political subsystems display certain differences and must therefore
be dealt with separately. The political subsystem of social organisations
will not be considered in detail here, since it plays a relatively
subordinate role in the matter we are concerned with and the justifi-
cation of the authority of social organisations deviates in only minor
respects from that of state authority.
By 'legitimation procedures' we understand here the methods used to
27
convert the normatively postulated legitimacy into real legitimacy. It is

therefore aimed at generating in the population a state of consciousness
in the light of which communist rule appears legitimate. Legitimation
procedures also pursue the objective of giving the impression abroad
that communist rule is legitimate.
We shall confine our attention in this essay to the Soviet Union and
the Eastern European countries lying within the sphere of Soviet
hegemony (Poland, the GDR, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania and
Bulgaria). We will touch on Albania only marginally, owing to the
meagre sources available. Vis-a-vis these other countries, Yugoslavia
displays some pertinent peculiarities, which would call for separate
treatment, and we cannot undertake this here. Likewise we must leave
out of consideration the communist systems in East Asia and Cuba.
2 THE LEGITIMACY DOCTRINE
2.1 Authority of the party
The legitimation of party authority is at present the subject of two

disciplines within Soviet ideology (i.e. the Soviet variant of Marxism-
Leninism), namely 'historical materialism' and 'scientific communism',
the latter having been elevated to the status of an independent
ideological discipline only at the beginning of the 1960s. Historical
materialism (histomat) postulates the general social-philosophical basis
of validation of party authority. The doctrine of the party created by
Lenin, and today dealt with mostly within the framework of scientific
communism, represents the actual legitimation doctrine.
The general social-philosophical context of legitimacy is presented by
historical materialism as follows. The starting point is the general
proposition that objective laws of social development exist and can be
recognised. While these laws are supposed necessarily to prevail anyway
precisely because of their objective character, their realisation by
deliberate human action in the name of progress is held to be a moral
obligation. The doctrine of social formations holds that there is an
objective law of development, as a consequence of which human history
is effected in a historical sequence of social formations (primitive
society, slave society, feudalism, capitalism, socialism-communism).
On the historical agenda of the present phase of development there
stands the transition from capitalism to socialism-communism. The
integration of the various communist countries into this developmental
Legitimacy Doctrines and Legitimation Procedures 29
schema presents a persistent ideological problem. The periodisation of

their own history is marked by obscurities and retrospective
reinterpretations. At the present time all the countries consider themsel-
ves to be in the phase of the 'developed socialist society', with the Soviet
Union being further advanced on the way to communism than the other
East European countries. This objective is presented not only as the
realisation of an historical law and therefore as something historically
necessary, but also as something morally good. In any case the historical
task of the communist countries is supposed to be the transition from
socialism to communism. Historical materialism sees the driving force
of social development in the contradiction between productive forces
and production relations and in the class contradictions based on the
latter. According to the doctrine on class capitalism is characterised by
the antagonistic class contradiction between the capitalists and the
working class, arising from the private ownership by the capitalists of
the means of production and the economic dependence of the workers.
Under socialism only non-antagonistic contradictions between mutu-
ally friendly classes are supposed to exist, the basic classes being the
working class and the collective-farm peasantry, to which are added the
stratum of the intelligentsia and on occasion other working strata. In
this developmental phase the chief driving force of development is no
longer class struggle, but class alliance. Then under communism there
will be a classless society. In the transition phase from capitalism to
socialism-communism the working class is supposed to be the bearer
of progress. The historical mission of the working class consists of the
carrying out of the socialist revolution, the setting-up of a dictatorship
of the proletariat and exercising leadership during the construction-
phase of socialism-communism.
While the deductive schema sketched out here certainly facilitates a
legitimation of the rule of the working class with the help of the
socialist-communist vision of the future, it leaves open the question of
the monopoly of knowledge: who perceives the current requirements of
social development and why? This gap is filled by the doctrine of the
party, which confers on the communist party a monopoly of knowledge.
It holds that the party is the incarnation of progressive social
consciousness. The proclaimed class basis of this elite party has gone
through a number of changes over the years from Lenin through Stalin
and Khrushchev to the present day (the intelligentsia- the working
class- the toilers - the whole people). According to the present interpre-
tation the communist party is formed out of the elite of the people, but
of the working class in particular. This is how it is put in the preamble to the
present CPSU Party Rules (approved 1961): 'The Communist Party of

the Soviet Union is the battle-tried vanguard of the Soviet people, which
unites on a voluntary basis the most progressive, conscious part of the
working class, the collective farm peasantry and the intelligentsia of the
USSR ... The Communist Party, the party of the working class, is
today the party of the whole Soviet people'. What is decisive is in any
case the more advanced consciousness which the party enjoys vis-a-vis
the mass of the population.
This more advanced consciousness and the monopoly of knowledge
connected with it apply in the first instance to the party as a whole. The
matter is presented in such a way, however, as to provide for the
possibility of further gradations of consciousness within the party. This
means that the consciousness levels 'people-working class-party' may
be supplemented as required by further levels such as 'party leadership-
party boss'. For it follows logically that those party members with the
most highly developed social consciousness should be chosen for the
party's top bodies and that the member whose social consciousness
surpasses those of all others should be appointed as party chief. How far
this differentiation within the party is actually pushed depends on
concrete power relationships. In periods of one-man dictatorship this
ideological reserve is fully exploited. This was the case in all communist
countries during the Stalin era. Thus Stalin arrogated to himself the title
of 'leader' [vozhd'] and had himself celebrated as a 'great and wise
teacher of genius', 'coryphaeus of science', 'leader of progressive
humanity', etc. At present such tendencies are most strongly marked in
Romania, where Ceaw~escu bears the unofficial title conducator (leader),
the same title used by the wartime pro-fascist leader Antonescu. In
periods of oligarchical dictatorship (or 'collective leadership' as it is
called) the chain of successive concentrations of social consciousness is
usually broken at the party leadership level and the fixing on a leading
personality left open. A classical example of this kind of substantiation
of legitimacy claims is offered in a textbook issued by the East German
Higher Party School in 1970:
The party has the advantage over the masses of working people of its
insight into the course of social development in accordance with
scientific laws. It is the direct bearer of Marxist- Leninist theory.lt not
only has at its disposal knowledge of the laws of development of
socialist society, but also possesses the best preconditions for pushing
forward this development under the circumstances prevailing at any
particular time. The Marxist- Leninist party of the working class and
the leader personalities [sic- Fuhrerperson/ichkeiten!] that have

emerged from its midst are distinguished by the fact that they give
expression to the interests of the working class and all working people
in the clearest, most consistent and most singleminded position. They
are therefore in the position to mobili~e the people for the building of
socialism and to guide the social process as a whole. 2
This final sentence represents a further step in fabrication of the

structure of legitimacy, deriving as it does a monopoly of leadership
from the monopoly of knowledge: the leading role of the party is a
consequence of its heightened perception capacity. The linking of the
knowledge and leadership monopolies is advanced without any ad-
ditional argumentation, since it is apparently viewed as self-evident.
There is assumed to be here a rational conclusion which any rational
person would draw, namely that those who are in possession of
historical truth and know the 'way to the bright future of mankind'
should also lead mankind thither!
The ground on which the party's rule is validated is its infallible insight
into the course and goal of history. Dolf Sternberger has assigned this
ground of validity to the category of 'numinous' (in contrast to
'bourgeois') legitimacy doctrines, arguing that inspiration by a higher
will of history functions as the source of legitimacy. 3 Indeed a
relationship with theological or even theocratic legitimacy doctrines can
scarcely be ignored. The source oflegitimacy is prescribed for mankind a
priori, while the technique of attainment of knowledge is characteristi-
cally one of the exegesis of holy (since revelatory of the absolute truth)
scriptures. The holy scriptures of the Soviet ideology are the works of
Marx, Engels and Lenin; since the twentieth party congress Stalin has
been crossed off the list of 'classics'. The party is the authoritative
interpreter of these holy scriptures, and party documents along with the
authoritative pronouncements of party leaders enjoy the status of
revelation through inspiration. Nevertheless one must agree with Peter
Graf Kielmansegg that the category of numinous legitimacy is made to
bear too much weight in this typological scheme. 4 While recognizing a
genuine distinction here he proposes a different view of where its essence
really lies: 'On the one hand orders of authority and positions of
authority, which are valid as "givens" independent of any human decision,
and on the other orders of authority which presuppose men as their
creators'. 5 If one requires labels- as scholars usually do- for this
distinction, then I would propose to distinguish in principle between
heteronomous and autonomous legitimacy doctrines. The relevant
teachings of Soviet ideology would thus be characterised as a heteronom-

ous legitimacy doctrine. The real difference as compared with theological
systems does not rest so much on the circumstance that it fails to
advance a 'divine' principle as its source of validity, but instead sets up
'profane' material social relations as the motor of history. For Soviet
ideology indignantly rejects any empirical test of its theses, and the
material laws of history 'unveiled' as they are by procedures charac-
teristic of the traditional methods of the humanities, come out as
principles no less transcendental than if they were the will of God. More
decisive here is the dynamic tension of the legitimacy doctrine imparted
to it by the eschatological goal of the classless communist society.
Paradise must be fetched down from heaven to earth and attained by
blood, sweat and tears. Thus in justification of the leading role of the
party it is always emphatically stressed (as in the passage quoted above)
that the party has knowledge of the concrete ways and methods necessary
to carry the historical development process through to the Communist
vision of the future. On the basis of these differentia speci.fica the
communist justification of party authority may be qualified as a
heteronomous-teleological legitimacy doctrine.
2.2 State authority
The legitimation of state authority follows two lines. On the one hand
state authority is derived heteronomously from party authority, the
thesis of the leading role of the party being complemented by that of the
instrumental character of the state: the state is said to be the chief
instrument of the party's hands, with the help of which it organises the
process of social development. This line of justification has remained
uncontested since the beginning of the 1930s, and in practice an effective
mechanism of 'transmission belts' was developed for conveying the
party's will to the state apparatus, 6 but only since the 1960s has it been
reflected in positive law. 7 In the Stalin Constitution of 1936 the
fundamental proposition about the leading role of the party vis-a-vis the
state was still touched on only in a most inconspicuous place, namely in
the course of Article 126 which regulated the freedom of association. By
contrast this relationship of subordination is clearly expressed in the
new constitutions of communist states right in their introductory articles
(Czechoslovak Constitution Art. 4; Romanian Art. 3 and 26 section 2;
GDR Art. 1 section 1; Bulgarian Art. 1 sections 2 and 3; Albanian Art. 3
section 1); and in Art. 6 section 1 of the new Soviet Constitution of 1977
it now states: The leading and directing force of Soviet society, the
nucleus of its political system as well as of state and social organizations

is the Communist Party of the Soviet Union'. The only exceptions are
the Hungarian and Polish constitutions to the extent that (respectively in
Arts. 3 and 3 section I) they designate the party as the 'leading force of
society', but make no mention of the state.
On the other hand state authority is democratically legitimated
through proclamation of the principle of popular sovereignty. Since it is
asserted that all state power emanates from the people and is exercised
by the people through representative bodies, we see that heteronomous-
teleological legitimation is supplemented by autonomous---<:onsensual
legitimation: state authority is legitimate because it rests on the consent
and the consensus of the people. In the various constitutions the
sovereignty of the people is formulated in different terms. One question
of particular interest here is who is specified as subject of this popular
sovereignty. With the exception of the Bulgarian and Soviet consti-
tutions which refer to 'the people' tout court, all constitutions designate
'the working people' as the bearer of sovereignty (Polish Art. I section 2
and Art. 2 section I; GDR Art. 2 section I and Art. 47 section 2;
Hungarian Art. 2 section 2; Albanian Art. 5 section I; Czechoslovak
Art. 2 sections I and 2 and Constitution Act No. I43/I968 Art. 2 section
2; similarly Romanian Art. 2 and Art. 3 section I). We will come back
later to the theoretical significance of this qualifying adjective.
The heteronomous-teleological and autonomous-consensual legitim-
ation of state power are mutually incompatible theoretically. In practice
they are mutually incompatible whenever a gap opens between the will
of the party and the will of the people, so that the normative legitimacy
of party authority no longer corresponds with any real legitimacy. This
inevitably poses the question of the order of priority of the two mutually
competing legitimacy doctrines. The answer is unambiguously in favour
of the heteronomous-teleological legitimacy doctrine. This emerges
from three main considerations: (I) On general grounds of rationality the
heteronomous-teleological legitimacy doctrine takes precedence be-
cause it can claim to be based on a higher level of validity, namely the
party's insight into the course and goal of history, which is superior to
the general level of consciousness of the people. (2) The same answer is
yielded by ideology. It is true that recent years have seen a relaxation of
the Stalinist dogma of identity of interests which asserted that personal
and social interests invariably coincide and denied the possibility of
conflict as something simply unthinkable. Today this has become a
harmony of interests, which asserts only that interests coincide in
principle and admits the possibility of non-antagonistic contradictions
between social and personal interests in questions of minor importance

during the socialist phase of development. Any such possible conflict is
to be decided to the advantage of the social interests since the divergent
personal interests are primarily to be traced to backwardness in the
consciousness of those concerned. It follows logically from this-
though not even the present doctrine of harmony of interests openly
acknowledges it -that in a case where the empirical will of the people
diverged from the social interest as correctly mirrored in the will of the
party it is the former that must give way. (3) The ultimate disregard of
the autonomous-consensual legitimacy doctrine (finally) emerges from
the interpretation of popular sovereignty in constitutional law. The
designation of 'the working people' as the bearer of popular sovereignty
carries the implication that it is not the mass of people conceived as
undifferentiated equals but rather the people as structured in class terms
that is sovereign. The qualitative concept of the people offers the
possibility of ascribing to particular class components different levels of
consciousness and therewith graduated power of legitimation. Because
the working class possesses relatively the most highly developed social
consciousness it is entitled to a privileged position in the whole structure
oflegitimation. With the help of this qualitative differentiation a bridge
is built between autonomous-consensual and heteronomous-teleolog-
ical legitimation: since even within the working class individual
differences in consciousness may be established and the best of the
working class as of all working people are united in the Communist
Party, the consent of the party to the state's authority must be attributed
greater significance than the consent of the people as a whole even within
the framework of popular sovereignty. This conception of the sov-
ereignty of the people takes general precedence in communist doctrine
of constitutional law, although the consequences are mostly not so
clearly spelt out, and this is the case even in Bulgaria where the
conventional quantitative [rather than qualitative] concept of the
people underlies the verbal version of popular sovereignty. 8
3 LEGITIMATION PROCEDURES
The procedures for converting normative into real legitimacy vary

according to whether they primarily serve the creation of hetero-
nomous-teleologically or autonomous-consensually based legitimacy.
As is to be expected from the priority given to the heteronomous-
teleological legitimacy doctrine which has been demonstrated above, it

is assigned substantially greater practical importance.
(a) The procedures used for producing heteronomous-teleological
legitimacy are summed up by the concept of'agitation and propaganda'.
They pursue the general aim of evoking a condition of consciousness in
the population which induces all people to acknowledge party authority
and through this state authority as legitimate and to comply with
particular authoritative acts willingly and of their own accord. Practical
agitprop work is carried out under the guidance of the appropriate
Central Committee departments. The organisational structure varies in
the different parties. In the GDR there exist separate departments of
Agitation and Propaganda; in Hungary there is just one Department of
Agitation and Propaganda; in the Soviet Union the responsible Central
Committee department bears the title 'Propaganda'; while the cor-
responding departments in the union republics are named 'Propaganda
and Agitation', indicating a decentralisation of agitation activity.
Alongside this central agitprop department there exist special depart-
ments for particular specialised fields (e.g. education, science, culture).
Looking in more detail, one may distinguish the following agitprop
legitimation procedures: Socialisation in the course of education and
training. In the teaching process relevant components of the ideology are
conveyed partly directly and partly indirectly. The indirect method
consists in the fact that all subjects are taught in the spirit of Soviet
ideology. Under the direct method special ideological disciplines are
included in the educational programme. In the general educational
schools the direct method is applied only to a minor extent, the subject
'social studies' or something similar being given in the higher classes.
Matters are different at the tertiary level where obligatory ideological
courses (dialectical and historical materialism, political economy,
scientific communism, party history, etc.) take up about 10 per cent of
the study timetable.
Mass Agitation is aimed predominantly at the adult population,
which is beyond the reach of institutions of training and education. It is
conducted mainly by the social organisations. Its most important forms
are oral agitation, lecture programmes, organised leisure activities,
adult education and visual agitation [posters, etc.].
The mass media (press, radio, television, cinema) propagate current
party policies under the direct guidance of relevant sectors of the party
machine. This guidance takes the form of prior approval of editorial or
programme plans, regular instruction conferences as well as straightout
directives.
Party education provides specialised ideological training. It primarily

embraces party members, but extends in some degree to non-members
as well.
(b) The procedures used for producing autonomous-consensual
legitimacy, which have their legal basis in the constitutional status
activus of the citizen, are subordinated to the superior goal of
heteronomous-teleological legitimation. This means that they constitute
primarily appropriate agitational-propaganda events, through which
the ideological reeducation of the citizens is sought and the appearance
of democratic participation in the power of the state is evoked. Only to a
microscopic extent do they afford the opportunity for material partici-
pation in decision-making, executive or controlling processes.
In particular the following legitimation procedures of this kind may
be distinguished: 9
Elections to popular representative bodies. With certain exceptions
such bodies exist at local, regional and national levels, and in accordance
with the principle of concentration of powers are supposed to be the
supreme organs of state power in their local area of jurisdiction and to be
elected by the population of the territorial unit concerned.
In most of the countries there is provision for plebiscitary manifes-
tations of the popular will. They appear in the following variants:
(1) Public discussions of important draft laws are specifically pro-

vided for in the constitutions of the GDR (Art. 65 section 3),
Bulgaria (Art. 93 no. 5) and the Soviet Union (Art. 5), but are also
practised in the other countries where this is considered
expedient.
(2) Consultative referendums, in which the non-binding determi-
nation of the popular will serves the purpose of consultation, are
possible under Art. 5 of the Soviet constitution, Art. 21 section 2
and Art. 53 of the GDRconstitution, Art. 30 section 1 no. d of the
Hungarian, Art. 67 of the Albanian, and Art. 2 section 2 and Art.
78 no. 3 of the Bulgarian constitution. While it is true that the
provisions just cited refer to 'referenda', this term is interpreted in
Hungary 1 0 and Bulgaria 11 exclusively in the sense of 'tests of
popular opinion'. In the GDR, by contrast, it is understood as a
general concept embracing the popular initiative, test of popular
opinion and referendum in the narrow sense of a binding decision
by popular vote. 12 The institution of the test of popular opinion
lacks any practical significance, the sole example being the
'Referendum' on the Bulgarian constitution of 1971.
(3) The referendum in the narrow sense can occur only in the GDR,
the one actual case being the adoption of the 1968 GDR
Constitution by referendum.
Reports to electors by member of the popular representative bodies

and occasionally also by other state officials. These reports are in fact
rarely held propaganda occasions. Similarly devoid of meaning is the
electors' right ofrecall of their representatives. While odd instances of its
exercise are reported as occurring at the local level, these involve
particularly gross cases of criminal behaviour or drunkenness, to the
point where the representative has simply become intolerable to the
party.
Activity in social organisations. The social organisations are engaged
primarily in agitation and propaganda activity. In effect it is only trade
unions that undertake certain public functions in the normal sense of the
term (work-safety and health precautions, social insurance). The
opportunities for ordinary members to contribute are limited, as all
important matters are dealt with by the full-time officials and the
organisational principle of democratic centralism reduces the margin of
action at the basis to a minimum.
Participation at the basis of the state's implementation process. The
opportunities here have been little extended since the Khrushchev era.
The actual forms of participation comprise honorary activity in the
commissions of local popular representative bodies, activity as a
'people's controller' under the enormous apparatus which under various
designations (Worker-Peasant Inspection, People's Control, etc.) exer-
cises comprehensive economic supervision, and as auxiliary to the
uniformed police. The consensual legitimating effect of these forms of
participation is therefore slight, since they relate to purely implemen-
tation and checking activities, involving only by way of exception some
narrow decision of substance. Participation in the judicial process
belongs in the same category: practically all cases coming before the
courts of primary jurisdiction are heard by a presiding professional
judge and two 'people's assessors'; this lay element is unrepresented
however in the appeal courts.
Submissions. The right to make submissions is a particularly elaborate
form of right of petition, by means of which citizens can introduce
suggestions and proposals into organs of the state. Its chief function is
informational: the authorities require knowledge of the wishes of the
population, so that their decisions may be taken on a firmer factual
basis.
(c) Communist elections: the function of these calls for fuller

comment. They are not elections in the sense of affording the possibility
of choice between political alternatives. Instead, their function is
predominantly of a propagandistic nature. They provide the occasion
for a large-scale propaganda campaign, aimed at focussing the elector's
attention on current party and state policy and mobilising him for
specific goals -mostly plan-fulfilment. In addition they are significant as
an integration device: they are intended to demonstrate the unity of the
people and the assumed legitimacy of the political system. The opinion
of the people is not asked, but formed. 13 'Thus the carrying out of
elections turns into a movement in which the socialist consciousness of
the millions of citizens is manifested'. 14 To what extent, apart from the
chief, propagandistic function, participatory expressions of the electors'
will may have some slight real impact, depends on the electoral practices
and electoral law of the particular countries. 15
Failure to vote and negative voting (including spoiled ballots) can be
seen primarily as symptoms of ineffectual dissent. This view is justified
by the fact that citizens are virtually compelled to take part in the
election and cast their vote publicly. Thus considerable civil courage is
required either not to vote at all or to enter the voting-booth in order to
mark one's voting paper (no mark being necessary for a positive vote).
Such manifestations of political dissent are naturally extremely rare: the
voter turn-out fluctuates around 99 per cent, while the proportion of
votes in favour of the official candidates usually exceeds 99 per cent. At
the same time there are differences between the various countries which
are not without interest. For instance it can scarcely be a result of pure
chance that the positive votes in elections to the GDR Volkskammer
always exceed 99.8 per cent, and usually even 99.9 per cent, while in the
six parliamentary elections in Hungary in the years 1958-80 they
averaged 99.35 per cent and in 1963 were as low as 98.9 per cent. 16 In
Poland the average for the years 1957-80 was a mere 99.04 per cent,
reaching a low-point of98.34 per cent in 1961. 17 It remains doubtful,
however, whether a close analysis of voting abstentions and negative
voting in te.rms of differences between regions, town and country, and
nationalities (voting statistics allow no other criteria to be considered)
can permit significant conclusions to be drawn. Certain English and
American studies of Soviet elections leave more questions open than
they answer, 18 and it is obvious that a large part of the unexplained
variance is to be attributed to outright voting manipulation or other
irregularities in the counting of votes. 19
What possible consequences an expression of will through the vote
may have depends on the character of the electoral system, and in this
respect the countries fall into two groups: (a) in the Soviet Union,
Albania, Bulgaria, Romania, Czechoslovakia and also since 1966
Hungary the voting is for a personal candidate in a single-member
constituency, an absolute majority of votes being required; (b) in the
GDR and Poland voting is for a list of loosely allied candidates in a
multi-member constituency.
Where voting is for a personal candidate whether or not the will of the
voter carries any force depends primarily on whether only one candidate
is standing or there is a plurality of candidates. While electoral law in the
communist states has never excluded the possibility of multiple
candidates, it was for a long time invariably the case and is still widely
practised that only one official candidate is nominated. Certain of the
new electoral laws, namely the Hungarian electoral law, no. m/1966
(Magyar Koz/ony, no. 71/1966), 20 the Bulgarian electoral law of29 June
1973 (Darzaven Vestnik no. 54/1973) and the Romanian law no.
67/1974 (Buletinul Oficia/1914, part 1, no. 161) now expressly allow for
the possibility of multiple candidates. So far, however, use of this
possibility has been made only in Hungary -since 1967 -and in
Romania -for the first time in 1975. In all the remaining countries the
voter's will only acquires relevance if the name of the official candidate is
struck out by over 50 per cent of the voters, in which case he is not
considered elected, and new elections must be held. The chances of
participating thereby afforded may be illustrated by the example of the
Soviet Union. Consideration of the election results establishes that in
elections to the supreme soviets of the USSR, the union republics and
the autonomous republics no candidate has ever yet been rejected. Only
in elections to lower-level soviets does the remote possibility exist of a
candidate failing to obtain an absolute majority. The probability of this
over the last twenty years has averaged 1: 13,000. It is also of interest to
note that such cases have been recorded only at the strictly local levels,
never in the regional level of oblast, autonomous oblast, krai or national
okrug. In the local sphere, moreover, fully 97.3 per cent of rejected
candidates stood for village or settlement soviets, while at the higher
local level of raion and city the number of rejected candidates is utterly
negligible. When one considers that an electorate at the lower local level
will comprise 50--60 electors and at the higher local level 330-340, it
becomes clear that the chance of throwing out unfavoured candidates is
available only in the smallest communities possessing the close social
contacts that permit understandings to be reached on the withholding of
votes. The details may be observed in Table 2.1 below.
TABLE 2.1 USSR: Elections to lower-level soviets 21
Settle-
Election No. of Villages ments Raions Cities Total %
Year deputies Rejected Candidates
1957 1,519,690 164 4 1 169 0.011

1961 1,822,047 236 9 3 1 249 0.014
1965 2,010,540 187 14 4 3 208 0.010
1967 2,045,419 119 5 2 3 129 0.006
1969 2,070,539 135 4 3 3 145 0.007
1971 2,165,168 89 4 2 95 0.004
1973 2,193,195 73 7 80 0.004
1975 2,210,932 62 2 1 3 68 0.003
1977 2,229,785 54 6 1 61 0.003
1980 2,274,861 65 8 2 2 77 0.003
In Hungary and oflate in Romania the voter is occasionally afforded

a personal choice, in that he can decide between a plurality of candidates
(usually two) who are all committed to the same political programme.
Thus a modest element of consensual legitimation is injected into the
'election' propaganda event. That the extent to which use is made of
plurality of candidates depends on the general internal political
situation is apparent from developments in the Hungarian par-
liamentary elections (Table 2.2):
TABLE 2.2 Plurality of candidates in Hungarian parliamentary

elections 22
Constituencies %with
Election No. of with plurality of
Year Constituencies two candidates candidates
1967 349 9 2.5

1971 352 49* 13.9
1975 352 34 9.6
1980 352 15 4.3
NOTE
* Including one with three candidates
In the Hungarian communal elections of 1967 more than one

candidate was put forward in 686 of the 84,508 constituencies (0.8 per
cent) and in those of 1971 in 3016 of68,865 constituencies (4.4 percent).
The situation of competition led in part to a significant split in the vote.
In Romania in the March 1975 elections to the Great National

Assembly two candidates were nominated in 139 of the 349 con-
stituencies (39.8 per cent) and in the simultaneous communal elections
90,858 candidates competed for 51,441 seats (a surplus of 76 per cent). 23
At the general elections of 1980 several candidates were nominated in
190 of the now 369 constituencies (51.5 per cent), including 39
constituencies with three candidates. 24
In systems with a loosely allied list of candidates in multi-member
constituencies the will of the voter can acquire practical relevance when
he can alter the order of candidates by striking out particular names -
provided the list contains more names than there are seats to be filled.
This possibility is today available both in the GDR and in Poland.
In the GDR the possibility has existed since 1965. It is laid down by
para. 39 of the election ordinance of 31 July 1963 as promulgated on 25
February 1974 (Gesetzblatt 1974, part I, p. 93) and now by para. 9 of the
electoral law of24June 1976 (Gesetzblatt 1976, part I, p. 301) that those
candidates are deemed elected 'who gather more than half of the valid
votes. If more than half of the valid votes are obtained by a greater
number of candidates than there are seats in the given electorate to be
filled, the occupancy of seats and the identity of substitutes is determined
by the order in which candidates' names appear in the list of nominees',
in other words not by the number of votes received by particular
candidates. Owing to the practical hindrances to voting freedom and the
pressure to cast one's vote openly it is virtually out of the question for a
candidate's name to be crossed out by over half the electors. Thus it is
that the list of candidates in the elections to the Volkskammer nearly
always obtains over 99.9 per cent of the votes cast, and it has never yet
happened that the order of candidates on the list has been changed by
the voting. It must be doubted whether there is any difference in the
commune elections, but we are unable to verify this owing to the lack of
statistical data. There is one relevant report, however, relating to the
commune elections of 1965, which stated that in an election of 186, I 07
deputies and 39,594 substitute candidates only two of the latter failed to
be elected. 2 s
In Poland plurality of candidates was introduced as long ago as the
'Polish October'. Under Article 39 of the electoral regulation for the
Sejm of24 October 1956 (Dziennik Ustaw, 1956, no. 47, position 210) it
was originally prescribed that 'the number of candidates in the list
should exceed the number of deputies to be elected in the respective
constituency, however not by more than two-thirds'. After the Sejm
elections of 1957 had shown the danger of this provision from the point
of view of the party, it was changed. Through the electoral law

amendment of 22 December 1960 (Dziennik Ustaw 1960, no. 57,
position 323) the obligatory character of the plurality of candidates was
abolished and its permissible extent limited to one half of the number of
deputies to be elected. The present electoral law of 17 January 1976
(Dziennik Us taw 1976, no. 2, position 15) maintains the latter restriction
but now again favours multiple candidacies. In contrast with the GDR it
is the number of votes cast for individual candidates that determines
which of them are elected, with the proviso that this number must exceed
50 per cent. Since, however, owing to the actual hindrances in the way of
free voting only 15 per cent of electors, on the whole, exercise their right
to strike out candidates' names, 26 it is virtually impossible for the will of
the electors to condemn the chief candidates to defeat and help others to
be elected in their place. In the seven Sejm elections of 1957, 1961, 1965,
1969, 1972, 1976 and 1980 in each of which 460 seats were to be filled,
there were only two cases where one of the chief candidates was defeated
and new elections had therefore to be held (in Nowy Sacz in 1957 and
Cracow in 1961 ). 2 7 At the same time the extent of striking out
candidates' names is sufficient to alter the order of the chief candidates.
Since it happens fairly frequently that the candidates are placed in a
different order by the number of votes received [than they appeared on
the voting list] the elections have the effect of a popularity test for the
official candidates. Thus for example in the Sejm elections of 1972 three
Politburo members who all headed their respective lists, namely CC
Secretary and former Interior Minister Szlachcic, the CC Secretary for
Cadres Babiuch (later prime minister) and the trade unions chief
Kruczek, were reduced from first to third position in this way. 28
Similarly, in March 1980 Interior Minister Kowalczyk and Foreign
Affairs Minister Wojtaszek both members of the Politburo, were
dropped from the top of the list to seventh and fifth place respectively. 29
It is clear from these quantitative considerations that the genuine
legitimating effect of communist elections should properly be estimated
at somewhere between 'nil' and 'minimal'. 30
NOTES
I. This is to be distinguished from the grounds for the validity of particular

acts of rule, in which, for example, N. Luhmann, Legitimation durch
Verfahren (Neuwied, 1969), is interested. On the history of the concept see
T. Wiirtenberger jun., Die Legitimitiit staatlicher Herrschaft (Berlin, 1973).
2. Politisches Grundwissen (East Berlin, 1970) p. 208.
3. Dolf Sternberger, 'Legitimacy', International Encyclopedia of the Social

Sciences, 2nd edn, vol. 9, p. 245.
4. Peter Graf Kielmansegg, 'LegitimitiH als analytische Kategorie', Politische
Vierteljahresschrift, 12 (1971 )382.
5. Ibid.
6. Compare R. Maurach, Handbuch der Sowjetverfassung (Munich, 1955)
p. 29fT.; Klaus Westen, Die Kommunistische Partei der Sowjetunion und der
Sowjetstaat (Cologne, 1968) p. 180fT.; G. Brunner in Sowjetunion (published
by the Coordination Committee of German East European Institutes)
(Munich, 1974) p. 53fT.; G. Brunner, Politische Soziologie der UdSSR, 2 vols
(Wiesbaden, 1977) vol. 2, p. 108fT.
7. The following constitutions are currently in force: Albania: Constitution of
the Socialist People's Republic of Albania of 28 Dec. 1976 (Gazeta Zyrtare,
no. 5, 1976); Bulgaria: Constitution of the People's Republic of Bulgaria of
16 May 1971 (Darzhaven Vestnik, no. 39, 1971); Czechoslovakia: The
Constitution of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic of ll July 1960 (Shirka
Zakonu, no. 100, 1960), is now applicable only in a few of its sections;
alongside these fragments there operate numerous constitutional laws, of
which the most important is the Constitutional Law on the Czechoslovak
Federation of 27 Oct. 1968 (Shirka Zilkonu, no. 143 of 1968); GDR:
Constitution of the German Democratic Republic of 6 Apr. 1968 as
promulgated 7 Oct. 1974 (Gesetzblatt 1974, part I, p. 432); Hungary:
Constitution of the Hungarian People's Republic of 20 Aug. 1949 as
amended on 19 Apr. 1972 (Magyar Kozlony, no. 32, 1972); Poland:
Constitution of the People's Republic of Poland of22 July 1952 as amended
16 Feb. 1976 (Dziennik Ustaw 1976, no. 7, pos. 36); Romania: Constitution
of the Socialist Republic of Romania of 20 Aug. 1965 as promulgated 8
April1974 (Buletinul Oficia/1974, part 1, no. 56; Soviet Union: Constitution
(Fundamental law) of the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics of7 Oct. 1977
(Vedomosti Verkhovnogo Soveta SSSR 1977, no. 41, art. 617). On consti-
tutional development generally, see G. Brunner, 'Neuere Tendenzen in der
verfassungsrechtlichen Entwicklung osteuropiiischer Staaten', Jahrbuch des
Offentlichen Rechts vol. 23 (1974) p. 209fT. On the new Soviet constitution
see B. Meissner, 'Die neue Bundesverfassung der UdSSR', Jahrbuch der
Offentlichen Rechts vol. 27 ( 1978) p. 321fT.
8. B. Spasov and A. Angelov, Darzhavno pravo na Narodna Republika
Balgariya, 2nd edn (Sofia, 1968) p. 76; B. Spasov, La Bulgarie (Paris, 1973)
p. 69. More generally, see M. A. Kroutogolov and V. A. Toumanov in
Introduction aux droits socialistes (Budapest, 1971) p. 166f.
9. A quite comprehensive positive-law listing is contained in Art. 21 section 2
of the GDR constitution, which specifies the general right of co-determi-
nation and co-development.
10. 0. Bihari, Allamjog (Budapest, 1964) p. 183.
II. B. Spasov, op. cit., p. 97.
12. K. Sorgenicht, W. Weichelt, T. Riemann, H.-J. Semler (eds), Verfassung der
Deutschen Demokratischen Republik: Dokumente, Kommentar (East Berlin,
1969) vol. 2, p. 265.
13. It is thus false to describe 'Bolshevik elections' as a 'referendum of
consultative character', as does H. 0. Leng, Die allgemeine Wahl im
bolschewistischen Staat (Meisenheim am Glan, 1973) p. 71.

14. Sorgenicht et. a/., op. cit., vol. 2, p. 55ff.
15. For a general survey see the respective country reports in D. Sternberger and
B. Vogel (eds), Die Wahl der Parlamente, 2 vols. (Berlin, 1969), and S.
Lammich, 'Wahlrecht und Wahlpraxis in den sozialistischen Liindern
Europas', Jahrbuch for Ostrecht 1972, vol. XIII, l, 37ff.
16. Nepszababsag, l9Nov.l958,23Feb.I963,22Mar.l967,28Apr.l97l, 17
June 1975 and lO June 1980.
17. Trybuna Ludu, 22Jan. 1957, 18 Apr. 1961, l June 1965, 3June 1969,21 Mar.
1972, 23 Mar. 1976 and 25 Mar. 1980.
18. P. B. Maggs, 'Negative Votes in Soviet Elections', Res Baltica, 1968,
p. l46ff.; J. M. Gilison, 'Soviet Elections as a Measure of Dissent: The
Missing One Per Cent', American Political Science Review, 62 (1968) 814ff.
(esp. 819ff.); E. M. Jacobs, 'Soviet Elections: What They Are, and What
They Are Not', Soviet Studies, xxn (1970) 70ff.
19. That such manipulations occur cannot be doubted, if only because the
number of positive votes in particular electorates sometimes exceeds l 00 per
cent. Examples of this are reported, e.g., in a case study of the Soviet local
and republic soviet elections of 1963 in Leningrad: seeM. E. Mote, Soviet
Local and Republic Elections (Stanford, 1965) p. 76.
20. Subsequently the Electoral Law, no. 3 of 1970 (Magyar Kozlony, no. 85,
1970) has come into force.
21. Sources: Pravda, 8, 9, 15 and 16 Mar. 1957, 12 and 24 Mar. 1961, 28 Mar.
1965; Vedomosti Verkhovnogo Soveta SSSR, no. 13, 1967, p. 162; no. 13,
1969,p. l45;no. 25, l97l,p. 323;no. 26, l973,p. 387;no.27, l975,p.411;
no. 26, 1977, p. 485; no. 10, 1980, p. 159.
22. Sources: Nepszabadsag, 22 Mar. 1967, 2 Apr. 1971, 17 June 1975 and lO
June 1980.
23. Source: Scinteia, 17 Mar. 1975.
24. Source: Scinteia, II Mar. 1980.
25. Neues Deutschland, 12 Oct. 1965.
26. W. Zabielski and A. Patrzalek, 'Der Sejm der Volksrepublik Polen (1)',
Zeitschrift fur Parlamentsfragen, 1974, p. 424. For further details see
S. Lammich, 'Grundzuge despolnischen Wahlrechts von 1976', Jahrbuchfur
Ostrecht 1976, xvn, 2, 95ff and 102ff.
27. Ibid., and D. Sternberger and B. Vogel, op. cit., p. 996.
28. Trybuna Ludu, 21 Mar. 1972.
29. Trybuna Ludu, 26 Mar. 1980.
30. It is, therefore, grossly out of proportion for H. Roggemann to speak of a
'goal conflict in socialist electoral law', in his article 'Volksvertretungen im
Sozialismus', Zeitschrift fur Parlamentsfragen, 1974, p. 380: 'on the one
hand elections as an acclamation- and integration-device, and on the other
the voter's "determining" influence on the membership of the people's
representative body' (ibid.).
3 Phases of Legitimation in
Soviet-type Societies
Agnes Heller
If a social order survives for sixty years it is appropriate to raise the

question of its legitimacy. We can regard it as highly unlikely that a
system of authority which conceives of itself and is conceived of by
others as an identity, as a continuum of the same coherent whole, would
have avoided collapse for over half a century had it been sustained by
nothing but various types of interest, including fear. According to one of
Max Weber's formulations, a social order is legitimated if at least one
part of the population acknowledges it as exemplary and binding while
the other part does not confront the existing social order with the image
of an alternative one seen as equally binding. 1 The relative number of
those legitimating a system may be irrelevant if the non-legitimating
masses are merely dissatisfied. This is most markedly the case in various
kinds of non-democratic systems where dissatisfaction cannot be
expressed, at least not continuously, and the absence of legitimation
remains hidden except for outbursts of anger that the ruling elite can
easily cope with.
The Soviet social order can therefore be conceived of as a legitimate
one even though only the party, or perhaps only the leading bodies of the
party, acknowledge the order as exemplary and binding and there are no
forces with a mass base capable of confronting the existing social order
with an alternative concept they acknowledge as exemplary. Likewise
we cannot speak of any legitimation crisis in East European societies
unless one of these two conditions oflegitimation disappears or is in the
process of dissolving. In the Soviet Union both prerequisites of
legitimation seem to be met and that is why the social order has to be
regarded as a legitimate one. In other East European societies, however,
and most clearly in Czechoslovakia, Poland and Hungary, these two
prerequisites are absent. Not only is the relative number of subjects who
45
legitimate the system very small (being basically restricted to the ruling
elite itself) but the overwhelming majority of the population does have
an image of an alternative order, namely that of the West European or
North American liberal-legal state, which is acknowledged by them as
exemplary. Thus East European societies, first of all the three mentioned
above, persist in a continuous legitimation crisis. That is true of
Hungary to no less an extent than of Poland or Czechoslovakia despite
the substantial popular support enjoyed by the present Hungarian
government. For what is meant by legitimation is not legitimation of a
government but rather of a form of domination, and the Hungarian
government enjoys a degree of support by the people despite its
exercising a form of domination which they reject, precisely because it
exercises it in a more bearable manner than do the governments of other
similar countries.
A protracted legitimation crisis does not lead inescapably, however,
to the collapse of a social order. Even without the dependent status of
these societies and the presence of the Soviet army on their territories,
the survival of their structure would be imaginable, if improbable. The
legitimation crisis only leads to an inevitable collapse if both pillars of
legitimation are shaken, which in this case would mean if the members of
the party or of the ruling bodies of the party also lost their belief in the
exemplary character of the order and no longer found it binding or
completely binding. This is what happened in Hungary in 1956. Those
who admired the open dissent within the Chinese ruling elite and who
contrasted this with its absence in the East European countries, missed
the important point that the Chinese leaders were never threatened by
the second aspect of legitimation crisis (except perhaps locally in
Shanghai). Most East European countries, however, have in the past
been legal-democratic states for a longer or shorter time and their
population is ready to consider democracy as their own tradition or a
variant of it. The subjects of these countries generally have access to
books and information about the 'other world', as well as personal
contacts and experiences. Should open dissent break out within the
party or its leadership the alternative images of the majority of the
population and the aspirations of one or other faction of the party may
coincide in that they may actually or apparently share both the will to,
and the prospect of, change. That is why the slogan of the purity of the
party and the expurgation of all open dissent from it is more than mere
ideology or neurosis: it is highly rational from the standpoint of the
social order. Communists, often the most honest ones, who plead for intra-
party democracy, do not understand the logic of their own social system.
Phases of Legitimation in Soviet-type Societies 47
In East European single-party systems the party is a multi-functional

organisation, one of its functions being precisely the legitimation of the
social order. Only those who meet this criterion can be admitted to the
party. No achievement in production, culture or administration is in
itself sufficient in order to be accepted, only the readiness for emphatic
legitimation - but the latter will suffice even without any kind of
achievement. The party member should not only accept the ruling order
but also believe in its absolute validity. That is to say, no other social
order should have any validity for him or her, even a relative validity. Of
course, this has not always been the case in fact, but party members are
expected to behave as if it were the case.
There is, then, this contrast between the Soviet Union and the most
important East European states; the latter are in a constant state of
legitimacy crisis, whereas in the former the social order can properly be
said to enjoy legitimation. However, we have yet to analyse what type of
legitimation it enjoys.
At the very beginning of this chapter we described the Soviet social
order as a system of authority that conceives of itself as an identity (or a
continuum) and is also understood by others as such. The one system of
authority however, has been legitimated in three totally different ways,
and the 'classical' types oflegitimation have always been combined with
auxiliary ones proper not only to the Soviet Union but to almost all the
despotic single-party systems of our times.
The first phase in the development of the Soviet Union can be
described in political terms as a form of Jacobin dictatorship. Its main
characteristic was that it did not lay claim to any kind of legitimation
proper. For the sake of fuller clarity we must analyse first, the mode of
self-justification of the dominating party (and this cannot be identified
with self-legitimation), and second the growing indifference of the ruling
elite regarding the attitude of the majority of the population, and third
the role of negative legitimation, particularly before the stabilisation of
the regime.
The Bolshevik Party conceived of itself as a revolutionary power, as
the embodiment of a complete break with Russian traditions- for it,
traditional legitimation was out of the question. Some attempts were,
however, made to construct a different tradition. It was very urgent for
the new regime to erect statues of Marx and Engels and propose the
establishment of a Pantheon for the heroes of the socialist movement.
This was, however, devised as a tradition for the movement and for the
successful revolution, not for a social order. Legitimation by means of
law was attempted but had to be abandoned. In all free elections after
the Bolshevik seizure of power, (namely in the election for the

