G.A.

COHEN

MARXISM AFTER THE COLLAPSE OF THE SOVIET UNION

(Received 31 October 1998; accepted in revised form 29 April 1999)

ABSTRACT. The article studies the implications for historical materialism of the failure
of the socialist project in the Soviet Union. The author demonstrates that the said failure
broadly confirms central historical materialist theses, which would have been difficult to
sustain if the Russian revolution had succeeded in its goal of superseding capitalism and
establishing a socialist society.

KEY WORDS: bolshevism, capitalism, historical materialism, Lenin, Marx, Marxism,

productive forces, relations of production, revolution, Russian revolution, socialism

What is the significance, for Marxists, of the failure of the socialist project
in what was the Soviet Union? And what is the significance, for socialists,
of the failure of that project? I separate the two questions not merely for the
formal reason that Marxists and socialists designate (overlapping but
nevertheless) distinct categories, but also for the more substantial reason
that the significance of the Soviet failure is, in my view, very different in
the two cases. For reasons to be explained below, the Soviet failure can be
regarded as a triumph for Marxism: a Soviet success might have embar-
rassed key propositions of historical materialism, which is the Marxist
theory of history. But no one could think that the Soviet failure represents
a triumph for socialism. A Soviet success would have been unambiguously
good for socialism.
I treat, here, the significance of the Soviet failure for Marxism.1 Now,
as I said, had the Soviet Union succeeded in building socialism, that might
have embarrassed historical materialism. It might, in particular, have posed
a serious challenge to these central claims of historical materialism:
(1) No social formation ever perishes before all the productive forces for
which there is room in it have developed . . .
(2) and new higher relations of production never appear before . . . [they]
have matured in the womb of the old society itself.2
1 I discuss its significance for socialism in my Self-Ownership, Freedom, and Equality
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 255264.
2 Preface to Karl Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, in
Marx/Engels, Selected Works in Two Volumes, Volume I (Moscow: Foreign Languages
Publishing House, 1958), p. 363.

The Journal of Ethics 3: 99104, 1999.

1999 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.
100 G.A. COHEN

It follows from the passage on exhibit that a capitalist society does not give
way to a socialist one until capitalism is fully developed in that society, and
that socialism does not take over from capitalism until the higher relations
which characterise socialism have matured within the antecedent capitalist
society itself. What, however, is imposed by the requirement that relations
constitutive of the future socialist society must mature under capitalism? A
complete answer to that question might be difficult to supply, but, whatever
else is required for such relations to have matured within capitalism, there
surely must exist, for such relations to have matured, a large and developed
proletariat within the capitalist society in question.3
Now, against the background of the two exhibited historical materialist
theses, I want to discuss a criticism of historical materialism which is often
made by anti-Marxists. I draw attention to this criticism because I believe
it to be instructively incorrect.
The criticism is that, whereas Marx predicted that socialist revolution
would first break out in advanced capitalist countries, it in fact occurred
first in a relatively backward one, one so backward that one might even
refuse to call it a capitalist country. And this predictive failure was not just
of the man Karl Marx himself, but of historical materialism, because of its
commitment to theses (1) and (2) above. For here was a socialist revolution
in an incompletely capitalist country in which further development of the

(1) and (2) (my numbers) constitute a single sentence in the text of the Preface. I have
taken a certain (in my view, justified) liberty with part (2) of this key sentence, which
reads, in full, as follows: . . . new, higher relations of production never appear before the
material conditions of their existence have matured in the womb of the old society itself.
So the sentence does not expressly say that the relations of production of the forthcoming
society, as opposed to the material conditions of their existence, must have matured
within the old society itself. But Karl Marx undoubtedly also believed the former, and
here unasserted, associated thesis, as he shows he did elsewhere. One such place is Karl
Marx, Wages, Price and Profit (Marx/Engels, Selected Works in Two Volumes, Volume
I), p. 446, where he says that capitalism simultaneously engenders the material conditions
and the social forms necessary for an economical reconstruction of society: social forms
surely include relations of production. Another text in evidence of the relevant belief is in
Karl Marx, Grundrisse (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1973), p. 159: . . . if we did not find
concealed in society as it is the material conditions of production and the corresponding
relations of exhange prerequisite for a classless society, then all attempts to explode it [that
is, society as it is] would be quixotic [Relations of exchange (Verkehrsverhltnisse)
in this Grundrisse passage are identical with what the Critique Preface more aptly calls
relations of production (Produktionsverhltnisse)]. For further support of my use of
part (2) of the Preface sentence in its truncated form, see the reference to The Poverty
of Philosophy at footnote 3 below.
3 See Karl Marx, The Poverty of Philosophy, in Marx/Engels Collected Works, Volume
6 (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1976), pp. 177178, for strong confirmation of this
interpretation.
 MARXISM AFTER THE COLLAPSE OF THE SOVIET UNION 101

