Editor's Introduction

Abstract

While the "socialist idea" has obviously been widely discredited in the former Soviet Union, some Russian scholars seek to distinguish between its "utopian" and "scientific" elements. The need to make this distinction is stressed by Iakov Pevzner in our opening selection ("Socialism: Utopia or Science?"). For Pevzner, the principal Utopian elements in Marxian thought—certainly in its Bolshevik version—included the vision of a postcapitalist society based on the rejection of a market mechanism and private property, and in its final stage organized in accordance with the principle of "distribution according to needs." The author also emphasizes the striking contrast between the relative success of Western market-oriented economies (often developing in response to social-democratic pressures and initiatives) and the ultimate economic stagnation of communist-led systems that rejected the market mechanism. While the communist utopia has clearly failed, the socialist ideal in Pevzner's view remains inseparably linked to "democracy and freedom, solidarity and justice." As for examples of "scientific" elements in socialist thought, Pevzner seems to associate them with the work of Eduard Bernstein, denounced for decades by Soviet and other orthodox Marxists as a principal source of "revision."