Constituent Assembly, and in those of Georgia and the Ukraine) the
ruling party suffered a devastating defeat. It became completely clear
that the system of domination ran counter to the will of the vast majority
of the population, that their authority had failed to establish itself as a
legal one. The possibility of charismatic legitimation was, again, out of
the question. Lenin was anything but a charismatic leader- his
charisma was a posthumous and ideologically motivated product of his
followers. He had never been acknowledged as 'the leader' by the
peasant masses (otherwise they would not have voted for the SR party),
and even the workers' councils majority turned towards the Mensheviks
soon after the February revolution. Neither did Lenin possess charisma,
only very high authority, within his own party: Bukharin seriously
considered his temporary arrest and Lenin's opponents' final consent
to his proposal regarding the Brest- Litovsk peace treaty was due not
to his personal charisma but to rational calculation. Lenin's threat to
found a new party if his proposal were not accepted was blackmail based
on his truly enormous authority, but precisely as such, was con-
tradictory to the image of a charismatic leader. His lack of charisma had
little to do with his personality, it was mainly due to there being no
Fuhrer-Prinzip in socialist movements, even in their bolshevik version.
The theory ofPlekhanov that 'great personalities only execute historical
necessity' and that is why one always can be replaced by another, was
deeply rooted in the self-understanding of all socialist parties in the first
two decades of our century.
The self-justification of the ruling elite- i.e. roughly speaking the Old
Guard of the party and those who joined the victors believing that
victory was justification in itself- was composed of different though
related elements. The party's self-image was that of the executor of a
world-historical necessity, of the vanguard of world-revolution, of the
repository of the future, of the embodiment of the real interests of the
proletariat inside and outside Russia. This self-justification was binding
to a very large extent but it did not imply at the same time the
recognition of a social order as exemplary, if only because the new
system of domination was not understood as a permanent social order at
all but as the bulwark of coming revolutions, as a prelude to a future
social order. Lenin's remark that after the victory of the European
revolution Russia would again become an under-developed country, is
very telling in this respect. Except for the expropriation of the previous
ruling classes all measures taken were rationalised by reference to the
'state of emergency': the system was understood as temporary. The
revolution had not yet been completed - it had only been started.
As mentioned, reference to the objective interest of the proletariat was
a constituent element in the self-justification of the regime. Needless to
say that interest in itself is no principle of legitimation even if real
interests are understood by it. However, in this particular period only
the interest of the self-justifying party was real, while the interest it
supposedly represented was imaginary to an increasing extent. Lenin's
words were quite clear on this. In 1919 he stated: 'We recognize neither
freedom, nor equality, nor labour democracy if they are opposed to the
interest of the emancipation of labour from the oppression of capital'. 2
In 1921, Radek formulated it even more bluntly. The workers do not
support us, he said, 'but we must not yield, we must impose our will on
them'. 3 This language betrays indifference towards legitimation. Despite
this indifference, Bolsheviks appealed at least to the proletariat and
asked for its support but they did not ask, except in the civil war, for the
support of the majority of the population. The bulk of the peasants, the
so-called 'middle-peasants', had to be neutralised, that is to say, with
regard to them no legitimation was sought, only that they should
withdraw their recognition from the social forces opposing the
Bolsheviks.
The civil war was won not thanks to the new regime obtaining a
generally recognised legitimation but thanks to the legitimation crisis of
the old regime. The slogan of peace proved to be a good catchword, for
the soldiers were fed up with war. However, it was not this promise but
the splitting up of the landlords' estates, the land reform, that really
mattered. The White armies imperilled this achievement in that they
represented the old regime. The Mensheviks and the SRs supported the
'Red' side as well- for while the future under the Bolsheviks was still
unclear the Tsarist past was known all too well. Non-Bolshevik
Socialists could not be sure that they were going to be crushed by the new
power but they could be -and were -sure that this fate awaited them if
the old regime were restored. Though the main elements of the new
system of domination had already been present from October 1917
onwards, the system itself was fully established only in 1921: at the 1Oth
Party Congress Lenin's motion for the abolition of factions was
accepted, as was Radek's proposal at the Tenth Conference to outlaw
and crush the Menshevik and SR parties completely.
The legitimation of the social order was made at least partially
necessary by the programme of 'socialism in one country'. It is well
known that up until then the 'dictatorship of the proletariat' meant
terror. The principle of terror is, however, no principle of legitimation.
Terror proclaimed and openly practiced is the exercise of sheer power

and not of domination, in it popular consent is simply excluded from
consideration. The 'construction of socialism', however, was under-
stood as a revolutionary establishment in need of the cooperation of the
majority. Hence power had to interpret itself as domination and
increasing terror could no longer be practiced openly. Without going
into historical details it will suffice here to stress that Soviet political
domination underwent its first legitimation crisis in the 1920s. The intra-
party debate expressed this legitimation crisis, admittedly, in a fairly
distorted manner, while at the same time triggering basic economic
changes. The outcome of the crisis was the establishment of the
totalitarian state. If the first milestone in the transformation of the
Jacobin dictatorship into a totalitarian despotism was laid, as we have
seen, in 1921, the last one was laid from 1929-32 bycollectivisation. The
legitimation crisis finally issued in a new form of legitimation: namely
charismatic legitimation.
It is easy to grasp why the intra-party debates of the 1920s were a
distorted expression of the legitimation crisis and not simply a struggle
for power, although they were indeed a power struggle as well. The
rejection of the formula of 'socialism in one country' by Trotsky was
related to his endeavour to continue the course of self-justification
without any kind oflegitimation. He further insisted both on open terror
on the one hand (in Lenin's lifetime even more emphatically than Lenin)
and on intra-party democracy, the esprit de corps of the ruling elite, on
the other. The perpetuation of this militant attitude only made sense,
however, from the perspective of permanent revolution -both internal
and external. It is interesting to follow Kamenev's argument against
Trotsky's plea for intra-party democracy. He said: 'For if they say
today, let us have democracy in the Party, tomorrow they will say let us
have democracy in the trade unions, the day after tomorrow workers
who do not belong to the party may well say: give us democracy
too ... and surely then the myriads of peasants could not be prevented
from asking for democracy'. 4 Kamenev was merely the mouthpiece of
Zinoviev', of his negative attitude towards democracy, which was
interconnected with the re-militarisation of the party plus the pro-
gramme of forced industrialisation in economic policy. Bukharin
recommended a different kind of legitimation, namely through the
raising ofliving standards and support to the peasantry, which may have
been combined with concessions to the masses and consequently with a
certain liberalisation. Stalin's will to power was -right from the
beginning -connected with his will to charismatic legitimation. That is
why the various options of economic policy were for him of secondary
importance. Immediately after Lenin's death, he purposely fabricated a
charismatic image of the deceased leader.
However, in the twentieth century charismatic legitimation is bound
up with the totalitarian state: Stalin's charismatic leadership presup-
posed a totalitarian state and he pushed through his project in the most
brutal way.
Visibly both Bukharin's and Zinoviev's programme regarding the
need for legitimation were primarily of an economic character. Here we
are confronted with a new attempt at legitimation, namely legitimation
through substantive rationality.
In recent years certain experts on East European societies (Konrad
and Szelenyi, Rigby) 5 have advanced theoretical proposals to interpret
these societies as legitimated completely or at least chiefly by substantive
rationality. This seems to be a very doubtful idea. Although substantive
rationality has functioned in these societies from the beginning to the
present day as an auxiliary form of legitimation, it has never been its
main type, nor is it now. All those who experimented with it as the basic
principle of legitimation (e.g. opposition groups in the party during the
1920s)failed. Their failure apparently cannot be understood as a mere
historical accident. In fact, substantive rationality can only be posited,
never really practiced, without a certain kind of rational argumentation
at least among the experts, and thus without the corrective principle of
formal rationality and pluralism. If the principle of substantive
rationality is taken seriously, the dogma of infallibility cannot persist
and the way 'back' to some kind offormal democracy is only a question
of time. However, as soon as substantive rationality serves only as a
sheer ideology for centralisation of economic decisions it becomes a
myth- and myth needs mythmakers, as well as a belief in infallibility, in
other words it needs either charismatic or traditional legitimation.
Legitimation through tradition was not practicable in the late twenties,
for the new regime lacked any meaningful and generally accepted
tradition. Only two courses remained open: either the real acceptance of
substantive rationality which sooner or later would lead to lawful
legitimation (i.e. through elections) or by using substantive rationality
exclusively as a myth, as an auxiliary form oflegitimation complement-
ing a charismatic one. The totalitarian state combined with charismatic
legitimation mean fascism.
The notion of 'fascism' has historical connotations which make it
difficult to apply it to the present case. It cannot be replaced, however,
simply by the concept of 'totalitarianism', for a state can be totalitarian
without the distinct features which could and should be described as

'fascist' ones. Historical 'fascism' evolved socio-economic structures
different from those prevailing in the Soviet Union of Stalin's time, but
'fascism' can be applied as an all-embracing term if we have in mind the
political structure only. The notion of fascism serves here as a sociologi-
cal category, not as a word of abuse. States exist that are worse than
Mussolini's fascism was without their being fascist themselves.
Jacobin dictatorships cannot but be shortlived, and they may have
two outcomes: fascism or the so-called 'Thermidor'. During the terror of
French Jacobinism, one of its leaders, Robert Lindet, already predicted
the possibility of a new 'Tamerlane', and one only has to remember
Bukharin's description of Stalin as Genghis Khan to see that the
prediction was highly realistic. Trotsky and all others who explain
Stalin's seizure of power as a result of the under-development of Russia
miss the important point: in the late twenties only a certain type of
fascism could preserve 'Lenin's work', and in this respect it was a
necessary outcome of his work. No slanders are, of course, admissible
here in a theoretical analysis: Lenin would undoubtedly not have
appreciated this manner of preservation. But he would not have
appreciated the disappearance of the system created by him either.
There were no other options.
The idea of substantive rationality was inherited from Marx, which,
however, does not account for the fact that precisely this thesis was
widely accepted while others were neglected. It is obvious, though,
without going into historical details, that the belief informal rationality,
more precisely in its beneficiary results, had been immensely shaken in
the first 30 years of our century for various reasons. The experience of
'the disenchantment of the world' on the one hand, the vast irrational
by-products of formal rationality (world war, economic crises) on the
other, motivated the readiness to accept different kinds of substantive
rationality as alternative solutions. Firstly, it motivated the replacement
of the market-oriented economy by a 'planned' one, of 'society' by
'community', of formal-legal regulation by direct action, and of
pluralism by homogeneity. These components were characteristics -in
different ways with different kinds of ideology -of all totalitarian states.
Not only Stalin, but Mussolini and Hitler too legitimated their systems
by the confrontation between them and the Western types of capitalist
democracies. Not only Stalin, but Hitler and Mussolini too boasted that
they had put an end to unemployment- and all three 'mobilised' the
population for 'great industrial achievements' (e.g. the Autobahn-
network in Germany). Since then the ideologies of 'modernisation' and
'revolution' as auxiliary forms oflegitimation of modem despotic states

with single-party systems have become fairly widespread, especially
after the Second World War in the former colonies.
In spite of all parallel phenomena, it was the Soviet experiment that
fully realised this model. And this was primarily because the ideology of
the Bolshevik party was devised and conceived of as science proper, as
the only true science of society, the arcanum of knowledge regarding the
necessary advent of a socialist future. Even if it had been applied as
myth, it had never been understood as such. The leaders of the party
really believed that they were 'equipped' with the only true knowledge
and that it was their historical mission to shape the 'matter' of society as
raw material for the historical goal, even if the 'matter', that is to say the
people, should prove resistant. What was meant was the revolutionary
transformation of society from above. However, at the moment when
the party leaders were really confronted with the task of economic and
social transformation, they proved helpless, and this was true first of all
of Lenin. Their 'science' turned out to be impotent when it came to
applying it. In order to totalise a social system the principle of
substantive rationality had been applied but it proved to be rational only
politically, and neither economically nor socially. 'Universal rationality'
was nothing but an obligatory creed. The terrible waste of human energy
and lives surpassed the worst dreams of all formal rationality and the
achievement itself had substantially nothing to do with the posited 'goal'.
Even the real achievement, the vast though badly organised industry,
was officially not allowed to be identified with the goal proper. Stalin in
his 'The Economic Problems of Socialism in the Soviet Union' 'rebuked'
Yaroshenko severely for positing industrial growth as te/os.
However, substantive rationality as ideology did become an auxiliary
principle of legitimation. It could be no more than auxiliary for the
irrationality of its application was experienced and perceived by
everyone with the slightest common sense. Common sense itself had to
be eliminated, the 'senses' had to be ideologised, perception had to be
distorted, in order for the mythical substantive rationality to be accepted
as rationality. And this was achieved through charismatic legitimation.
The charismatically legitimated totalitarian state is fascism. I am fully
aware that the term 'Fascist' could provoke sociological objections on
the grounds that the Fascist countries proper had a different economic
structure. My usage of the term, however, refers to the political structure
of Stalinism, so nightmarishly akin in its developed form to that under
Hitler, and likewise akin in the utter human degradation it entailed. It
does not denote a socio-economic whole. These two constituents are,
however, not necessarily 'ready' at the same time. Mussolini's regime

was legitimated charismatically from its inception, but Italy became a
totalitarian state only in 1926, if we accept the view of Alastair
Davidson. 6 In the Soviet Union, by contrast, the state was already
totalitarian before charismatic legitimation was gradually established.
And after Stalin's death the Soviet Union ceased to be a fascist state,
without ceasing to be a totalitarian one.
As a definition of totalitarianism, we need go no further than that
formulated by the founding father of totalitarian fascism. Mussolini
wrote: 'The Fascist concept of the state is all-embracing; outside of it no
human or spiritual values may exist. This understood, Fascism is
totalitarian, and the Fascist state, as a synthesis and unit which includes
all values, interprets, develops and lends additional power to the whole
life of the people'. 7 Thus totalitarianism is identical with political society
(i.e. the subjection and liquidation of civil society), with the elimination
of recognised pluralism of any kind. Pluralism of values may of course,
persist but it is outlawed and persecuted. The degree of punishment for it
may vary in different countries and at different historical times but the
principle remains the same.
Charisma serves to legitimate totalitarian systems in all cases where
they cannot be legitimated by tradition. Hitler was a charismatic
personality; Stalin was not but he created his charismatic image, albeit
less successfully.
Charisma means a quasi-religious belief in the omnipotence of a
personality and not merely in his superiority. Omnipotence has to be
proven day by day by mobilising the masses for ever new 'victories'. The
image of permanent dangers which can only be overcome by the wisdom
and willpower of the Fuhrer is an organic part of it. If there are no real
dangers, substitutes have to be created. A fascist leader needs the
perpetuation of war against external and internal enemies. The belief,
moreover, must be a belief of the masses- and this presupposes the
distortion of rationality, of common sense, of everyday perception.
Finally: there is no belief without the generation of universal fear.
In stating that fascism was the necessary outcome of Jacobin terror if
Lenin's work was to be preserved we are not asserting that the
unbelievable dimensions of Stalin's mass terror were a necessity as well.
Many millions destroyed by the 'leader' were victims of this particular
leader, and their fate cannot be explained by the social system alone.
However, a fascist system could not have been established in the Soviet
Union without taking many victims, first of all because the perpetual
war which such a system must wage was in this case of necessity an
'inner-directed' one. The Soviet Union of that time was too weak to start
a war against 'external' enemies and it was sound on Stalin's part not to
risk his power in such adventures.
On the other hand, Stalin established his fascist system, as is always
the case, with a single party. Paradoxical though this may seem,
however, this single party was not a fascist party. In spite of its military
discipline, overcentralisation and readiness to wipe out whole groups of
the population labelled as 'class enemies', the party inherited by Stalin
was far from being a fascist one. While a fascist leadership must consist
of unscrupulous murderers, the Bolshevik leaders, though prone to ex-
ercising mass terror, did have scruples, e.g. they opted for a decrease of
terror in the aftermath of collectivisation even though this contradicted
the fascist type of rule. There was no Fiihrer-Prinzip in the party. The
famous joke circulating in higher party echelons after the Kirov
assassination testifies to this. One day Stalin summoned Radek who was
well-known as a cynic for spelling out things others did not even dare to
think. Stalin said, 'I was informed, comrade Radek, that you have been
speaking about me in an ironical manner. Have you forgotten that I am
the leader of the world proletariat?' 'Excuse me, comrade Stalin', Radek
responded, 'it was not me that invented that particular joke'.
Furthermore, while the system of authority that fascist parties had in
mind before the seizure of power was practically identical with what they
in fact realised, this was not the case with the Bolsheviks. They had
inherited traditional humanistic ideas from the socialist movement
which they did not observe in practice but whose validity they did not
question. The old leaders were not brought up in hostility towards
democracy, but rather in the hatred of Tsarist autocracy. Nor did the
direct democracy of the early soviets vanish completely: minds once
educated in rational discussions could not be re-educated by a simple
declaration of belief. Of course, unrestrained ruthlessness against the
actual or potential enemy, the prompt readiness to silence by coercion
all dissent outside and inside the party, predisposed the Bolshevik party
to be easily transformed into a fascist one. Nonetheless it had to be
transformed. There may well be truth in Conquest's view that Stalin was
planning the transformation of the party into an obedient tool via the
extermination of the majority of its leaders and a huge percentage of its
membership as early as 1934 and that he borrowed the idea from Hitler's
manner of dealing with Roehm and his comrades. Mass support for
such a procedure could be achieved, however, only by mass terror, by
the alternation of periods of hysteria and periods of relief, and by
Stalin's skill in making people believe that whereas others were
responsible for the ups of the terror, he was responsible exclusively for
its downs. He succeeded in making almost the whole country co-
responsible for all the crimes committed, and consequently his char-
ismatic legitimation was based on the 'natural' drive of self-defence as
well. Not only did the beneficiaries of the terror hail his name, but so did
its victims. Before their execution, in the concentration camps, starving
and humiliated, they blessed their executioner. And even those who
hated him ascribed everything to his personality, to his superhuman
wickedness. Charismatic legitimation was complete.
In the charismatic type of legitimation the legitimation of the system
and of the leader is identical; the leader is the symbolic incorporation of
the system. The so-called 'cult of personality' is only an expression of
this identity. Hence only fascist totalitarianism, not totalitarianism as
such, excludes the differentiation of the regime from the ruler.
Charismatic legitimation in the Soviet Union became historically
obsolete after the victory in the Second World War. From that moment
onwards the same system of domination could have been legitimated in
a different way as well, government and system could have been
differentiated, hence the elite could have governed without the fascist
type of rule. Moreover, in a sense it could only survive by transforming
fascist totalitarianism into non-fascist totalitarianism.
However, this transformation did not take place at once. Fascist
regimes disappear either with the death of their leaders or by defeat in
war. Whether or not Stalin was mad in the last years of his rule remains a
secret. What we do know is that he continued to act according to a
fascist logic (though perhaps after a historical moment of hesitation). He
kept artificially creating crises and producing scapegoats outside and
inside the country in a new wave of extermination. He was co-
responsible with the Western powers for the Cold War and with China
for the 'hot' one in Korea, he set up mini-fascist regimes in the occupied
territories, once again sent millions into camps and started anew the
assassination of his own loyal guard. The latter event is a telling one.
Since the Yezhovshchina, he had never endangered his close
collaborators- they were his creatures. The unexpected change in his
behaviour may be due to a hidden crisis oflegitimation after the war. One
may be right in assuming that Stalin's entourage were aware the times
had changed and tried to cancel the complete identity of the system with
its leader. One might view the convening of the Nineteenth Party
Congress with Malenkov as the new chief speaker as corroboration of
this thesis. The second legitimation crisis in Soviet history became overt,
however, only after Stalin's death. It is this that lends importance to the
question whether he was murdered or died a natural death.

Soviet fascism died with Stalin, not because no one qualified for
charismatic leadership but because it had already become superfluous in
Stalin's lifetime. The country felt a deep relief in the midst of its
mourning.
Khrushchev drew the obvious conclusion from the situation by
terminating the wars both internal and external. The prisoners in the
camps were released, the politics of detente was launched. In order to
break openly with fascism, the image of the charismatic leader had to be
annihilated. Only those who have never lived in a fascist state
underestimate such symbolic acts as the re-christening ofStalingrad and
the removal of the mummy of the 'father of nations' from the
Mausoleum.
The charismatic type of legitimation had now been discarded.
Negative legitimation (i.e. legitimation resting on mass rejection of what
went before as in the period of Lenin's Jacobinism) was not an available
option. It would have meant breaking not only with Stalin but also with
the whole system of authority which his charisma had legitimated. It
would rather have been a prelude to a new system of authority which
contradicted the interests of the ruling group, including Khrushchev.
(True, there were at least some among the communist leaders, first of all
Imre Nagy, who did what Khrushchev never wanted to do by accepting
a different system of domination based on the sovereignty of the people).
Khrushchev was an experimenting spirit, a man of constant change. If
one takes a look at his different experiments and projects it becomes
clear that even his most senseless ideas were somehow related to the
realisation of substantive rationality. His greatest ambition was to
surpass the most developed capitalist countries in per capita production
and thus attain the promised land of communism. He even forecast the
exact date when this was to happen. Khrushchev promised more
production for personal consumption and better living standards, he
initiated new, even if ill-considered, plans for the rapid increase of
agricultural production, he boasted in America of the superiority of the
planning approach. Thus it happened for the second time in Soviet
history that substantive rationality was proposed as the main type of
legitimation. It failed again for the same reasons.
Almost all ruling strata are clever enough to overcome their
legitimation crises if they are capable of being overcome at all. But in the
case of the Soviet Union of the sixties no mastermind was needed to
accomplish this task. The party leaders simply were never shaken in their
firm conviction that they had the right to rule by virtue of tradition. The
party had ruled the country for half a century; it had already created a
socio-economic structure completely adequate to the system of
domination. As a result of the subsequent waves of extermination no
alternative political forces had been left in the country. Under their rule
the Russian Empire had won its greatest victory since the Napoleonic
wars. The Soviet Union had gradually become a superpower, an equal
partner with the United States in co-deciding the fate of the whole
world, while at the same time progressively increasing its sphere of
influence: and once again this happened under their rule. It is no wonder
that self-legitimation by tradition appeared as natural for them: to rely
on tradition was self-evident for the ruling elite and not a shrewd move
devised to obtain mass support. Legitimation by tradition meant not
only self-legitimation of the rulers, it became 'legitimation proper', i.e.
of the social order and the system of domination.
The new traditional legitimation is a combination of two traditions:
the Russian national tradition and the tradition of Soviet rule since
1917.
Much earlier Stalin had already begun to experiment with reintroduc-
ing the idea of nationalist Great Russia as an auxiliary form of
legitimation. In his image of history, however, it was the figures of great
dictators and 'modernisers' that were paradigmatic, as the Old Russian
forerunners of his charismatic leadership: such figures as Ivan the
Terrible, Peter the Great, and the great military leaders and the
conquerors were those with whom he now identified himself. In the new
type of traditional legitimation, however, it is Nation and Empire that
receive the prime emphasis and the 'responsible part' of the old ruling
elite gets its share of recognition.
At the same time, it is what is directly related to Soviet tradition that is
predominant. An exclusively nationalist tradition would run the risk of
provoking the non-Russian nations, the danger of which in a multi-
national country does not escape the leaders' vigilance.
In order to legitimate the system of authority by the Soviet tradition,
the latter has to be conceived of as a continuity. The immense resistance
to Khrushchev's de-Stalinisation on the part of the party leadership has
not been due to any 'Stalinist' creed or tendency within the ruling
stratum. As mentioned, Soviet fascism died with Stalin, it was already
obsolete before his death, and no one could reintroduce it or even wish
to do so. Quite fundamental interests were involved in this common
decision to bury Stalin's method of rule: after all, everyone prefers to die
in their bed rather than being tortured, hanged or shot. The vehemence
of de-Stalinisation, the rummaging among the crimes of the past,
endangered traditional legitimation, however, since it invited questions

about the leaders' right to rule. That is why they had to get rid of the
legacy of the Twentieth Congress, even though the revelations of past
crimes at the Twentieth and Twenty-second Congresses were far from
revealing the full measure of what really happened. But even what had
been revealed exceeded what was tolerable for the requirements of
traditional legitimation. For the purposes of self-legitimation and
'legitimation proper' the rulers had to turn the page in the book of
history dealing with Stalin and to erase it from 'popular memory' as
well. They did this with considerable success. When meeting some young
people seven or eight years ago, Yevtushenko made an improvised
survey of their estimates of the number of Stalin's victims: the result he
came up with was that quite probably they had amounted to some
thousands!
Legitimation by tradition implies conservatism, and the present Soviet
Union can well be characterised by this term. It is ruled by a
'gerontocracy'. Social and economic experiments of any kind, typical in
all previous phases, have been totally avoided. The slightest change is
rejected, even promised reforms are never realised. Culture is completely
mummified, and family life and education are also conservative. The
state has not, of course, lost its totalitarian character, pluralism is no less
outlawed than before, but this tradition has had to be formalised too.
Such formalisation has become necessary because reference to a 'state of
emergency' is no longer feasible under traditional legitimation.
What is the secret of the Soviet leaders' success with their new
traditionalism? The answer is that the present system of authority in the
Soviet Union is in fact traditional and is accepted as such.
It is common knowledge that there has never been a democratic
system in Russia. There were, indeed, movements for direct and
representative democracy, but under Stalin all such forces, needless to
say, were progressively eliminated, and no father remained to convey a
different image of rule to his children. Furthermore, the relative number
of those who had participated in the first attempts of the Russian people
at self-emancipation, in the revolutions of 1905 and February 1917, in
the soviets and in the government agencies between February and
October 1917, had always been small, thus portending the revolution's
'betrayal' that duly occurred. Again, the silent acceptance of arbitrary
decisions of the authorities, the myth of the sacred ruler, the habit of
meeting calamities with passive endurance, the belief in an immutable
fate, in other words the behavioural patterns of serfdom, were deeply
rooted in a population moulded by centuries of autocratic rule. It was,
indeed, necessary to reinforce these habitual modes of behaviour in

order completely to erase the memory of those quite recent democratic
patterns. Today even those who are aware of democracy as an
alternative system of authority no longer have the social imagination to
grasp what this really means. All present habits, attitudes, abilities, even
the language used, were created by totalitarianism, while everyday life
and the 'second nature' of human beings have adapted themselves to it.
The existence of dissatisfaction with the state of affairs does not
contradict the lamentable fact that the system has become 'natural' for
its oppressed subjects. Nothing makes all this clearer than the attitude of
a far from negligible section of the dissidents. Of course, every dissenting
opinion, and even more so every open act of dissent, has a progressive
function in a totalitarian state. Having said this, one must immediately
add that a considerable proportion of Soviet dissenters is characterised
by the belief in the superiority of the old Russian way of life over the
'decadence' of the West, by contempt for democratic procedures, for the
rules of civility, and for formal rationality, by a predilection for
obscurantist world-views, quasi-religious beliefs in catastrophe and
redemption, for the paternalistic approach to dealing with issues. One
can see from the Weltanschauung and cast of mind of the most resolute
of such dissenters how difficult (if not wholly impossible) it is to recover
from certain social ills.
The types oflegitimation in East European countries can be conceived
as miniaturised imitations of those in the Soviet Union, though
occurring in different sequences and variations. However, one main
divergence should not be overlooked. In certain East European
countries- most notably in Poland and Hungary and later also in
Czechoslovakia- the mass basis oflegitimation was never as broad as in
the Soviet Union. It coincided roughly with the party membership, at
least until the death of Stalin. From that time on, however, an
important change could be observed. We have already pointed out that
one of the main functions of the party membership is to legitimate the
system. The party membership is selected in such a way that it has to
blindly accept the system of domination as exemplary and binding. But
in East European countries it lost this function. Joining the party
became increasingly a mere formality, the consequence partly of mild
pressure and partly of calculation. Various considerations may underlie
a decision to join. To carry a party membership card opens the way to
privileged positions or at least to fairly good ones without requiring a
high level of professional skill. The party meeting is the only place where
public discussions are allowed or tolerated even if to a very limited
degree: as a result, the slight possibility of influencing public opinion-

which is never completely nil- may be a motivation as well. The private
convictions of party members differ in no way, however, from the
opinions of those who never join the party. The leaders are perfectly
aware of this and that is why they are increasingly interested only in the
public performances of party members. It is why, moreover, they no
longer seek to use the party as a whole as a legitimating entity. Thus the
self-legitimation of the regime became identical with the self-legitim-
ation of its leading functionaries and bureaucrats and a section of the
top technocracy.
A second divergent feature of the East European pattern from the
Soviet paradigm is that nationalism, national power and dignity could
never be used successfully as forms of auxiliary legitimation. Such
attempts when made have been rejected with contempt by the popu-
lation of the occupied countries. Only in Romania- the only East
European country that plays the game of sham independence and that
has never lost certain 'Mussolinist' features of totalitarianism -could it
achieve a degree of success.
Some East European countries established pluralistic-legal states
after the Second World War, limited in their freedom of action by the
presence of the Soviet Army and its direct interventions in the internal
balance of power. These regimes were transformed in accordance with
Stalin's plans into fascist-totalitarian states. Mini-Stalins were created,
whose artificial charisma was but the emanation of the charisma of the
'Father of the Peoples'. They could be dismissed, imprisoned and
murdered by him, even their show-trials were fabricated by tht' Soviet
secret police. Not even their fellow-murderers believed in them, for they
knew they were complete non-entities, playing roles in a drama whose
origin was unknown to the population, and even to party members.
Here too fascism died with Stalin, abruptly in Hungary and more slowly
in the other states. Unlike in the Soviet Union, however, the legitimation
crisis did not admit of a solution in these countries.
Of course in speaking of attitudes and motives in these regimes we are
speaking of the 'average' for it is the average that counts. Among the
leaders there are those cynical enough to think of nothing but their
privileged situation; there are bureaucrats ready to serve every possible
regime and again there are believers loyal in their heart to the cause of
socialism, some of them not even identifying the existing form of it with
their 'ideal' of it. Such personal differences, however, must be subsumed
in a sociological explanation.
Hungary repeated -for a while, after the defeat of the 1956
revolution -the Leninist model of self-justification. The Kadar govern-

ment in its early period made use of a negative legitimation. It constantly
referred to the legitimation crisis of the preceding government (to the
crimes of the 'Rakosi-clique' and the 'counter-revolution') and com-
bined these references with open terror. The transformation of the then
prevailing type of legitimation into a traditional one had to face
unresolvable difficulties in all East European countries. The only
tradition the rulers could conjure up was not their own but that of the
Soviet Union. That is why the 'leading role' of the Soviet party and the
'national way to socialism' had to be accepted and professed together.
This gap can be bridged only by a vast amount of pure pragmatism. The
ruling stratum insists, of course, on its right to rule, but the question of
what makes them legitimate rulers is not raised sincerely, if at all.
Allusions to the 'division of the world' as afact, to the necessity of the
Soviet presence, to 'order' as such (identified, of course, with the existing
order), in other words rationalisation through interests, this is part and
parcel of an increased pragmatism. With their defensive and shaky self-
legitimation the rulers are susceptible to auxiliary ones. Thus in
Hungary pragmatism is supplemented by the well-known remedy of
legitimation through substantive rationality. The government establis-
hed there by Khrushchev could never completely strip off the marks of
its heritage.
But legitimation through substantive rationality fails of necessity. If it
aims at transcending the limits of self-legitimation, it has to reintroduce
formal rationality, a kind of pluralism, and finally to tolerate a
transformation into a different system of authority. Failing this (and it
would mean the abandonment of authority on the part of the ruling
strata, which is an impossibility), substantive rationality becomes
nothing but a sheer rationalisation of the pragmatism of the
government, a rationalisation which must occasionally be combined
with the open and brutal display and use of non-legitimate power, once
again in a pragmatic way. For this reason the permanence of the
legitimation crisis in East Europe is due not solely to the fact that the
social fantasy of the population preserves the image of an alternative
and at the same time exemplary system of authority but also because of
the incapability of the ruling strata to elaborate a meaningful and
binding formula of self-legitimation and because of the lack of a party
internalising and representing it publicly. These three components are
inter-related and shape the total pattern.
NOTES
I. Max Weber, Wirtschaft und Gese/lschaft (Til bingen, 1972) pp. 16-17. In the
German original the terms 'exemplary' and 'binding' are respectively
vorbildlich and verbindlich.
2. V. I. Lenin, 'The Deception of the People' (speech of 19 May 1919) cited in
Robert Conquest, The Great Terror (London-Melbourne, 1968) p. 6.
3. Cited ibid., p. 7.
4. See Raphael R. Abramovitch, The Soviet Revolution (London, 1962) p. 288,
cited Conquest, p. 129.
5. See George Konrad and Ivan Szelenyi, The Intellectuals on the Road to Class
Power, translated by Andrew Arato and Richard E. Allen (New York-
London, 1979) and T. H. Rigby, 'A Conceptual Approach to Authority,
Power and Policy in the USSR', in Rigby, Brown and Reddaway, op. cit.
6. Alastair Davidson, 'History of the Italian Communist Party' (unpublished
manuscript: quoted by permission of the author).
7. Cited from the Enciclopedia Italiana by Robert C. Tucker, The Soviet
Political Mind. Studies in Stalinism and Post-Stalin Change (London, 1963)
p. 4.
4 Paternalism as a Mode
of Legitimation in
Soviet-type Societies
Ferenc Feher
Dostoevsky's famous and malevolent aper;u that one of socialism's

main attractions for the legendary 'man in the street' is his fear of having
an opinion of his own has been regarded by generations of socialists as
an enemy slander. As far as the first anti-capitalist and paternalist-
socialist movements of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries
are concerned, it undoubtedly was a slanderous statement, for what
these movements feared most and what they sought a protecting
authority against was famine and the elementary difficulties of physical
self-reproduction. Their problems were not those resulting from the
subtle difficulties of a life led as an individual. If one looks closely at the
model case, that of the famous sans-culottes of 1793-4 and their anti-
capitalist socio-economic programme of maximisation, one will discern
the much discussed problem of bread -in a literal sense -behind their
demands for the terroristic-paternalist state authority that turned out to
be so murderous, for themselves included.
In the case of Russia, it took 40 years before the consequences set in
train by the Revolution confronted socialists with a system whose actual
operative principle of legitimation was paternalism in the form of the
fear of 'freedom', of escape from having an opinion of one's own. I
should like to quote here at some length from a 1979 article in The
Guardian dealing with present-day Romania:
... Sanda ... didn't hesitate when I asked her if there was anything
she thought was really positive, even exemplary, about today's
Romania. 'Security', she said. 'Here there isn't the terrorism you find
in Germany or Italy. There is no violence. I can come home alone at
64
Paternalism as a Mode of Legitimation 65
night after the movies without worrying about getting mugged, which
you can't do in Paris. Here you don't have a landlord who can chase
you out of your apartment, and when you finish school you're
guaranteed a job'. In her younger days Sanda thought about
emigrating to the West -'because you have freedom'. Freedom to
read what you like, to travel when you want to, to express an opinion
outside your own four walls, to be able to protest a government
decision (the ban on abortion, for instance) without becoming a rebel,
and the freedom not to have to live in constant fear of attracting
attention from the ubiquitous police. But now she no longer considers
leaving: 'I have a child and I don't want the responsibility of taking
him into your world' -a world of uncertainty, conflict and
competition. It frightens her: 'In the West you've got to struggle so
hard to make a living that everybody becomes self-centred'. 1
This is indeed an exemplary quotation in which one can find all the
motives for paternalism found in the Soviet-type societies of today:
the fear of external dangers, of uncertainty and competition, of a
performance-centred society; even the ostensibly moral arguments
directed against the self-centred man of capitalism. In this quotation,
state paternalism appears as an actually functioning mode of legitim-
ation that determines the life strategy of the woman in question. In
addition, hers is a sincere and objective statement: she knows that she
pays with freedom for a 'guaranteed' life. Obviously it would be totally
pointless to argue with her, for instance to mention that there is, of
course, plenty of crime in every large 'socialist' city (especially those in
Russia) or perhaps that there is also another type of violence practised
there by the state itself (in mental asylums and prisons, against
dissidents). It would prove equally pointless to enumerate the various
guarantees existing in capitalist life (such as, for instance, trade-union
protection in many Western countries), for she is aware of these facts.
Behind such a dogged determination there is generally an existential
choice, and in her case it is a choice against freedom and for paternal
authority. This chapter seeks to prove that this is not an eccentric
individual decision but a powerful new mode oflegitimation accepted by
large masses of people in Eastern European countries with systems of
the Soviet type. 2
Since when is it appropriate to speak of paternalism as an operative,
even if auxiliary, mode oflegitimation in Soviet-type societies? In a very
abstract way one could of course assert that from the early 1930s on
there have constantly been elements of paternalism in Soviet society (for

those who have studied this history or 'lived it', it will suffice to mention
the epitheton ornans of Stalin as the 'father of the Soviet peoples').
Equally undeniable are the roots of such a paternalism in Tsarist Russia.
One should only remember the popular reference to the Tsar as 'father'
and the symbolic fact that the executed leaders of the Narodnaya Volya
group who assassinated Alexander II were branded after their execution
as 'parricides'. This would be, however, a very superficial characteris-
ation of a social constellation, a substitution of what can be called
paternalism proper (whose structure I will analyse in detail) by merely
external and not specifically characteristic features shared by any
authoritarian rule. In a sense, what has been described by the Romanian
woman in the above quotation as an autobiographical fact (the period of
her youth when she longed for the freedom of the West in contrast with
her mature years when she swapped this ideal for the 'guaranteed'
existence of paternalism) is also an historical distinction. I am convinced
that one cannot speak of paternalism proper in a sociologically relevant
sense, as an independent and operative mode oflegitimating the Soviet-
type system, either in the Leninist or in the Stalinist period, and that
paternalism is an original invention of the post-Stalin leadership, indeed
their major contribution to conservative statesmanship.
In the Leninist period, this true imitation of the Jacobin dictatorship,
everything was fluid, undecided and transitory: the regime did not
possess any legitimating principle sensu stricto. Under Stalin's indus-
trialising tyranny, legitimation was of the charismatic type combined
with a totalitarian state. 3 As already mentioned, in this period, in
pointed contrast with the previous Leninist one from which earlier
elements of an 'irreverent Enlightenment' had not wholly disappeared,
an authoritarian turn took place. Not only was it ti Ia mode to address
Stalin as the highest, the ultimate personal authority on every question
of social life, but- at least once, during the war- he seems to have
become in fact a 'father figure'. Even if there is no reason to challenge the
description of the political climate under Stalin as spelled out in 1961 by
Nikolai Shvernik, previously one of Stalin's political sycophants, who
characterised the situation in vast regions (the Ukraine and Belorussia)
as verging on open revolt, yet it seems that the famous battle-cry of the
Soviet soldier: 'Za rodinu, za Stalina' (For the Motherland! For Stalin!)
was not just something imposed on them by coercion. It was an attitude
deeply similar to that of the imploring choir of the people in Boris
Godunov when they are constantly whipped to display more fervour but
yet do actually feel, and not just pretend to feel, the need for a strong
paternal authority to come who can relieve the utter misery of the
people's life. There are many testimonies to the typically Russian feeling
that by 'being loyal to the ruler' and by their valiant efforts and immense
sacrifice of blood people can hope to have 'earned' a milder rule. Even
Churchill fostered similar hopes after his conversations with Stalin. And
although we are now in possession of a crucial piece of literary evidence
in Solzhenitsyn's Ivan Denisovich, who revoked in retrospect his
patriotic decision to volunteer for the front on the first day of war, which
proves that this feeling had decisively receded, Stalin's funeral, when the
hysterical, sobbing and lamenting masses around his catafalque could
hardly be checked by the authorities, demonstrated that it had not
evaporated without trace.
Nonetheless, Stalin's rule cannot be described as a consolidated
paternalistic conservatism and no one was more fully aware of this than
his Old Guard, to whom the enormous task was bequeathed of
consolidating the regime without his personal authority. Stalin's policies
placed the population under a constant threat and deprived them of the
guarantees without which paternalism is meaningless. His unceasing
inward-directed wars of extermination made elementary existential
security so unstable that vast masses of people never knew whether the
next day would bring a continuation of their usual way oflife or instead
a concentration camp or 'population transfer' to some remote, un-
known and virtually uninhabitable region. Robert Conquest is right in
my opinion when he ascribes the elimination ofYezhov, the director of
Stalin's 'Great Purge', at least partly to the fact that the latter had
assumed such dimensions as to threaten the whole urban population.
Even today the Soviet Union has not yet fully recovered from the
Stalinist treatment of agriculture and the peasantry. While the Soviet
peoples undeniably bore the brunt of the Second World War, there can
be little doubt that Stalin's lunatic purges of his army's officer corps were
primarily responsible for the astronomical number of Red Army
casualties which, together with the civilian victims, totalled something
like a demographic catastrophe. The collective punishments which
Stalin planned and implemented after the war, meted out to whole
nations and regions as well as to his own POWs (punished for the simple
fact of their surrender for which the 'Father of Nations' was for the most
part responsible), and involving millions of people, showed that no halt
was intended to this policy. His was a rule that could occasionally trigger
otT at the one extreme hysterical symptoms of dedication on the part of
desperate crowds looking for a redeemer, or at the other extreme an
animal hatred, but which cannot reasonably be termed paternalism if we
include in this concept essential measures to protect the population and