productive forces, under a capitalist aegis, was surely possible [so that
(1) stands falsified], and in a country which had not generated much of
a proletariat [so that (2) also stands falsified].
Before indicating why I think that this criticism is misguided, I should
address a standard reply to it, in defence of (2), which I think unsound. The
standard reply, against the charge that the 1917 revolution occurred without
the existence of a developed proletariat, and, therefore, in contradiction of
(2) above, is that there was a highly developed and concentrated proletariat
in the huge factories of Petrograd itself, where the leading revolutionary
events occurred, and where power was seized. But, while an ample local
proletariat may help to explain, and may even have been crucial to,
Bolshevik political success, theorem (2) is, in my view, supposed to be true
not because of the exigencies of politics but because of what a new form
of economy requires for viability. So this way of protecting (2) against the
threat posed to it by the Russian revolution fails.
Despite the failure of the Petrograd proletariat gambit, I do not think
that the 1917 revolution falsifies thesis (2). The reason why I think it does
not is that it would do so only if what occurred in 1917 was indeed a
socialist revolution, one which, by definition, ushered in a truly socialist
society, in which class division is abolished under the rule of the associ-
ated producers themselves. I do not believe that Soviet society had such
a socialist character: it was not ruled by the associated producers, but by
the leaders, and sometimes just the leader, of the Bolshevik Party. Indeed,
those who criticize historical materialism in the stated fashion would be
the last to grant that the 1917 revolution succeeded in establishing what
Marxists would regard as a truly socialist society: they should therefore be
the last to lodge the criticism that they do lodge [They may think that the
Russian revolution produced the only sort of socialism that is possible,
but they should not (as they do) expect others, who may not agree with that
further claim, to accept that the Russian revolution falsifies (2)].
In a word, the 1917 revolution and its aftermath offer no difficulty
for proposition (2), since appropriately higher relations of production did
not supervene. But, all the same, the Russian revolution might still be
thought to refute proposition (1), the principle that no social order ever
perishes before all the development for which it supplies room has been
completed, for capitalism surely showed room for fuller development in
Russia in 1917. Thus, someone might say, the problem the 1917 revolution
poses for historical materialism is not that it caused socialism to succeed
prematurely but that it caused capitalism to fail prematurely.
But I believe that that judgment is also ill-considered. For historical
materialism does allow for the possibility of a premature revolution against
102 G.A. COHEN

capitalism, provided that it is not successful in the medium or long run.

Only because historical materialism does allow for such a thing could
Marx have warned, in the German Ideology, that, if there were an attempt
to install socialism on the basis of an incomplete development of the
productive forces, then all the old filthy business would begin again.4
Now, I am confident that the Russia of 1917 was indeed characterized
by an incomplete development of the productive forces, in the sense Marx
intended: he undoubtedly thought, in the early 1880s, that Russia was very
backward, and I am sure that he would still have thought it backward (if
not very backward) in 1917. Accordingly, under a reasonable interpretation
(which I shall presently give) of the aforequoted German Ideology passage,
the restoration of capitalism in the Soviet Union confirms the truth of that
passage in particular and of historical materialism in general: the restora-
tion shows that no social order perished here before all of its possibilities of
productive development were exhausted. Capitalism receded, but receding,
temporarily, is not the same thing as perishing.
The reasonable interpretation of the German Ideology passage that I
have in mind says, first, that Marx did not think that competition and
capitalism would necessarily begin again immediately: seventy years
is the batting of an eyelid, world-historically speaking. And the reason-
able interpretation adds, for good measure, that the rigours and deaths
and mismanagement of the seventy post-revolutionary years might them-
selves be regarded as illustrating the filthy business that Marx predicted
(whether or not we eccentrically interpret Soviet society as itself a peculiar
form of capitalism, as some twentieth century Marxist sects have done).
In sum, the standard use of the Soviet case in criticism of (2) requires
affirmation that the 1917 revolution established a socialist society, which is
not true, and which is hardly considered to be true, in the appropriate sense,
by makers of the standard criticism. And the standard Soviet-experience-
based criticism of (1) works only under a crude conception of historical
materialisms implications which ignores the reasonable interpretation just
ventured of an important, and entirely representative, German Ideology
passage. So, as far as anything raised thus far shows, the Russian revolution
does not embarrass the relevant historical materialist theses.
But there is a further point to be made here. As is quite well known,
Marx was consulted in the 1880s by Russian socialists who asked him
whether he did not think that Russia could pass from its semi-feudal
and merely nascent capitalist condition directly to communism, without
undergoing the rigour of a full capitalist development. In order to answer
4 Karl Marx, The German Ideology, in Marx/Engels, Collected Works, Volume 5
(London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1975), p. 49.
 MARXISM AFTER THE COLLAPSE OF THE SOVIET UNION 103