provide guarantees for their daily lives.
Despite Stalin's quarter of a century of unquestioned dominance in
the Soviet Union (if we date the beginning of his autocracy from the late
1920s), despite his unparalleled power over every aspect of social life in
this vast country, Stalin's rule remained provisional, it still did not
'consolidate the achievements of October'. The Stalinist leadership after
and without Stalin simply had to find some way out of the network of
social tensions that they inherited, a task made all the more difficult in
that they were left without the one great resource enjoyed by the
previous rule: charisma. One has very few insights into the decision-
making processes of the Soviet leadership (such unexpected acts of
'lifting the lid' as Khrushchev's Memoirs show a colourful and bizarre,
but obviously inaccurate and partial view of it, full of self-excusing lies)
and consequently we can only guess at how they actually attained to
their sole original invention, the system of paternalistic dictatorship. On
the basis of analogy with the decisioQ-making of a leadership about
which I have detailed knowledge, however, namely that of Hungary
under 'Kadarism', I think it likely that they found it in a 'somnambulist'
way, by trial and error.
The task was twofold: on the one hand, the dictatorship, the
authoritarian rule of the Soviet power elite which precluded democracy
in any form, had to be maintained or even fortified, and parallel to this, a
certain degree of continuity with the past had to be preserved lest people
forget the time of dies irae, the great terror, lest they ever get the
ludicrous idea that along with the criticism of the 'cult of personality'
reckless bourgeois liberties were to be tolerated in Soviet society.lt was a
highly symbolic incident that very shortly after the Twentieth Congress,
the Soviet press attacked, of all people, Yaroshenko, the naive believer
who years earlier, still in Stalin's lifetime, had appealed against Stalin's
'theoretical errors in political economy' to Stalin's own Political Bureau
and who after the de-Stalinising Twentieth Congress transgressed two
absolutely inviolable norms. Firstly, he arrogated to himself the role of
having been right prior to the party, and secondly, he demanded further
democratisation. Such claims clearly remained intolerable for the post-
Stalin leadership. On the other hand, however, they all seem to have
understood, though obviously in varying degrees, that oppression had
to be rationalised, that political tyranny had somehow to be coupled
with a certain paternal care for the average citizen, in short that the
system must become to some extent reciprocal. In a sense, the
Hungarian revolution of 1956 and its aftermath can serve as a model
case to study the new, 'streamlined' Soviet policy. Hannah Arendt was
unquestionably right when she wrote that had Stalin lived during the
Hungarian revolution (which is, by the way, an impossible assumption)
he would immediately have retaliated with a mass deportation of the
Hungarian population. Under the new Soviet leadership nothing of the
sort happened. The sum total of executions was, of course, terrible,
surpassed only by the repressions following the Greek Civil War in post-
war Europe, but they remained within the framework of that inhumane
'rationality' which has always characterised any reactionary regime in a
post-revolutionary situation. The Soviet goal was to intimidate the
population (and this they achieved) to a functionally satisfactory degree,
not the improvisation of aimless slaughters in the good old Katyn style.
But one can observe the reverse side of rationalised oppression as well.
The very fact that Kadar's regime is now regarded, and rightly so, as the
most liberal of the Warsaw-pact countries is evidence of conscious
paternalistic concessions to the population on the part of a leadership
which is at least intelligent in its oppressive policy.
The establishment of a functioning, consolidated dictatorship was the
real historical assignment that Khrushchev received from the power elite
and that he began to realise; however, this was only completed in the
Brezhnev period. Strange as it may sound, one can say that despite
Khrushchev's overthrow there has been, for nearly 25 years, a continuity
in the Eastern European societies whose main mode of legitimation is
now paternalism. Of course, the coup d'etat organised against
Khrushchev was not at all accidental. 4 Nor was the seemingly empty
slogan ofthe abolition ofthe 'cult of personality', this general laughing-
stock of all intelligent analysts of the regime, absolutely void of content.
It is only seemingly paradoxical that a consciously paternalist regime did
not tolerate a father-figure: in a deeper sense, it needed an impersonal
and collective one. The reasons are twofold. Partly, the power elite was
first and foremost concerned with its own safety and comfort and the
greatest obstacle to this was a tyranny personified in one man. Partly, as
has been mentioned, their innovation was guaranteed existence, and the
caprices of a tyrant as can best be observed at present in Albania or in
Romania where there are still unlimited personal rulers, is the exact
antipode of a guaranteed existence. In short, they wanted social
immobilism and Khrushchev's personality was far too prone to
experiments in the spirit of the Old Guard: he turned out to be
incompatible with the requirements of paternalistic legitimation. 5
What are the characteristic features of paternalism as a mode of
legitimation and as a social system? First of all, the power elite radically
and deliberately has put an end to all revolutions from above. There is
little point in terminological hairsplitting: one can, and perhaps should,
regard Stalin as a figure parallel to Hitler, one can, and perhaps should,
argue that many of Stalin's 'revolutions from above' were superfluous or
even detrimental for the Soviet Union (in substance or in method) but it
is unquestionable that he was a radical revolutionary in the worst
possible sense of the word. His revolutions of industrialisation and
agricultural transformation launched from above and executed through
the medium of a power elite destroyed existing social structures and
created new ones to a historically unprecedented extent. This could be
realised, however, only by the most violent means: by the direct or
indirect liquidation of millions, by the coercive transfer of equally large
numbers of people to places thousands of miles from their original
homes (a process in which the individual could not easily decide which
measure meant population transfer, and which punitive mass
deportation). During this period the power elite lived a half militarised
way oflife: party 'armies' kept the peasantry in check and under physical
terror during collectivisation and the campaigns of agricultural
'procurement'. This all came to a halt with the new paternalistic system.
Perhaps the last of such efforts was the Khrushchevite campaign for the
cultivation of the virgin lands in Kazakhstan and Siberia, to which
Brezhnev owes much of his reputation in the party but which was
generally despised by the population and regarded as a partial relapse
into Stalinism. In marked contrast with Stalin's 'revolutions from
above', the present leadership is demonstratively conservative and a
partisan of the 'no-change policy'. This attitude leads to sometimes most
reactionary moments of national consensus, such as hatred for the
Western New Left (viewed as 'subversive' elements) or of the Chinese
'proletarian cultural revolution', a hatred shared by both the politically
conscious strata of the population and the government. 6 This social
immobilism obviously has a beneficial aspect for the long-suffering
Soviet population, and only romantic New Leftists, neurotically
obsessed with their own grievances, can be totally hostile to it. After the
horrors of collectivisation, the great purges, the war and post-war
repressions, people want peace, tranquillity, no drastic changes. This
social immobilism is also needed -both from an economic and a
sociological viewpoint -by any paternalistic-protective regime which
has at least the intention of rationalising oppression. But on the other
hand it also makes positive reforms impossible. The most notable of the
latter is obviously the long-awaited radical reform of Soviet agriculture.
Highly revealing in this connection is the persistence of the 'third
serfdom' of the kolkhoz peasants, who could not freely leave their
villages because they lacked internal passports, for some two decades
after the large-scale conversion of kolkhozes into state farms and other
socio-economic changes had rendered this an anachronism that no
longer served the purposes for which it was intended. The reason was
not, in my opinion, the reactionary inclinations of the Soviet leadership.
They are, of course, reactionary enough, but they also have an interest in
solving the agricultural crises which recur regularly every two or three
years. But one of the social preconditions of such a solution, namely the
liberation of the peasant's person (he obviously remains a politically
oppressed subject even after this 'liberation') by allowing him freedom
of internal migration, looked too much like the sort of 'revolution from
above' which is repugnant to a system based on paternalistic
immobilism. 7
The second feature is that the population is now coming to enjoy
certain beneficial aspects of its political obedience in a tangible way. In a
sense, one can say that the expectation of the Soviet population for a
'milder rule' in exchange for its loyalty and heroism in the Great
Patriotic War was only realised under Khrushchev and the post-
Khrushchevite paternalism. This situation has three factors. Firstly, it is
manifested in the annual increase in living standards (even if one takes
into account the general irrationality and backwardness of the system,
the prerogatives of the army and the armament industry over the
population's needs plus the recurring agricultural crises). This new
policy means a limited tolerance towards the individual as consumer
even if the need system in this 'dictatorship over needs' is still 'planned'
by the central authorities. The second factor is a growing depoliticis-
ation of everyday life (more in the so-called 'liberal' countries, primarily
in Hungary, less in the hardline countries) and, thirdly, in connection
with the former factor, a growing acceptance of tacit consent, in contrast
with the Stalinist demand for (forced) positive support on the part of the
citizen.
Last but not at all least, the power elite, too, obtains its (the lion's)
share of paternalist protection. The semi-military vigilance (together
with the collateral dangers and tensions) disappears from its life. If one
simply notes the dress habits of the ruling stratum, the change from the
obligatory Stalinist uniform to the recent shabby 'Westernism', the
difference becomes immediately apparent. The purges are
'constitutionally' abolished, and this is one segment of social life in
which laws and 'legal' norms are taken very seriously. 8 Whereas Stalin
was an outright enemy of equality in every sense, the vestiges of a period
in which people believed in absolute equality were too strong to allow

the overall unequal position of the leading stratum to be openly
acknowledged and professed. Under Stalin's rule members of the
Political Bureau and the Secretariat practically enjoyed an 'open' (that is
to say an unlimited) bank account, or more precisely, they had no salary
but amenities in kind, while lower ranking functionaries had in-
numerable material prerogatives, but at the same time these facts had to
be concealed from the 'ruling proletariat'. In the new period, the
functionaries' prerogatives lost some of their 'naturalist' and unlimited
character, and there are sometimes even punishments for corruption,
but their unequal position (the relative proportions of which have
remained unchanged) is now a publicly acknowledged, firmly es-
tablished fact, a 'law of socialist construction', as well as an organic part
of the new paternalist system.
What are the gains aimed at and obtained by the ruling power elite
through this new system of legitimation? In the main, it is the growing
feeling of many social strata that it is worth obeying commands, that it
'pays' to renounce your freedom for you receive certain existential
guarantees in exchange (the ones mentioned by the Romanian woman at
the beginning) which you never received under Stalin. For a quarter of a
century, the absolute unpredictability of Stalin's terroristic caprices
aimed at individuals, nations and social groups could, and actually did,
trigger off the feeling, which is the most fertile soil of general rebellion,
that 'we are going to be liquidated anyway, so why not try to get rid of
them', typified by the atmosphere in the Warsaw ghetto before the
rising. This feeling of bitter despair has now disappeared. The new
leadership planned and achieved a state of affairs in which all
manifestations of a will to freedom are banned but in which one knows
in advance for what he or she will be imprisoned. A leadership now has
to be exceptionally unskillful and brutal (as the Polish leadership was
twice in one decade) to drive important social strata into violent actions.
Apart from the risks always inherent in civil war, people do have
achievements to lose if, as the result of an ill-considered action, the old-
time hardliners, the authentic Stalinists, return. I will briefly analyse at
the end of this paper whether or not this tum to paternalism has resulted
in a real consolidation of the ruling stratum.
What, then, are the constitutive elements of the system of
paternalism? First of all, the transformation of the state into an
authoritarian community which takes care of the individual's physical
and cultural reproduction, which provides the available range of choices
regarding their system of needs (including such 'amenities' as schooling,
health care, housing, etc.), which prescribes the recommendable modes

of behaviour, etc., but which authoritatively defines the individual's
scope of action. Let me be totally clear about what I am setting out to
describe. It is not the forced Gemeinschaftlichkeit of the central
authorities, the ideological representation of group interests as the
'public interest', nor is it the authoritarian character of those same
central authorities: all this is characteristic of the central power in all
phases of the Soviet system after the October revolution. The novel
element in the paternalist phase is the recognition of the individual in his
capacity of'suppliant'. That does not seem to be a highly emancipatory
achievement and indeed it is not. But it does mean progress when
measured with the yardstick of the Stalin period. Let me illustrate this by
two examples. The first is Stalin's command to all Red Army officers to
commit suicide rather than become prisoners of war, non-compliance
being regarded as treason and punished by concentration camp or
execution. And in the post-war period with the mass deportation of
Soviet POWs returning from German camps this punishment was in fact
extended to rank-and-file soldiers. But if the norm of behaviour could be
one in which the only alternative to continuing to resist the enemy in the
front-line was the voluntary self-sacrifice of one's own life, and this in a
totally purposeless way, solely for ideological reasons and at the behest
of a tyrant's caprices, it is quite clear that the individual is not tolerated
even in his or her capacity of suppliant. The individual had one,
obligatory, virtue in this regime: to endure passively what had been
meted out to him or her. The second example is less dramatic but no less
instructive. Once in the early 1960s Kadar was asked by a UPI journalist
whether it was the right of a Hungarian citizen to have a passport. He
answered in a highly characteristic way which provoked much derision:
it was the right of the citizen to apply for a passport. The derision was
undeserved. Kadar, as a genuinely perceptive statesman of the new
phase of the Soviet system, described the situation correctly. Up to
a certain time, say, up until 1955-6 in Hungary, it was not only not a
'right' (that is to say, a publicly tolerated act) of a citizen to apply for a
passport, but it was a very dangerous step, and if someone applied for an
emigration passport, it was a risk with unpredictable consequences.
After 1956, it became a 'right' to apply for it, in other words it was
tolerated as an act of supplication. Of course, there is justification in
being satirical towards ius supplicationis as an alleged right but the
situation is undoubtedly a novel one as compared with the Stalin period.
At the same time the following characteristic features of this situation
need to be taken into account. Firstly, the supplicant has to be an
atomistic person. Collective positions are not only unlawful, they are
subject to very severe punishments and this is true even if sometimes, e.g.
in the case of the Czechoslovak Charter 77, the authorities did not give
effect to 'the full rigour of the law' because of political considerations. In
contrast with Mussolini's or to a lesser degree Franco's dictatorship, the
Soviet system is not a corporative one, it considers political communities
or corporations of any kind outside the party as dangerous. It is an
ironical turn of history that a system that calls itself Marxist drives to the
extreme what Karl Marx so much hated in capitalism: the atomisation
of the individual, for the sake of its political safety.
Secondly, the suppliant has to be humble. This does not only mean
humility as a norm of behaviour, although a person who makes a scene
when being treated rudely by bureaucrats is automatically placed in a
disadvantageous position when appealing to a higher authority. It
primarily means a substantial principle: the suppliant has to ac-
knowledge with his or her whole attitude that the right is exclusively on
the other side, on the side of the authorities, that he or she is only entitled
to humbly request. But for that reason, thirdly, the majority of social
amenities provided by the state which can equally be granted, refused or
revoked, even declared unlawful retroactively, are not legally stipulated
rights. Paternalism and law are very largely incompatible, even if
sometimes ridiculous and pompous 'rights' are stipulated in Soviet type
constitutions, such as the right to domicile or to physical recreation. So-
called real socialism is, especially in this regard, a pathetic caricature of
early anti-capitalist and socialist demands, such as that of Robespierre
to posit the right to 'existence' ahead of property rights, or that of Louis
Blanc to stipulate a right to work. But, finally, every individual may
count on a certain amount of tolerance on the part of the state. Under
Stalin's successors, the state became a Gemeinschaft of(albeit restricted
and capricious) equity, not ofjustice, for justice implies equality, at least
before the law. But it is primarily in this 'familiar' sense that the state is
Gemeinschaft: all are its children and there is no other life sphere in
which and through which one might satisfy one's needs or at least have
them recognised. Every isolated-atomised member has to recognise the
unquestionable paternal authority, but having done so has thereby
earned his or her right to a certain amount of need satisfaction. (As to
how much, this is always mysterious partly because of the inherent
irrationality of the system, and partly because it is not good family
policy to 'spoil the children' by too much indulgence).
A second element of the paternalist regime is a system of centrally
defined and guaranteed life strategies for the individual. This has a
positive and a negative aspect. The first is summed up very succinctly in

the comments of the Romanian woman quoted above: there is no
unemployment, no landlord to chase you out of your flat, etc., but there
is health-care even if of unequal quality and not as wholly free as
advertised, etc. The negative aspect is that individual initiative is very
limited (even if not reduced to nil as under Stalin); one cannot volunteer
new ideas regarding new ways of life, for their number and scope are
centrally determined. Here once again perfect clarity is needed: I am not
referring to the fact that the regime is a dictatorship over needs, for this is
its general characteristic from its conception onwards, but of one
particular phase within it. It can be distinguished from the Stalinist
period when the individual only had a 'clandestine' influence over his or
her own life strategy. Everyone who lived in this period knows perfectly
well that even without belonging to a 'socially harmful' group such as
the former bourgeoisie or kulaks, whose members only survived, if at all,
by the mercy of the rulers, it was not an argument for someone to be
admitted to a job, a type of university, etc. that one had chosen this or
that particular life strategy. Just the contrary: often such a statement
was regarded as the symptom of a dangerous 'individualism' and
punished precisely by a refusal, solely on the ground of the suppliant's
individualism. As a result, in Stalinism one's chance to govern one's own
fate was minimal and, in any case, was not a recognised right. The
changes in the paternalist period are the following. The state-party
retains its prerogative to delimit the scope of possible ways of life. The
state has never renounced, not even in principle, its 'right' to mobilise, in
other words, to coercively transfer, considerable masses of people from
one part of these countries to another. Moreover, in one particular case
it still does practice it: in order to change the national homogeneity of
certain regions (in the Soviet Union, Romania, etc.). But, and this is the
novelty, the policy of forced population transfer is no longer aIa mode,
moreover, at least in certain countries, the voluntary change of
workplace on the part of the individual is increasingly tolerated. Or
again, the compulsion to labour is retained; with the exception of minors
and married women it is illegal even to stay temporarily out of
employment. The reason for this is very clear: it is only thus that the
totalitarian state can exercise its overall control over the 'whole surface'
of the individual's life. But, and this is a novelty again, within this
compulsion to labour, individual varieties, preferences and shades of
taste are extensively tolerated and this is why many people feel this new
situation to be the guarantee of work, rather than the compulsion to
work. Obviously, in the Stalinist period when people, even if they were
not deported to Kolyma, could easily be sent as slave labourers to

various 'great constructions' where the mortality of the workforce
reached or surpassed that of the black slave workforce on Southern
plantations, they did not consider it 'guaranteed' work. Paternalism and
its greater tolerance towards the individual was needed for such a change
of attitude. But a further innovation of dubious value is added. Together
with individual initiative, competition and efficiency are likewise
eliminated from work in 'real socialism'. The result, apart from the
armaments industry in which totally different mores reign supreme, is a
system of general incompetence and with it another advantage of
paternalism: the absence of mass frustration caused by lack of skills.
This form of neurosis so widespread in the West is practically unknown
under Soviet-type regimes. This is partly because efficiency standards
are not taken seriously, and partly because people if they fail in some
particular assignment feel that there was some 'deeper' political reason
for their being sacked, reduced to a lower rank, etc. Of course, this leads
to a general degradation of the workforce, both moral and professional,
in these countries, a negative realisation of that famous droit aIa paresse
that was demanded by Lafargue. 9 And such an 'escape from frustration'
into a world of collective irresponsibility and incompetence is one of the
main comforts ofunfreedom. It is a mass symptom with emigrants from
Soviet-type countries that they find life so hard in the West precisely for
this pointed prevalence of efficiency requirements.
A further element of the system of paternalism is its marked affinity
with a conservative-authoritarian family pattern and its hostility
towards traditional religions. Originally all predictions suggested that
the monogamous, father-dominated family would be a pushover in the
hands of the 'immoral reformers' and would gradually wither away
whereas the Churches were predicted to rather perish than yield and
ultimately to prove an insurmountable obstacle for the new regime. In
the 1920s there were indeed efforts to replace the monogamous family by
a more flexible and collective unit, but these attempts disappeared from
Soviet life together with all other collectivist aspirations. The traditional
family, with its emphatically conservative overtones typical of Russia
and of many regions of Eastern Europe, grew gradually into an ally of
the regime. The adverb 'gradually' should be emphasised for the alliance
was openly concluded only in the Khrushchev period and under the
subsequent paternalism. In the 1930s, during the purges- and this was
repeated in the early 1950s in Eastern European countries- the sanctity
of the family was not excessively respected by the secret police: children
were encouraged to denounce their parents, wives were subjected to
torture to testify as 'witnesses' to their husbands' non-committed

crimes, etc. But the paternalist period and its spontaneous statesmanlike
wisdom realised the advantages of an authoritarian type of family whose
reputation and inner hierarchy is sometimes defended even against their
own bureaucracies. For this is a fertile soil in which to produce en masse
an 'authoritarian personality' whose inborn ethos is uncritical
obedience to authority. The structural similarity between microcosmos
and macrocosmos is all too obvious.
It is here that one can find the roots of the general ideology and
practice of the 'partiality for order' in the Soviet personality structure.
'Order' has a double function in Soviet paternalism. It has a directly
oppressive meaning: everything should be done according to
commands, there are no pressure groups, etc.; the interrelation between
an authoritarian society and the authoritarian family is crystal-clear
here. The 'paternal' authority of the state-party over society, and the
paternal authority of the father- and of adults generally- over the
'younger generations' are promoted by every possible means, including
many legal stipulations which allow younger people to choose a
profession, to travel, etc. only with the written permission of their
parents. But there is a further conservative meaning of order as well:
while not advertised openly, it becomes public knowledge that the power
elite does not regard itself as 'subversive' any longer. As we mentioned
earlier, the work of the revolutions (from above) is concluded. This is
one of the reasons for which people who are ideologically outright
anti-communists have become staunch supporters of the regime in
the paternalist period, sometimes against certain 'subversively
oppositional' radicals.
Combined with the predominant ideology of the authoritarian family
and of 'order', the distinguished role of the old reappeared in a totally
traditional sense. While the first revolutionary governments were
composed of young or at least middle-aged politicians and their new
bureaucracies used even younger functionaries, even if the Russian
revolution lagged in this respect far behind the Jacobin period of the
French Revolution, the post-Stalinist leaderships are proverbially
'gerontocracies'. There is, at least, one reasonable consideration behind
this: the generally highly suspicious Soviet leaders want the proof of at
least one test of loyalty and reliability for admittance to the leading
circles, and the last occasion for such a test was the war, which makes the
youngest admissible functionary about 60 or more. But this is only one
aspect of a more complex problem. Together with the increasingly
conservative character of society, 'respectable' age (and, of course,
'respectable demeanour') belong to the necessary insignia of

paternalism.
It would be a mistake to consider the regime's unceasing conflict with
the Churches to be of an ideological nature. It was ideological in the
Leninist period, when on the one hand a generation of doctrinaire
communists regarded the prevalence of a 'materialist world-view' as a
precondition for socialism, and on the other there was a widespread
popular hatred of the clergy, as a pillar of the old regime, at least in the
cities. (And Khrushchev, with his usual predilection for 'Leninism', is
reported to have closed most of the churches reopened in the war period.
because of his militant atheism.) The new conflict that arose from the
inception of the Stalin period was of a more pragmatic character.
Churches are competitive authority centres (the Catholic Church
additionally even has an international world centre to obey, at least in
principle, and is not within the reach of the Soviet power elite) and the
system of dictatorship over needs does not tolerate any competition, or
any pluralism. Even in this regard there is a certain alleviation as a result
of the introduction of paternalism, although much slower and much
more limited than in the case of the authoritarian family. Religious
belief is increasingly, though not wholly, tolerated as a personal matter,
a matter of indifference to the state as long as two requirements are met:
(a) the given Church to which the believer belongs testifies its
unconditional allegiance towards the policy objectives of the party, (b)
the individual believer has a record of impeccable political obedience. 10
There is a negative proof of the relatively well-established character of
the paternalist phase of Soviet tyranny: its influence can be found in the
typology of opposition. The first and most frequent type of opposition is
that of the intellectual who- on the ground of his education, cultural
background and 'professional' individualism- can scarcely tolerate
either the authoritarian family or the paternal state authority. The
intellectual's revolt may assume various forms and take up most varied
(and sometimes enthusiastically collectivistic) ideologies but- unless it
is combined with organised semi-organised mass movements as happens
to be the case now in Poland- one will invariably find the revolt of
individualism under the surface. A second type is the technocrat for
whom the above-mentioned advantages of unfreedom, namely mass
escapism into irresponsibility and incompetence, with the collateral
technological backwardness, constitute a social scandal. Their slogan is:
'rather meritocracy than gerontocracy', rather a society based on
efficiency and competence than a system of passive obedience incapable
of technological achievements. The third type of dissident is the real
triumph of paternalism: it is the new 'fundamentalist', best represented

by Solzhenitsyn and his intolerant conservatism. The new
fundamentalist, whose main, apocalyptic, vision is the 'degeneration of
democracy', who does not believe in decadent liberties such as the free
press and seeks for a new paternal authority, instead of the present
Soviet one that has failed its early expectations and disrupted 'sound'
Russian organic historical unity, is a paternalist himself, with an
opposite political programme but with an identical intolerance and an
identical respect for paternal authority. If Marx is correct when he says
that reaction is determined by action, then the Solzhenitsyn type of
dissent is a direct product of Soviet paternalism and it testifies to the
ominous vitality and influence of the latter's principles.
In conclusion, I must answer a question raised earlier: have the Soviet
leaders succeeded in consolidating 'the achievements of October' by
introducing the paternalist mode oflegitimation? In my firm conviction,
only partially. Their partial success is due to their eliminating a system of
increasingly irrational oppression, which drove people to despair and
thus became a constant instigation to revolt. Yet this they have replaced
by a rational system of oppression, and they still have room to
manoeuvre. In principle, they could still make agricultural reforms
creating a conservative-individualist peasantry which would be a
staunch supporter of the regime, or they might go ahead with their plan,
indirectly constantly advertised, though publicly never admitted, of
'partial Finlandisation' of the Eastern European countries. On the other
hand, a new opposition has appeared on the scene, manifested first and
foremost in the revolts of Polish workers and the collateral and to some
extent co-ordinated actions of intellectuals in solidarity with them, for
whose demands paternalism offers no solution. Obviously, this new
opposition has a very long way to gv to achieve their goal. But this goal,
a pluralistic and for some participatory democracy, now articulated in a
more or less open way for the first time since October, is incompatible
with paternalistic tyranny. Their very appearance indicates the begin-
ning of a social crisis of Soviet paternalism.
NOTES
I. The Guardian Weekly, 121, 23 (1979)12.

2. Introducing paternalism as a mode of legitimation obviously implies
disagreement with Weber's famous typology. But it is my firm conviction
that this typology in tolerating three modes of legitimation, no more, no
less, is just as much an overgeneralisation as are many of Marx's equally

rigid typologies.
3. In this typology, I follow and accept A. Heller's division of the periods of
Soviet history as far as the modes oflegitimation are concerned. My partial
disagreement refers to the post-Stalinist stage. Even here, I do not deny the
validity of what she terms traditional legitimation but I find paternalism as
conceived here an equally powerful factor (and system) of legitimation.
4. Khrushchev's regime was just as transitory, although established on a
totally different basis, as that of Lenin to whom he wanted to 'return' (a
sociologically impossible project, of course). Partly he improvised again
with 'substantive rationality' (as Bukharin tried to do at the end of the
1920s) which would have implied a radical economic reform if it had been
taken seriously, partly he generated too much energy and bathos in exposing
Stalin's crimes, or at least the ones committed against communists. In both
capacities, he became dangerous and hyperdynamic for a power elite that
primarily wanted stability.
5. As for the present farcical cult of Brezhnev's personality, in which a man
without the elements of culture and with the taste of a Texan oil magnate is
awarded medals for 'further developing Marxism- Leninism' and acclaimed
as an 'epic writer' for his unreadable memoirs, I would describe this as
simple servility, albeit of a most disgusting kind. Personally Brezhnev is the
exact opposite of Khrushchev: he is conservatism incarnate. As such, his
cult is a personal rather than a directly state matter, and most certainly not
one which is dangerous for the new mode of legitimation.
6. Of course, I cannot attempt here to analyse the highly contradictory events
in China, but wish only to express my aversion against the unmistakable
jingoism of such attitudes (directed against the 'yellow peril') and the semi-
Fascist excesses they sometimes lead to. To illustrate the latter, I could
mention a well-known Russian intellectual of European fame and mould
who said in the early 1970s to a friend of mine: 'Of course, I detest them (he
was speaking of the Brezhnev-leadership) but if they are going to strike a
pre-emptive nuclear blow against the Chinese, I am morally with them'.
7. A regulation issued in 1974 stated that internal passports would be
gradually issued to kolkhozniks, and although specific residence permits are
still required if they wish to move from their farms, this change is imbued
with some symbolic importance.
8. For instance, in Hungary it is strictly forbidden for any officer of the secret
police (or any police organ, for that matter), even of the highest rank to
continue an interrogation when the name of a member of the Central
Committee has been mentioned in any incriminating connection by a person
detained or arrested. It is equally 'unlawful' to arrest any member of the
Central Committee without the previous consent of that body. I put
unlawful in inverted commas because this decision is not a legal one in the
proper sense of the word. It is a decree of the Central Committee which,
formally speaking, is non-existent as a legal body. But this only reflects the
ineradicable contradictions of 'socialist legality'.
9. A negative realisation it is for not only does the compulsion to work remain
valid but also, as M. Haraszti described it in his excellent book Workers in a
Workers' State (London, 1977), in many factories and various branches of
industry the worst sort of Taylorism and exploitation of the physical

energies of workers is practised.
10. That is why, according to press reports, political prisoners drawn from the
Soviet clergy and religious life are mostly either (Ukrainian, Lithuanian,
etc.) Catholics or people belonging to various sects. With few exceptions,
the Russian Orthodox Church lives up to its historical record since Peter the
Great, accepting the rulers of Russia, whoever they might be, as its lawful
superiors.
5 Overt and Covert Modes
of Legitimation in East
European Societies
Maria Markus
The impressively growing literature on legitimation has produced not so

much a further clarification of the concept as rather a number of new
interpretations and an extension of the topics discussed under it. This
extension has involved not only a more detailed analysis of the concrete
mechanisms of the process of legitimation, but also a multiplication of
the objects of legitimation: the notion of legitimacy is not applied to
social systems as wholes as well as to political regimes, concrete
governments and even to specific measures of governmental policy.
Despite this heterogeneity of approaches, there seems to be a
relatively wide consensus concerning the most general difference
between the pre-modern and modern types of legitimation, understood
not purely in the classical Weberian sense as the distinction between
traditional, charismatic and rational-legal forms of authority; a basic
change is seen as occurring in the very orientation of the legitimation
process towards different subjects, that is in the answer to the question:
who is considered in the given society as the source of authority. As
Zygmunt Bauman has formulated it, in cases of pre-modern legitim-
ation 'the ruler is seen as the repository and source of authority, and
instead of needing confirmation of his rights from another social agent,
he enjoys the unique capacity of confirming by his will the rights of all
other agents to demand and to command'. 1 Legitimation here is
therefore oriented basically from the top down. 2 Popular acceptance of
the social order- so far as one can speak of it at all- is assured through
the 'teachable knowledge of an ordered world' as total and com-
prehensive world-view, and not through the reflective consent of 'free'
subjects. 3
82
Overt and Covert Modes of Legitimation 83
By contrast, the modern type of legitimation is based on the

assumption that sovereignty is located in the people, in civil society. It is
this latter that has to delegate its authority to the institutions of the state,
remaining at the same time an alternative source of power and
maintaining its relative autonomy. 4 The very direction oflegitimation is
thus basically changed, though this does not mean that legitimation of
the earlier type disappears entirely. It remains as the principle of the
functioning of executive power itself, that of bureaucracy which obtains
its authority from above. But this now constitutes only a subsystem of
legitimation just as rudimentary forms of legitimation from below also
existed within the pre-modern type oflegitimation. Such an understand-
ing of modernity, however, raises certain problems with respect to East
European societies. In general they undoubtedly constitute an historical
variant of modern societies, as indicated by their economic dynamism,
prevalence of non-ascriptive criteria of social stratification etc. On the
other hand, they seem to be characterised by a virtually complete
absence of all the substantive conditions pertaining to the modern form
of legitimation (the people as the source of authority, the autonomy of
civil society and the possibility of formulation of and choice between
alternatives). In these societies a sole or dominant party constitutes the
repository of both political and economic authority and it integrates the
totality of social life under the primacy of the political sphere. This
unification of economy and politics establishes a global and all-
encompassing hierarchy of power, leaves no autonomy to the society
itself and prevents the very possibility of the formulation of social
alternatives. This, of course, simultaneously transforms the character
of the ruling party itself from a political organisation into a strongly
hierarchised bureaucratic institution. Thus while each and every sphere
of social life becomes politicised, at the same time the autonomous
sphere of politics ceases to exist. Such a system not only makes
impossible the appearance of any spontaneous movement or
organisation, but also offers no forum in which the needs and demands
of different strata might be articulated and a compromise reached
between the interests of different groups. With this, however, the very
process of transforming domination into hegemony, power into auth-
ority becomes undermined. For in modern societies this process
typically presupposes both an institutional framework of civil society
capable of connecting, of linking, the goals of the state with those of a
structured population, as well as 'that account be taken of the interests
and the tendencies of the groups over which hegemony is to be
exercised'. 5
Given the situation that all effective power and authority relations are
organised (at least in principle) from the top downwards, it is not
surprising that East European societies have had recourse to an attempt
to recreate, in a sense, the pre-modem type of legitimation. Power is
again legitimated in terms of a total world-view that encompasses both
nature and society, i.e. in terms of that 'institutionalised' Marxism
which constitutes the official ideology of these societies. To say this,
however, is to identify only one aspect of the function of the official
ideology. One must also note how this new total interpretation of the
whole of reality differs from traditional mythico-religious vehicles of
legitimation. Such differences may be seen in form, in content and also in
social function . In its form this official ideology lacks the directly
emotive and normative significance of traditional cosmic world-views,
while positively it makes the claim to be a 'science', i.e. empirically and
critically testable knowledge of facts. In its content it deals not with the
hidden, immutable order of the world, but with the 'laws of its change', it
purports to represent knowledge of the historically necessary future.
Lastly, it confers legitimation on the existing system of power not by
allocating it a sacred place in the preordained divine system of all beings,
but by making it the monopolistic possessor of this knowledge on the
basis of which it can decide with scientific precision and objectivity what
the long-term and 'real' interests of the main social groups are and
realise the common interest of all of them. In the name of this ideology,
the organs of the unified apparatus take upon themselves the function of
defining what these interests are and at the same time of working out a
just compromise between them, representing the 'interest of the people'
as such. The unique accomplishment of this institutionalised world-
interpretation is precisely this legitimation of a hierarchically down-
wards-oriented system of power and command in the name of a 'real'
popular sovereignty. Official communist ideology thus transforms the
principle of the sovereignty of the people into the sovereignty of the
proletariat (on the basis of its historical mission), and then, in a second
step, the latter is transformed into the sovereignty of the party (on the
basis of its specific knowledge, which confers on it the role of
'vanguard'). In this way a 'sovereign prince' is created though the
'modem' principles of legitimation are ideologically preserved.
Here the question naturally arises, why an ideological claim to
legitimation from below is made when all the preconditions of the
modem type oflegitimation are actually excluded and public opinion (if
one can speak about its existence at all) is socially and politically
ineffective in any way. Why is the system not satisfied with the pre-
modern type of 'self-legitimation' of a 'sovereign prince'? The expla-

nation lies in three main factors.
The first may be called the historico-genetic factor, arising from the
revolutionary origins of these societies, irrespective of the concrete form
these took in the different countries of Eastern Europe. Although the
majority owed their existence to the military-political expansion of the
Soviet regime, the changes introduced were revolutionary at least in the
sense of involving a total negation of the previous establishment. As a
result, beliefs in an 'ordered and preordained world' could not be
maintained as a basis for legitimation. This is perhaps one of the most
important components of the political 'modernity' of these societies.
The second important factor is connected with the ideological basis of
these regimes. Marxist ideology constitutes not merely an instrument of
legitimation but also the original impetus and basis on which these
societies were established. And in this sense the system is restricted by its
own ideology. Weber's dictum, according to which it is not the Church
that creates and perpetuates religion, but religion that creates and
perpetuates the Church is certainly only a half-truth, since once created
the Church not only perpetuates but also reforms the religion. It
nevertheless remains true that the very possibility of reformation has
definite limits imposed by the character of the 'religion' itself. Even a
purely verbal adherence to Marxism as ideology involves the indispens-
ability of such theses as that of the historical mission of the
proletariat. The latter can indeed be transformed into one in which this
mission is represented by the vanguard of the proletariat, i.e. the party.
But this principle of the representation and realisation by the party of
the 'real interests' of the proletariat and of society as a whole, being the
basic element of the overt legitimation of the power structure in East
European societies, perpetuates the need for constant reference to this
'ultimate source' of authority.
A third and final important reason, why the political regimes in
question claim legitimation from below is connected with the social
functions of the latter. For legitimation fulfils not purely the function of
preventing disobedience (ensuring the voluntary compliance) of the
population, it also has to contribute to the process of integration and
mobilisation of the society around settled tasks. Under conditions of
modernity, the state 'normally' contributes only to the maintenance of
this integration centred around self-identities originating in civil society.
As Habermas has noted: 'The claim to legitimacy is related to the social-
integrative preservation of a normatively determined social identity',
though 'the state does not ... itself establish the collective identity, nor
can it itself carry out social integration through values and norms, which
are not at its disposition'. 6
In East European social systems, however, as a result of their
'totalitarian' (in the above sense) character, the collective identity of the
society can be established, at least in principle, only through the state
which is in the position of having exclusive control over all means of
communication and socialisation. The process of integration has thus a
different character than in Western societies. Private activities attain-
though in various degrees- public significance, and regulation by the
state establishes not only a general framework for these private activities,
but also attempts to influence their content. Therefore intemalisation of
the goals and values posited by the power structure becomes - in
principle and ideally- a demand of the system. These goals and values
established by the collective wisdom of the party have to be presented as
connected with the interests of individuals and social groups, but in such
a way as to ensure the subordination of the former to the latter.
Such an extension of the political sphere, which 'etatises' or, at least,
attempts to etatise, the whole society including the private activities of
persons, on the one hand opens a new area for legitimation, but on the
other makes it extremely fragile and vulnerable, a characteristic to which
we will return.
If, for the reasons we have given above the political regimes of Eastern
Europe need a 'modem' type of legitimation, this in itself tells us little
about either the concrete forms assumed by the latter or the degree of
success they achieve.
Of course, neither the modes of legitimation nor the level of success
are constant factors, they both change historically and vary from
country to country. Here I must confine myself to indicating in
analytical vein some of the basic trends and specificities of the process of
legitimation as they appear today in the more 'developed' societies of
Eastern Europe, concentrating mainly on one important aspect of this
process, namely the relation between the overt and covert modes of
legitimation. It is important to realise that not only do the character and
concrete modes of legitimation change over time, not only can they
differ in the sense of a 'discrepancy between the pattern of legitimating
values in terms of which power is claimed and exercised and those in
terms of which compliance is in fact granted', 7 but they may also differ in
another important respect, namely in what is referred to openly as the
basis of legitimation and what is referred to only half-secretly, forming
two different layers which I term the overt and covert modes of
legitimation.
If legitimation means, at least partly, the verification of political