that question, Marx learned the Russian language, so that he could study
Russias history and circumstances. And his answer to the question that
the Russians put to him was very interesting: If the Russian Revolution
becomes the signal for a proletarian revolution in the West, so that both
complement each other, the present Russian common ownership of land
may serve as the starting-point for a communist development.5
Now, how does that sit with the requirements of historical materialism,
and, in particular, with theses (1) and (2)? I believe that, as long as (1)
and (2) are taken to be true of each society separately, then Marxs advice
was heresy. But that very advice suggests a global construal of historical
materialism in which claims such as (1) and (2) are asserted not of each
society taken singly but of world-scale or at least multi-national social
systems.6 (If Marx had meant that revolution in the West was no more
than just politically or militarily required, then his answer to the socialists
does not require this construal, but I think that he thought that socialist
success in Russia needed Western co-operation for more deeply systemic
reasons.)7
Now, was Marxs advice to the Russians heresy, if we interpret (1) and
(2) in the suggested global fashion? That is a matter of judgment, and
all I can do here is set out my own. It is that, taken globally, (2) would
be consistent with Marxs advice, but that (1) would not be. (2) would be
consistent because the proletariat was sufficiently developed across Europe
as a whole for new, higher relations to count as having matured, in a global
sense, within that region. But (1) would still contradict Marxs advice,
since, as history shows, there was enormous scope for further develop-
ment under capitalism in Europe when Marx wrote his remarks. Whatever
globalism does for (2), in the face of the challenge to it posed by the
Russian revolution and you may disagree with my judgment that it helps
(2) a lot it makes (1), if anything, more difficult to defend, in the face of
that challenge.
V. I. Lenin was, of course, an erudite student of Marx, and he did
not imagine that the 1917 Russian Revolution would stand alone and
succeed. He thought that it would succeed, but only because he thought
that there would be the responsive workers revolution in the West that
Marx laid down as a requirement of a Russian success: the needed support

5 Preface to a new Russian translation of the Communist manifesto, 1882, in

Marx/Engels, Selected Works in Two Volumes, Volume I, p. 24.
6 The appearance of social formation in the Preface sentence quoted at p. 99 above
might be thought to make the single-society interpretation more plausible, but a more
global interpretation of social formation is no less eligible.
7 Compare my rejection of a political construal of (2) at p. 3 above.
104 G.A. COHEN

from afar would be forthcoming. As a Marxist, Lenin was committed to

believing that, in the absence of that desire response, socialism in Russia
was doomed, and, in due course, he expressed despair over Western prole-
tarian failure and inaction.8 The true heresy was not Lenins making of
the 1917 revolution, for he made it with appropriately orthodox hopes, but
Joseph Stalins proclamation of socialism in one country, because that
had to mean socialism in one backward country, and such a prospectus
contradicts historical materialism on any construal of its central theses. (I
do not thereby commit myself to Trotskyism,9 but perhaps I do commit
myself to the view that one must choose between denial of key historical
materialist theses and affirmation of some Trotskyist ones.)
If the Soviet Union had succeed in building an attractive socialism, then
that would have been wonderful for socialism and for humanity, but bad
for the credibility of historical materialism. Of course, since human beings
are the sorts of creatures that, fortunately or unfortunately, they are, they
might have been more willing to believe historical materialism had the
Soviet Union succeeded. But by credibility, here, I mean what it could
be rational to believe, so the stated infirmity of human nature does not
affect what I have said.10

All Souls College

Oxford, OX1 4AL
UK

8 The only complete guarantee against restoration in Russia is a socialist revolution in

the West. There is and can be no other guarantee (Report on the Unity Congress of the
Russian Social Democratic Party a Letter to the St. Petersburg workers, May/June, 1906,
in V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 10 (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1962), pp. 333
334). The Russian proletariat must not forget that its movement and its revolution are only
part of a world revolutionary proletarian movement [Speech at the opening of the 7th All
Russian Congress of the RSDLP (Bolsheviks), April 24, 1917, in V. I. Lenin, Collected
Works, Volume 24 (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1964), p. 227]. I thank Steve Paxton
for those references.
For a mass of corroborating further statements by Lenin, from the periods both before
and after the 1917 revolution, see Appendix II (Socialism in a Separate Country?) to
Volume III of Leon Trotsky, The History of the Russian Revolution (London: Pluto Press,
1967).
9 That is, to the view that its is not possible to achieve a socialist revolution in one
country, but only on a world scale.
10 I thank Chris Bertram for useful criticism of an earlier version of this article, and
Danny Goldstick for advice on various counts.
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