institutions and measures by their consistency with the socially con-
stitutive system of values, we face the question: on what level is this
verification supposed to occur? In cases where there exists a more or less
autonomous civil society, the latter's institutions provide the forums for
both the elaboration of values and for their confrontation with the
functioning of the political institutions. In Eastern Europe both these
processes are placed under the direct control of the state and therefore,
in this respect, there is an identification of the subject and the object of
legitimation- a situation rather paradoxical from the point of view of
modem legitimation. But, at the same time, as it is well known virtually
to everyone and even admitted in official documents, sociological
surveys etc., despite the monopolisation of the means of socialisation
and public communication, the regimes of these countries have suc-
ceeded neither in their attempts to transform 'popular mentality'
(Gramsci's 'commonsense' understood as a 'historically produced
conception of the world of the masses' 8 ) in the desired direction, nor in
the unambiguous assimilation of the 'high culture'. The causes of this
situation are manifold and, at least to a degree, different on the two
mentioned levels of social consciousness which we have distinguished.
Leaving aside the problem of the 'high culture', since it would lead us
too far from our immediate topic, we shall note two factors which seem
especially relevant for explaining the failure of the official ideology to
penetrate popular mentality. The first is its inability to deal in an open
and non-contradictory way with the traditional cultural and value
patterns of the societies in question. Undoubtedly the latter have
undergone significant changes (albeit not those officially desired and
proclaimed) due to widespread processes of social transformation
(industrialisation, urbanisation etc.). Nevertheless they retain a very
deep and lasting influence, supported as they are by the process offamily
socialisation, and often also by the institution of the church.
The second reason why the official ideology has lost its battle to
transform popular mentality consists in the fact that this ideology is
both incapable of withstanding the test of verification with social reality
(while proclaiming its testability), and devoid now of any real pragmatic
orientative value within this reality as well. In effect one of the more
significant changes in the post-Stalinist period has been the virtual
extinction of the 'language' of the official ideology not only in private
and semi-private intercourse, but also in the contacts of individuals with
'officials': its concepts, theses etc. are no more regarded as necessary or
even adequate when claims are made on institutions, cases are argued
etc., its use has been restricted to definite public occasions alone.
As a result no real link exists now between 'commonsense' and the
'state philosophy'. This does not necessarily mean that these two do not
share some identical values, they often do, but in quite different
contexts. This discrepancy between the two types of 'world-view' is not
only well described by numerous students of the societies in question, 9
but it is also realised by the regimes themselves, which therefore, while
maintaining their claim to an ultimate legitimation from below, have
had to give up their attempt to base it directly and exclusively on their
official ideology.
As a result we face two phenomena: on the one hand the historical
process of transformation of the official ideology into a kind of verbal
ritual, serving partly the function of the self-legitimation of these
regimes, partly the merely repressive function of monopolisation of
'public speech'. On the other hand, this ritualisation is accompanied by
the ever-growing weight of 'covert' legitimating practices. This process
is something different from the forementioned discrepancy between
ideology and practice, for it means a simultaneous reference by the
officials of the regime themselves to two different and often con-
tradictory principles in the same sphere, one of which is openly
proclaimed on 'public' occasions and the other in a more covert way in
dealings with individuals and smaller groups. This phenomenon as such
is not totally new, and its origin can be traced back to the Stalinist period
when, as W. Brus has observed, 10 the replacement of a revolutionary
legitimation by a state-nationalist one had already begun. What makes
it basically a post-Stalinist phenomenon is partly the extension and
acceleration of this process, and partly its combination with the
previously mentioned process of ritualisation of the official ideology in
general.
The existence of an extensive system of covert modes of legitimation
constitutes one of the most characteristic features of East European
societies as they exist today. Its role is not merely an auxiliary one, for it
is believed to be more effective, appealing as it usually does to more
popular, sometimes traditional, sometimes 'external', so-called 'petty-
bourgeois' values. Thus internationalist references in overt legitimation
are replaced within this system of covert legitimation by nationalist
ones; the principle of collectivism is replaced by a competitive
individualism, by the ideology and practice of 'bettering one's own lot'
and emphasis on familial values; the aim of humanisation of social
relations is replaced by an orientation towards 'modernisation', pri-
marily in the sense of economic growth etc. 11 Generally speaking, the
system of covert legitimation is far from being, or even attempting to be,

coherent. In this sense it 'adapts' itself to 'commonsense' which is never a
systematic world-view. At least in some of its elements it attempts to
introduce a kind of traditional legitimation for basically modem, i.e.
dynamic societies, for a type of society which was originally created in
the name of a radically new future and which- in its overt ideology-
retains the emphasis on the future and on the rational character of the
chosen alternative. At the same time it radically changes the evaluation
of this alternative itself, by transforming the overt thesis which refers to
the given social reality in these countries as the best alternative, into the
negative proof that any other alternative is non-existent and even
impossible (a proof which in the dependent countries of Central East
Europe often points to the external limiting force of the Soviet Union).
Such a change in basic perspective means at the same time a shift in the
emphasis of legitimation from the evaluation of the regime on its own
merits to the acknowledgement of its effectiveness as compared usually
with the historical past of the country concerned or where possible with
its less successful neighbours.
Of course, the sphere of legitimation is never restricted merely to
ideology and culture. Poulantzas was quite right in stressing that 'the
relation of the masses to power and State- in what is termed among
other things a consensus- always possesses a material substratum', 12
that the apparatus of power in order to legitimate itself is always forced
to adopt some material measures which are of positive significance for
the popular masses. The opportunities for using such material measures
for legitimating purposes in East European societies, however, is much
more extensive than in capitalist countries, where e.g. the redistributive
policy of the state can be directly linked with taxation policy and
therefore can have not only legitimating but 'delegitimating' effects as
well. At the same time, not only has a 'capitalist' state much narrower
possibilities for intervening in the economy, but when such intervention
does occur with positive effects for certain social groups, it can be clearly
traced back to the pressure or direct struggle of these groups and not to
the 'good will' of the state, whereas the latter is represented as the
underlying ideological motive of all state policies in Eastern Europe. In
this sense these positive measures of societal policy form an integral part
of the legitimating systems in these societies. And from this point of view
only a secondary significance can be attached to such (usually valid)
objections that the same measures could just as easily have been adopted
by a different socio-political order, since the fact remains that they were
actually adopted by this particular one, or that they could or should be
extended etc. In this sense, the liquidation of unemployment (in

comparison both with contemporary capitalist countries and the past of
these societies themselves), widened access to education and assurance
of some channels for social mobility (compared with the historical past
and with propagandistic images of capitalist societies), some basic
security of everyday life etc., all form part of the system of legitimation
of East European regimes.
The 'overall' success or failure of claims for legitimation is noto-
riously difficult to assess, let alone to measure. The absence of direct
signs of rebellion, of course, is no sure indication even of mere
compliance, and where there is compliance it may have nothing to do
with an evaluation of the political order as binding or exemplary or even
as effective (these three qualities being again far from identical). There
can be a number of reasons which bring people to accept a given system,
and even more which prevent them from rebelling against it. In a
situation, however, where there are hardly any legal 13 forums and
channels through which the interests and demands of different social
groups might be formulated, expressed and confronted with each other,
only completely privatised opinions or direct acts of rebellion can serve
as indicators of successes or crises of legitimation. In this sense the
legitimating systems of East European societies are rather successfully
insulated against any conscious social check and test of their effectivity.
But this phenomenon has also a reverse side. As a result of the over-
extension of the political sphere, the inconsistencies of the two layers
and modes of legitimation and the very lack of institutional channels
supporting the formulation and expression of conflicts, these legitimat-
ing systems are, on the other hand, very sensitive and vulnerable. A local
strike on economic issues in a non-totalitarian society certainly does not
constitute a substantial danger to its legitimacy, it may even belong (as a
sign of the society's 'openness' etc.) to the very mechanism of
legitimation . In Eastern Europe, however, such an event will always
constitute a political act expressing at least the instability of
legitimation. This is partly due to the politically illegal character of
strikes in general, and partly to the fact that it can be directed only
against the state itself. When the Polish workers, during the strike of
1970, had written on the gate of the shipyard in Szczecin: 'the strike has
an economic and not a political character', paradoxically this slogan
itself had a political meaning. This was not only because the demands of
the strikers have actually far transcended the purely economic sphere,
and had direct political consequences of an unprecedented character in
the history of these societies, but this very slogan formulated a political
demand aiming at the change of the institutional system of the state, at

forcing it to accept the legality of economic strikes as such. It was clearly
an expression of a legitimation crisis, a crisis which became even more
obvious when new waves of strikes recurred repeatedly in 1976 and
especially since 1980. 14
Poland, on the other hand, is an exception today in Eastern Europe,
and so is Hungary, albeit in a contrasting manner. But the exceptional
character of both countries is in a sense one of form rather than
substance, for they both express with untypical clarity- as a result of a
complicated conjunction of their historical past, specific cultural
patterns and the recent relation of social forces- certain tendencies
inherent in the legitimating system of East European societies in general.
The exceptional character of Poland is at least partly due to the fact
that it is the only country in the Eastern bloc where the state has an
'institutional competitor' in regard to the formation of the self-identity
of the society, namely the Catholic Church, whose success in this respect
cannot be explained merely in terms of the traditionally strong religious
attachment of the Poles. Its enormous influence today is connected with
the very fact of its systematic 'counteractivity', which has recently
become linked with that of the political opposition, broadening and
strengthening the latter's institutional basis. The second 'specificity' of
the Polish situation, although its practical importance should not be
exaggerated, arises from the fact that this is the only country in Eastern
Europe that, in the aftermath of 1956, has tolerated to a degree the
existence of parliamentary 'quasi-lobbies', whose activity was
noticeable for example during the 1976 discussion on the new draft
Constitution, giving an impulse to the formation of a more articulate
and overt political opposition, which emerged amid signs of a deep
economic recession and workers' unrest.
If Poland represents the one case of an open crisis of legitimation in
East European societies, Hungary serves as an example not for the
success of legitimation of the political system, but for an effective
compromise between the population and government. This compromise
is based on the one hand on the non-existence of any other practically
available and politically realistic alternative, and on the other on the
relative 'effectiveness' of governmental policies. The belief in being the
'most comfortable barrack in the camp', which is shared by the majority
of the population, combined with the acknowledged impossibility of
leaving the camp, certainly has a legitimating force. This however does
not make the system as such exemplary, though insofar as it generates a
certain kind of loyalty it may render its particular form binding.
Together with the quite general political apathy of most of the

population, this seems to be, at the moment, the highest measure of
success which the legitimating systems in Eastern Europe are capable of.
NOTES
1. Z. Bauman, Socialism the Active Utopia (London, 1976) p. 81.

2. I refer here to the general model and not to concrete historical cases, where a
kind of legitimation from below, as e.g. in the case of the feudal liege lord
and his vassals, could have existed in the form of the mutuality of accepted
duties and obligations.
3. See J. Habermas, 'Legitimating Problems in the Modern State', in J.
Habermas, Communication and Evolution of Society (Boston, 1979) p. 185.
4. I am far from suggesting that existing Western societies fully realise these
preconditions. Economic inequalities directly limit the political freedom of
the citizens and the institutions of civil society serve the hegemony of the
'haves' rather than open discourse between free and equal citizens. The
model described exists therefore purely as a 'formal' basis of the functioning
of these political systems.
5. A. Gramsci, Selections from the Notebooks (London, 1971) p. 161.
6. J. Habermas, op. cit. pp. 182 and 180 resp.
the Soviet Union', in T. H. Rigby eta/. (eds), Authority, Power and Policy in
the USSR (London, 1980).
8. A. Gramsci, op. cit., p. 348.
9. See e.g. A. Brown and J. Gray (eds), Political Culture and Political Change in
Communist States (London, 1977).
10. W. Brus, Socialist Ownership and Political System (London, 1975), p. 58.
11. Here I cannot undertake a more elaborate description of the concrete
mechanisms of covert legitimation. However, the contrast between the
latter and the 'official' or overt form of ideological legitimation certainly
cannot be reduced to the simple opposition between public and 'private' (or
less public) pronouncements. A complicated system of covert legitimation
exists which embraces not only legitimating references suggested in informal
contacts of officials with individuals or groups but likewise a whole gamut of
views which, in various ways, are labelled 'unofficial' and nonbinding on the
regime, though they are expressed publicly and disseminated with official
approval. Certain limited degrees of heterogeneity of political opinions may
be tolerated by these systems today as a more effective means of 'suggesting'
legitimation for policies which otherwise could not be stated clearly.
Naturally, the principles of covert legitimation need not necessarily relate
directly to the content of actual policies, i.e. they may or may not
correspond to the latter.
12. N. Poulantzas, State, Power, Socialism (London, 1978) pp. 30-1.
13. I place emphasis here on the 'legal', since in the majority of these societies
there exist today at least some rudimentary forms of political and
'theoretical' opposition (mostly among intellectuals and national, religious
etc. minorities), which in most cases have established some semi-legal or

illegal channels of communication, like the so-called 'samizdat' in the
USSR, Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia, or the 'flying universities' in
the same countries with the exception of the USSR.
14. This book was already in the hands of the publishers when the strikes which
gave rise to the solidarity movement erupted. While the full significance and
outcome of these developments remain unclear, they most obviously
manifest an open crisis of legitimacy. It is no longer merely a matter of
economic unrest which contains certain political implications, nor is the
question of political pluralism in this case merely a demand on the part of
'marginal intellectuals'. The demand for free trade unions as an alternative
form of worker organisation is an open call for political pluralism, that has
been formulated by the workers themselves.
6 Personal Dominance and
the Collective Principle:
Individual Legitimacy in
Marxist-Leninist Systems
Graeme Gill
A prominent feature of Marxist-Leninist regimes which have come to

power through indigenous revolutions has been the emergence of
exaggerated cults of the leader. While such phenomena have attracted
scholarly attention in the West, much of this has tended to see the leader
cult as stemming primarily from the psychic desire for self-aggrandise-
ment on the part of the individual leader concerned. 1 While the desire
for personal gratification may have been a significant contributor to the
genesis of leader cults, emphasis upon this aspect has obscured the
importance of such cults for their respective political systems. The leader
cult has been systemically important in a wide variety of ways, the most
obvious being its role in establishing the legitimacy of the political
power, position and prominence of its principal. This role was clearly
evident in the cases of the two cults with which this paper is concerned,
those of Stalin and Mao, and is suggested by the circumstances
surrounding their emergence: both developed after prolonged periods of
faction-fighting which ended in the political victory of the principals of
the respective cults. The Stalin cult burst onto the scene in the week
beginning 18 December 1929, three weeks after the official recantation
of the Right Opposition effectively marked the end of the leadership
struggles of the 1920s. The elevation of Mao accompanied the chengfeng
campaign of 1942-4. 2 This campaign expunged from the party's life the
ideological position of the Returned Student Faction, the group Mao
had displaced from the leadership in the years following the party's
defeat in Kiangsi in 1934. 3 The leader cults of Stalin and Mao sought to
94
Personal Dominance and the Collective Principle 95
legitimise these outcomes of political conflict within the respective

leadership groups.
One of the paradoxes of leader cults in Marxist-Leninist systems is
that the focus upon the individual which they have embodied has
emerged within a formally collective ethos. The parties at the centre of
such systems claim to be guided in their actions by Marxism-Leninism,
the core of which is belief in class forces as the dynamic of historical
progress. This commitment to a collectivist view of the world involves a
total rejection of the 'great man' theory of history. In formal party terms
this orientation has been reflected in a commitment to the principle of
collective leadership. The formal ethos of the parties has thus been
directly contradictory to the emphasis of the leader cult and should have
constituted a major barrier to the emergence of it. One of the more
interesting aspects of this paradox is the way in which the leader cult, in
seeking to establish the legitimacy of an individual's position against the
collective, could not openly reject the principle of collectivity. Instead
the leader cult has had to subvert this principle through the types of
claims made for the leader.
The first area in which the leader cult challenged the collective
principle was in the ideological field. As noted above, the principle of
collectivism constituted a central strand of Marxism-Leninism. Both
the cults of Stalin and of Mao attempted to overcome this difficulty by
seeking to root the principal of the cult firmly within the Marxist-
Leninist fram~work. Two aspects of this were of particular importance
in the ca,se of Stalin. The first was the attempt to project an image of a
close personal relationship between Stalin and Lenin. Throughout the
whole period of the cult, and particularly up until the mid-1930s, the cult
projected an image of Stalin as Lenin's most faithful companion and
comrade-in-arms. In the words of an article in Pravda on the day of
Stalin's fiftieth birthday: 'Stalin was always with Lenin, never left him,
never betrayed him'. 4 Or as the message from a plenum of the Leningrad
Soviet to Stalin in November 1931 asserted: 'In the years of rigorous
underground activity, in the years of the imperialist war, in the
victorious days of October, in the difficult days of Brest, in the years of
the civil war, in the years of the transition to NEP you were always with
Lenin, together you nurtured our glorious communist party'. 5 This type
of image is significant because it attempts to link Stalin directly with the
person who, for post-1924 Soviet communists at least, was the single
most important contributor to the doctrine of Marxism -Leninism by
which they claimed to be guided. The implication was clear: Stalin must
have been a true Marxist-Leninist, always guided by its principles and
in accord with its precepts, to have been so closely associated with

this fount of ideological orthodoxy. The link with Lenin developed
by the cult thus helped to establish Stalin's Marxist-Leninist
credentials.
However, more important in establishing those credentials were the
claims made for the Marxist-Leninist nature of Stalin's writings.
Although the transition was never completed, the emphasis in the cultist
image of Stalin and his writings changed from one in which Stalin was
merely the interpreter of Lenin's words to one in which he appeared as a
source of Marxism-Leninism. Elements of both types of image
occurred at all stages of the cult's development, but the second clearly
overshadowed the first after the mid-l930s. Initially Stalin was simply
the 'Leninist', 6 the 'true continuer of the cause of Lenin', 7 who upheld
Lenin's teachings and fought attempts to distort or subvert them. 8 But
this image of Stalin as the defender of a static corpus of theory was
qualified by the picture of him enlarging that body of doctrine. Stalin
was claimed to have 'further developed' Lenin's teachings, 9 thereby
contributing directly to the 'treasure-store of Marxism-Leninism'.
Moreover his contributions constituted a 'higher stage' in the develop-
ment of Marxism-Leninism 10 and even the 'furthest development of
Marxism'. 11 The picture of Stalin as a generator of Marxism-Leninism
is neatly summarised by the epithet 'Stalin is the Lenin of today'. 12
This image of Stalin as a source of Marxism-Leninism was paralleled
by the image projected by the cult of Mao in China. This was a central
aspect of the Mao cult from the outset. The cheng feng campaign was an
attempt to ensure the ideological orthodoxy of all party cadres through
a process of study and re-education. The most significant aspect of this
endeavour was the definition of ideological orthodoxy not in terms of
adherence to Moscow's dictate or of Russified Marxism, as had
characterised the previous leaderships and most recently the Returned
Student Faction, but of 'Marxism in the light of China's specific
characteristics'. 13 The cheng feng campaign was the vehicle through
which the signification of Marxism demanded by Mao and his closest
associates was to be brought about. In practical terms, this meant that
the documents studied in the campaign were overwhelmingly Chinese in
origin; of the twenty two documents, only six were from the USSR. Of
the remainder, seven were definitely written by Mao, and a further six
were Central Committee resolutions which he would have played some
part in drafting and which accorded with his views. 14 For many in the
party for whom this was the first extended exposure to theory, Mao must
have appeared as the source of this theory, particularly in view of the
calls in the press for the study of his writings 15 and the elevation of his
person which was taking place at this time. 16
This view received official confirmation at the Seventh Congress of the
party held in 1945. In the constitution of the party adopted at that
congress, it was stated: 'The Communist Party of China guides its entire
work by the teachings which unite the theories of Marxism-Leninism
with the actual practice of the Chinese revolution -the Thought of Mao
Tse-tung .... ' 17 According to Liu Shao-ch'i: 'The Thought of Mao
Tse-tung is . . .. Communism and Marxism applied to China. The
Thought of Mao Tse-tung is a further development of Marxism in the
national, democratic revolution in a colonial, semi-colonial and semi-
feudal country at the present period. It is the best expression of Marxism
applied to a given nation .... ' 18
By 1945 Mao had thus been elevated into a special relationship with
Marxism-Leninism, although the precise nature of that relationship
was ambiguous: Mao appeared as both the means of the integration of
Marxism-Leninism with the practice of the Chinese revolution, and the
source of Marxism-Leninism in China. This dual image of Mao was
maintained by the cult throughout most of the post-1949 period, 19 and
only during the Cultural Revolution was the ambiguity dissolved in
favour of Mao as the source of ideology. The following is typical of the
types of claims which dominated the Cultural Revolution: 'Mao Tse-
tung's thought is Marxism-Leninism inherited and developed with
genius, creatively and in an all-round way in the era in which
imperialism is approaching complete collapse and socialism is advanc-
ing to victory all over the world; it is the acme of Marxism-Leninism in
the present era; it is living Marxism-Leninism at its highest. Comrade
Mao Tse-tung is the greatest Marxist-Leninist of the present era'. 20
Thus both the cults of Stalin and of Mao were concerned to portray
their respective principals as standing squarely within the Marxist-
Leninist stream of thought. But neither cult was restricted to projecting
an image of the leader as simply one Marxist-Leninist among many.
What set the leader apart from his colleagues was not that he acted
according to the dictates of Marxist-Leninist precepts, because pre-
sumably all communists claimed to do that, but that he was the
interpreter/source of the doctrine. It was the transition from interpreter
to source which was of fundamental significance for the leader's
personalised legitimacy. Although the portrayal of the leader both as the
interpreter and the source of Marxism-Leninism clearly elevated him
above his colleagues, it was the latter aspect which eliminated any
possibility of a challenge to him based upon an appeal to the collectivism
of the Marxist-Leninist heritage. While a leader was acknowledged

only as an interpreter, his pre-eminence could be challenged on the basis
of Marxist -Leninist collectivism by claiming an alternative, 'truer',
interpretation of the corpus of Marxist-Leninist theory. However,
when an individual was acknowledged as the source of Marxism-
Leninism, and therefore his words and actions constituted a living
espousal of the doctrine, he could not be attacked for deviating from
that doctrine unless his claims to have ever been the source of Marxism-
Leninism were totally rejected. If the leader was acknowledged as the
source of Marxism-Leninism in the current period, by definition his
words and actions were in accord with the principles of the doctrine. The
question of a conflict between Marxist -Leninist-based collectivism and
individual pre-eminence was thus neatly eliminated.
Just as the leader cult eliminated the principle of collective leadership
as a problem in the field of ideology by claiming the right to define the
content of that field for the principal of the cult, it also undercut any
attempt to argue for the collective principle on the basis of party history
or tradition. Utilising a process of wide-ranging historical revision, 21
both cults created a picture of a close link between the party's pre-
revolution successes and the activities of the principal of the cult. In the
case of Stalin, the attempt to show him as always at Lenin's side was one
aspect of this. The cult projected an image of Lenin and Stalin together
guiding the party through all of its trials and tribulations. Although this
point frequently was made by citing specific instances of Stalin's part in
party successes, 22 far more important were broad declarations of the
following type: 'if one speaks of comrade Stalin, then one speaks of the
most important events in the history of our party', 23 and 'Together with
Lenin at the head of the Bolshevik Party, comrade Stalin led the
working class through the severe conditions of underground tsarist
Russia to the victory of the Great October Socialist Revolution'. 24 In
China a similar attempt was made to link the party's early successes with
Mao. At the Seventh Congress of the party a resolution on questions of
party history 25 was adopted which set the tone for cultist claims in this
area. Henceforth all the successes and failures of the party were linked to
the presence or absence of Mao's leadership; all the party's failures were
attributed to Mao's enemies and the successes to Mao. In the words of
Liu: 'Numerous historical events in the past have shown that whenever
the revolution was under the leadership of Mao Tse-tung and the
Thought of Mao Tse-tung it succeeded and developed and whenever
it departed from that leadership it met with failure or decline'. 26 This
remained a prominent theme of the cult during the 1950s. By projecting
this sort of image, both cults devalued the collective traditions of party
life, thereby undermining the potency of any appeal to such traditions in
opposition to the individual leader concerned.
The link between party success and individual leadership was
important from another point of view also. Both cults portrayed their
respective principals as being key figures in the success of the two
revolutions, and therefore of the regimes coming to power. Stalin not
only created the party with Lenin, 27 but it was he who guided the course
of the armed uprising in Petrograd 28 and, along with Lenin, created the
new Soviet state. 29 Similarly, Mao was the key to the growth and
strengthening of the party, 30 the author of the successful military
strategy, 31 and the guiding force behind liberation in 1949. 32 The
significance of this theme of the cult is difficult to over-estimate. The
prominent place accorded to the leader in the myths which developed
around the foundation of both regimes 33 made it difficult to separate the
legitimacy of the system as a whole from that of the place of the leader in
it. Once a special role had been attributed to the leader in the birth of the
regime, it was difficult to deny him a similar role in the post-
revolutionary era. The legitimacy of the leader's position thus came to
be rooted in the basic legitimacy of the system.
Claims for the leader's special role were not restricted to the pre-
revolution and revolutionary periods. One of the chief features of the
leader cults was the attribution to the leader of responsibility for all the
successes (and none of the failures) which the regime achieved. The
leader was responsible not only for the party coming to power, but also
for all the gains it made in the building of socialism in the post-
revolutionary era. Every major achievement in all areas of life from art
to economics, agriculture to foreign policy, were the result of the wise
guidance and solicitous care of the leader. According to messages in
Pravda on the sixtieth birthday of Stalin, 'all of our successes ... are
wholly and completely linked to Stalin', 'Comrade Stalin directs all
aspects of life in our country. He is the initiator and organiser of all our
victories, all the great undertakings in the construction of a new life', and
'Due to the genius of Stalin, in the epoch of Stalin, socialism has been
victorious'. 34 Stalin's words constituted 'the guiding star for the
proletariat, the workers and oppressed of all the world', 35 while 'Life
confirms the deep truth in the words of our leader and teacher comrade
Stalin'. 36 In China, achievements were often attributed to Mao
personally: 'We are proud of these achievements dear Chairman Mao,
and we know that we owe all this to none other than you ... .' 37
However, more frequently, responsibility for successes was attributed to
Mao's writings: 'The writings of Chairman Mao are like a key. They are
the key which saved us by opening the door of the prison that was Old
China. We must master them to open the door to the China of the
future', 38 his thought constituted the 'compass for all work' 39 while
'Guided by the great thought of Mao Tse-tung, the Chinese people will
certainly be able continuously to perform miracles on earth'. 40 The
leader was thus the source of all success, the reason for the regime's
steady advance toward communism, and the guarantee of success in that
endeavour; as long as the society and the party continued to take their
lead from this infallible source of guidance, ultimate success was
assured. In this way the leader displaced abstract Marxism-Leninism as
the supreme source of guidance and the key to the achievement of
communism.
The final aspect of the leader cults was the relationship between leader
and followers. Both cults asserted that the leader was the object of love
and devotion from those he led, although on many occasions emotions
more intense were suggested. A few examples will suffice to convey the
tone of this strand of the cult. For Stalin: 'My heart thumped joyfully
when I saw that comrade Stalin was coming toward me', 41 'Each of us
carries in his heart a fervent flame of boundless love for You- our friend,
father, leader and teacher', 42 the name of Stalin was 'on all lips, and
always and invariably it is in the heart of every Soviet man', 43 'In the
soul of each one of us there is one and only one image which governs all
of us. That is the image of the great Stalin', 44 and finally, '"Stalin".
Always we hear in our souls his dear name. And here, in the Kremlin, his
presence touches us at every step. We walk on stones which he may have
trod only recently. Let us fall on our knees and kiss these holy
footprints'. 45 Similar claims were made for Mao: his approach so
affected one sailor that his 'heart thumped violently' and he cried, 46 'At
1.10 p.m. on October 18, the most, most happy and the most, most
unforgettable moment in my life, I saw Chairman Mao, the never-
setting red sun', 47 Mao's presence brought 'uncontrollable weeping for
joy', 48 while to see him was the 'greatest happiness in the world'. 49 In
this way both leaders were projected as the objects of the ardent
devotion of the people and as one part of a deeply emotional and
perhaps spiritual relationship between leader and followers.
The intense relationship that the cults depicted between leader and
followers provides a clue to the type of authority which the leader cult
sought to embody. In terms ofWeber's tripartite typology of authority,
legal-rational, traditional and charismatic, the leader cult was clearly
an attempt to create and maintain the leader's authority on the basis of a
charismatic tie with his followers. Despite the substantial difficulties in

operationalising Weber's notion of charisma, 50 if this is viewed as an
ideal type, and therefore as something which can only be approached
but not achieved, the leader cult can be seen as an attempt to create an
authority relationship in which the charismatic element is dominant.
For Weber, the key to charisma lay in the perceptions of the followers; a
charismatic relationship was established when the followers believed
that the leader possessed certain qualities or powers which were relevant
to their own immediate situation. 51 The image projected by the leader
was thus central to the generation of a charismatic relationship. The
leader appeared to his followers as the person who could lead them out
of their current difficulties and overcome the problems which beset
them. The charismatic leader possessed qualities which endowed him
with extraordinary power, and was therefore 'the "natural" leader(s) in
moments of distress' 52 and the source of salvation for his followers; he
embodied a sense of mission, of escape into a better future. It was this
extraordinary power which set the leader apart from his followers and
which was the source of their complete devotion to him. But as well as
transcending his followers in this way, the charismatic leader also
appeared in a form of mystical union with them. This sense of union
usually was brought about through the direct association of the leader
with the traditional myths, symbols and heroes of the culture of his
followers. In this way he appeared rooted in the cultural milieu which
they shared. 53 These elements of the image of the charismatic leader
were evident in the cultist images of Stalin and Mao. The source of the
leader's power was his role as a generator of Marxism -Leninism, and it
was this which enabled him to lead his followers from the misery of
exploitation into the socialist millennium. The projected role of the
leader in the foundation of the regime and his place in the Marxist-
Leninist tradition of theorists paralleled the charismatic leader's
association with the traditional culture of his followers, 54 while the
popular love, devotion and commitment enjoyed by the charismatic
leader was reflected in the relationship between leader and led portrayed
in the cult.
But the parallel between the charismatic authority type and the leader
cult is not restricted to similarities in the image of the leader. One aspect
of the leader cult clearly accorded with Weber's view that charisma in its
pure form was alien to routine structures. 55 The logic of both cults has
been to call into question the party's claim to be the key organisation in
the society. Those elements of the cult referred to initially, the link with
Marxism- Leninism, party history, regime legitimacy and the march to
socialism, all implied an expansion of the figure of the leader and a

reduction in the role accorded to the party and the remainder of the
leadership. Although this involved a substantial diminution in the
stature of the party in the symbolism of the regime, the party remained
an integral aspect of these elements of the cult. However, in the cultist
image of the relationship between leader and followers, not only did the
party not appear, but logically there was no room for the party within
the relationship. The essence of this relationship was an elemental tie
between leader and followers, a tie that was not mediated by any
organisational form. In this sense the party was extraneous, and its
demise implicit in the other elements of the cult was crowned: the party
was replaced as the mediator of Marxism- Leninism and as the source
of all success by the leader, and this was recognised by the people who
directed their gratitude, love and fervent devotion to him personally. The
leader appeared as the sole legitimate figure in the regime's symbolic
web.
By creating this image of a tie between leader and led in which the
party had no place, the leader cult was projecting a completely new
authority relationship. This new relationship not only dismissed the
party as a significant element in the symbolism of the regime, but it also
challenged all of the organisational principles upon which the bureau-
cratic structures of the regime relied. With the followers expected to take
their lead from and be guided by the principal of the cult, the formal
framework of regulations and procedures and the notion of the linking
of duties and responsibilities with particular positions in the structure,
all of which was central to the efficient operation of the regime's
bureaucracies, was called into question. The leader cults thus con-
stituted a symbolic challenge to the established norms of bureaucratic
procedure and hierarchical authority. This contradiction between the
authority relationship projected by the cults in the symbolic sphere and
the actual operating practice of both regimes was resolved, at least
temporarily, at the time of the purges in the Soviet Union and the
Cultural Revolution in China when the principals of both cults
mobilised other forces in society to destroy the leading bureaucratic
structures as coherent, operating entities. Although the destruction of
the bureaucratic apparatus at this time resulted from considerations of
power politics rather than flowing automatically from the leader cult, it
was the image of authority embodied in the cult which legitimised these
developments. Indeed, it is no coincidence that these attacks on the
formal bureaucratic structure coincided with the cultist portrayal of the
relationship between leader and followers at its most fervent. 56
Personal Dominance and the Collective Principle l 03
The logic of the leader cult has thus been to undermine the principle of
collective leadership and to diminish the stature of the party in the
symbolism of the regime, even to the point of displacing it altogether. In
this way it has posed a major challenge to both the basic principles of the
regime and to its major political institution, the communist party. Yet
such cults have often emerged in political systems led by communist
parties. The source of this paradox lies in a number of different areas of
explanation. The way in which leadership and political power are
structured in these systems is one source of the generation of leader
cults. 57 An essential element is the desire of the principal of the cult and
some of his supporters to foster such a phenomenon. 58 A further area of
explanation lies in the structural characteristics surrounding the birth
of those Marxist- Leninist systems which were established as a result of
indigenous revolutions. The remainder of this chapter will be concerned
with making some preliminary observations about this link between the
nature of the regimes' birth and the generation of leader cults.
A central feature of the birth of both regimes has been the conjunction
between the context of the revolution and the teleological belief system
to which the revolutionary party has been committed. Indigenous
revolutions bringing Marxist-Leninist parties to power have occurred
only in societies with a very low level of economic, and particularly
industrial, development. Educational standards have been low and the
productive forces of the society underdeveloped. However, the re-
volutionaries have come to power motivated by a vision of socialism
which assumed high levels of class consciousness and of economic
development. The new leaders have thus seen their task to be rapid
development of the society along lines that were consistent with their
ultimate goal as stipulated by their ideology. But the doctrine to which
they were committed gave little guidance about the actions which such
leaders should take. The ideology was not, in Lenin's terms, a dogma,
but a guide to action. It provided a method of analysis, a framework,
and a set of basic assumptions, but no concrete directions for specific
courses of action. As a result, the revolutionary leaders needed a means
of coordinating the tasks of social construction confronting them with
the body of doctrine to which they were committed but the practical
utility of which was limited in the contemporary situation. This need for
coordination was met by having someone who could make the theory
relevant to the practice by 'creatively developing' the corpus of doctrine
in such a way that it was brought to bear on contemporary problems.
While theory remained important for the revolutionaries, a theoretician
was essential, and because of the claims for the infallibility of the
doctrine, there could be only one line of theory publicly espoused. This
created enormous pressures for the acknowledgement of one individual
as the theoretician of the movement.
In this type of situation where the urge to overcome economic and
social backwardness by political direction was generated by an ideo-
logical vision of the future, acknowledgement as the theoretician of the
movement was a key to political power. The mantle of'leading Marxist-
Leninist' therefore had profound political implications, and was one
which contenders for power sought to attain. This transformed the
leader cult into a major weapon in the struggle for political supremacy
within the movement because it was the medium through which an
individual established his claim to ideological primacy to the exclusion
of his competitors. 59 Only if he could publicly root himself firmly in the
Marxist-Leninist tradition and 'prove' this by unerringly guiding the
society toward the communist millennium could he consolidate his
position against rivals, both potential and actual. 60 Thus the way in
which the accepted qualifications for leadership were conditioned by
this combination of revolution in an underdeveloped society and a
millennia} view of the future provided fertile soil for the growth of a
leader cult.
The scale of the socio-economic engineering contemplated by the
revolutionaries was also favourable for the emergence of a leader cult.
The disparity between the social reality with which they were confronted
and the millennium they hoped to achieve was sufficiently great that it
could generate among many a loss of confidence and disillusionment
with the goals. Such a process could only be exacerbated by the rapid
bureaucratisation of the regime as the governing apparatus expanded to
encompass all aspects of the programme of directed socio-economic
change. Bureaucratisation brought with it a decline in political activists'
sense of involvement; no longer did they feel part of a crusade struggling
to achieve socialism against enormous odds, but instead were engaged in
the more humdrum tasks of bureaucratic administration. With the
decline of revolutionary fervour that accompanied the change in the
party's emphasis from revolution to administration, the individual's
sense of commitment to the ideals of the movement frequently was
strained. Under such circumstances a leader cult could be of positive
value. The leader personified the glorious traditions of the past, the
revolutionary foundation of the system and the early steps on the path to
socialism. It was he who provided the living link with Marxism-
Leninism, the key to success in the past and the guarantee of victory in
the future. As such, the leader provided a clear symbol of the
Personal Dominance and the Collective Principle l 05
movement's roots and of its aspirations; he personified the regime's

rationale for existence. 61 In this way the leader cult could provide a
source of confidence and of continuing commitment for the members of
the movement at a time when such confidence and commitment needed
to be reaffirmed.
Beside this decline in the level of enthusiastic commitment to the
regime's goals, the confrontation with the reality of ruling could also
involve, in certain respects, a devaluation of those goals. The revolution
did not usher in the millennium, and ideologically desirable social
engineering had to be postponed under the pressure of more immediate
demands. But what was important was not just that the goals which gave
the movement its rationale were indefinitely postponed, but that short-
term actions often seemed directly to contradict those goals. The clearest
instance of this involved the movement's commitment to egalitarianism
and its anti-authority ethos. These themes are expressed most forth-
rightly in Lenin's The State and Revolution, but this work merely reflects
the more generalised commitment of Marxist-Leninist parties to a
future in which the state will cease to be a structure which is alien and
oppressive to the people and in which political authority will rest with
the community as a whole. However, it was the direct antithesis of this
ideal which issued from the revolution. The demand for rapid, large-
scale, politically directed socio-economic change led to the enormous
expansion of bureaucracy referred to above. The colossus of the
bureaucratic machine weighed heavily on society, its presence mocking
the communal ideal with which the ideology was imbued. Furthermore,
the pressures for rapid development created a tension within the regime
in terms of the qualities demanded of individual members of the
movement. In the pre-revolution period, and even in the immediate
post-revolution years when the main task was the consolidation of
political power, the chief quality demanded by the political leadership
was loyalty. Those who benefited most from this situation were the long-
time party members. However, when the regime turned its attention to
social reconstruction, primarily in the form of industrialisation and
agricultural collectivisation, new qualities were needed. Knowledge,
technical expertise and administrative ability were required, qualities
which many of the older party members lacked. In order to mobilise
people with these qualities, the regime was forced to accept the need for
material incentives and wage and status differentials, with the result that
the nucleus of a stratum of managerial/technical personnel began to
emerge in the years after the seizure of power. Such a development not
only strangled the personal ambitions of many older party members, but
it also directly contradicted the ideological commitment to

egalitarianism. With these two central tenets of the accepted view of the
future, the communal ideal and the principle of egalitarianism, brought
into question by the imperatives of industrial development, a leader cult
emphasising the continuing validity of ideological principles and the
link with the past could strike a responsive chord among wide ranks of
the party. The leader symbolised the ideals for which great sacrifices had
been made and he represented the certainty of the future achievement of
those ideals, despite their current demise.
One further aspect of the circumstances surrounding the regime's
birth was favourable for the development of a leader cult. The
revolution brought to power a group of people committed to the
construction of a new type of society. Their accession to power may have
been popularly supported, in which case they may have had a wide
degree of popular legitimacy from the outset, or they may have been
greeted by a popular lack of enthusiasm if not open opposition. But
regardless of the regime's popular status upon gaining power, its
commitment to social change of necessity involved it in policies which
would cause substantial disruption to the lives and habits of the
population. Agricultural collectivisation and the drive for industrialis-
ation were only the most obvious instances of this. Such disruption
would naturally lead to a decline in popular support, and perhaps even a
substantial fall in popular legitimacy.lt was therefore important for the
regime to attempt to sink its roots deeply into the populace to try to
minimise the effects of such a development. A leader cult was one means
of doing this. The image of a strong leader providing the guidance and
direction for those who follow was consonant with the strongly
authoritarian authority figure typical of the political culture of tradi-
tional peasant society. 62 The cult could thus have appealed to the
traditionally-based popular orientation toward authority, thereby offer-
ing a sense of continuity which might have eased the break with the past
and rendered popular perceptions of the regime more positive. Such a
development may have been reinforced by the cultist image of the way in
which the leader was working for the best interests of the people and was
concerned with improving their livelihood, and by the affirmations of
love for and devotion to him attributed to the populace. Cast in terms
reminiscent of the traditional profile of authority, shown as concerned
for the people's interests and beloved by them, the leader as projected in
the cult could have constituted a potent integrative force in the society.
Thus the need for a medium through which the regime could establish a
sense of its legitimacy among the populace provided fertile ground for
the emergence of a leader cult.
The circumstances surrounding the emergence of Marxist-Leninist
regimes through indigenous revolution can thus provide a substantial
impetus for the emergence of leader cults, quite apart from the
ambitions which individual leaders may possess. Such cults, however,
have not been an inevitable outcome of the conjunction between
revolution in an underdeveloped country and a teleological value
system, but have been generated by a whole complex of political and
personal factors. Once such cults have emerged, they have constituted a
source of tension within the regime between the collectivist principles at
the heart of the movement's value system and the individualist emphasis
of the cult, and between forces for bureaucratic authority and regularity
and those focused on the individual will of the leader. Although such
tension may have been partly moderated by the way in which the cult
fused the person of the leader with the goals of the movement, this
tension has constituted a potential source of instability for the regime.
This sort of tension may be temporarily resolved with the death of the
principal of the cult, but it can only be transcended completely through
the institutionalisation of the system as a whole, and particularly the role
positions at the apex of the political hierarchy.
NOTES
1. See for example, Robert C. Tucker, Stalin as Revolutionary 1879-1929

(London, 1974) and Robert Jay Lifton, Revolutionary Immortality. Mao
Tse-tung and the Chinese Cultural Revolution (Harmondsworth, 1970). The
Mao cult has been much better served than that of Stalin in terms of analyses
focusing upon the political significance of the cult and de-emphasising the
personal aspect. See for example, Richard H. Solomon, Mao's Revolution
and the Chinese Political Culture (Berkeley, 1971). Unfortunately study of
the Stalin cult has been hindered by the extensive range of meaning attached
to the term 'personality cult' in Soviet writing, a meaning which extended
beyond the projected public image of Stalin to embrace all of his misdeeds,
and acceptance of this by Western scholars.
2. There were some earlier isolated instances of the excessive laudation of
Mao. Jerome Ch'en (ed.), Mao (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1969) p. 20.
3. The political influence of this group on party policy had effectively
disappeared by 1939, although some members of the group retained office
long after the cheng feng campaign was completed. See, for example, the
entries for Ch'en Shao-yu and Cheng Wen-t'ien in Donald W. Klein and
Anne B. Clarke, Biographic Dictionary of Chinese Communism 1921-1965

(Cambridge, Mass., 1971) pp. 127-34 and 61-7.
4. Pravda, 21 Dec. 1929.
5. Ibid., lO Nov. 1931.
6. Ibid., 7 Nov. 1933.
7. Ibid., 7 Nov. 1930.
8. Ibid., 7 Nov. 1932.
9. Ibid., 18 Mar. 1932.
10. Ibid., 21 Jan. 1953.
ll. Ibid., 22 Apr. 1950.
12. Ibid., 21 Jan. 1938.
13. Mao Tse-tung, 'The Role of the Chinese Communist Party in the National
War', Selected Works (Peking, 1967) vol. II, p. 209.
14. Most of these documents are reproduced in Boyd Compton, Mao's China.
Party Reform Documents, 1942-44 (Seattle, 1966). On authorship, see
Mark Selden, 'The Yenan Legacy: The Mass Line', A. Doak Barnett (ed.),
Chinese Communist Politics in Action (Seattle, 1969) p. 109.
15. Noriyuki Tokuda, 'Yenan Rectification Movement: Mao Tse-tung's Big
Push Toward Charismatic Leadership During 1941-1942', The Developing
Economics, IX (1971)94-5.
16. See a discussion of this in Ch'en, op. cit., pp. 20-2.
17. Liu Shao-ch'i, On the Party (Peking, 1950) p. 157.
18. Ibid., p. 31.
19. Although this role seemed implicitly to be brought into question by the
elimination of all reference to Mao from the new party constitution
introduced in 1956.
20. Peking Review, 27, l July 1966. Although People's China and Peking Review
are both English language publications, they reflect the flavour of domestic
publications.
21. See an early discussion of this in regard to Stalin in the collection of articles
in Problems of Communism, II (1953)3-4. For Mao see William F. Dorrill,
'Transfer of Legitimacy in the Chinese Communist Party: Origins of the
Maoist Myth', John Wilson Lewis (ed.), Party Leadership and Re-
volutionary Power in China (London, 1970) pp. 69-113.
22. Pravda 21 Dec. 1929, where it is asserted that Stalin supported Lenin in
opposing opportunists in the party is a typical instance.
23. Ibid.
24. L. Kaganovich, Stalin is Leading Us to the Victory of Communism (Moscow,
1950) p. 6.
25. This is reprinted in Mao Tse-tung, Selected Works (London, 1950) vol. IV,
pp. 171-218. This has been omitted from the most recent edition of Mao's
works published in Peking.
26. Liu, op. cit., p. 32.
27. Pravda 21 Jan. 1946.
28. N. Shvemik, Comrade STALIN -the Continuer of LENIN's Great Work
(Moscow, 1950) pp. 3-4.
29. Pravda, 22 Apr. 1946.
30. People's China, no. 13, l July 1950.
31. Ibid., no. 9, l May 1950.
32. Ibid., no. 17, 1 Sept. 1950.

33. I have analysed this process in regard to Stalin, 'Political Myth and Stalin's
Search for Authority in the Party', in T. H. Rigby, Archie Brown and Peter
Reddaway (eds), Authority, Power and Policy in the USSR (London, 1980).
34. Pravda 21 Dec. 1939.
35. Ibid., 9 June 1936.
36. Ibid., 2 May 1948.
37. People's China, no. 2, 16 Jan. 1950.
38. Ibid., no. 21, 1 Nov. 1951.
39. Peking Review, no. 44, 1 Nov. 1960.
40. Ibid., no. 43, 21 Oct. 1966.
41. Pravda 7 July 1935.
42. Ibid., 25 Sept. 1936.
43. Ibid., 8 Nov. 1945.
44. Izvestiya 7 Jan. 1947.
45. Cited in Harry G. Shaffer (ed.), The Soviet System in Theory and Practice,
Selected Western and Soviet Views (New York, 1965) p. 84.
46. People's China, no. 13, 1 July 1954.
47. Peking Review, no. 43, 21 Oct. 1966.
48. Ibid., no. 35, 26 Aug. 1966.
49. Ibid., no. 46, 11 Nov. 1966.
50. For critiques of the concept and its utility, see inter alia K. J. Ratnam,
'Charisma and Political Leadership', Political Studies, XII (1964)341-54,
and Carl J. Friedrich, 'Political Leadership and the Problem of the
Charismatic Power', Journal of Politics, 23 (1961)3-24.
51. According to Weber, 'What is alone important is how the individual is
actually regarded by those subject to charismatic authority, by his
"followers" or "disciples".' Max Weber, Economy and Society. An Outline
of Interpretive Sociology (Guenther Roth & Claus Wittich (eds)) (New
York, 1968) vol. I, p. 242, and 'The term "charisma" shall be understood to
refer to an extraordinary quality of a person regardless of whether this
quality is actual, alleged or presumed.' Max Weber, 'The Social Psychology
of the World Religions', H. H. Gerth & C. Wright Mills (eds), From Max
Weber, Essays in Sociology (New York, 1958) p. 295. It is the failure to
understand the crucial nature of the followers' perceptions which causes
some to deny that leader cults can constitute an instance of charisma. (For
example, see Robert C. Tucker, 'The Theory of Charismatic Leadership',
Daedalus, 91 (1968)740, and Raymond A. Bauer, 'The Pseudo-Charismatic
Leader in Soviet Society', Problems of Communism, n, 3-4, (1953)11-14).
Such a position fails to realise that regardless of how followers' perceptions
are established, the existence of those perceptions reflects the presence of a
charismatic relationship. Similarly, even if a cult does not lead to the
development of a ~rue charismatic tie between the principal of the cult and
his potential followers, this does not invalidate the interpretation of the cult
as an attempt to establish such a relationship. Weber approaches this
question in his discussion of the 'routinization of charisma'. Economy and
Society, vol. I, pp. 246-54 and vol. III, pp. 1121-48.
52. Weber, Economy and Society, vol. III, p. 1111.
53. For a discussion of the image projected by charismatic leaders, see Ann
Ruth Willner and Dorothy Willner, 'The Rise and Role of Charismatic
Leaders', Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science,
vol. 358 (1965) pp. 81-84.
54. In this respect see Robert Tucker's comments about Bolshevism under
Lenin as a charismatic movement, Tucker, op. cit. ( 1968) pp. 738-9, and op.
cit. (1973) pp. 33-5.
55. Weber, Economy and Society, vol. 1, p. 247.
56. The image of the relationship between leader and followers projected
through both leader cults at this time is a perfect profile of the sort of
relationship Weber believed would exist between the charismatic leader and
his following. In the words of one student of the concept, 'Such emotions -
devotion, awe, reverence, and, above all, blind faith -are what the
charismatic leader generates in his followers ... this relationship involves
abdication of choice and of judgment by followers and the surrender of the
mandate to choose and judge to the leader'. Ann Ruth Willner, Charismatic
Political Leadership. A Theory, Research Monograph, no. 32 (Center of
International Studies, Princeton University, 1968), p. 6.
57. I have discussed this point in regard to the Soviet Union in 'The Soviet
Leader Cult: Reflections on The Structure of Leadership in the Soviet
Union', British Journal of Political Science, x (1980) 167-186.
58. Comments on the roles of Stalin and Mao in fostering the early development
of their cults will be found in, respectively, Robert C. Tucker, 'The Rise of
Stalin's Personality Cult', American Historical Review, 84 (1979)347-{)6,
and Stuart Schram, Mao Tse-tung (Harmondsworth, 1967) p. 233.
59. This is shown particularly clearly in the case of Stalin and the way in which
his cult was developed initially on the basis of the cult of Lenin, and of Mao
in terms of the political object of the cheng feng campaign. See respectively,
Gill, 'Political Myth ... ', and Tokuda, op. cit.
60. The fluid and non-institutionalised nature of leadership structures in this
type of regime enhances the importance of the symbolic weapon in political
conflict. This argument has been developed in my paper 'The Soviet Leader
Cult ... '.
61. This could also be an important function of a leader cult when the
transformative period of a regime's life has ended and it enters the 'post-
mobilization phase'. (The concept comes from Richard Lowenthal, 'The
Ruling Party in a Mature Society', Mark G. Field (ed. ), Social Consequences
of Modernization in Communist Societies (Baltimore, 1976) p. 81. With a
'revolution from above' having set the country on firm socialist foundations
and determined its future course of development, the continued political
monopoly of the regime becomes more difficult to justify. A leader cult may
be useful in this situation by embodying a direct link with the legitimising
myth of the system and a contemporary reaffirmation and demonstration of
the relevance of the ideological principles at the heart of the regime's
perception of itself.
62. See the chapters by Stephen White and Jack Gray in Archie Brown and Jack
Gray (eds), Political Culture and Political Change in Communist States
(London, 1977).
7 Political Legitimation in
the German Democratic
Republic
Henry Krisch
'Legitimacy', according to one authoritative definition, 'is the foun-

dation of such governmental power as is exercised both with a conscious-
ness on the government's part that it has a right to govern and with some
recognition by the governed of that right'. 1 But in the case of a
revolutionary regime, only the former half of this necessary condition is
initially likely to be present. Revolutionary regimes, especially in their
'heroic', mobilisational phases, will tend to locate the source of their
legitimacy in an ideological doctrine and policies derivative from it. The
'recognition' of revolutionary authority by the 'governed' is not sought
from all groups in society, and not accorded to the regime by many (not
necessarily the same) such groups.
As the author of the definition just cited goes on to point out,
revolutionary regimes may acquire legitimacy as they actually govern,
although the use of force in (initially) securing compliance with policies
is not to be excluded. This acquisition oflegitimacy has two aspects: the
transformation of society by a revolutionary regime may result in the
growth of social groups supportive of the regime's policies; furthermore,
and more significantly in the long run, the revolutionary regime may
gradually come to respond to the values and policy goals of substantial
segments of society (including some of the very groups originally
sponsored and nurtured by the transformational policies of the regime).
As Peter Stillman has written, a regime is legitimate 'if and only if the
results of governmental output are compatible with the value pattern of
a society'. 2
The Communist states of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, as
T. H. Rigby has recently reminded us, display a characteristic pattern of
Ill
authority combining power with its legitimation. 3 Indeed, the politics of

Communist regimes raise the question of legitimacy in specific and
pressing ways. As revolutionary regimes, they share the general need of
newly established political authorities to secure for themselves at least a
measure of support in the attitudes of at least some segments of society.
Moreover, as regimes claiming to embody an explicit historical dynamic
principle, they are constantly called upon to demonstrate the conver-
gence of the regime's policies with the (ever changing) goals of the
population. As Richard Lowenthal has recently written, the crucial
question for such systems is the extent to which 'a stable value consensus
can be achieved between the Party elite and the masses'. For the leaders
of such a regime, he goes on to point out, achievement of such legitimacy
in the perceptions of the governed would also produce a 'self-
legitimization' which is central to the ethos of the regime. 4
Thus, if Communist regimes in their 'heroic ages' stress drastic social
transformation in the service of millenarian goals, their later develop-
ment is marked by appeals to such other goals as national assertion,
economic welfare, maintenance of social achievement, and other, largely
incremental goals. Significantly, such 'middle-range' goals lend themsel-
ves much more readily to performance tests. Utopia is, perhaps by
definition, always far away; higher consumption levels are a matter for
daily review.
Given the controlled participation typical of Communist states,
however, it is difficult to locate the source of legitimacy in popular
attitudes, despite the undoubted pattern of feedback from policy output
through popular perceptions to regime legitimacy. It is this dominance
of goals and means as determined by the regime that has always been an
important conceptual obstacle to discussions of legitimacy in Commun-
ist systems. Many analysts cannot visualise how to probe for whether
such regimes have passed 'the ultimate test of non-coercive obedience by
the majority of its subjects'. 5
If what Dieter Staritz has called the 'rationalisation of rule'
(Rechtfertigung von Herrschaft) rests on an ideologically grounded
vanguard role of the Party, whose position rests in part on its ability to
manipulate that rationalisation, it is also true, as he goes on to point out,
that the resulting norms are in turn binding on the Party. 6 The
legitimating policy options available to the Party are thereby limited;
the support of social groups such as the industrial working class and the
beneficiaries of post-revolutionary upward social mobility cannot be
readily dispensed with; ideologically relevant policy outcomes, such as
full employment and rising consumption levels, cannot easily be
Political Legitimation in the GDR 113
renounced. The struggle to generate legitimacy in Communist regimes,

therefore, becomes very closely tied to quite detailed and circumstantial
policy issues. Far more than is true for other regimes, for example, those
of the Western industrial democracies, Communist regimes to the extent
that they wish to rule legitimately cannot afford policy setbacks. While a
regression to policies of revolutionary upheaval and repression cannot
be excluded, the drift of Communist politics is toward a consensual
legitimacy based on policies congruent with the situation of the regime
and the expectations of the population.
It is the argument of this chapter that the question oflegitimacy in a
Communist polity can best be understood by defining legitimacy as the
intended outcome of a set of regime policies congruent with the particular
circumstances of the state and the aspirations of the people. Although
Communist regimes, including that of the GDR, may not strive for
legitimate acceptance by the whole population, they do increasingly seek
to evoke legitimating responses from ever-larger numbers of people.
Hence, although legitimacy is being considered in this chapter as
derivative from regime policies, those policies are themselves intended to
increase popular acceptance of the regime. As recurrent outbreaks of
popular discontent in Eastern Europe, most recently in Poland,
demonstrate, the ruling groups in these polities cannot integrate
autonomous popular responses into their Leninist-derived, manipulat-
ive attitudes toward mass political action. Thus, the regime's aim of
evoking legitimacy is inherently compromised by its unwillingness to
risk a genuine political response. 7 These policies may be considered
under two headings: some are policies common to all (or most)
Communist states, while some are particular to one or another such
regime. The former would include maintenance of Leninist party
leadership over society and, within the party, a 'democratic centralist'
style of governing. A common policy goal in economic areas is to
maintain economic growth and full employment. Examples of policies
specific to particular countries often relate to cultural and social
patterns. Thus, Yugoslav legitimacy involves a federalist, 'Yugoslavist'
resolution of nationality conflict, while Polish policy aims at reaching an
acceptable accommodation with the Church.
In the politics of the German Democratic Republic (GDR), both
general and particular policies designed to enhance the regime's
legitimacy exist. Thus, the GDR stresses the authority of the ruling
Socialist Unity Party (SED), and of its current leadership. It has elevated
the attainment of social welfare to a major legitimating principle. 8 On
the other hand, the regime, atypically for contemporary Eastern
Europe, has sought legitimacy by close ties to the Soviet Union. 9 The
tangled web of the GDR's relationship both to its German national
heritage and to its West German counterpart has provided the GDR
leadership with an enormously difficult problem of devising legitimacy-
generating policies in this area. 10 When one compares the use of these
three sets of policies in the G DR with the record of other East European
countries, certain intriguing contrasts emerge. In propagating the
special role of the ruling Party and its internal organisational principles,
the leadership in East Berlin has made a record quite similar to the other
East European regimes. In questions of economic and cultural policy, its
record is in many ways superior, but due to the heightened expectations
of the population, these policies are not generating the degree of
legitimacy that might be expected. Finally, the definition of the GDR's
special position in relationship to the Soviet Union and to 'Germany'
has become an increasingly incoherent and unsuitable instrument with
which to generate legitimacy.''
In the sections of the paper that follow, we will first review the
development oflegitimating policies in the GDR from 1949 to 1971, and
then examine the policies of the first Honecker decade, policies which
were designed to fill the GDR's oft-cited 'deficit' in legitimacy. We will
consider the degree of success achieved through these policies, and
finally, we will weigh the implications of these questions for the political
development of the GDR and its leadership.
The basis for the legitimacy of Communist regimes differs at different
stages of their development. In the revolutionary stage (for the GDR,
roughly to 1961/63), legitimacy was generated by ideological rigour, social
upheaval and its resulting mobility, and authoritarian monopoly of
political power (with restricted participation). For the GDR, as for
other East European Communist regimes, this meant the establishment
of a Communist party-state, a proletarian dictatorship under SED
aegis; transformation of the social and economic order, a process which
in the GDR began with land reform and partial nationalisation of
industry and finance between 1945 and 1946 and was largely completed
by the collectivisation of agriculture in 1960; the establishment of'party-
minded' (parteilich) controls over intellectual life; adherence to Soviet
leadership, even in de-Stalinisation. In short, during what has been
called the 'mobilisation stage' of GDR history, the regime's legitimacy
rested on the acceptance of its postulates of struggle and social
exclusion. Revolts like that of 1953 could have posed a political danger
to the regime- had its enemies proven strong enough- but not a threat
to its legitimacy. Only the ambiguous SED position on the national
question was a problem, as shown by the elite dissensus in 1957-8. 12

After the Berlin Wall (1961), and especially with the introduction of
the 'New Economic Policy' (1963), the GDR entered a post-mobilis-
ation stage. In this phase of its history, the bases for regime legitimacy
shifted, bringing new problems as well as new achievements. Despite all
differences between the GDR and the other East European states and
the USSR, the social-political development of the G DR closely parallels
that of the other East European Communist states. Like them, the GDR
sought to generate regime legitimacy by appealing to increased satisfac-
tion of social ambition, by catering to rising expectations of material
comfort, by loosening cultural controls, and by acknowledging in
largely symbolic terms the strength of indigenous nationalism (albeit
with a firm if often unspoken commitment to general Soviet foreign
policy overlordship).
In the GDR, a 'new class' of technicians and managers rose to
prominence, even to a limited degree in political life, albeit not quite to
the status of a counter-elite. 13 The GDR's pre-eminence within
COMECON in such 'post-industrial' growth fields as applied elec-
tronics helped to give this stratum a sense of self-worth. Moreover,
especially after the advent of the Honecker regime on the eve of the
SED's 8th Congress (1971), the GDR's economic growth was used-
and was publicised as being so used- for the satisfaction of mass
consumption desires (most notably in housing). Despite all subsequent
qualifications, the regime's self-proclaimed 'main goal' remains satisfac-
tion of consumer desires. The ideal of economic growth was and is used
as a major legitimating device for the regime. 14
In the cultural field, the Honecker era began as one of reconciliation
between the authorities and the artists. The bounds of the permissible, in
both form and substance, were enlarged for 'all those who stand on the
platform of socialism'. 15 There followed what may be termed the
'Plenzdorf Era' of a relatively liberal cultural policy, designed to win
over this crucial group. Honecker's public approbation of Ulrich
Plenzdorf and the latter's play The New Sorrows of Young W,
encouraged production of cultural works which looked at the mundane,
daily reality of GDR life from a critical perspective.
One element in the recipe for gaining at least grudging legitimacy
seemed to be unavailable to the GDR leadership. That was the appeal to
nationalism. After the negotiation and ratification of the complex of
agreements flowing from Bonn's intensified Ostpolitik, particularly the
1971 Agreement on Berlin and the 1972 Basic Treaty between GDRand
the Federal Republic, the appeal to a common German future, no
matter how remote in practical terms, had to be abandoned. The regime

thereupon attempted to create a new, GDR-oriented sense of national
identity. The evidence of the past several years, however, suggests that
'GDRism' has proven to be a sickly flower. After much ingenious
redefinition, the GDR's nationality theoreticians have largely aban-
doned the effort to deny a common German identity as having existed
in the past, one which the GDR can draw upon.
In a recent authoritative formulation of regime policy on the national
question, 16 the post-1974 distinction between a single German nation
(no longer existing) and a common German nationality was taken
several dubious steps further with the assertion that contemporary
GDR development displays an amalgamation of ethnic 'German' traits
derived from a lengthy history with 'new social class content'. This
process is said to produce a further explication of what it means to have
a 'socialist German nation'. Upon closer examination, however, these
characteristics of a 'new' nation tum out to be the typical social and
economic policies of Soviet-type polities; what the difference is,
therefore, between a socialist state's policies, and a socialist nation's
characteristics, is left unclear. 17
Insofar as a regime's invocation of national identity as a legitimating
factor involves some appeal to traditional (Weberian) legitimisation, it
is worth noting that current GDR thinking on the nature of the German
heritage is rather ambivalent. While most GDR ideologues continue to
differentiate between the revolutionary and repressive strands in the
German heritage, 18 and indeed maintain that the GDR's 'national'
heritage should include non-German revolutionary models, the regime
is not averse to allowing a certain emphasis on traditional German
values. The regime seems to have decided on a far-ranging rehabilitation
of hitherto denigrated aspects of the German past. A more favourable
view of many aspects of Prussian history, including the career of
Frederick the Great, and the official blessing given to the celebration of
the SOOth anniversary of the birth of Martin Luther (with a concomitant
upgrading of Luther's 'progressive' tendencies), are both signs of this. 19
That such a policy seems to compromise the rigorous Abgrenzung both
from the ambiguous German past, as well as from West Germany, seems
clear; this may account for Honecker's rather laboured response to a
question directly on this point. 20
In recent years, the GDR leaders have tried to compensate for the
policy of demarcation (Abgrenzung) from the common national heritage
by stressing convergence (Anniiherung) with the USSR. The Soviet tie is
often regarded as a delegitimising factor for the GDR leadership, for
example, by forcing acceptance of the Ostpolitik package with its

difficult restrictions on GDR policy toward Berlin and the Federal
Republic. The GDR-USSR connection, however, has had positive
consequences for regime stability as well. 21 An important example of
this is the 'wave of recognition' that carried the GDR into the centre of
diplomatic activity in 1972-5. Moreover, as a technologically and
administratively advanced ally of the USSR, the GDR has also received
prestigious missions in the Third World (for this, see further below).
At the SED's 9th Congress in June 1976, the prospects for generating
substantial regime legitimacy seemed fairly bright. As a culturally
lenient, economically generous regime, flushed with foreign policy
success, with stable leadership and good ties to the USSR, the Honecker
regime might have reasonably hoped that the passage of time would
enable it to overcome its lack of 'national' legitimacy (Austria was a
favoured rhetorical example in GDR writings of this period). In a not-
too-distant future, the GDR might be viewed by its citizens, especially
by the younger and socially active ones as, on the whole, 'their' regime
and an acceptable one.
How far has this picture come to be realised in the years since? It
seems fair to say that, at least, the expectations of 1976 have been
underfulfilled. Moreover, in some cases, trouble has come from quite
unexpected sources, calling into question the basis of the regime's
policies. The evidence supplied by GDR developments of recent years
suggests that legitimacy cannot be adequately supported by social policy
alone; normative satisfaction is required, and this normative satisfaction
must come from areas in which the regime is constrained from taking
effective action by its own legitimating ideology, as well as by political
limitations.
In reviewing the policies pursued in the past to generate GDR
legitimacy, it seems clear, first of all, that the close coordination of GD R
foreign policy with the foreign policy of the USSR has not proven to be a
substantial handicap to the GDR's quest for legitimacy. Soviet needs
have in the past overridden East German interests in connection with
Berlin and all-German questions. For example, a meeting in the spring
of 1980 between Schmidt and Honecker, announced in December 1979,
was postponed in January to a later date in 1980 in the wake of the furore
caused by Soviet actions in Afghanistan; in the wake ofthe labour unrest
in Poland in the summer of 1980, the West German Chancellor
postponed his visit indefinitely. 22 Nevertheless, the economic ties
between the two countries are extremely close and mutually beneficial.
The GDR's dependence on Soviet energy supplies is likely to make this
connection an inescapable one; the GDR populace is likely to recognise

it as such. 23
Especially useful for generating legitimacy is the GDR's involvement
in Africa (and parts of the Middle East), an involvement which certainly
occurs under Soviet aegis. 24 The GDR extends material aid including
military aid to several African states (Angola, Mozambique, Ethiopia
and others); 25 it gives and has given political and diplomatic support to
liberation movements such as the Zimbabwe Patriotic Front, the
Namibian SWAPO and the ANC of South Africa. Its political, military
and economic leaders exchange visits with African representatives. In
1979 there was an enormous symbolic harvest from Honecker's trips to
the 'front line states' of Southern Africa, as well as to Libya, Ethiopia,
Southern Yemen and India.
More problematical has been the fate of Honecker's ambitious policy
of satisfaction of consumer demands. Substantial evidence indicates
that the rise of 'consumption socialism' has involved the regime in
policies which contain real dangers of de-legitimisation. On the one
hand, the goal of an ever-expanding consumption makes the regime
hostage to economic forces; the GDR, more than most industrial
nations, is dependent on external factors for its economic well-being.
These include Soviet economic decisions (e.g., oil pricing policy), OPEC
policy, as well as West German trade policy (the 'swing'). The spectacle
of a Marxist -Leninist regime flying in Levi jeans, importing special
consignments ofVolkswagens, in short, the whole Intershop-Exquisit-
De/ikat syndrome, has already aroused an ideologically and morally
hostile reaction. In addition, the legitimacy of a regime cannot rest
securely on an ever-growing mountain of indebtedness to its ideological
adversaries. 26
It has been suggested that the regimes of Eastern Europe have
'bought' their legitimacy by a loosely defined but widely acknowledged
social compact under which the regime supplies guaranteed employ-
ment and rising consumption standards to the population in exchange
for legitimacy. As noted above, the Honecker leadership's main
domestic policy after 1971 was based on this line. (One remembers the
SED slogan, 'Work pays off in the GD R'). In the cautious redefinition of
the party's 'main task' so as to link consumption to increased
productivity, there is a sign of the troubled times that may lie ahead for
the GDR. Already there are official complaints regarding excessive
inputs of labour and shoddy work standards. 27 SED leaders are
certainly aware that the longer-term prospects for easing the economic
distress brought on in large part by rising raw material costs are
practically nonexistent. Calling for an ideological response to this

problem is, in effect, to promise no material relief.2 8
It is in this context that the cultural malaise of the GDR relates to the
question of legitimacy. From the noontime of cultural liberalism in
1976, the GDR has descended rapidly into the shadows of cultural
retrenchment if not outright repression. Beginning with the arbitrary
expatriation ofWolfBiermann in 1976 and the resulting wave of(partly
public!) protest, there has not been a 'quiet season' in GDR cultural life
since. Like the 1965 Sinyavsky-Daniel trial in the USSR, the Biermann
case has led to a series (thus far unending) of protests, more or less forced
flight to the West, and ever more severe harrassment of intellectuals.
Some of the most prominent figures in film, literature, and other arts
have been involved. 29
This cultural freeze adversely affects the effort to generate legitimacy
in several ways. If the post-Ulbricht era was to be one of cultural latitude
and loyalty, recent years have left the regime with a reputation in this
area as bad, if not worse than its predecessor. Recent signs of a renewed
amelioration of cultural policy are unlikely to obscure the fact that the
Honecker regime seems in practice unable or unwilling to pursue a
consistent policy of cultural liberalisation. 30 Moreover, the flight of
GDR intellectuals to West Germany, their continued artistic activity
there and, above all, their continued ties to the GO R public by means of
West German news media (the 'electronic reunification' of Germany, as
it has been called), all mock the effectiveness of the GDR's Abgrenzung
from the West. Finally, this cultural disarray has ties with an upsurge of
socio-political criticism, and has led directly to a sharpening of the
regime's penal laws.
The extension ofliterary-artistic protest to social and political dissent
is an important development in this connection. The most prominent
examples were the publication of Rudolf Bahro's Die Alternative, with
its author's subsequent trial, jail term, amnesty, and departure for the
West, as well as the publication in Der Spiegel of a declaration by a
'League of Democratic Communists'. These critiques of what the regime
calls proudly, and Bahro sarcastically, 'actual socialism', emphasise the
gap between official pretence and unpublicised reality; they question
that the regime can legitimately consider economic performance as a
source of legitimacy, but they also question whether such an
achievement, even if present, would be sufficient to legitimate the
regime. Both Bahro and other dissenters see the malaise of the GDR as
lying partly in the processes of political life, especially the ineffective
participation of the masses and middle-level managers and of the
ineffective control of public authority, i.e., the lack of curbs on the SED.
What seems to be emerging in the GDR is in many ways quite similar
to the ideological and social forces that fuelled the Prague Spring.
Walter Connor has argued that Soviet dissent of the Sakharov type may
be understood in political culture terms as an effort of some elements in
the population to move from subject to participant status. 31 This
presumes, of course, that a change in orientation, from subject to
participant, has already taken place. What needs to be investigated is the
extent to which such a change has taken or is taking place in significant
and crucially-placed segments of the GDR population.
The GDR is in a number of ways more liable than most other
Communist states to undergo such a development. First, and despite the
cliche of the 'authoritarian, Prussian' GDR, it must be remembered that
today's GDR also inherited the radical and libertarian ideals of Berlin,
the social radicalism of Saxony, and a considerable Social Democratic
tradition. Politically, it has one of the highest proportions of ruling party
membership to population (roughly 12 %). It has an advanced working
class and technical intelligentsia (a good test case for many com-
monplaces of modernisation and political culture theories), and it is
peculiarly exposed to Western influences, both through the large
number of human contacts (especially since 1971), and via the ready
availability of Western media transmissions.
The response of the regime to these problems betrays the lack of self-
confidence in their own legitimacy that marks the East German rulers.
As a practical step, they introduced, suddenly and without even the pro
forma discussion normally arranged in Communist legislatures, a series
of revisions to penal legislation; these changes affect writers especially,
and generally make communication with West Germans more difficult.
These measures must therefore be seen in connection with the sharpen-
ing of regulations regarding foreign (read 'West German') journalists
promulgated a few months earlier. 32
With increasing intensity and frequency, regime spokesmen stress
values of order and vigilance. This may take the form of a positive
assertion of benefits to be had from the GDR's social and political order.
This 'socialist order' is contrasted to the insecurity and unpredictability
of the West; the regime in effect warns its subjects of the dangers of the
otherwise all-too-tempting stormy outside world. 3 3
More familiar are the warnings of subversion and disloyalty.
Particularly galling to the SED leaders must be the forced admission
that antisocialist, subversive purposes are being pursued through abuse
of the consequences of detente, especially of the agreements associated
with Helsinki and Ostpolitik. Foreign agents, it is alleged, strive to

recruit politically shaky citizens and extant hostile groups (!) into a
trumped-up 'opposition'.
Just how challenged and disturbed the leadership feels in this regard is
indicated by the assertion of Erich Mielke, SED Politburo member and
head of the State Security Service (SSO: the political police) that such
machinations are without hope of success, as the GDR is 'solid and
stable' -but on the other hand, no one will be allowed to 'harm
socialism' -not even those who, under the massive ideological influence
of Imperialism, have come to believe that they must take a position
different from that of the regime. 34 Not surprisingly, therefore, SED
propaganda increasingly stresses the importance of formal state powers,
and the inculcation of a 'positive state consciousness' in citizens. 35
Indeed, the 'development of socialism' is made dependent on the 'all-
round strengthening of the state'. 36
It would be misleading to suggest that the GORis confronted by some
immediate crisis oflegitimacy. One can and should find many elements
of stability and strength. For one thing, the stability of the SED party
leadership is an asset in securing the revolutionary-ideological heritage
of the regime. Honecker has managed to incorporate past leaders of the
party into a revolutionary pantheon. Pieck, Ulbricht, Grotewohl and of
course Thalmann all receive their appropriate praise, now that
Ulbricht's role has been relatively down-graded since his death in 1973.
It is worth noting that since the end of the phase of revolutionary
transformation, now twenty years ago, the SED and GDR have had
only two party-state leaders- Ulbricht and Honecker. Nor has the
GDR stopped providing educational and professional opportunities to
the able and ambitious among its citizens. Economic problems,
although real enough, look less threatening in an international and
comparative context, say in comparison with Poland. Finally, in the
post-Afghanistan heightening of international tension, the almost
ostentatiously helpful maintenance of good ties with the Federal
Republic almost surely gains the regime credit with the people.
If the GDR leadership finds difficulty in generating legitimacy, it is
not because that leadership is isolated from or ignorant of the effects of
its actions on the attitudes of its subjects. 37 In a fascinating work, the
late Peter Ludz described and analysed the regime's sponsorship and use
of survey and other GDR sociological research. Among his
observations, those most relevant to the question of legitimacy are that
while extensive and sophisticated research on these lines is carried out by
the GDR's research establishments, the form of the investigation, the
context of the research, the interpretation of the findings and finally the
dissemination of the results are all subject to ideological and in part self-
defeating restrictions. 38
The same consideration applies to the general question oflegitimacy.
There are imperatives of the regime's power which policies that might
generate legitimacy are not allowed to threaten. An unresolved national
issue, a precarious economic platform, an inability to foster a supportive
yet creative intelligentsia: these are some of the difficulties which hamper
the growth of legitimacy. Resolution of these difficulties will be very
difficult within the limits of current GDR politics.
One may ask, of course, whether a deficit in legitimacy is a serious
political handicap to a ruling group in a state like that of the GDR. Have
not repression, external (Soviet) influence, and rising economic levels
allowed the regime to exercise power for over three decades without
effective challenge? Such questions cannot be answered within the scope
of the present chapter. Leaving aside the regime's own clear desire to
rule 'legitimately', however, it is worth pondering the proposition that
further successes in meeting the goals of GDR social, economic and
cultural policy may require a population whose energies and initiatives
can only be mobilised through a 'legitimate' commitment to the political
structure of the German Democratic Republic. 39
NOTES
1. Dolf Sternberger, 'Legitimacy', International Encyclopedia of the Social

Sciences, vol. IX, David L. Sills (ed.), (New York, 1968) p. 244.
2. Peter G. Stillman, 'The Concept of Legitimacy', Polity, 7, 1 (Fal11974)39.
the Soviet Union', in T. H. Rigby, A. H. Brown and Peter Reddaway, eds,
Authority, Power and Policy in the USSR (London, 1980) p.9.
4. Richard Lowenthal, 'Zur Umwertung unserer Werte. Politische Legitimitiit
und kultureller Wandel in modernen Industriegesellschaften', L'76, no. 11
(1979)147-8.
5. Teresa Rakowska-Harmstone, 'Toward a Theory of Soviet Leadership
Maintenance', in Paul Cocks, Robert V. Daniels, Nancy Heer (eds), The
Dynamics of Soviet Politics (Cambridge, 1976) p. 54.
6. Dieter Staritz, 'Formen und Wandlungen der Austragung innerer Konflikte
in der DDR', Deutschland Archiv, Sonderheft (1979) p. 92.
7. For a thoughtful discussion of these issues, together with some conceptual
considerations, see Peter C. Ludz, 'Legitimacy in a Divided Nation: The
Case of the German Democratic Republic', in Bogdan Denitch (ed.),
Legitimation of Regimes, SAGE (for the International Sociological
Association) (Beverly Hills, 1979) pp. 161-75.
8. Thomas Baylis, 'Economic Reform as Ideology', Comparative Politics, 3, 3
(1971)211-29; for a full and formal statement of economic melioration as

the party's main goal, see Program der Sozialistischen Einheitspartei
Deutschlands (Berlin, 1976) p. 29.
9. Melvin Croan, East Germany: The Soviet Connection, The Washington
Papers, vol. 4, no. 36 (Beverly Hills, 1976).
10. Henry Krisch, 'Nation Building and Regime Stability in the DDR', East
Central Europe, vol. 3, part I (1976)15-29.
11. It will be apparent that the three policy lines discussed in this chapter,
national, economic, and party-political, correspond roughly to Weber's
traditional, rational and charismatic grounds of legitimacy. I have not
chosen here to attempt any elaborate linkage of GDR policies with
Weberian categories; as is generally recognised, particular policies will
diverge from ideal types in any case. For a general assessment of the GDR's
stability in a broader, comparative East European setting, see William A.
Welsh, 'Understanding Stability in East European Political Systems',
Berichte des Bundesinstituts fur ostwissenschaftliche und internationale
Studien, no. 2 (1980) esp. pp. 9-10.
12. There is an extensive literature on the origins and early phases of
development of the GDR. Of particular relevance for this chapter is
Dietrich Staritz, Sozialismus in einem halben Land (Berlin, 1976).
13. The notion of a technologically-based 'counter-elite' to challenge the older,
'revolutionary' party officials is elaborated in Peter C. Ludz, Parteielite im
Wandel (Koln, 1968) esp. ch. 3.
14. For a recent restatement, qualified by reference to foreign trade pressures,
see Honecker's speech at the SED's 12th CC plenum, as reported in Neues
Deutschland, 22 May 1980, p. 3.
15. For Honecker's most recent re-statement of the theme that there should be
no taboos for artists who take a socialist position, see Neues Deutschland,
23-4 June 1979, p. 11.
16. Alfred Kosing and Walter Schmidt, 'Geburt und Gedeihen der sozialistis-
chen deutschen Nation', Einheit, 34, 9/10 (1979)1068-75.
17. Ibid., pp. 1072-3; the authors claim general doctrinal validity for the concept
that 'everywhere and always' in the transition to socialism there is an
accompanying transition to a socialist nation.
18. Albert Norden, 'EinhistorischesWendepunkt',Einheit,33, 12(1978)p.l27;
Helmut Meier and Walter Schmidt, 'Tradition und sozialistisches
Bewusstsein', ibid., pp. 122-24.
19. Jiirgen Riihle, 'Nachdenken iiber Preussen', Deutschland Archiv, vol. 13, 5
(1980)479-82; Reinhard Briihl, 'Carl von Clausewitz- Patriot und
Militiirtheoretiker', Einheit, 35, 3 (1980)314-21; Honecker's speech at the
opening meeting of the 'Martin Luther Committee of the GDR', in Neues
Deutschland, 14-15 June 1980, p. 3; Ronald Asmus, 'GDR Celebrates
Martin Luther', RAD Background Report/155, 25 June 1980.
20. For Honecker's remarks on this theme, including his specific approbation of
Ingrid Mittenzwei's life of Frederick the Great, and Honecker's weak
response as to how GDR celebrations would differ from the West German
ones, see 'Erich Honecker zu aktuellen politischen Fragen', Neues
Deutschland, 26 August 1980, pp. 3-4. In view of West German plans to
celebrate Luther and the growing West German interest in Prussia, the
GDR regime may have decided to pre-empt some historical territory.

21. Henry Krisch, 'Soviet-GDR Relations in the Honecker Era', East Central
Europe, vol. 6, part 2 (1979)152-72.
22. 'Honecker und Schmidt treffen sich zum geeigneten Zeitpunkt', Neues
Deutschland, 3I January I980, p. I; 'Schmidt Cancels Trip to East
Germany', The New York Times, 23 August 1980, p. 6.
23. See Krisch, 'Soviet-GDR Relations in the Honecker Era', East Central
Europe, 6, part 2 (1979) I52-72. The political consequences of this
dependence are unlikely to be lessened by the relative decline of Soviet
energy provisioning; apparently, Soviet oil deliveries to the GDR in 198I-
86 will not exceed current annuailevels of 19 million tons. See Joachim
Nawrocki, 'Rote Zahlen bei den Roten', Die Zeit, 4 July 1980, p. I8, and
Ronald D. Asmus, 'The East German Search for Oil', RAD Background
Report/187, 25 July I980.
24. For a general statement of the GDR position, issued at the time of
Honecker's trip to Africa, see 'DDR fest verbunden mit den kiimpfenden
Volkem Afrikas', Neues Deutschland, 21 February I979, p. 2.
25. Heinz Hoffman, 'Wir wachen iiber das Errungene', Einheit, 34,9/10 (1979)
957; Hoffman has declared that, 'In truth there are and have been no units of
our National People's Army in any African country whatsoever .. .'.
(Heinz Hoffman, 'Die sozialistische Militiirkoalition- zuverliissiger Schild
des Sozialismus', Einheit, 35,5 (I980)476). See also, 'DDR: In Afrika keine
Einheiten stationiert', Frankfurter Algemeine Zeitung, 30 Apr. I980, p. 5.
26. Dieter Staritz has pointed out that the SED's 1971 proclamation of
improvements in social welfare as the regime's main task has generated
continuous stress not only between the regime and the population, but more
importantly as between social groups who react quite differently to the
output of this policy. To the extent that consumptionist-welfare policies
have taken the place of ideological and visionary appeals, some social
groups, especially, for example, intellectuals, become alienated from the
regime (Staritz, 'Formen und Wandlungen .. .', p. 101).
27. Hans-Dieter Schulz, 'Die SED will eine Wende erzwingen', Deutschland
Archiv, 13, 1 (1980)4-5. It is noteworthy that the chief of GDR security,
SED Politburo member Erich Mielke, felt called upon, in an article devoted
to security challenges, subversion, dissent, etc., to denounce industrial and
economic delinquencies, including arson and on-the-job accidents, and to
rail against 'neglect of duty, sloppiness (Schlampem) and carelessness' in
industrial life. Erich Mielke, 'Verantwortungsbewusst fiir die Gewiihrleis-
tung der staatlichen Sicherheit' Einheit, 35, 2 (1980)157.
28. See Honecker's remarks at the II th CC Plenum, as reported in Neues
Deutschland, I4 Dec. I979, p. 4.
29. For a general review, see Harald Kleinschmid, 'Das grosse Schweigen',
Deutschland Archiv, vol. I2, 9 (1979)899-905. On the weakness of current
cultural policy as a legitimating instrument, see tbe perceptive summary by
H. G. Huettich, 'Dissent and Systemic Stability in East Germany', Studies in
Comparative Communism, I2, 2-3 (I979)254-62.
30. See Ronald Asmus, 'A New Life for Dissident Writers in the GDR?' RAD
Background Report/2IO, I9 Aug. I980.
31. Walter Connor, 'Generations and Politics in the USSR', Problems of
Communism, 24, 5 (Sept.-Oct. I975)20-31.
32. 'Gesetze im Interesse der Burger', Neues Deutschland, 2 July 1979, p. 2; see
also ibid., 29 June 1979, p. 2. For the extensive Western commentary, see
e.g., 'So wird Kritik an der SED fast unmoglich', Frankfurter Algemeine
Zeitung, 2 July 1979, p. 2.
33. Gunter Kertzscher, 'Chaos und Ordnung', Neues Deutschland, 26-7 July
1980, p. 9.
34. Mielke, op. cit., pp. 155-7.
35. Two perceptive analysts ofGDR social development came to the conclusion
that 'neither among the younger nor among the older generation in the
GDR is a growing "socialist consciousness" observable'. Ralf Rytlewski
and Dieter Voight, 'Soziale und politische Struktur der DDR im Wandel',
Deutschland Archiv, Sonderheft ( 1979) p. 170.
36. Kurt Hager, 'Unser Staat-unser Stolz', Einheit, 34, 8 (1979)800. This article
was given first as the main report at an international scholarly-political
conference marking the GDR's 30th anniversary. See also, Willi Stoph,
'Staat und Staatsbewusstsein im 30. Jahr unserer Republik', Einheit, 34,
9/10 (1979)910-14.
37. Staritz, 'Formen und Wandlungen .. .', p. 101 reminds us of the regime's
cautious but effective 'conflict management' in relation to the trade unions
and churches (i.e. grievances of industrial workers and Christian, mainly
Protestant, believers).
38. Peter C. Ludz, Mechanismen der Herrschaftssicherung (Munich, 1980) esp.
pp. 189-206.
39. See in this connection the remarks of Peter Ludz, 'Legitimacy in a Divided
Nation: The Case of the German Democratic Republic', pp. 170-2.
8 Eurocommunism and the
Quest for Legitimacy
Robert F. Miller
I INTRODUCTION
The usage of the term 'Eurocommunism', if not necessarily the

phenomenon itself, has been a source of considerable embarrassment
for the Soviet leadership and its foreign loyalist supporters, as well as for
the leaders of the three West European parties to which the label is most
commonly affixed, the Communist Parties of Italy, France, and Spain
(PCI, PCF, and PCE, respectively). Why this should be so is not always
entirely clear; at times the furore over Eurocommunism has been more a
media event than a reflection of the genuine political significance of the
emergent phenomenon. At other times, however, issues of considerable
practical and theoretical substance may indeed be involved. Some observ-
ers with substantial knowledge of the international communist movement
in general and of the histories of the three parties in particular have
entertained doubts as to the genuine novelty and longer-term signifi-
cance of the phenomenon. 1 Others who are prepared to argue that
important changes have taken place in these parties are compelled to
account for obvious retrogressions, as well as historical precedents
before and after the Second World War which proved to be transitory.
The generic character of the Eurocommunist phenomenon is another
matter of dispute, both within and outside the socialist community.
Given the historical differences among the three parties -their distinct-
ive cultural, social, and political traditions -any generalisations based
solely upon geographical propinquity or socio-economic structural
similarities are likely to be superficial or problematical.
Nevertheless, some generalisations are possible and useful, if only to
place the changes of the seventies in proper historical perspective. Until
well after Stalin's death the leaders of the three parties shared, at least
126
Eurocommunism and the Quest for Legitimacy 127
publicly, the basic orientations imposed by him on the international

communist movement. Notwithstanding the idiosyncratic Crocean
verbal baggage smuggled into the PCI lexicon by Antonio Gramsci and
retained by his successors or their and their French comrades' brief
experiences with governmental responsibilities right after the war, 2 all
three Latin parties behaved like thoroughly 'Bolshevised' appendages of
Moscow throughout this period. They basically denied the legitimacy of
the bourgeois socio-political order in which they operated, rejecting
'bourgeois parliamentarism' and the existing modes of political plura-
lism as fundamentally flawed by their class basis. The party organis-
ational network came to be viewed by the faithful as virtually self-
sufficient islands within their respective national communities, rep-
resenting that higher order of legitimacy embodied in the Soviet model
of working-class rule. (To be sure, the exiled PCE leaders had no
bourgeois parliamentary order to reject- a fact which must surely help
to explain their unusually intense attachment to it since Franco's death.)
The operative values of the movement were scrupulously registered by
the parties in their rules of discipline and organisational structure,
symbolised by the well known principles of proletarian dictatorship,
democratic centralism, and proletarian internationalism.
To speak of a 'quest for legitimacy' by parties like the PCI, PCF, and
PCE is, therefore, a matter of no little complexity. In appealing to an
electoral constituency that is part of the broad consensus constituting
the political order of a given state, the normal political party, especially
if it is successful in getting some of its candidates elected, can take its
legitimacy pretty much for granted. That is, it competes and operates in
a single national 'arena' of legitimacy. Most non-ruling communist
parties, by contrast, particularly in the Western democracies, have had
to be concerned with legitimacy in three separate arenas: the formal
domestic political system, the domestic 'left' and working-class
movement, and the 'international communist and workers' movement'.
Throughout the Stalin era, except for the brief interludes of the Popular
Front and the war-time and early postwar anti-fascist coalitions, the
future Eurocommunist parties were interested almost exclusively in the
latter two arenas.
It is the relatively recent turn toward the first arena -the acceptance
of the domestic political order as a legitimate sphere of activity for a
communist party and the manifest desire to be accepted as legitimate by
that order- which is the essential innovation of Eurocommunism. The
practical intensity and durability of the quest for this kind oflegitimacy
remain in some doubt, however, because the other two traditional
arenas continue to exercise a powerful influence on the self-perceptions

oflegitimacy of the Eurocommunist elites. Moreover, the latter are also
bound to be aware of the hopes and expectations maintained toward
them by the more liberal, or at least more independently minded,
communist political forces in Eastern Europe -a dimension of the third
arena that is often overlooked by students of Eurocommunism. 3 The
tensions generated by the effort to operate simultaneously within
the different arenas of legitimacy in fact explain a good many of the
problems which the Eurocommunists have faced in elaborating a
credible theory and strategy of political action.
II SIMILARITIES AND DIFFERENCES AMONG THE

EUROCOMMUNIST PARTIES
In a relatively brief chapter it is impossible to do justice to the

multiplicity of features and contexts which characterise the individual
Eurocommunist Parties, although certain distinctive factors may be
abstracted for the kind of general analysis attempted here. It is sufficient
to note for the moment that it is the specific features which have
conditioned the manner in which the respective parties have sought to
overcome their particular problems of legitimacy and to reconcile the
competing demands of the three arenas; and they have also influenced
the choice of strategy and tactics by which the Soviets have sought to
bring the deviant parties back into line.
But let us first consider for analytical purposes, some of the major
common elements of Eurocommunism as a general political tendency.
Eurocommunism is a form of national communism, or, more
accurately, communist nationalism* arising in advanced Western
capitalist systems, where there exist numerically and/or politically
strong communist parties with powerful influence and firm roots in the
mass trade union movements. The designation applies primarily to the
* This distinction was suggested to the writer by Tadeusz Szafar of the Russian
Research Center, Harvard University. He argues that ruling or otherwise
politically strong communist parties inevitably develop a particular kind of
nationalism, bordering on chauvinism, which eventually brings them into
conflict with Soviet positions on a number of issues. 'National communism', by
contrast, he maintains, is a contradiction in terms, although the writer would
argue that the specific forms which socialist construction has taken in
Yugoslavia, the People's Republic of China, and other peripheral communist
states suggest that the concept retains some analytic usefulness.
three Latin European parties already mentioned -and the Japanese

Communist Party (JCP), which is often included in discussions of the
Eurocommunist phenomenon. The definition pointedly excludes other
superficially analogous parties, such as the Communist Party of Great
Britain (CPGB), the Communist Party of the U.S.A. (CPUSA), and the
Portuguese Communist Party (PCP), which display certain ideological,
geographical, or developmental parallels to the Eurocommunists. On
the programmatic level, the Eurocommunist parties all support, at least
verbally, the civil and human rights achievements of the parliamentary
democratic order (which they promise to 'deepen' or 'expand' to other
spheres and segments of social activity, such as worker participation in
industrial management), as well as the political pluralism on which that
order is based. They have committed themselves 'irrevocably' to abide
by the expressed will of the electorate, even if that means the possibility
of being voted out of office after they have succeeded in gaining a share
of governmental power. Eurocommunist leaders insist, moreover, that
they neither seek nor desire to govern by themselves, but only in
coalition with the broadest possible array of progressive, anti-monopo-
list political forces.
At the same time, they have all refused to abandon their commitment
to some form of 'hegemony' of the proletariat, which is, after all, a
fundamental element of their raison d'etre as communists and a primary
component of their self-image of legitimacy. But they have sought to
moderate some of the more frightening connotations of this hegemony
for potential domestic political allies by, on the one hand, redefining the
'proletariat' to include practically anyone who earns his daily bread
through the use of privately owned means of production- i.e., the
increasing proportion of 'salarian' elements in modem industrial or
post-industrial society, the engineers, technicians, professionals,
intellectuals, bureaucrats, and other tertiary sector employees; and, on
the other hand, by reducing the dimensions of the 'class enemy' to the
transnational and domestic 'monopoly capitalists'- especially the
'comprador bourgeoisie' of Mao's well known distinctions among
categories of the bourgeoisie. Thus, their appeal is to all those forces in
post-industrial society who had apparently lost faith in the capitalist
system by the late 1960s and the 1970s -in Carrillo's terminology the
'forces oflabour and culture'. It was a strategy which seemed to make a
good deal of political sense in the light of emerging socio-economic and
professional tendencies discerned by both academic social scientists and
trade-union policy-makers in Western industrial countries. Whether
communist parties could make a convincing case for their legitimacy as
leaders of such broad (one is tempted to say 'amorphous') coalitions

remained to be seen. For a time, even the traditionally ouvrieriste PCF
seemed genuinely to desire to pass this test of domestic political
legitimacy by demonstratively accepting the rules of the political game.
In this connection it is interesting to compare the behaviour of the PCI
and PCF in the 1970s with their conduct during the brief flourishing of
centre-left coalitions in the 1944-8 period, when they actually assumed
governmental posts as coalition partners. The period is instructive, also,
in indicating patterns of influence between Eastern and Western
European communist parties in the elaboration of political strategy. At
the time the modes of exercise of Soviet power in the newly acquired
satrapies in Eastern Europe were still sufficiently tentative and flexible to
suggest to certain party theoreticians in the East that fundamentally new
types of socio-political systems might be possible in the region: that the
theretofore unique Bolshevik road to power and the Soviet model of
one-party dictatorship were no longer to be considered obligatory for all
communist-led systems. Eugene Varga, the venerable Hungarian poli-
tical economist exiled in the USSR since the collapse of the 1919
Hungarian Soviet Republic, called the emerging East European states
'Democracies of a new type'. Writing in the authoritative Soviet journal
Mirovoe khoziaistvo i mirovaia politika, which he edited, in March 1947,
he claimed:
The social order of these new states differs from all others known to us
up to now; it is something completely new in the history of mankind.
It is not a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, but it is also not a
dictatorship of the proletariat ... The bases for their transition to
socialism are laid down in the nationalization of the most important
means of production and in the very character of the state. While
maintaining the present state power [structure] they can gradually go
over to socialism, steadily developing the socialist system and, along
with the simple goods production system (peasants and artisans) the
existing capitalist system, which has already lost its dominant
position. 4
Citing Lenin as his authority- he had actually questioned Il'ich on a

similar matter in 1920!- Varga concluded: 'The rise of the states of the
new democracy shows clearly that the political rule of the toilers is
possible also with the preservation of the external forms of par-
liamentary democracy'. 5
Other Soviet writers were making similar pronouncements on the
'New Democracies' in this period, although they and Varga would soon
have cause to rue their earlier enthusiasm for this ostensible innovation,
particularly after the founding of the Cominform in September 1947. 6
Still, the Polish philosopher Adam Schaff could argue in a textbook on
Marxist theory not published until 1948:
Will, in the changed situation, the period of the transition to socialism

be the dictatorship of the proletariat or some other form of order? The
answer to this question is, in the light of the theory of Marxism, clear
and straightforward: in the specific conditions of people's democracy,
which enable a peaceful transition to socialism, the necessity of the
transition period of the dictatorship of the proletariat for the people's
democratic states disappears. In the system of people's democracy the
people's government leads society to socialism by evolutionary paths,
without the dictatorship of the proletariat. 7 [emphasis in the original].
Schaff continued several pages later:
People's democracy is a specific form of public conduct of govern-

ment through classes representing the masses of toilers. Political
power in people's democratic states is concentrated in the hands of
representatives of masses of people: workers, the overwhelming mass
of peasants, toiling intellectuals, and part of the petty bourgeoisie.
These classes and strata, linked in alliance, conduct government
business through the intermediary of democratic parties, coalesced in
one form or another, depending on the specific conditions of the given
country. 8
What Schaff was describing wasn't quite Western-style parliamentary

democracy; but neither was it one-party dictatorship.
With these kinds of signals evidently emanating from the fount of all
ultimate legitimacy, the Soviet Union and the region under its direct
tutelage, it is little wonder that the PCI and PCF leaders, Togliatti and
Thorez, seized the opportunity to thrust themselves into the arena of
parliamentary politics, now a fully legitimate sphere of communist
political activity (more than it had ever been in France under the
Popular Front). Thus, in a speech to party members in Reggio Emilia in
the fall of 1946, Togliatti condemned those 'sectarian comrades' who
were raising 'imaginary obstacles' to political collaboration with
'intermediate class' forces. This merely played into the hands of those
who sought to keep the PCI out of government at all costs. 9 At a
National Conference of the PCI in Florence a few months later he set the
tone for the pluralistic doctrine that would later be closely identified
with his name:
We see that in every country, in relation to the diversity of the

development of capitalism, in relation to the traditions and national
characteristics, and in relation, also, to the position which the given
country occupied in the course of the great world war, the march
toward democracy and toward socialism assumes particular forms. 10
In the Italian context it was clear that the march would assume a
parliamentary form and that Togliatti enjoyed the exercise oflegitimate
authority which that form conferred.
Thorez expressed similar sentiments in this period. In June 1945 he
blandly averred: 'We consider the prolonged maintenance in office of
a government of broad democratic and national unity as the happiest
prospect for our country'. 11 Eighteen months later, celebrating a limited
success by the PCF in a constitutional referendum, he echoed the
Eastern theorists of the New Democracy in assuring an interviewer of
the London Times:
The progress of democracy ... permits the consideration of other

roads than that followed by the Russian Communists. In any case, the
road is necessarily different for each country. We have always
considered and declared that the French people, rich in a glorious
tradition, would find its own way. 12
Indeed, in the first government under the new Constitution of the

Fourth Republic, under Paul Ramadier, the PCF demonstrated its
willingness to accept political responsibility by pressing for, and
receiving, five portfolios.
Equally successful, Togliatti clearly relished the new opportunities
which the new openings for legitimate political activity offered. Giorgio
Galli has observed that PCI leaders were becoming increasingly aware
of the benefits of their party's expanding influence in Italian society and
were happy to partake of this additional source of legitimacy-
additional, that is, to the legitimacy they enjoyed by virtue of their
leader's prominence in the international movement. 'A part of Italian
life, they were top leaders, men politically on the international level and
not obscure collaborators of exile reviews'. 13
But the parliamentary honeymoon of the two parties was destined to
be shortlived. By the middle of 1947, as the Cold War gathered impetus

and the lines between East and West sharpened, both parties found
themselves excluded from their respective governments, although for a
time they were reluctant to accept the rebuff as final by moving over
directly into opposition. They were rudely chastised for this timidity,
however, at the founding meeting of the Cominform in Szklarska
Por~ba, Poland, in September 1947, when PCI and PCF representatives
(Togliatti and Thorez were shrewd enough not to attend) were roundly
castigated for opportunism and 'parliamentary cretinism' because of
their persistence in playing by the rules of the bourgeois-democratic
game. 14 The first concerted effort to achieve legitimacy in the domestic
political arena was thus abruptly terminated. It was significant that the
most abrasive criticism of their policies had come from their East
European comrades, particularly the Yugoslavs, Kardelj and Djilas.
Turning the clock ahead some three decades, one is struck by the
similarities, and, to be sure, some of the differences as well, in the ways in
which the leaders of the Eurocommunist parties have responded to the
possibilities for legitimate political involvement offered by their respect-
ive parliamentary systems. In some respects, the successors ofTogliatti
and Thorez have simply picked up where their illustrious predecessors
had so abruptly left off. Thus, all three parties have explicitly discarded
the hoary Marxist-Leninist conception of the dictatorship of the
proletariat (as opposed to mere 'hegemony') as necessary for the
transition to socialism, declaring it incompatible with the advanced
stage of economic development and progressive social attitudes in their
societies. Indeed, the JCP has gone so far as to disavow Marxism-
Leninism entirely as the ideological underpinning of their party
programme in favour of a vague commitment to 'scientific socialism'.
However, there is one principle which the Eurocommunists have
shown themselves to be no more willing to abandon now than were their
predecessors in the 1944-7 period: the Leninist principle of democratic
centralism. Unlike the earlier period, when the PCF, for example,
demanded that the principle serve as the organisational basis for a
proposed amalgamation with the Socialists (SFIO) in an all-embracing
French Workers' Party, 15 they now assure their potential coalition
partners that they will not seek to apply it in joint party undertakings. 16
But they continue to insist that it be maintained within their own party
ranks, thus ensuring that their partners will always be confronted by a
solid phalanx of communists, even as the latter remain free to attempt to
split the ranks of their partners by appealing over the heads of their
leaders. The most the Eurocommunists have been willing to promise is
that the 'democratic' aspects of the principle will in future be given

greater prominence, a concession which their monolithic behaviour in
recent PCI and PCF congresses suggests is virtually meaningless
(although the PCE record appears to have been somewhat better in this
respect).
Moreover, all of them reject with indignation the charge, emanating
from both sides of the East-West divide, that they are in danger of
succumbing to the 'sloth' of social-democracy. Their goal, the Eurocom-
munists insist, is not, unlike that of the social-democrats, to 'manage the
crisis of capitalism', but to transcend capitalism and begin the large-
scale transformation to socialism at all levels of society. How they
proposed to do this in coalition with such diverse political allies was left
largely unspecified. Indeed, Eurocommunist spokesmen have made a
virtue of this indeterminacy by arguing that existing models and
prescriptions for building socialism were inapplicable. Each party
would have to work out its own programme of socialist transformation
in keeping with the historical and cultural traditions and the developing
socio-political configurations of its own country. This was all fair
enough, but charges of'Bernsteinism' and social-democratic ideological
opportunism from both the domestic left and the international oracles in
Moscow were clearly difficult to refute.
On the plane of international policy the Eurocommunists have
obviously found their previous status as appendages of Moscow a
definite hindrance in their quest for domestic political legitimacy,
especially since the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia.
Accordingly, they have utilised numerous low-risk opportunities to
distance themselves from Kremlin policy on selected issues. They have
got considerable mileage out of highly selective criticism, for example, of
Soviet repression of internal dissidents and resurgent anti-Semitism in
the USSR. But they have rarely carried such criticism to extremes and
have invariably lagged behind other progressive intellectual forces in
their respective countries, although their criticism has undoubtedly
carried extra weight with the Soviet authorities.
As one might expect, this policy has not been very popular with the
Soviet leaders, but it has also antagonised certain Stalinist elements in
their own midst (in the PCF, for example, the widows of Maurice Thorez
and Jacques Duclos- Jeannette Vermeersch and Gilberte Duclos- not
to mention various hardline middle-ranking apparatchiks and rank-
and-file members). Consequently, it has tended to undermine the
Eurocommunist leaders' legitimacy in the second arena.
However, the acid test of their domestic political legitimacy in the
foreign policy sphere has been their stand on the strategically vital
question of NATO and the European Community. Here the positions
have purposely been left unclear, and unity among the Eurocommunists
has been harder to discern. Nevertheless, to a greater or lesser degree
they have all managed to evince a certain qualified support for Western
integration and a military balance favourable to detente. There is no
question that these issues have placed them in a real dilemma. On the
one hand, they have evidently derived genuine satisfaction from the
growing might of the socialist camp and have accepted the Soviet
argument that this strength is the foundation of detente itself, which has
made possible their own newly found status as potential candidates for
domestic power. (Carrillo, to be sure, may have been somewhat less
agreeable to this interpretation). On the other hand, they realise that
they can never hope to establish their credentials as legitimate spokes-
men for national interests as long as they are slavishly bound to support
Soviet foreign policy objectives. In this connection, Leon Blum's famous
distinction between the positions of the SFIO and the PCF, uttered in
July 1945, shortly after his liberation from Buchenwald, bears
repetition:
We combine in ourselves French patriotism and international

patriotism, while our communist comrades combine in themselves
French nationalism and Soviet nationalism. 17
It is probably true that some Eurocommunist leaders have come to the

conclusion that Soviet national interests and those of their own states
are often strikingly incompatible, at least in the short run, and that
Western economic integration and the maintenance of the common
Western defence effort, again at least in the short run, are in their
respective nations' interest. In any case, since the majority of their fellow
citizens manifestly believe this to be the case, the Eurocommunists must
somehow appear to go along, even if the Soviet Union continues to
fulminate against the Western integrative impulse. However, by the
qualifications which the Eurocommunists have attached to their support
for integration, it is clear that they are still very much interested in
mollifying Soviet, as well as their own members', objections to the new
line. In the process of trying to square this circle they have undoubtedly
undermined their credibility in all three arenas of legitimacy. But the
damage is by no means irreparable especially as regards the interests of
their domestic and international left constituencies. It could well be that
Eurocommunist participation in the integrated Western structures
would render the latter less inimical to Soviet interests. The question
posed by the ideological purists, however, is whether the experience of
participation might in itself lead to a form of creeping 'parliamentary
cretinism'.
Doctrinally, the Eurocommunist pursuit of greater independence
without unduly sacrificing their legitimacy in the international move-
ment reached its culmination at the June 1976 meeting of European
communist parties in East Berlin. There, with staunch support from
their Yugoslav and Romanian colleagues, they managed to have the
venerable concept of'proletarian internationalism'- long the symbol of
Soviet dictation of communist international relations- replaced by the
ostensibly less restrictive concept of 'international proletarian
solidarity'. The subsequent insistence by Moscow on treating the two
concepts as functional equivalents suggests that the Eurocommunist
victory was more apparent than real, but the East Berlin Conference
process illustrated some interesting features of the relationships which
have developed between Eurocommunism and the autonomist andjor
dissident movements in Eastern Europe.
There can be little doubt that the more independent-minded commu-
nist regimes of Eastern Europe, most overtly the Yugoslavs and the
Romanians, but tacitly the Hungarians and the Poles as well, welcome
the emergence of Eurocommunism as a tendency within the socialist
world. But this positive sentiment presupposes two things: first, that the
Eurocommunist parties remain within the Pale of legitimacy of the
international communist family, as recognised by the Soviet leaders; and
secondly, that the Eurocommunists themselves refrain from espousing a
new common counter-orthodoxy based on pluralist, multi-party par-
liamentary forms of socialist rule. For, although Tito and Ceau~escu are
happy to take advantage of the expanded autonomy generated by the
Eurocommunists' legitimation of diversity within the movement (the
Yugoslavs are obviously looking ahead to the critical post-Tito period),
neither Balkan ruler is willing to relinquish the 'bird-in-the-hand' of
one-party monopolistic power. Both Ceau~escu and Tito's principal
ideologist, the late Edvard Kardelj, have explicitly stated that their
socialist systems have gone beyond the stage of political pluralism and
the formal liberalism enunciated by Eurocommunism. 18
For their part, the Eurocommunists are very sensitive to the realities
of socialism as practised in the existing communist-ruled countries. The
Yugoslav system of worker self-management is viewed very positively
and it has been adopted programmatically by all three parties with great
fanfare as an instrument for 'expanding' democracy in their own
countries. On the other hand, the repression of dissent in any one

socialist country or blatant Soviet interference in the affairs of other
Bloc countries is condemned (albeit selectively) as grist to the mill of
anti-communism and is regarded as a direct hindrance to the
Eurocommunists' quest for legitimacy in their own countries. For
example, PCI leaders have been known to lecture Yugoslav officials in
private on the need to mitigate repression of dissident intellectuals,
advice which has apparently been received without undue umbrage. 19
Santiago Carrillo's assertion in the Italian left-communist newspaper//
Manifesto in November 1975 that Eurocommunism in power would
foster the liberalisation of Communist regimes in Poland, Hungary, and
even Czechoslovakia has never been put to the test, and it was probably
naive or disingenuous in any case. 20 But the writer has been told by more
than one Yugoslav dissenter in recent years that, 'Eurocommunism is
our only hope'. Whatever its actual achievements to date, Eurocom-
munism as myth evidently retains considerable force in the various
currents and counter-currents of influence within the international
communist movement. Even the Chinese Communists apparently now
consider its representative parties worthy of direct relations once again.
The foregoing characterisation of Eurocommunist positions bears the
weaknesses of the lowest common denominator, always an especial
danger in political analysis. As has already been noted, the differences
among the three parties in their approach to the quest for legitimacy in
the three arenas have been at least as significant as the common
elements. In the brief space remaining one cannot hope to explore these
differences thoroughly, but a few illustrative comments deserve
mention.
The PCE, at once the weakest of the three Eurocommunist parties
numerically and the most vociferous in asserting its independence of
Moscow, carries the heavy burden of the record of communist excesses
and duplicity during the Spanish Civil War, when the party was cynically
used by Stalin to eliminate Trotskyites and other opponents enlisted on
the Loyalist side. Its leaders were subsequently forced into almost forty
years of exile in the USSR and Eastern Europe, where they often
succumbed to the internal squabbling and intrigue characteristic of exile
politics. These internal splits were frequently manipulated by Moscow
to enthrone its own favourites, a tactic which the Kremlin leaders have
again tried to employ, so far without success, against Carrillo and his
chief ideological lieutenant, Manuel Azcarate, in the Eurocommunist
era.
Carrillo's efforts to forge a coalition of established anti-Franco forces
under tacit PCE hegemony as the Franco era drew to a close were largely
unsuccessful. The party's poor showing in the June 1977 elections
indicated that it had a long way to go to earn, in the domestic political
arena, the same degree of legitimacy that it had quickly won in the
labour movement through its control of the Workers' Commissions. But
Carrillo has shown himself to be anything but rigid and backward-
looking, a Ia Georges Marchais, in adapting his party's course to the
evident requirements of the struggle for domestic political legitimacy. In
addition to supporting the integration of Spain into the Western
economic and defence community (the latter very tacitly to be sure), he
has pushed through certain modifications of party doctrine, for
example, the dropping of Leninism and rigid unitarism in internal PCE
operations. 21 We have already commented on his demonstrative
enthusiasm for the institutions of parliamentary democracy.
The PCF, by contrast, has long been an example of a conservative,
thoroughly Bolshevised party. Under Maurice Thorez, Waldeck
Rochet, and, for a time, Georges Marchais as well, it remained wedded to
a self-image of anti-intellectual ouvrierisme and encadrement, 22 glorying
in a rejection of the French political system and at the same time
maintaining a curious neo-Gaullist attitude toward French particip-
ation in West European integration. This stance has occasionally
embarrassed even the Soviets, who had in the meanwhile been
moderately successful in reaching accommodation with de Gaulle and
his immediate heirs. The recent PCF adventure in Eurocommunism has
accordingly been hedged with numerous reservations and nationalistic
qualifications which Ronald Tiersky has aptly called 'Galla-
communism'. The PCF quest for domestic legitimacy through
acceptance of liberal political values has been the least convincing and
the most tentative of the three parties. And yet the stridency of Marchais'
attacks on particular Soviet policies has, in an oddly Stalinist fashion,
been among the most striking and uncompromising (for example, his
refusal to attend the 25th Congress of the CPSU and the 60th
Anniversary celebrations of the October Revolution in Moscow). The
subsequent rupture of the Common Programme with its left-wing party
allies in the fall of 1977 showed just how uncomfortable the PCF was in
its new mantle of responsibility, but a total return to the Stalinist past
appears to be precluded.
In comparison to the PCF, the PCI has been a model of tactical
flexibility and intellectual tolerance. For many years before its clearcut
determination to pursue the Eurocommunist option the PCI, although
formally barred from the central corridors of Italian governmental
power, had acquired practical acceptance within the political system

through the traditional practice of behind-the-scenes wheeling and
dealing with the various factions of the ruling elite. In local politics the
PCI had established an impressive record for effective (by Italian
standards) administrative and political operations in municipal
government- most notably in Bologna. At the national level PCI
parliamentarians, such as Giorgio Amendola and Pietro Ingrao, had
been regularly involved as contributors to national debates on structural
reform and social policy for more than a decade. 23 As Galli observed for
the early postwar period, PCI leaders had become increasingly ac-
customed to a role in national politics. For them the shift to Eurocom-
munism has been a gradual process unlike the abrupt turnabout in
orientation demanded of their PCE and PCF counterparts.
One of the most salient of the national differences among the three
parties has been their experiences in dealing with their arch-rivals, the
socialist parties, a key element in the strategy of forming potential
governmental coalitions. In all three countries the communist parties
have had to contend with a legacy of deep suspicion among the
socialists, born of the often perfidious behaviour of the communists in
previous alliance situations. In Spain it was the experience of the Civil
War, when socialists and anarchists were sacrificed to the interests of
Stalin's vendettas against his enemies. The result has been a steadfast
refusal by Felipe Gonzales and the PSOE to participate in joint efforts
with Carrillo. In France it was the disappointment over communist
failure to accept responsibility and abide by commitments of support in
critical moments during the Popular Front before the war and the
party's sudden turn to violent opposition under Cominform instructions
after the war. The agreement on a Common Programme with Fran~is
Mitterand's revitalised Socialist Party in 1972 was always a fragile thing,
as each side continually sought advantages over the other and was
constantly on the lookout for signs of malfeasance and duplicity by its
ally. In Italy there was also a matter of disagreement over foreign policy,
as the PSI under Pietro Nenni became disillusioned over the PCI's
refusal to condemn Soviet repression of the Hungarian rebellion in 1956.
The Italian relationship has been somewhat less acrimonious than that
in Spain and France, perhaps because of the long-term relative weakness
of the socialists. Nevertheless, a reconciliation with the socialists has
remained no less a problem for the Italians than for the French and
Spanish communists.
This remains a crucial problem indeed, for it is evidently axiomatic
that a close relationship with the socialists is a conditio sine qua non for
any viable Eurocommunist strategy for gaining power. The socialists

have long been accepted as a legitimate component of the political
structure in these countries. In France and Italy they have participated
in governmental coalitions on several occasions since the war. And in
post-Franco Spain they have again become a credible alternative to the
existing centrist government, as the potential nucleus of a moderate left-
of-centre coalition. The Eurocommunists would obviously like to use
the acceptability of the socialists to gain legitimacy for themselves, not
only in the political arena, but also in the working-class movement,
where cooperation with the socialist trade-union leadership would
facilitate communist consolidation of their already dominant position.
The latter objective highlights another important common strategic
element of Eurocommunist policy- the extension of socialist modalities
beyond the main political arena to other areas of social life, especially
the workshop and the local community. Here the Yugoslav model of
worker self-management and social self-government is often cited by
leaders of the three parties. The theoretical basis of this strategy is to
restructure relations of production and daily existence at the 'economic
base' of society in order to make the changes in the political
superstructure, heralded by a Eurocommunist accession to power,
irreversible. This scenario perhaps helps to explain the brazen assertion
of PCI Central Committee member Lucio Lombardo Radice that the
voters would never unseat a Eurocommunist-led government; 'Would
any part of the population want to see a regression from Socialism, a
retreat from a higher form of society to a lower?' 24 The dogmatic quality
of Lombardo Radice's question is rather uncharacteristic of PCI
utterances, but its thrust undoubtedly reflects the thinking behind PCI
policy, for example, in the many municipalities presently under its
control.
Similar logic evidently governs the PCF's uncompromising stand on
the issue of further nationalisation of French industry, which was the
proximate cause of the rupture with the other signatories of the 1972
Common Programme (first the Left Radicals of Fabre and then the
Socialists of Mitterand) virtually on the eve of the 1978 general elections,
when the left coalition was apparently on the verge of victory. For the
PCF, assuming that it genuinely wished to assume power at this time,
and did not unduly fear being temporarily upstaged by the socialists, the
extension of nationalisation would have increased the access of its
organisers to additional groups of workers and bureaucrats where their
prospects of success were greatest, both in terms of party and trade-
union recruitment, and facilitated the politicisation of key social
institutions. Lacking the PCF's organisational skills, and less commit-

ted to its objective of socio-psychological transformation 'at the base',
the PS and the Left Radical leaders were understandably less en-
thusiastic over further nationalisation.
This issue illustrates the interaction between situational and attitudi-
nal differences in the policies of the respective Eurocommunist parties,
parties which are ostensibly pursuing similar goals and strategies. The
PCE, which is currently in no position to demand nationalisation (or
anything else) from its various prospective coalition partners, takes a
very conciliatory, 'national interest' stand on virtually all social and
economic issues, while it patiently strives to build its support in the
working class and regional autonomy movements. It has clearly opted
for domestic political legitimacy at the expense of its standing in the
Soviet-dominated core of the international communist movement, while
seeking working-class legitimacy by a judicious policy of'economism' at
the base.
The PCI, which is politically and socially strong enough to make
demands on coalition partners (and apparently on the ruling Christian
Democrats as well), has not made an issue of further nationalisation,
primarily because there is little else of importance left to nationalise in
Italy, but also because nationalising the few remaining large-scale
bastions of capitalism, such as FIAT, would unnecessarily frighten
social elements and forces with which the party already has comfortable
working relations. Yet this policy of reasonableness and respectability
has clearly failed to win Berlinguer additional votes or the confidence of
the PSI, newly revitalised under the tough leadership of Bettino Craxi.
The price demanded for such confidence by the PSI is evidently still too
high. In the words of PSI Deputy Secretary, Claudio Signorile in August
1978, 'The Communist Party must pay a price for its change, on the
ideological plane and in its behaviour in domestic and foreign policy'. 25
Thus, even in Italy the Eurocommunists are forced to bear the heavy
burden of their past record in the ongoing quest for domestic political
legitimacy.
The events of 1980 - the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the
disciplined workers' revolutionary action in Poland- have placed the
Eurocommunist parties before yet another set of crucial points of
decision in the relations with Moscow. On the Afghan issue the PCF
has apparently abandoned any attempt at critical independence, render-
ing still more questionable its eligibility for designation as
'Eurocommunist'; while the PCI and the PCE have further dissociated
themselves from Soviet policies. The Polish situation is potentially even
more crucial. Should the Soviet leaders decide that the Kania regime
has gone too far in yielding to the demands of the Polish workers and act
accordingly, the Eurocommunists will inevitably have to make a
decisive choice one way or the other. On the other hand, if Moscow (and
Warsaw) allow the apparent concession of trade-union autonomy to
stand and become consolidated, the lot of the Eurocommunists will, of
course, be much easier on all counts. At this point the latter eventuality
must, unfortunately, be considered the less likely.
III CONCLUSIONS
By the end of 1979 it was clear that the Eurocommunist tide of the 1970s
had begun to ebb. In certain superficial respects Soviet assertions that
the Eurocommunist parties were chasing a phantom in seeking legit-
imate power through peaceful means and accommodation with the
bourgeois parliamentary order appeared to be vindicated. But surely it
was too soon to be writing obituaries for Eurocommunism; something
like it would have had to arise under the changing social and political
conditions of the three countries, and is likely to rise again, if the strong
communist parties wish to maintain their relevance as active political
factors. It is difficult not to agree with the assessment of Cornelius
Castoriadis, an independent French leftist commentator:
Eurocommunism has developed out of the effort of the totalitarian

Communist party apparatuses to adapt to a situation in which their
accession to power, as prescribed in the classic scenarios, seems to be
indefinitely unrealisable and in which, given social changes, they
would risk withering away were they to limit themselves simply to
struggling to stay alive. Thus they are led to put more and more
distance between themselves and Russia, to modify their public
behaviour and, up to a point, their internal functioning; and finally, to
abandon, or pretend to abandon -the difference is likely to be slight -
their ideological monolithism.
This effort to adapt is strained by inconsistencies, as one sees in the
case not only of the French CP but also of the Italian party. But when
has inconsistency ever prevented anyone from surviving? 26
Yet Castoriadis may have exaggerated the ability of the Eurocom-

munist parties to adapt sufficiently. It may well be that 'real existing
socialism', as defined by Boris Ponomarev and practiced in the Soviet
Union and its satellites, or even in Yugoslavia, is the only game in town:
that communist parties can only rule in such a manner. 2 7 For, one of the
most important reasons for the failure of the Eurocommunists to win
acceptance in their respective political systems is the absence of a true
conception of politics in their theory and practice. Their tenacious
adherence to democratic centralism is an important symbol of this
absence. Like their Bloc and Yugoslav comrades, the Eurocommunists
have a basically Platonic, rather than an Aristotelian, notion of politics
and its place in the social activity of conscious human beings. The
political impulse is viewed as flawed, as evidence of a kind of original sin.
The ideal citizen is not a 'political animal' for whom contention and
rivalry for power and the chance to promote his own favourite solutions
to social problems is a fundamental social value; rather, he is a worker
who accepts the need to implement solutions which scientifically
informed elites have determined and prescribed for him. Hence, the
Eurocommunists' penchant for governments of national unity, 'Historic
Compromises', Common Programme, and the like. Even their commit-
ment to pluralism is tinged with this unitarian coloration; procedural
safeguards are sacrificed on the altar of mass consensus. Consider, for
example, Pietro Ingrao's remarks on minority rights in the debates on
reform of the Italian Parliament in 1966:
I want to say that the more one works concretely for an extension of
the participation of the masses, the more one gives a guarantee to the
minority as well. Thus I would say that the strongest guarantee, the
only guarantee, is in the concrete policy which a party carries out. In
the measure in which we communists struggle to extend this
participation of the masses we indeed construct the conditions in
which a minority can exist, not only as an electoral list, which is also
important, but above all in which it can really participate in the
political dialectic. 28
Such demagoguery could hardly have been convincing to Ingrao's

parliamentary colleagues and opponents, let alone potential coalition
partners. Eurocommunist protestations to the contrary notwith-
standing, these sentiments seem to foreshadow the extension of
democratic centralism to whatever 'progressive' or 'anti-monopolist'
coalitions they succeed in assembling.
Thus, the idea that competition for power and the right to propose
alternative, even diametrically opposed, solutions to national problems
as a basic continuing value in a political system still appears to be alien to
the spirit of Eurocommunism. It is not surprising that socialist party

leaders are reluctant to tie themselves closely to allies with this
ideological orientation.
On the other hand, there is some evidence that PCI politicians and
administrators at the local level, fully exposed to the overwhelming
administrative and financial difficulties of municipal government, are
learning the lesson that no one has all the answers. Whether their
experiences will percolate up to the party leadership and whether they
will be prepared to 'pay the price on the ideological plane' remains to be
seen.
This is a crucial question, for the cost of tuition in democratic politics
through increasing immersion in the give and take of electoral and
policy-making competition may be high. Legitimacy in the domestic
political arena is likely to be obtained only at the cost of a decline in
authority and support in the domestic working-class movement and the
international communist movement, at least that part of it dominated by
the Soviet Union. And the Soviet leaders are sure to attempt to pick up
those in the Eurocommunist parties who are alienated by their leaders'
respectability or are otherwise unwilling to pay the price. Whether
leaders like Berlinguer and Carrillo can long tolerate these internal and
external cross-pressures (Marchais has already succumbed to a great
extent) appears problematical at this point. If not, someone among their
successors will undoubtedly have to resume the effort at some future
juncture.
NOTES
l. See, for example, Roy Godson and Stephen Haseler, 'Eurocommunism':

Implications for East and West (New York, 1978); also G. R. Urban's essay
in G. R. Urban (ed.), Eurocommunism: Its Roots and Future in Italy and
Elsewhere (London, 1978).
2. See Eugenio Reale's devastating portrait of inter-party relations after the
war and the personalities involved, in his Avec Jacques Duclos au Bane des
Accuses a Ia Reunion Constitutive du Kominform a Szklarska Porrba,
translated from Italian by Pierre Bonuzzi (Paris, 1958) esp. pp. 9-45.
3. For an overview of basic elements of the relationship with respect to the
Balkan region see Robert F. Miller and Carsten Holbraad,
'Eurocommunism and the Balkan Communist Parties', Current Affairs
Bulletin, (Sydney, Australia), 54, 12 (May 1978) 24-34.
4. E. Varga, 'Demokratiya novogo tipa', Mirovoe Khoziaistvo i mirovaya
po/itika, no. 3 (Mar. 1947) 3.
5. Ibid., p. 13.
6. For example, I. P. Trainin, 'Demokratiya osobogo tipa', Sovetskoe
gosudarstvo i pravo, nos I and 3, ( 1947); and L. Leontiev, 'Ekonomicheskie

osnovy novoi demokratii', Planovoe khoziaistvo, no. 4 (1947)63-79. For a
comprehensive account of Varga's works and his harsh treatment for
having praised the 'new type of democracy' see Laszlo Tikos, E. Vargas
Tatigkeit als Wirtschaftsanalytiker und Publizist (Tiibingen, 1965) esp. pp.
86-97.
7. Adam Schaff, Wstfp do teorii Marksizmu (Warsaw, 1948) p. 270.
8. Ibid., p. 273.
9. Palmiro Togliatti, II partito (Rome, 1964) p. 102.
10. Ibid., p. 116.
II. Quoted in Ronald Tiersky, 'Alliance Politics and Revolutionary
Pretensions', in Donald L. M. Blackmer and Sidney Tarrow (eds),
Communism in Italy and France (Princeton, 1975) p. 433.
12. Ibid.
13. Giorgio Galli, 'Italian Communism', in William E. Griffith (ed.), Commu-
nism in Europe, vol. 1 (Cambridge, 1964) p. 307.
14. Reale, op. cit.; see esp. the speeches by Kardelj, pp. 129-38; Djilas, pp. 143-
50; and Mihaly Farkas, pp. 138--40, where Lenin's old epithet of
'parliamentary cretinism' is specifically used.
15. Jacques Fauvet, Histoire du Parti communiste franfais, vol. II ( 1939-1965)
(Paris, 1965) p. 161.
16. Jean Elleinstein, interviewed in Urban (ed.), op. cit., p. 91.
17. Quoted in Fauvet, op. cit., p. 162.
18. Miller and Holbraad, op. cit., pp. 28-30. Kardelj's views are set forth most
completely in his last major work, Democracy and Socialism, translated by
Margot and Bo~o Milosavljevic (Belgrade, 1978).
19. Personal conversation of the author with a Yugoslav official in October
1976.
20. Cited by Paul Preston in The Third Road' (review article), New Statesman,
12 October 1979, p. 556. The author is indebted to Professor James Cracraft
for bringing this review to his attention.
21. Eusebio Majal-Leon, 'The PCE in Spanish Politics', Problems of
Communism, XXVII, 4 (1978)32-5.
22. The influence of these principles on PCF conduct is incisively analysed by
Ronald Tiersky in ' French Communism, Eurocommunism, and Soviet
Power', in RudolfL. Tokes (ed.), Eurocommunism and Detente (New York,
1978) esp. pp. 146-51 and 171--6.
23. Leopoldo Piccardi, Norberto Bobbi, Ferruccio Parri (eds), La Sinistra
Davanti alia Crisi del Parlamento (Milano: Giuffre, 1967) (Amendola) and
pp. 135--47 (Ingrao).
24. Lombardo Radice interview in Urban (ed.), op. cit., p. 48.
25. Quoted in an interview by Francesco Palladino, 'II PSI dopo il Quirinale',
Oggi, XXXIV, 31 (3 August 1978)40.
26. Cornelius Castoriadis, 'The French Communist Party: A Critical
Anatomy', Dissent, Summer 1979, 321.
27. B. N. Ponomarev, 'Vsemirno-istoricheskoe znachenie Velikoi Oktiabr'skoi
sotsialisticheskoi revoliutsii', Kommunist, no. 17, 27-30.
28. Piccardi, eta/. (eds), op. cit., p. 145.
9 The State, Marxism and
Political Legitimation*
R.N. Berki
In the Western context political legitimation refers in the main to certain

processes (and their doctrinal underpinning) whereby state and govern-
mental power and policy-decisions are rendered morally acceptable to
the governed, so that there may be conformity without coercion.
Furthermore, legitimation here is usually taken to signify the in-
stitutionalisation of electoral choice between alternative and conflicting
basic policies and between competing groups of aspiring power-holders.
What is thus conspicuous here is electoral or popular 'sovereignty', i.e.
the ever-present uncertainty attaching to the outcome of political
contests, rendering the nature of politics somewhat abstract and
indefinite, and legitimation a predominantly procedural, formal affair.
The contrast to Marxist doctrine and practice at least in East European
communist states could not be more pronounced, for what is conspicu-
ous with the latter is the predominantly substantive character of political
legitimation, i.e. the conformity of policies and personnel-in-power to
certain clearly defined, concrete objectives, to which the formal
procedures characterising electoral sovereignty are made at least in part
subservient (e.g. one-party 'elections'). Crudely, therefore, the contrast
is between the 'people' or electorate as the ultimate source oflegitimacy
in one case, and the concrete objective ('communism') as defined by the
ruling Party and made effective by state power in the other case, or to
reduce it even further to the oft-repeated cliche: in liberal-democracy
'society' has the final say in politics, in communism it is the 'state'. 1
But not only is this view crude and superficial; it tends actually to turn
attention away from what I shall argue is really the important and
*I am grateful to my friend Terry McNeill, of the Hull Politics Department, for

his bibliographical assistance and comments on an earlier draft of this chapter.
146
The State, Marxism and Political Legitimation 147
determining factor here, the one that adequately explains the

aforementioned contrast. The argument I am advancing is that, despite
appearances perhaps, political legitimation in liberal-democratic sys-
tems rests on an elevated, exalted conception of the state, whereas the
crucial and relevant feature of Marxism is its elevation of society and
corresponding degradation, dethroning of the state. I shall go even
further and define the contrast in these dramatic and hyperbolic terms:
political legitimation in the West presupposes the divinity of the state;
Marxism in direct negation of this principle asserts the divinity of man,
and hence, in its prevalent Marxist-Leninist form at any rate, has no
coherent doctrine of political legitimation at all. Now without doubt the
expression 'divinity of the state' will jar in some Western ears, but I think
(and will endeavour to demonstrate) that its adoption here is fully
justified. Let me make one preliminary remark: the principle of the
divinity of the state, as I understand it, is not only a valid principle and
the logical prerequisite of any coherent view of political legitimation,
but it is also a humane and reasonable notion, not in the least demeaning
or inimical to individual dignity. What I am calling here the divinity of
man, i.e. the belief that man can transcend and live without the state, is
by contrast a pernicious as well as incoherent notion. I interpret
Marxism in this chapter as being in essence such a notion; however, as I
shall argue later, Marxism cannot establish the divinity of man in any
coherent form, and that its doctrinal inadequacies on this score are
revealed by textual ambiguities and incongruous political practice; at
the end of the day Marxism too has to pay back-handed and unwitting
tribute to the divinity of the state.
The divinity of the state refers to the moral authority of law and
government as such, or to the principle of rightful rules and commands
as such, which means in turn accepting government irrespective of its
historically and geographically contingent shape and prior to any
instrumental value it may have in actively promoting substantive
satisfactions. The argument then clearly divides into two parts, firstly
relating to the nature of moral authority and secondly to the moral
authority of the state. It is, I think, relatively easy to establish the first
point, viz. that morality in individual consciousness necessarily implies
the acceptance of authority. I am here more or less straightforwardly
adapting Peter Winch's insight, who has recently argued that 'the
acceptance of authority is not just something which, as a matter of fact,
you cannot get along without if you want to participate in rule-governed
activities; rather, to participate in rule-governed activities is, in a certain
way, to accept authority. For to participate in such an activity is to
accept that there is a right and a wrong way of doing things, and the
decision as to what is right and wrong in a given case can never depend
completely on one's own caprice'. 2
Two points need special emphasis here. Firstly, as Winch says, rule-
governed conduct (which is the only properly recognised human conduct
there is) means acknowledging a 'right way' which is not identifiable
with individual 'caprice' or natural inclination. Surely morality,
minimally, must involve the belief that there is something higher, more
durable and firmly established than one's immediate desires, whichever
way this something is defined. The rational human 'will', for example, as
Kant worked it out, can well be presented as the source of binding moral
authority; Kantian moral theory, in fact, is doubly relevant here, since
on the one hand it is a secularised further development of Protestant
moral theology (strongly suggestive of the 'divine' background to
morality), and on the other hand it does, through successive stages of
transformation, lead eventually to Marxism which is, so to speak, its
reductio ad absurdum, involving what I argue is an unwarranted final
leap from the divinity of the human rational will to the divinity of man.
According to Kant, in morality 'we stand under a discipline of reason,
and in all our maxims must not forget our subjection to it ... .' 3 He
observes rightly that 'the perfect accordance of the will with the moral
law is holiness, a perfection of which no rational being of the sensible
world is capable ... .' 4 It seems to me then that it is not altogether
unreasonable or absurd to characterise moral authority as 'divine'; its
divinity consists in its categorial distinction from the natural self (which
does not, of course, exclude the contingent coincidence of the two) and
its categorial imperative. Moral authority is for us absolute, it is what we
accept, initially and unconditionally, what we cannot change
capriciously, what 'creates' us as conscious and free human agents in the
first place. This leads to the second point to be emphasised. Freedom, on
this understanding of moral authority, is not at all diminished by the
acceptance of unconditional moral rules, but on the contrary it depends
for its intelligibility on this very acceptance. If freedom means to be able
to act on one's own reasons, then it must presuppose authority, for, as
Winch puts it, 'reasons are intelligible only in the context of the rules
governing the kind of activity in which one is participating ... to
eschew the rules ... would not be to gain perfect freedom, but to create
a situation in which the notion of freedom could no longer find a
foothold'. 5 Moral rules govern activities in a formal and negative or in
Oakeshott's term 'adverbial' manner, prescribing conditions, but not
substantive purposes and satisfactions. 6 Moral authority is by definition
superior to natural inclination, but it at the same time presupposes

agents who nevertheless consistently act so as to gain natural
satisfaction; one would be unintelligible without the other.
But let us move on to the second part of the argument, concerning the
morality of the state; this presents, to be sure, a knottier problem, but
one that is still capable of rational demonstration. Roughly, what is
argued here is that the aforementioned basic characteristics of moral
consciousness are applicable also to the state, and indeed that their
absence would render the state as a form of human association wholly
unintelligible; that is to say, the state implies the unconditional
acceptance of its authority, that this authority is in principle formal and
adverbial, that it presupposes the opposite feature of natural inclination
or 'caprice' on the part of its citizens, and that it therefore promotes
substantive satisfactions only indirectly. As regards the first two points,
the moral character of the state is well attested by such time-honoured
distinctions imbedded in common usage as between 'authority' and
'power' ('rightful government' and 'tyranny') or between 'prudential'
and 'moral' considerations. The state is and must be distinguished from
goal-pursuing enterprises on the one hand (to which individuals may or
may not join, depending on their understanding of their own 'interest')
and situations of pure coercion on the other (e.g. the paying of
kidnappers' ransom). The Western tradition of political thought has
always emphasised the unique and moral nature of the state, its
universality, indispensability and priority to other allegiances and
substantive pursuits. Aristotle first formulated this view, in the famous
lines: ' ... the state is a creation of nature, and ... man is by nature
a political animal. He who is stateless by nature and not just by
choice is either sub-human or super-human'. 7 The basic sense of this
conviction is taken up into later (and no doubt, on the surface, quite
different) formulations, such as the Pauline-Augustinian notion of the
divine ordination of 'powers that be', Machiavelli's reason of state,
Bodin's majesty, Hobbes's 'mortal God', right down to the modern and
still unsurpassed expositions to be found in Rousseau and Hegel. The
notion running through Western political philosophy is that the state
provides the general moral framework for all other human goods and
objectives; since it is necessary for the attainment of everything, it
cannot be considered simply a 'means' or an 'instrument', neither a
particular, substantive good itself. It has no definite duration or profile
determined by external factors (e.g. 'economic forces'), no specific
purpose or interest to promote, except its own survival; it is formal and
moral association uniting individuals 'who are joined in no common
purpose or engagement, who may be strangers to one another, the object

of whose loves are as various as themselves, and who may lack any but
this moral allegiance to one another'. 8
Why should there, however, be such a 'moral' association in the first
place? One possible answer is suggested by the foregoing account of
morality, and I suspect that this is the kind of explanation- here
outlined only in a very terse, rudimentary way -most resorted to also in
the classical texts. The elevation of a firm, rational 'will' with its
categorical command presupposes, as we have seen above, the natural
and capricious individual self continually seeking satisfaction. More or
less the same position obtains in the inter-human context where political
thinkers have traditionally contrasted to the state as moral association
such entities as the 'natural individual' (Hobbes) or the household
(Aristotle). The point is that these lesser entities or groupings express, ex
definitione, a principle that is pre-moral or, if we really want to make the
contrast dramatic, immoral. That is to say, while the state qua moral
authority postulates acceptance as the starting-point in understanding it
and relating oneself to it, here we have an initial and exclusive assertion.
While the moral character of the state places it above specific purpose
and interest, these constructs (the individual, the household, the firm,
the club, the social class) must have a well-defined and well understood,
unitary and exclusive interest as their operative principle -what sense,
meaning, point or 'function' would they have otherwise? Let us call
these lesser entities collectively 'society'. The principle of society then is
particularity and conflict, since interests are always diverse and divisive;
it represents, so to speak, 'caprice' writ large (there are potentially, as
many diverse interests as there are selfconscious individuals who may, of
course, be also internally divided as between conflicting natural desires).
Society hence needs to be limited or rather interpenetrated by a universal
and moral association which is the state. It is, let us add briefly,
methodologically naive and misleading to conceive of the state or moral
authority as something merely external and posterior to social interest; if
this were the case, if the state were understood as an 'agency' set up to
'restrain' individual caprice, etc., then we would simply be adding yet
another 'interest' to existing ones, and we would completely fail to
comprehend its character. State and society, just as 'rule-governed'
activity and natural inclination do not and cannot exist in temporal
succession or even analytical separation; they presuppose each other
and are interpenetrating opposites. Indeed, in the present context what
needs special stress is that aspect of the state which shows its (logical)
priority to society (though let us remember that this, too, is an
abstraction): 'politics' may well be, as Marxists assert, fundamentally

about conflict, but then conflict itself presupposes agreement about
certain general moral rules; it cannot occur in the void, but in the context
of moral authority; the 'class struggle' is not literally and not exclusively
'struggle', but social conflict within a moral framework (and even
warfare in the proper sense has acknowledged 'rules').
It is then no surprise that so many eminent thinkers have believed that
the state, as a puzzling, mysterious entity (like the Almighty himself),
requires 'veneration'. Edmund Burke, for instance, thought that 'fealty
and homage', and almost 'oblation of the state itself' 9 as God's direct
creation were called for; in a manner similar to Kant's conception of the
moral law, Burke looks upon the state as a 'contrivance of human
wisdom to provide for human wants' among which most important is
the want to have a restraint on our own 'passions'. 10 Somewhat more
surprisingly perhaps, James Madison also showed himself suspicious of
attempts to 'deprive the government of that veneration which time
bestows on everything, and without which perhaps the wisest and freest
governments would not possess the requisite stability'.'' Like Burke
and Kant, he also extends the dualism presupposed by morality into this
area:' ... it is the reason alone, of the public, that ought to control and
regulate the government. The passions ought to be controlled and
regulated by the government'. 12 Another relevant point to be made here
concerns the modern doctrine of popular sovereignty which, against
appearances, is compatible with the principle of the divine state. The
'source' of moral authority is a consideration secondary to the
acceptance of authority as such; what popular sovereignty has really
asserted is not so much the humanisation of the state as the deification-
through the state, not in separation from it! -of the people. Oakeshott
rightly points out that the seemingly antithetical character of the two
main forms of justification of state authority in modern Europe,
invoking either the grace of God or the will of the people, 'is illusory:
from the sixteenth to the twentieth century they have together sustained
what they were designed to sustain: faith in authority ... vox populi was
endowed with authority in being recognised as vox dei'. 13 Quite often, of
course, the supernatural authority of the Christian God has been
directly invoked to sustain popular sovereignty; an apt illustration of
this is to be found in the Preamble to the American Declaration of
Independence, the people claiming here 'the separate and equal station
to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them', and the
'self-evident' truths 'that all men are created equal, that they are end-
owed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights .... That to secure
these rights, Governments are instituted among Men deriving their just
powers from the consent of the governed .... 'Here it is clear that only
the powers of government are derived from 'consent', but not the
institution of government, to which, tied as it is to the notion of
unalienable rights which in turn are derived from the Creator, is
attributed the halo of divinity.
Here we may take a somewhat closer look at Rousseau and Hegel
whose interest derives from their proximity to Marx. Rousseau
obviously thinks that although 'will' is the source of state authority, this
'will' is not to be reduced to individual inclination and caprice: it is the
will of morality. The state requires the 'total alienation' of each person
enacting the 'compact', and it is this act which 'creates a moral and
collective body'. And the sovereignty of the 'general will' does mean that
'whoever refuses to obey ... shall be compelled to do so by the whole
body. This means nothing less than that he will be forced to be free' 14 -
the argument leading directly to Kant and the 'divinity' entailed in
moral consciousness that we have already remarked upon. Rousseau
emphasises the fact that the creation of the state 'produces a very
remarkable change in man'; man is not divine to begin with, he gains this
elevation only in and through the state. Furthermore, Rousseau insists
that the morality and sovereignty of the 'will' that gains embodiment in
the state depends on it remaining really general, 'in its object as well as its
essence ... it loses its natural rectitude when it is directed to some
particular and determinate object ... .' 15 It can thus be plausibly
argued that Rousseau's general will, the moral authority of the state, is
and must be confined to the fundamental moral law, and it does not
include actual legislation which always has a 'particular and determinate
object'. The divinity of the state for Rousseau thus means the state's
formal and universal character. 16 Hegel, too derives the state from the
'free will' which is made 'actual, the world of mind brought forth out of
itself like a second nature'. 17 But free will, of course, does not mean
capricious inclination or, as Hegel expresses it, 'indeterminate
subjectivity', but on the contrary, it means the 'bond of duty' in which
'the individual finds his liberation'. Duty as the absolute moral good is
defined by concrete moral life, Sittlichkeit, the institutional embodi-
ment of which is the state, 'this substantial unity' which is 'an absolute
unmoved end in itself', and it 'has supreme right against the individual,
whose supreme duty is to be a member of the state'. 18 Hegel, in fact,
criticises Rousseau and Fichte, who, although correctly deriving the
state from the rational and free human will, do not see the rationality of
the state itself, falling victim to 'abstract reasoning' which tends to
'destroy the absolutely divine principle of the state, together with its
majesty and absolute authority'. 19 One may cavil at the terms used, but I
do not think that the Hegelian position can be substantially improved
upon (though it may, of course, be paraphrased in all sorts of ways): as
long as there is government, as long as there is observance of commands
'rightfully' issuing from power-holders, there can be no other under-
standing or explanation that is satisfactory. Either it is full divinity or
full anarchy, man in his (in Aristotelian terms) 'natural' political milieu
or man who is considered 'super-human'. A relevant point to note here is
Hegel's limitation of the state, which is concomitant with its divinity. On
the one hand, the state is declared the highest, and the only divine,
human institution, but the institutional sphere is itself transcended by the
freedom of 'absolute spirit' expressed in art, religion and philosophy.
And on the other hand, the state is also limited from 'below': it is
superior to and encompasses 'civil society' which is merely the 'external'
state, catering for the multiplicity of various human 'needs', but it does
not smother it or devour it: the caprice of 'indeterminate subjectivity'
also has its proper role to play. In sum, Hegel sees that morality and
interest, acceptance of authority and assertion of need, want and
purpose, the principles of state and of society, are both necessary,
mutually reinforcing and justificatory, and must be coordinated.
And here, finally, we come to political legitimation. The rationale of it,
as defined in the opening paragraph of this chapter, comes first of all
again from the nature of morality. As I have argued, the acceptance of
moral authority does not cancel out, but on the contrary implies the
pursuit of substantive satisfactions on the part of free agents; morality is
concerned only with limits or formal considerations. The state likewise,
in the first instance, concerns itself only with general rules which
negatively prescribe the limits to substantive pursuits, but it does not,
positively and directly, prescribe what anyone should or will do. This
would clearly negate free agency and through that the moral authority
of the state itself; law must be negative and government must be limited,
though supreme; divinity presupposes a kind of remoteness and majestic
unconcern. But this is not the end of the matter. It can be further and
cogently argued- and this is of course the distinctive contribution of
modem liberal-democratic thought to the understanding of the state-
that freedom and morality are not fully realised in the state unless
society can also penetrate the sphere of government, in the manner of
individual choices determining the content of legislation. The state and
society must, in other words, be mediated and it is this mediation which
we might properly term 'politics', and the determination of the content
of government is political legitimation. The crucial point of course is to

be aware that since the rationale of the state is society and since the
essential principle of society is the conflict of interests, the result of
legitimation, i.e. agreed substantive decisions on policy, can never be
more than contingent and temporary adjustments which do not negate
the further possibility of conflict. Otherwise the state would be reduced
to the level of society and would, as it were, forfeit its divinity; it would
mean the exclusive (and needless to say, pernicious) sway of one single
'interest' over others. But then it follows that political legitimation
proper presupposes the continuing acknowledgment of the divinity of
the state, i.e. the separation of form and content or between authority
and government on the one hand and politics on the other. Political
proposals, as Oakeshott puts it, 'postulate the recognition of the
authority of the conditions whose desirability they may question, even
where what is questioned is the desirability of the shape of an office of
authority or the credibility of the beliefs in which it is recognised to have
authority'. 20 And as Clinton Rossiter aptly summarises the message of
The Federalist: 'no happiness without liberty, no liberty without self-
government, no self-government without constitutionalism, no con-
stitutionalism without morality -and none of these great goods without
stability and order'. 21 Now I am not concerned here to defend the theory
and practice of Western liberal-democracy in toto, and I will not deny its
very serious blemishes, but I will make the rather obvious point that here
at least something like public morality really exists. This, I believe, has
close connections with the prevalent acknowledgment of the divine
character and authority of the state.
I must now, however, turn to Marx. The whole ostensive purport of
Marx's thought, early and mature, is a resolute attack on the idea of
divinity, with special reference to religion, the state and (later) political
economy. The critique of 'alienation' and 'dehumanisation', with which
the texts are replete (and to which later Marxist thinkers added such
terms as 'domination' and 'reification') refer to the same things as have
here been described in terms of authority and government. It seems at
first self-evidently true that, as Tucker has put the point, 'Marx believed
that the sovereign political authority in society could not under any
circumstances be considered a rightful authority. The state qua state was
evil'. 22 But, as I have hinted earlier, one must be careful not to jump to
hasty conclusions. Although ostensibly Marx's doctrine is the assertion
of the divinity of man, there are a sufficient number of significant
ambiguities in his (and Engels's) writings to suggest the possibility of
another kind of interpretation. I mean, one can choose between two
alternatives, to read Marxism as a rejection of the divinity of the state or

as a failure to understand it; in the latter case one might argue that Marx
simply assumes the state's divinity, without talking about it.
The most clearcut denunciation of divinity by Marx is, not
surprisingly, to be found in his early programmatic statements on
religious criticism, e.g. 'Religion is only the illusory sun which revolves
round man as long as he does not revolve round himself'. 23 And 'the
criticism of religion ends with the teaching that man is the highest being
for man, hence with the categorical imperative to overthrow all relations
in which man is a debased, enslaved, forsaken, despicable being ... .' 24
The question is here, of course, whether or not political relations in every
important and relevant sense are also to be included in this category of
misery. Not all the textual evidence points one way, although un-
doubtedly anti-statism is the predominant mode. Marx begins,
chronologically, his critique of the state and politics proper with a series
of notes on Hegel's Philosophy of Right, some points of which can be
here briefly mentioned. While Marx here unceremoniously dismisses the
Hegelian state (with its bureaucracy, monarchy and landowning
aristocracy), he extols 'democracy' which he then regards as the 'solved
riddle' of constitutions (similarly to the way he looks upon
'communism' a year later as the solved riddle of history), revealing the
state as the 'free product of man'. 'In democracy the constitution, the
law, the state itself, insofar as it is a political constitution, is only the self-
determination of the people, and a particular content of the people'. 25
Echoing the Bible, Marx declares his belief that 'man does not exist for
the law but the law for man -it is a human manifestation'. 26 Note that
here neither the 'law' as such nor the 'constitution' as such is renounced
unreservedly, only their perverted or incomplete forms. In On the Jewish
Question for the first time Marx explicitly employs the state-society
antithesis which was to become the theoretical basis for his mature
doctrines. He laments in this article that the modern secular state, with
its legal equality and guaranteed freedom of opinion, religion, property,
etc. represents 'human emancipation' only in a partial and distorted
way. The state is man's 'heavenly existence' where he appears free and
equal, as opposed to society where he is oppressed, dehumanised. 'The
perfect political state is, by its nature, man's species-life, as opposed to his
material life'. 27 The liberal-democratic 'Rights of Man' falsely present
political life as though it were man's real life; but what obtains in truth,
Marx asserts, is that the state and politics are wholly subservient to
society. The latter, society, is man's real life, real being, but here this too
appears in a distorted form, hence giving rise to a state and politics
which are only celestial, i.e. a world of make-believe. Now 'species-life

itself, society, appears as a framework external to the individuals, as a
restriction of their original independence. The sole bond holding them
together is natural necessity, need and private interest, the preservation
of their property and their egoistic selves'. 28 Here, I think, the traces of
Marx's genuine Hegelianism, perhaps one could say his residual (and
increasingly suppressed) cognisance of the divinity of the state as moral
authority, is observable: what he attacks is the failure of the state to
attain to true divinity, its being only what Hegel has called the 'external
state', the state based merely on 'need'. What does Marx mean, after all,
by 'human emancipation?' As he says: 'Only when the real, individual
man re-absorbs in himself the abstract citizen, and as an individual
human being has become a species-being in his everyday life ... and
consequently no longer separates social power from himself in the shape
of political power, only then will human emancipation have been
accomplished'. 29 Why should 'citizenship' be 're-absorbed' in in-
dividual-social life, and not simply abandoned or abolished? What does
re-absorption mean? Is Marx really rejecting the divinity of the state
(together with religious divinity, etc.) or is he further developing the
crystallised Hegelian view? The puzzle, I think, remains to the end.
Two brief critical remarks could be interposed here. Firstly, it is too
often accepted unquestioningly, even by avowed anti-Marxists, that
Marx is correct in arguing that 'society' is more basic to human life than
the 'state'. Of course here Marx is following in the footsteps of
individualist thinkers like Locke (as regards some aspects of Locke's
political theory), and his views are paralleled by those of Bentham, Mill,
Cobden, Bright and Spencer. The argument of this chapter is that this
view is erroneous, and moreover that it has important implications for
Marxism subsequently, when it becomes itself an ideology of state
power. Contra Marx, it is asserted here that the state is just as basic to
human life, free human agency, as is society. Without acceptance,
without a structure of moral authority, there can be no assertion, no
'interest', no pursuit of individual satisfaction. Secondly, it is as well to
call attention to the implications of the principle of the divinity of the
state which Marx- insofar as we interpret his views as a 'development'
of the Hegelian notion -does not seem to notice or to accept. That is to
say, if human emancipation or 'communism' really involves the 're-
absorption' of citizenship, the establishment of a full moral community,
it must go hand in hand with the acknowledgment of the continuing
diversity and consequently conflict of individual interests. In the same
way as morality and 'reason' fail to make sense if simply identified with
caprice and natural inclination, a moral community is meaningless if

simply conflated with the non-moral, self-oriented pursuits of 'social'
beings.
But let us go further. If anything, Marx and Engels harden their views
on the state in the mature writings. The state is now pronounced to be
nothing but the 'managing committee' of the bourgeoisie or alterna-
tively a 'parasitic', external structure, achieving temporary supremacy
over society (as in Bonapartist France after 1849). Engels in his
Introduction to Marx's Civil War in France refers contemptuously to the
'superstitious belief' that the state is the 'Kingdom of God on earth'; in
truth 'the state is nothing but a machine for the oppression of one class
by another'. 30 The priority of society over state is given the status of
unquestioned first premise in the materialist conception of history, and
Marx can thus ridicule German socialists in his Critique of the Gotha
Programme for regarding the state as 'an independent entity that
possesses its own intellectual, moral and free basis'. For Marx the
'present-day state' is merely a 'fiction'; what really, independently and
substantively exists is 'present-day society', viz. capitalism. In Capital
Marx reaffirms his view (and his formulation is of some significance in
the present context) that 'man is, if not as Aristotle contends, a political,
at all events a social animal'. 31 Engels in his article 'On Authority'
( 1874) declares: 'All socialists are agreed that the political state, and with
it political authority, will disappear as a result of the coming social
revolution, that is, that public functions will lose their political character
and be transformed into the simple administrative functions of watching
over the true interests of society' 32 - again 'society', being the embodi-
ment of a supposedly unitary and substantive human 'interest', is totally
conflated, i.e. confused, with the moral community and authority of the
state. This view of Engels's is of course echoed in the more renowned
statement in Anti-Duhring regarding the 'withering away of the state' and
government being replaced with the 'administration of things'; and
incidentally Engels's view that 'authority' survives after the revolution
only in the sphere of production, being necessitated by the forces of
nature, is paralleled by Marx's famous statement in Capital III about
labour being an eternal, nature-imposed 'realm of necessity' (a view with
which, as a matter of fact, we would have no quarrel at all, except that
Marx and Engels do not seem to recognise a similar 'realm of necessity'
in the inter-human context). It is further asserted by Marx and Engels,
though only on rare occasions, that the coming revolution will have to
'smash' the state and replace it with the 'dictatorship of the proletariat'
which, as Engels intimates in his Introduction cited above, would still
represent 'an evil inherited by the proletariat'. Tucker again seems

correct in arguing that Marx and Engels considered this dictatorship 'at
best a necessary evil on the road of man's entry into a higher form of
society which would be a good society and as such stateless .... As a
state the proletarian state would be less evil than any other in history,
but an evil it would be'. 33
Yet some doubts still remain, even when we consider Marx's and
Engels's mature writings. Let me just briefly refer to a couple of
interesting points here. Marx talks in his Civil War in France about
' . . . a vague aspiration after a republic that was not only to supersede
the monarchical form of class rule, but class rule itself. The Commune
was the positive form of that republic'. And he goes on: 'While the
merely repressive organs of the old governmental power were to be
amputated, its legitimate functions were to be wrested from an authority
usurping pre-eminence over society itself, and restored to the re-
sponsible agents of society'. 34 And consider Engels who argues in a
letter composed in 1875 that 'the whole talk about the state should be
dropped, especially since the Commune, which was no longer a state in
the proper sense of the word'. He adds: 'We would therefore propose to
replace the word 'state' everywhere by the word Gemeinwesen, a good
old German word which can very well represent the French word
commune'. 35 Just how far is this a verbal question though, and where
should one draw the line between class-rule on the one hand and
'republic' on the other, or between the 'repressive' and 'legitimate'
functions of representative organs, or between a 'pre-eminent authority'
and 'responsible agents?' What is really a 'community' or
'commonwealth' (Gemeinwesen), if it is not to resemble at all, or not in
an essential way, the state? The argument advanced in this chapter is, of
course, that verbal quibbles do not count for much and that no neat
dividing line could be drawn here, ever. A 'community' which is to be
genuinely 'human' and to embody moral relations can only be conceived
in terms of what I have called here the divine state -any supposed
alternative is just poetic fancy, uncommunicable reverie. 'Responsible
agents' of society can be neither 'agents' nor 'responsible' unless they are
occupants of an office of genuine authority, i.e. the state is separated
from social interests; 'legitimate' functions must be, in some sense and in
some directions, 'repressive' (towards the capricious manifestation of
interests).
It seems to me, at any rate, that the two diverging tendencies of
Marxism, which emerged around the tum of the century, can be usefully
commented on in terms of the analysis attempted in the foregoing pages,
i.e. with reference to the antithesis of the divinity of the state and the
divinity of man. Both directions properly derive from the basic texts of
Marx and Engels, though it must be said that Leninism, qua the divinity
of man, appears to have a more convincing pedigree. However, it
appears certainly possible to develop Marxist thought validly as it were
in a statist direction, without coming necessarily to embrace 'revisionist'
social democracy (although Western Marxists with a statist predilection
in the period of the Second International did go this way). I shall offer
here just two brief illustrations. Karl Kautsky, at one time Lenin's
mentor in Marxism, came to criticise Lenin's theory and practice of
'proletarian' power very severely indeed in his The Dictatorship of the
Proletariat, written on the morrow of the Bolshevik accession to power
in Russia. In this book Kautsky draws quite explicitly the required
conceptual distinction between morality and interest which, we argued,
is logically preliminary to the separation of state and society. Kautsky
sees the historic mission of the proletariat to consist 'in the fact that the
collective interests of society fall into line with its permanent class
interests, which are not always the same thing as special sectional
interests'. The 'maturity of the proletariat' means, according to him,
that members belonging to this class come to acquire the habit 'of
regarding things as a whole instead of looking at special interests which
are furthered and extended by engaging in political action'. 36 Regarding
things as a 'whole' means taking a moral point of view, and what
Kautsky calls here the 'collective interests' of society refer of course not
to 'interest' proper, in the substantive sense, but to the formal aspect or
the general good or morality represented by the state. This general good
has, as Kautsky emphasises, only a contingent relationship to the
'sectional' interest of the proletariat, which means that social conflict
can potentially exist also in the new, proletarian state. Interestingly,
Kautsky attempts to explain (explain away?) the Marxist notion of the
'dictatorship of the proletariat' by calling it 'not a form of government,
but ... a condition which must everywhere arise when the proletariat
has conquered political power'. 37 And he draws the following distinc-
tion between 'dictatorship' proper (in the Leninist sense, not as
'condition' but as a 'form of government') and 'democracy':
'Dictatorship impels the party which is in possession of power to
maintain it by all means, whether fair or foul, because its fall means its
complete ruin. With democracy it is quite otherwise. Democracy
signifies rule of the majority, and also protection of the minority,
because it means equal rights and an equal share in all political rights for
everybody, to whatever class or party he may belong'. 38 Here it is
evident that what Kautsky calls 'dictatorship' refers to the intolerant,

impatient, unitary rule of 'society' asserting one interest and trampling
over others, disregarding morality, whereas 'democracy' refers to the
'state', with its formal generality and consequent protection extended to
cover all individuals as citizens, irrespective of their social affiliation.
The other illustration is taken from Ralph Miliband's recent work,
Marxism and Politics. Unlike Kautsky, Miliband has no susceptibility
towards social democracy, and his militant and orthodox Marxism is
above suspicion. He begins, like all Marxists, by defining politics in
terms of conflict: it is 'the pervasive and ubiquitous articulation of social
conflict and particularly of class conflict ... .' And he minces no words
in denouncing the view (which is the position taken in this chapter, too)
that the state is above competing groups: 'The starting point of the
Marxist theory of politics and the state is its categorical rejection of this
view'. 39 However, when Miliband comes to engage in strategic
speculation, arguing in favour of a new kind of revolutionary orien-
tation for Marxists in advanced capitalist countries, a rather different
kind of understanding concerning the state approaches the surface. The
time of a revolution, he argues, is the time when the 'dictatorship of the
proletariat' aIa Lenin is least advisable, 'because such a time requires the
re-creation of a new and strong state, a "state proper" ... .' He agrees
with Lenin that the old state has to be smashed and that the new will be
'a very considerable transformation of the character of the state'. Then:
'What follows the "smashing" of the existing state is the coming into
being of another "state proper", simply because a "state proper" is an
absolutely imperative necessity in organizing the process of transition
from a capitalist society to a socialist one'. 40 Just why is this an
'absolutely imperative necessity?' It cannot be, we may surmise, because
of the need for overwhelming power, since the Leninist 'improper'
construct has had that, to be sure. Neither could this necessity have
simply to do with organising the 'transition' from capitalism to whatever
is said to follow it, since Stalin and his followers have certainly managed
that, without fail. Is it then because 'socialism' as a system of society
still- somehow, incredibly- needs the state, not just to assist its coming
into being, but its being as well, to make it into a proper moral
community, a commonwealth? I suspect that if hard pressed, Miliband
would have to veer towards an answer along these lines- and such an
answer does, of course, imply an acceptance of the divinity of the state, a
view which is 'categorically rejected' by Marxism.
Now finally let us tum to a brief consideration of Marxism in its
clearest formulation as a doctrine of the coming divinity of man, as
propagated by Lenin and his disciples who, on this more obvious and
plausible interpretation of Marx, do carry on the original message with
remarkable consistency. Lenin's classical definition of the revolutionary
dictatorship of the proletariat, formulated in his angry (and when wasn't
Lenin angry?) polemic against Kautsky, that 'it is rule won and
maintained by the use of violence by the proletariat against the
bourgeoisie, rule that is unrestricted by any laws', 41 is but a more down-
to-earth, and a lot more clear-sighted, formulation of the original vision
concerning 'human emancipation' beyond the sphere of politics and the
state, since the state, properly understood, does signify authority in
contrast to violence, and it is indistinguishable from 'laws'. Lenin is also
clear in his mind that his lawless dictatorship by society will lead to
'communism' where there is no law, no politics of any kind: ' ... in
communist society democracy will wither away in the process of
changing and becoming a habit .... ' 42 This then we may say represents
the final closing of the circle: the disappearance, absorption of authority
in the inter-human context means the absorption of the consciousness of
morality into 'habit' in the context of the individual. The development of
Marx's vision to Marxism-Leninism can thus be traced quite easily. The
divinity of man is the starting-point and this pivotal notion is developed
through a succession of identifications. The ideal of human emancip-
ation signifies the elevation of man's 'social being' as opposed to his
'alienated' being in the form of religion, the state, morality and
commodity production. Existing 'society' in capitalism is condemned,
but the valid core of man's 'social being' is located in as it were the basis
of bourgeois---<:apitalist society itself, viz. the proletariat. From the
proletariat as a class, objectively defined, we move on to its most
'advanced' section, as the Communist Manifesto puts it, which is the
Party. It is through the Party that the proletariat becomes a class 'for
itself', i.e. fully aware of its historic mission of leading humanity to
divinity. The Party, too, has its most advanced section in its leadership,
whether or not further condensed into one individual. The original
objective is still fully operative, namely to ensure 'that Man is not merely
an object guided from outside, and that he is not reduced to the existence
of a means'. 43 The question we have to ask is: what does 'man' mean in
the absence of moral relations embodied in the state? And the answer is
that it means nothing but the elevation of an absolutely arbitrary,
uncontrolled and uncontrollable unitary interest and assertion, a
limitless abstraction defining itself continually, without regard to
regulation, rules, guidance from 'outside'. To put it in Aristotelian
terms, man attempting to be 'super-human' and live without the
mutually self-limiting framework of the state, becomes in the process

'sub-human', the would-be angel turning into the beast of moral chaos
and intoxicated wilfulness, which then leads to institutionalised
violence. Absolute humanism produces absolute despotism. 44
This conclusion is confirmed by a summary examination of the
doctrine of the Soviet state and its relation to the Marxist-Leninist
Party. The Soviet state is a state whose divinity is reduced to all but a
pale shadow. It is quite wrong, in my opinion, to liken it to the Hegelian
state, of which it is in truth the diametrical opposite. According, for
example, to A. G. Meyer, 'a Soviet theory of state developed which
represents a curious turn from Marx to Hegel because it hails the
communist state as the institutionalization of the spirit of reason while
enveloping its leaders with an aura of infallibility'. 45 This kind of
argument appears doubly erroneous, since in the first place Hegel
definitely did not attribute infallibility to 'leaders' (it would have
contradicted, in his thought, the divinity of the state), and secondly the
Soviet Constitution and its supporting documents all quite unambigu-
ously agree in declaring the state to be a subservient instrument, a dumb
legal machinery. In truth the Soviet state is a genuine product of Marxist
revolutionary endeavour, a toothless, halo-less residue from which
'alienated' human powers are successively taken away. In the first place,
the Soviet state declares itself to be a full democracy, where 'all power
belongs to the people'. This in itself of course is unexceptionable, and
indeed, as J. K. Gilison points out in his most stimulating comparative
study of British and Soviet government, both these 'states are founded
on the same elementary doctrine of legitimacy: the people rule'. 46 It is
here, however, that we have to ask again the crucial operative question:
who and what are the 'people'? In the British case, and in liberal-
democratic states in general, the 'people' are presumed to consist
of free agents or individuals whose assertive and conflicting social
interests are coordinated (but not eliminated) in the general moral
framework of the state. The Soviet people, however, rule not as
individuals in this sense, but as Man writ large -and this means
something rather different in respect of political legitimation, as we shall
see in a moment. (It is of interest to note here that the Soviet state still, in
spite of its subordinate character, at least residually fulfils the proper
traditional role of the divine state, i.e. it has general laws, elections,
government departments, courts of justice, etc.) But then in the second
place, the Soviet state declares itself 'socialist', i.e. it embodies a definite
aim, the building of a new kind of civilisation. Paradoxically, the
assumption of a substantive character in addition to its formal character
as a state, negates the freedom, the sovereignty, the moral authority of

this state. Very much the opposite of Hegel's 'absolutely unmoved end',
this state is in a condition of abject slavery to an aim already set by forces
pre-existing and external to itself. And this, of course, presents us with a
self-contradiction: power cannot belong to the 'people' if it has already
been decided beforehand whither social development would lead. The
slavery of the state means thus directly the slavery of the 'people' who
can no longer be considered as free, assertive social agents acting on
their own diverse interests; if it is already laid down that socialism and
communism are the goals of the march of history, if these are attributed
to the 'people' beforehand as the people's 'interest', then it is clear that
we can no longer talk about free agents and it is somewhat incongruous
to assert that 'all power belongs' to them; automatons, minute fractions
of divine Man (as per Darkness at Noon) can have no 'power' at all,
cannot make proper political decisions. Free individuals do require the
free state, so derisively dismissed at the time by Marx and Engels. Then
thirdly, it follows that the Soviet state and others in the same mould are
suicidal wretches; they have a strictly temporary existence only, to be
liquidated when 'society' finally, irrevocably takes over; their further
'constitutional development' only hastens their demise; contrary to the
indefinite duration of the divine state in liberal-democracies (which is
parallel to the indefinite, unfathomable nature of God; the attribution of
'eternity' to the deity really means indefiniteness, since eternity can only
be grasped as timelessness), here we have the definite life-span of a
miserable mortal.
The Party, which as it were concretely represents the divinity of man
in Marxism-Leninism, is defined ambiguously in the Soviet Consti-
tution and in the Party Rules themselves. Formally it is subordinated to
the state, as Article 6, of the current Constitution declares: 'All party
organizations shall function within the framework of the Constitution
of the USSR'. But it can be argued that this limitation attaches merely to
the formal, external elements of the Party, its mortal, human aspects as it
were, not in the least impugning its transcendent divinity. As the same
Article lays it down: 'The Communist Party, armed with Marxism-
Leninism, determines the general perspectives of the development of
society and the course of the home and foreign policy of the USSR,
directs the great constructive work of the Soviet people, and imparts a
planned, systematic and theoretically substantiated character to their
struggle for the victory of communism'. There is no need for paraphras-
ing here. The Party's leadership in politics, and thereby also the primacy
of politics over law and government, is established without qualifi-
cations or safeguards or expressed doubts of any kind. The Party, as it

says in the adopted Programme, has become now the Party of the entire
people, and it pronounces itself 'the brain, the honour and the
conscience of our epoch'. 47 There can be nothing higher than reason
(brain), morality (honour) and feeling (conscience): these are qualities of
the divine human being, perfection embodied.
If the Party, in terms of substance or content (as distinguished from
formal considerations), is superior to the state, it must also mean its
superiority over the people, since the people, properly considered as free
agents with socially diverse aims and interests, are the state. Individuals
are thus here ruled over by their own fantastic image, the unhampered
assertion of a putatively unitary 'social' interest. What, I think, is most
revealing about the nature of Marxism in connection with political
legitimation is the view that the 'interest' of the Party and of the people
to whom the Party 'belongs' are identical; there is no possibility of
conflict, even divergence, between them. This doctrine is, of course,
already sketched out in the Communist Manifesto, and Lenin and his
followers have merely put the gloss on it. As the interest of Man, of
human progress, is equated with the interest of an emancipated 'social
being', and the latter with the interest of the proletarian 'class', so the
interest of the Party is literally the interest of the working class. It is its
spirit, life, perfection, consciousness. The Party and people cannot be
separated, since then both would die, both would become meaningless
abstractions. To attempt to counterpose the Party to the people would
be like, as Leonid Brezhnev has put it in a speech recently, 'trying to
separate, say, the heart from the whole of the body'. 48 The Party is the
better self of the people, its rationality and morality; it is the embodied
'general will', but here, unlike in Rousseau and Hegel, this supreme will
refers not to formal and general arrangements only, but to substantive
policies which elevate a unitary 'interest'.
Again, as Trotsky put it, when he was still wielding his battleaxe, the
Party had the right 'to assert its dictatorship even if that dictatorship
temporarily clashed with the passing moods of the workers'
democracy . . .. The party is obliged to maintain its dictatorship,
regardless of temporary wavering in the spontaneous moods of the
masses, regardless of the temporary vacillations even in the working
class'. He also said: 'In the last instance the party is always right, because
it is the only historic instrument which the working class possesses for
the solution of its fundamental tasks'. 49 This formulation succinctly
expresses the self-contradiction that is at the heart of the Marxist
doctrine of the divinity of man: on the one hand the Party must always be
right, since it is the consciousness of the divine people itself, and there
can be nothing higher than that, but on the other hand the Party is still
declared an 'instrument' in the hands of the people. But an 'instrument',
one might argue, cannot be right or wrong, let alone being 'always' right.
Which is the 'instrument' then and which is the wielder? The people,
outside and in separation from the Party have an equally plausible
appearance as an instrument or tool or vehicle or raw material from
which divine man, i.e. the Party, creates and fashions itself; the Party is
man who 'revolves round himself', it is the incarnation of knowledge,
wisdom, auctoritas, the 'philosophy' which according to Marx in 1843
would come to employ the proletariat as its 'weapon'. Of course all
policies initiated by the Party are by definition in the interest of the
people, but 'the masses of the people do not always realise at once the
processes going on, which they are even less able to initiate, particularly
if the capitalist environment reacts against it'. 50 The Party, further,
'exists for the people, and it is in serving the people that it sees the
purpose of its activity'. And it 'considers it its duty always to consult the
working people on the major questions of home and foreign
policy .... ' 51 However, the people outside the Party do not seem to have
the formal right to be consulted and I think it would be illogical for
Marxist-Leninists to want to include provisions or safeguards of this
kind: the people outside the Party are, after all, minors, novices or at best
potential recruits, and they are already represented (like the 'virtual
representation' of the Old Whig theory) through the Party's divine
humanity. It is only in the context of the state that individuals as such
can have rights, which are deemed equal and which have the character of
formal generality; in the stateless or supra-state context of emerging
'social' self-government there could be no such abstract, formal rights,
for the simple reason that here there is already a determinate assertion
prescribing right and duty, and right and wrong, substantively, regard-
ing content; there is nothing else to be added, and we do not have a
presumption of indefiniteness, of ignorance of the future, of the
fundamental freedom to choose between alternatives, which would be
the only consideration properly justifying this 'formal' equality and
legality.
The Party then embodies politics, being the substance and conscious
expression of the social interest of divine man, the heart and head of the
people. So then when the question arises concerning political legitim-
ation in communist systems, the answer could well be this simple one:
there is no such thing here at all as 'political legitimation'. The Party
undoubtedly claims and has (in its own eyes) legitimacy of a most firmly
established kind, but this signifies, as it were, an ontological status, a

transcendental foundation, and not anything that is created by definite
political processes in the spatio-temporal universe. Who or what
legitimates the absolute sovereignty and overwhelming power of God
over the universe? -the question itself would sound ridiculous, and the
same appears to be the case concerning the legitimacy of divine man,
through his concrete incarnation, the Party. The Party cannot be
legitimated, since it itself is the people; it legitimates other things, like
God's will which creates and legitimates the order of nature. Here then
lies the real difference between East and West, between the divinity of
the state and the divinity of man. In the West it is the formal principle of
government, the abstract moral framework of the state, that has
absolute supremacy, or legitimacy ab ovo, the transcendental foun-
dation which can have no legitimation. But then, by the same token, here
we have political legitimation, or choice regarding the content of
government. In communism the opposite happens: the state, as far as
possible, is properly 'legitimated', that is to say, reduced to a machinery
only, almost a plaything in the hands of a theoretically sovereign
'people'. ('As far as possible' -not even the Soviet state can be
completely an instrument; every state, as such, must have some residual
traces of divinity). And what, politically (and hence also morally)
speaking, ought to be legitimated by due formalised processes, viz. the
content, policies, purposes, directions of government, is exempted from
popular control, negating thereby the principle of free human agency.
We are certainly going towards a situation where, in the words of the
Marxist philosopher G. A. Cohen, 'content' will completely determine
'form', 5 2 and thus we have not moved away an inch from the original
Marxist vision; what, however, the sublime goal of 'human
emancipation' looks like on paper and what it really means in actual
practice are two very different things.
Finally, a brief observation concerning the real, as opposed to the
ascribed, attitude of the people to the legitimacy of Marxist-Leninist
Party rule in communist systems; as it is aptly remarked in a recent
scholarly work on the Soviet Union, 'the Soviet system may have
achieved a relatively high level of legitimacy, or uncoerced support',
which, however, is not matched by a comparable success in gaining
popular commitment to the Soviet 'regime' or 'Marxist-Leninist
values'. 53 The distinction between 'system' and 'regime', I want to
suggest, is relevantly similar to the conceptual opposition employed in
this chapter regarding the divinity of the state and the divinity of man.
The former may and ought to command the allegiance of individuals
everywhere, and it obviously does so, in the communist context too: the
Soviet Union and other communist countries are still 'states' and they
can provide an acceptable, livable, quite humane moral framework for
individuals to pursue their own substantive satisfactions (which they
could do, ceteris paribus, as well as anybody else in other systems). But
the humaneness of communist systems prevails in spite, and not because,
of the assertive humanism incorporated in communist regimes; the latter,
expressing the old aspiration to achieve the divinity of man, his coming
transcendence of the state, law and morality, is treated by people with
the contempt it deserves.
NOTES
I. Cf. my 'State and Society: an Antithesis of Modem Political Thought'

(Introduction to J. Hayward & R. N. Berki (eds), State and Society in
Contemporary Europe (London, 1979). There regrettably, the terminology
employed was in some respects rather misleading; in the present chapter,
while essentially building on the same analytical perspective, I endeavour to
rectify this.
2. P. Winch, 'Authority', in A. Quinton (ed.), Political Philosophy (Oxford,
1967) p. 99. (Emphasis here and in all subsequent quotations is in the
original.)
3. I. Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, translated by T. K. Abbott (London,
1948)p.175.
4. Ibid., p. 218.
5. Winch, op. cit., p. 102.
6. M. Oakeshott, On Human Conduct (Oxford, 1975) Parts 1 & 11. The
argument of this chapter is quite heavily indebted to Oakeshott's ideas on
morality and the state. I do not, however, entirely accept his perspective; cf.
my forthcoming 'Oakeshott's Concept of Civil Association: Notes for a
Critical Analysis', Political Studies, March 1982.
7. Aristotle, Politics (London, 1959) p. 7.
8. Oakeshott, op. cit., p. 129.
9. E. Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France (London, 1960) p. 95.
10. Ibid., p. 57.
II. The Federalist Papers (New York, 1961) no. 49, p. 314.
12. Ibid., p. 317.
13. M. Oakeshott, 'The Vocabulary of a Modem European State', Political
Studies, vol. 23 (1975) p. 329.
14. J. -J. Rousseau, The Social Contract and Discourses (London, 1963) p. 15.
15. Ibid., p. 25.
16. The interpretation of Rousseau here offered thus fundamentally disagrees
with that of J. L. Talmon who charges Rousseau with being an originator of
the idea of 'totalitarian democracy' (The Origins of Totalitarian Democracy
(New York, 1960) p. 43); a point worth mentioning here, since my term the
'divinity of man' is similar to and in some ways derives from Talmon's
'totalitarian democracy'. I disagree with Talmon not on the nature of the

phenomenon, but only on the details of its historical unfolding. It may also
be relevantly remarked here that my understanding of the relationship
between Rousseau and Marx is opposed to that of Lucio Colletti who has
argued that as far as political theory is concerned, 'Marx and Lenin have
added nothing to Rousseau' (From Rousseau to Lenin: Studies in Ideology
and Society, translated by J. Merrington and J. White (London, 1972) p.
185). It is wrong I think, to read as Colletti does into Rousseau any view that
implies the Marxist 'withering away of the state' (ibid., p. 184). Rousseau
definitely does not believe in the divinity of man, present or future; see, e.g.
'All justice comes from God, who is its sole source; but if we knew how to
receive so high an inspiration, we should need neither government nor laws'.
(Rousseau, op. cit., p. 29).
17. G. W. F. Hegel, The Philosophy of Right, translated by T. M. Knox(Oxford,
1962) para. 4, p. 20.
18. Ibid., para. 258, p. 156.
19. Ibid., p. 157.
20. M. Oakeshott, 'The Vocabulary of a Modem European State' (Concluding
Part), Political Studies, vol. 23, 1975, p. 410.
21. The Federalist Papers, op. cit., p. xvi. Cf.: 'The two-party system is the
natural concomitant of a political tradition in which government, as such, is
the first consideration ... .' (L. S. Amery, Thoughts on the Constitution
(London, 1964) p. 17). Also: 'Prior to freedom, or to "justice", or even to
truth, the primary and virtually absolute requirement is order, which must
mean the existing order, until it can be replaced by a better, through orderly
procedure and without excessive cost'. (F. H. Knight, 'Authority and the
Free Society', in C. J. Friedrich (ed.), Authority (Cambridge, Mass., 1958)
p. 72).
22. R. C. Tucker, The Marxian Revolutionary Idea (London, 1970) p. 85.
23. K. Marx and F. Engels, Collected Works (London, 1975) vol. 3, p. 176.
24. Ibid., p. 182.
25. Ibid., p. 31.
26. Ibid., p. 30.
27. Ibid., p. 153.
28. Ibid., p. 164.
29. Ibid., p. 168.
30. K. Marx, Selected Works (London, 1943) vol. 2, p. 460.
31. K. Marx, Capital (Moscow, 1961) vol. 1, p. 326.
32. L. S. Feuer (ed.), Karl Marx and Federick Engels: Basic Writings on Politics
and Philosophy (London, 1969) p. 522.
33. Tucker, op. cit., p. 86.
34. Karl Marx, Selected Works op. cit., p. 500.
35. Ibid., p. 592.
36. K. Kautsky, The Dictatorship ofthe Proletariat, translated by H. J. Stenning
(Manchester, 1919) p. 30.
37. Ibid., p. 43.
38. Ibid., p. 133.
39. R. Miliband, Marxism and Politics (Oxford, 1977) p. 66.
40. Ibid., p. 189.
41. V.I. Lenin, The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky, Collected
Works (London, 1965) vol. 28, p. 236.
42. Ibid., p. 242.
43. G. Antalffy, Basic Problems of State and Society (Budapest, 1974) p. 185.
44. Cf. Talmon, op. cit., p. 249.
45. A. G. Meyer, 'Historical Development of the Communist Theory of
Leadership', in R. B. Farrell (ed.), Political Leadership in Eastern Europe
and the Soviet Union (London, 1970) p. 15. Cf. also I. Fetscher, 'Das
Verhiiltnis des Marxismus zu Hegel;, Marxismusstudien, 3 (Tiibingen,
1960).
46. J. M. Gilison, British and Soviet Politics: Legitimacy and Convergence
(Baltimore, 1972) p. 11.
47. The New Soviet Society: Final Text of the Program of the Communist Party
of the Soviet Union (1961), introduction by H. Ritvo (New York, 1962)
p. 240.
48. On the Draft Constitution (Fundamental Law) of the USSR and the Results
of its Nation-wide Discussion. Report by Leonid Brezhnev to the Session of
the USSR Supreme Soviet, Oct. 41977, repr. from New Times, no. 41, p. 13.
49. Quoted in Miliband, op. cit., p. 143 and p. 147.
50. Antalffy, op. cit., p. 175.
51. The New Soviet Society, op. cit., p. 248.
52. G. A. Cohen, Karl Marx's Theory of History: a Defence (Oxford, 1978) pp.
129-33.
53. Stephen White, Political Culture and Soviet Politics (London, 1979) p. 189.
Index
Note: references to legitimacy/legitimation are indicated as follows: l. and, oft.,
etc.
Abramovich, R. R., 63 Baylis, T. A., 23, 122

Afghanistan, 117, 141 Becker, W., 22
Africa, 118 Beddie, B. D., ix, 21
agitation, and 1., 35 Belorussia, 66
agriculture, see peasantry Bendix, R., 25
Akhenaton, 2 Benn, S., ix
Albania, 28, 69; constitution, 32-3, Bentham, J., 156
36, elections, 39 Berger, P. L., 19
Albrow, M., 22 Berki, R. N., 167
Alexander II, 66 Berlin, 117, 120; Berlin Wall, 115
Almond, G., 18 Berlinguer, E., 141, 144
Amendola, G., 139 'Bernsteinism', 134
Amenhotep IV, Pharaoh, 2 Biermann, W., 119
Amery, L. S., 168 Blanc, L., 74
Augustus, Emperor, 2 Blum, L., 135
Anarchists, 139 Bobbi, N., 145
Angola, 118 Bodin, J., 149
Antaffly, G., 169 Bologna, 139
anti-Semitism, 134 Bolshevik Party, see Soviet Union,
Antonescu, 1., 30 Communist Party
Aristotle, 2, 141, 149-50, 153, 157, Breslauer, G. W., 24
167 Brest-Litovsk treaty, 48
Asmus, R., 123--4 Brezhnev, L. 1., 69-70, 80, 164, 169
Austria, 117 Brie, S., 19, 24
authoritarianism, 77, 120 Bright, J., 156
authority, 2, 4, 31, 47, 55, 57, 82-3, Britain, 162; Communist Party, 129
101-2, 106, lll-12, 148, 157; of Brown, A., 21, 25, 92, 110
party 28-32; of state, 32--4 Briihl, R., 123
Azcarate, M., 137 Brunner, G., vii, 3, 12, 14, 43
Brunner, 0., 20-1
Bahro, R., 119 Brus, W., 88
Ballard, J., ix Bukharin, N. 1., 48, 51, 80
Barnett, A. D., 108 Bulgaria, 28; constitution, 32-3, 36;
Barry, B. M., 18 elections, 39
Bastide, P., vii bureaucracy, 2, 9-12, 83, 102, 104-5,
Bauer, R. A., 109 107
Bauman, Z., 82, 92 Burke, E., 151, 167
170
Index 171
Carrillo, S., 129, 135, 137-8, 144 culture, and 1., 115, 119; see also
Castoriadis, C., 142, 145 political culture
Ceau~scu. N., 30, 136 custom, 7-8, 24
Chapman, J. W., 19 Czechoslovakia, 28, 45-6, 60, 74, 93,
Ch'en, J., 107 134, 137; constitution, 32; elections
Ch'en Shao-yu, 107 39 ,
cheng feng movement, 94, 107
Cheng Went-t'ien, 107 Dahl, R. A., 18
China, 46, 56, 70, 80, ch. 6, passim
Davidson, A., 54, 63
128; Communist Party, 137; CP
de Jouvenal, B., 19
Central Committee, 96; CP 7th
delegitimation/delegitimisation 18 26
Congress, 97-8; revolution, 97 89, 116-18 , , ,
churches, see religion
democracy, 8-9, 50-1, 55, 59-60, 68,
civil society, 83, 87
79, 159-60; Eurocommunism and
Civil War: Greek, 69; Russian, 49; 129-33, 139, 143-4; intra-party, 46;
Spanish, 137, 139 labour, 49; 'new', 130-2
Clarke, A. B., 108 democratic centralism, 14, 113; and
Clausewitz, C. von, 123 E~rocommunist parties, 133-4, 143
Cobden, R., 156 Demtch, B., 23, 25
Cochran, C. E., 19
Cohen, A. P., 19 despotism, 2
Cohen, G. A., 166, 169 de-Stalinisation, 58, 114
detente, 135
Cold War, 56, 133 Dettman, P. R., 22
Colletti, L., 168
Deutsch, K. W., 22
Comecon, 115
'dictatorship over needs' 71 75
Cominform, 131, 133, 139
command, 7-9, 14; command-
dissent, 60, 119-20, 134,' 13'7
divine: divine law, 17; divine will 32·
structures, 10 man as divine, 147, 154-5, t60-7:
communism: as goal, 12, 28-9, 100, state as divine, 147, 151-6, 158, 160,
104, 112, 146, 161, 163; communist 162-3, 166 ,
systems, 3-4; see also Marxist-
Leninist doctrines Djilas, M., 133, 145
domination, 4, 50, 57, 83
compliance, 2, 12, 25, 86, 111
Dorrill, W. F., 108
Compton, B., 108
Dostoevsky, F. M., 64
conducator, 30
Duclos, G., 134
Connor, W., 120, 124
Duclos, J., 134
Conquest, R., 55, 63, 67
consent, 2, 152
conservatism, 59, 67 76-80 138 Easton, D., 18, 22
constitutions, and 1., '13-14, J2-4 43 Eckstein, H., 18
91, 162-3 , , economic growth, and 1., 115
corporative system, 74 education, and 1., 35
Craxi, B., 141 effectiveness,
118 and 1., 15 , 89, 91 , 115,
crisis, ofl., 21-2,45-6,49-50, 56-7,
61-2, 90-1, 93, 121 elections, and 1., 11, 14, 36, 38-44 146
Croan, M., 123 Ellenstein, J., 145 '
Croce, B., 127 Engels, F., 31, 47, 154, 157-9 163
Cuba, 28 equality, 49, 71-2, 74-5, 106 '159
'cult of personality', 69, 80 Ethiopia, 118 '
Cultural Revolution (China), 97, 102 Etzioni, A., 19
172 Index
Eurocommunism, 18; ch. 8, passim; 114-16, 118-19; 'League of De-

arenas of, 127-8, 144; and mocratic Communists', 119; Social-
'democratic centralism', 133-4, ist Unity Party (SED), 113, 118;
143; and democratic political SED Central Committee plenums,
system, 129-33, 139; differences 123-4, SED Departments of Agi-
within, 137-42; and nationalism, tation and Propaganda, 35; SED
128, and politics, 143-4; similarities Higher Party School, 30-1; SED
within, 128-37; and social classes, leaders, 121-2, State Security
129-30, 133; and socialist parties, Service, 121; and West Germany,
139-40; and Soviet bloc, 134-8, 114-16, 118-19
141-4; and Yugoslavia, 136, 140, German Political Science Association,
143 10, 22
European Community, 135 Germany, 7-9, 12-13, 52; socialists,
157; see also German Democratic
Fabre, R., 140 Republic
Fagen, R. R., 25 Gilison, J. M., 23, 44, 162, 169
fascism, 30, 51-7 Gill, G., 2, 15, 110
Fauvet, J., 145 God, see divine
Feher, F., 15 Godson, R., 144
Ferrero, G., 16, 24-5 Gonzales, F., 139
Fetscher, 1., 169 Gosplan, 12
feudalism, 3, 6, 92 Gramsci, A., 87, 92, 127
Feuer, L. S., 168 Gray, J., 25, 92
Fiat, 141 Gray, S., 110
Fichte, J. G., 152 Great Patriotic War, see Second
Foreign policy: and 1., 117-18, 121, World War
134-5 Grotewohl, 0., 121
France: Bonapartist, 157; Communist Gurr, T. R., 24
Party (PCF), ch. 8, passim; PCF
Congress, 134; see also Euro- Habermas, J., 21-2, 85, 92
communism; constitution of 4th Hager, K., 125
republic, 132; elections ofl978, 140; Haraszti, M., 80-1
Left Radicals, 140-1; Socialist Party, Harries-Jenkins, G., 22
133, 135, 139-41; revolution, 77 Hart, H. L.A., 19
Franco, F., 74, 127, 137 Haseler, S., 144
Fraser, J., 22 Hayward, J., 167
Frederick the Great, 116 Hegel, G. W. F., 149, 152-3, 155-6,
freedom,49,65, 72, 76, 79,82,92,148, 162-4, 168
153, 162-3, 165; fear of, 64 Heller, A., 15, 80
Friedrich, C. J., 18, 19, 20, 21, 109, 168 Henderson, A. M., 20-l
Fuhrer, 9, 54; Fuhrerpersonlichkeiten, Hennis, W., 2, 19
31; Fuhrerprinzip, 48, 55 Herrschaft, 4-9, 14, 21, 112
Hitler, A., 52-3, 70
Galli, G., 132, 139, 145 Hobbes, T., 149-50
Genghis Khan, 52 Hoffman, H., 124
German Democratic Republic Holbraad, C., 144
(GDR), 23, 25, 28, ch. 7, passim; Honecker, E., 114-15, 117-18, 121,
constitution, 32-3, 36-7; elections, 123-5
38, 41-2; and German heritage, Horowitz, 1., 25
Index 173
Horvat, B., 26 Knight, F. H., 168

Hua Guofeng, 25 Konrad, G., 51, 63
Huetich, H. G., 124 Korea, 56
Hume, D., 23 Kosing, A., 123
Hungary, 28, 45-6, 60-2, 68-9, 73, Kowalczyk, S., 42
91, 93, 137; Central Committee Kremlin, 100
members, 80; constitution, 32-3, Krisch, H., 123-4
36; elections, 38-40; revolt of 1956, Kruczek, W., 42
46, 62, 69, 139; Soviet Republic of Kubalkova, ix
1919, 130
ideology, see Marxist-Leninist doc- labour camps, 56, 76
trines Lafargue, P., 76
illegitimacy, 17, 25; see also legit- Lammich, S., 44
imacy, absence of Lane, D., 23
India, 118 leader cults, 30-1, ch. 6 passim, 162;
industrialisation, 50, 70, 106 and charismatic authority 101; and
Ingrao, P., 139, 143 collective principle, 95, 103; leader-
intelligentsia, 29 follower relationship, 100-2; and
interests, 84, 150, 156-7, 159, 162-4 Marxist-Leninist ideology, 95-8,
Italy, 12, 54; Christian Democrats, 104-7; and party history and
141; Communist Party (PCI), ch. 8, tradition, 98-100; and traditional
passim; Congress, 134, Florence authority, 106; see also legitimacy,
National Conference, 132; see also charismatic
Eurocommunism; Socialist Party legality, and 1., 1, 13, 19; see also
(PSI), 139, 141 constitutions
Ivan the Terrible, 58 legitimacy /legitimation: absence of,
47, 66, 165; see also illegitimacy;
Jacobin dictatorship, 47, 50, 52, 54, acquisition of, 111; of bourgeois
57, 66, 77 (liberal-democratic) systems, 127,
Jacobs, E. M., 44 146-7; definitions of l, 16, 27, 87,
Japanese Communist Party, 129, 133 111, 146; distinction between, 165-
Jaszi, 0., 25 6; durability (familiarity) and, 15,
John of Salisbury, 25 17, 19, 24, 45; formulas of 3, 20;
function of, 85; history and uses of
Kadar, J., 62, 73 concept, vii, 2, 10, 18-23; paterna-
'Kadarism', 68 lism as; 15, 60, ch. 4, passim; pre-
Kaganovich, L. M., 108 requisites of, 45; social values and,
Kant, E., 148, 151-2, 167 17-18, 111-12; of 'system' and
Kardelj, E., 133, 136, 145 'regime', 166-7
Kautsky, K., 159-61, 168 varieties of: autonomous-con-
Kazakhstan, 70 sensual, 34, 36-42; charismatic,
Kertzrchez, G., 125 5, 15, 48,51-8,61, 68, 101, 109-10;
khozyain, 7 see also leader cults; consensual,
Khrushchev, N. S., 13, 29, 57-8, 62, 113; false, 16; goal-rational, 10-15;
68-71, 78, 80 heteronymous-teleological, 32-3,
Kielmansegg, P. Graf, 10, 23, 31, 43 35-6; individual, ch. 6, passim;
King, P., ix modern and pre-modern, 82-6;
Klein, D. W., 107 negative, 47, 57, 62; normative, 27;
Kleinschmidt, H., 124 numinous, 31; overt and covert, 3,
174 Index
legitimacy/legitimation (contd.) Merrington, J., 168

ch. 5 passim, esp. 88-92; proce- Meyer, A. G., 23-4, 162, 169
dural, 23, 146; rational-legal, 5, 13; Michels, R., 8
real, 28; revolutionary, 88; self-1, 58, Middle East, 118
61-2, 88, 112; state-nationalist, 88; Mielke, E., 124-5, 221
substantive, 146; traditional, 5, 15, Miliband, R., 160, 168
58-60, 62, 89, 106, 116 Mill, J. S., 156
Leng, H. 0., 43 Miller, R. F., 18, 144
Leontiev, L., 145 Mittenzwei, 1., 123
Lenin, V.I., 31,48-9, 52-4,63,95-6, Mitterand, F., 139, 140
98-9, 105, 131, 145, 159-61, 168-9 Mommsen, W., 21
Lewis, J. D., 25 mono-organisational society, 10, 13
Libya, ll8 morality, 76; and l., 148-9, 153-4
Lifton, R. J., Lindet, R., 52 Mosca, G., 20
Lipset, S. M., 25 Mote, M. E., 44
Liu Shao-ch 'i, 97-8, 108 Mozambique, 118
Locke, J., 156 Mueller, C., 22
Lowenthal, R., 22-3, llO, 112, 122 Muller, E. N., 22
Luckmann, T., 19 Mussolini, B., 52, 54, 74
Ludz, P. C., 23, 25, 121-3, 125 myths and symbols, andl., 2-3, 19, 51,
Luhmann, N., 22, 42 59, 84, 99, 101-2, liS, 118, 137
Luther, M., 116, 123
Nagy, 1., 57
Machiavelli, N., 149 Namibia: SWAPO, 118
McNeill, T., 146 Narodnaya Volya, 66
McWilliams, W. L., 10, 21 national minorities, 58, 75, 81, 113
Madison, J., 151 nationalism, and l., 3, 58, 61, 88; 113-
Maggs, P. B., 44 17, 128, 135
Majal-Leon, E., 145 NATO, 135
Malenkov, G. M., 56 natural law, 17
Maluschke, G., 23 Nenni, P., 139
Mao Tse-tung, 15, 25, 129; cult, ch. 6, NEP (New Economic Policy), 95
passim New Left, 70
Marchais, G., 138, 144 Norden, A., 123
Markus, G., ix Novy mir, 13
Markus, M., 3
Marx, K., 31, 47, 52, 74, 79, 152, 154- Oakeshott, M., 148, 151, 154, 167-8
65, 168 obedience, 2, 9, 14
Marxist -Leninist doctrines, 161, 163; OPEC, 118
and l., 3-4, 27-34, 85, 88, 95-8, opposition, 51, 78-9, 92-3, 121
103-4, 146-7 Orenstein, H., 19
Matz, U., vii, 23 organisation of power, and l., 12-13,
Maurach, R., 43 16, 84
Mayntz, R., 24
media, and l., 35 Palladino, F., 145
Meier, H., 123 Parri, F., 145
Meissner, B., 43 Parsons, T., 18, 20-l
Mensheviks, 51 participation, 37, 43
Merelman, R. M., 22 Partridge, P. H., 19
Merquior, J. G., 22 party, i.e. Communist Party in Com-
Index 175
munist States, 3--4, 10; and 1., 28- Radek, K. B., 55

32,45,47,60,62,68, 77,83-6,98- Radice, L. L., 140, 145
9, 101-3, 112-14, 161-6; see also Rakowska-Harmstone, T., 122
under respective countries; Com- Ramadier, P., 132
munist Party rationality: formal, 52; formal-legal,
Pateman, C., ix, 19 12; and heteronymous-teleological
Patrzalek, 44 1., 33; goal-rationality, 12; substan-
PCE, see Spain, Communist Party tive, 51-3, 57, 62, 80; of oppression,
PCF, see France, Communist Party 79; 'universal', 53; Western, 9
PCI, see Italy, Communist Party Ratnam, K. J., 109
peasantry, 29, 49-50, 67, 70-1, 79, Ray, L. J., 21
106 Reale, E., 144-5
Pennock, J. R., 19 Rechtsstaat, 8, 19
People's Control, 37 Red Army, see Soviet Union, army
Peter the Great, 58, 81 Reddaway, P., 21
Piccardi, L., 145 religion, 10, 32, 76, 78-9, 81, 85, 87,
Pieck, W., 121 91, 113, 125, 154-5
Plato, 2, 143 Returned Student Faction, 94
Plekhanov, G. V., 48 revolution: European, 48; 'from
Plenzdorf, U., 115 above', 70; indigenous communist,
pluralism, 59, 61, 78-9, 93, 136, 103-7; see also under respective
143 countries
Poland, 28,45-6,60, 72, 78,90-1,93, revolutionary regimes, and 1., 103-7,
113, 117, 121, 137, 141-2; consti- 111-12
tution, 32-3, 91; elections, 39,41- Rigby, T. H., 21, 24, 51, 63, 92, 111,
2, Politburo, 42, Sejm, 41-2 122
Polanyi, M., 19 Right Opposition, 94
police, 3, 37, 80, 121 Ritvo, H., 169
policies, and 1., 113 ff. Robespierre, M. M. 1., 74
Polin, R., 17, 25 Rochet, W., 138
political culture, 17-18, 25 Roggemann, H., 44
Ponomarev, B. N., 142, 145 Rogowski, R., 20, 24
Popular Front, 127, 131, 139 Rohricht, W., 20
popular sovereignty, and 1., 3, 33--4, Romania, 28, 30, 61, 64-5, 69, 75,
84, 146, 151-2 136; constitution 32-3; elections,
Portugal, Communist Party, 129 39--41
Poulantzas, N., 89 Romans, 2, 19
Powell, B., 18 Rose, R., 25
prelegitimacy, 16, 24 Rosenthal, U., 23
Preston, P., 145 Rossiter, C., 154
procedures, as 1., 22, 146; of 1., 27-8, Rothschild, J., 23
34--42 Rousseau, J. J., 149, 152, 164, 167-8
proletarian internationalism, 136 rule, 4-8, 27
proletariat, 29-30, 49, 80-1, 85, 93, Riihle, J ., 123
99, 112, 129, 138, 140-1, 161; dic- Russia (to 1917), 58, 66; autocracy, 55;
tatorship of proletariat, 13, 114, Bolshevik Party, 98; Revolution of
157-61 1905, 59; Revolution of February
propaganda, and 1., 16, 35 1917, 48, 59; Revolution of October
Prussia, 116, 120, 123 1917, 77, 98, 138; socialists, 49; see
Pye, L., 18, 22, 25 also Soviet Union.
176 Index
Russian attitudes and traditions, 58, 162-3; elections, 39; and I. of East
60, 67, 76 European regimes, 89; and I. of
Rytlewski, R., 125 East German regime, 114, 116-17;
and I. of Eurocommunist parties,
Sans-culottes, 64 127, 134-8, 141-4; I. periodised,
Sawer, M., ix 47-60; see also party in Communist
Saxony, 120 states
Schaar, J. H., 21 Spain: Civil War 137, 139; Communist
Schaff, A., 131, 145 Party (PCE), ch. 8, passim; see also
Schmidt, H., 117, 124 Eurocommunism; elections 1977,
Schmidt, W., 123 138; Socialist Party, (PSOE), 139
Schmitt, C., 19 Spencer, H., 156
Schram, S., 110 Spencer, M. E., 20, 22
Schulz, H-D., 124 SR (Socialist-Revolutionary) Party,
Scott, J., 20, 22 49
Second World War, 12-13, 53, 56, 61, Stalin, I. V., 15, 30, 31, 52, 54-7, 61,
67, 71 66-8, 71-2, 75, 127, 139, 160; cult,
SED, see German Democratic Ch. 6, passim; and Lenin, 95-6, 98-
Republic, Socialist Unity Party 9
Selden, M., 108 Stalinism, 53, 138
self-justification, of Bolshevik elite, Staritz, D., 112, 122-5
47-50 state: capitalist, 11; divinity of, 147,
Shaffer, H. G., 109 151-6, 158, 160, 162-3, 166;
Shils, A., 18 Kautsky on, 159-60; Lenin on, 161;
Shvernik, N. M., 66, 108 and 1., 32-4, 85-7, ch. 9, passim;
Siberia, 70 and liberal-democracy, 153-5;
Signorile, C., 141 Marx and Engels on, 154-8; Mi-
Simon, Y. R., 19 liband on, 160; moral character of,
Sinyavsky-Daniel trial, 119 149-52; and party, 162-6; popular
Sismondi, J-C-L. S. de, 24 sovereignty and, 3, 33-4, 84, 146,
social values, and 1., 16-18, Ill 151-2; and society, 153
socialism, 29; 'developed', 29; Dos- Sternberger, D., 18, 20-l, 31, 43-4,
toevsky on, 64; 'in one country', 122
49-50; 'real', 74, 142; see also Stillman, P. G., 23, Ill, 122
communism, Marxist -Leninist Stoph, W., 125
doctrines, and under respective Stoppino, M., 16, 24-5
countries strikes, and 1., 90-1
Solomon, R. H., 25, 107 support, and 1., 15, 18, 24-5
Solzhenitsyn, A. 1., 13, 67, 79 symbols, see myths and symbols
South Africa: ANC, 118 Szafar, T., 128
Southern Yemen, 118 Szelenyi, 1., ix, 51, 63
Soviet Union, passim; army, 46, 61, Szlachcic, F., 42
67, 73; Communist Party (CPSU):
Bolsheviks, 47, 49, 53, 55; CPSU Talleyrand, C. M. de, 24
Congresses, 59, 139; CPSU Polit- Talmon, J. L., 167
buro, 12, 72; CPSU Programme, Tamerlane, 52
164; CPSU Propaganda Depart- Teiwes, F. C., ix, 25
ment, 13, 35; CPSU rules, 30; CPSU terror, 49-50, 54-6, 64, 67-8, 71-2
Secretariat, 72; constitution, 32-3, Thalmann, E., 121
Index 177
'Thermidor', 52 Verba, S., 18

Thomas Aquinas, 25 Vermeersch, J., 134
Thorez, M., 131, 133-4, 138 Vidich, A. J., 21
Tiersky, R., 138, 145 Vietnam, 13, 28
Tikos, L., 145 Vogel, B., 44
Timasheff, N. S., 21 Voight, D., 125
Tito, J. B., 137 voting, see elections
Togliatti, P., 131-3, 145
To'kes, R.L., 145 Warsaw ghetto, 72
Tokuda, N., 108 Warsaw Pact, 134
totalitarianism, 4, 50-2, 54, 56, 59- Weber, M., 1-2, 4-9, 14-15, 20-3,
60, 75, 86, 167-8 45, 79, 82, 85, 100-l, 109-10, 116,
trade unions, 65, 93, 125, 140, 142 123
Trainin, I. P., 144 Welsh, W. A., 123
Trotsky, L. D., 52, 164 White, J., 168
Trotskyites, 137 White, S., 25, 110, 169
Tsar, 66 Willner, A. N., and D., 110
Tucker, R. C., 25, 63, 107, 109-10, Wilson, J. W., 108
168 Winch, P., 147-8, 167
Tudor, H., 19 Winckelman, J., 20
tyranny, 17, 25, 66, 68-9, 78-9 Wojtaszek, E., 42
Worker-Peasant Inspection, 37
Ukraine, 66 workers, see proletariat
Ulbricht, W., 121 Wiirtenberger, T., 19, 24, 42
Ullmann, W., 25
unemployment, 75, 90
United States of America, 13, 57; Yaroshenko, L., 53
Communist Party, 129; Declaration Yezhov, N. 1., 67
of Independence, 151 Yezhovshchina, 56
Urban, G. R., 144 Yugoslavia, 23, 113, 128, 136-7, 140,
Useem, B. and M., 22 143
U.S.S.R., see Soviet Union
Zabielski, W., 44
van Doom, 22 Zimbabwe, Patriotic Front, 118
Varga, E., 130, 144 Zinoviev, G. E., 51

Political Legitimation in Communist States

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POLITICAL LEGITIMATION IN COMMUNIST STATES

Earlier notions that political power in Communist states rested simply

But what does political legitimacy amount to in Soviet-type systems?

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

S. B. Burman CHIEFDOM POLITICS AND ALIEN LAW

A legitimate government has no need of propaganda

First published 1982 by

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

Notes on the Contributors X

Introduction: Political Legitimacy, Weber and Communist

2 Legitimacy Doctrines and Legitimation Procedures in East

3 Phases of Legitimation in Soviet-type Societies Agnes

4 Paternalism as a Mode of Legitimation in Soviet-type

5 Overt and Covert Modes of Legitimation in East European

6 Personal Dominance and the Collective Principle: Individual

7 Political Legitimation in the German Democratic Republic

8 Eurocommunism and the Quest for Legitimacy Robert

9 The State, Marxism and Political Legitimation R.N.

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

(Freiburg/Miinchen, Verlag Karl Alber, 1978), and Professor Krisch's

The editors wish to express their sincere appreciation to the Research

School of Social Sciences of the Australian National University for the

Canberra, 1980 T. H. RIGBY and

GEORG BRUNNER was born in Budapest in 1936 and came to

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

studied at the Lorand Eotvos University, Budapest from which he was

GRAEME GILL was born in Melbourne in 1947 and is currently

AGNES HELLER was born in 1929 in Budapest. From 1947 to 1952

HENRY KRISCH was born in Berlin, Germany in 1931. He received

Institute Certificate, and Ph.D. from Columbia University. He is

ROBERT F. MILLER was born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1932.

T. H. RIGBY, born in Melbourne in 1925, is Professorial Fellow in

The expectation of political authorities that people will comply with

power), has had a considerable currency, underlying in particular some

Naturally, the legitimacy of a system of authority may be treated

It is in the elaboration of these last points, and specifically in the claim

1. Rational grounds - resting on a belief in the 'legality' of patterns of

The terms on which people may consider they have an obligation to

to identify and try to resolve certain problems implicit in Weber's

'command' scarcely catches the distinctive role of these leaders- which

contemplated not without profound anxiety both as to the future of

of pulling themselves up by their own bootstraps. It is not that nothing

1. The Soviet type of socio-political order consists of a complex

There is little that need be said in elaboration of my first point. Apart

members subject to party instruction and discipline are in charge of all

units of society but indeed directly to manage their implementation

Soviet Constitution) that 'enjoyment by citizens of their rights and

that it is treated as valid. A further aspect noted by Weber is equally

incomplete 'functional equivalent' to legitimacy, 35 or again as a stage of

l. The best brief introduction is Dolf Sternberger's entry 'Legitimacy' in

(Englewood Cliffs, N. J., 1965) and A Systems Analysis of Political Life

Management of Myths. The Politics of Legitimation in a Newfoundland

criticism of Professor B. D. Beddie, who, however, would not necessarily

(1978)149-63; see also Richard Lowenthal, 'Gesellschaftliche Umwan-

the problem' are Peter Graf Kielmansegg, 'Legitimitiit als analytische

(1969)438. Frederick C. Teiwes has illustrated this function in his paper,

of'repudiated' regimes. cr. also Lipset's discussion of the interplay between

The term 'legitimacy doctrines' denotes doctrines prescribing the

convert the normatively postulated legitimacy into real legitimacy. It is

2 THE LEGITIMACY DOCTRINE

2.1 Authority of the party

The legitimation of party authority is at present the subject of two

schema presents a persistent ideological problem. The periodisation of