The Limits of the Leninist Opposition: Reply to David Bathrick

Abstract

Rudolf Bahro is free. Hopefully he will not be buried by uncritical praise. While his courage and integrity are undeniable, his theoretical synthesis, applauded in the West by Marxists of various stripes, belongs to that set of works from Trotsky to Hegediis which criticize the social systems of Eastern Europe only in terms that remain deeply embedded in the presuppositions of these systems. Their work belongs to the Eastern European past, even if this past cannot yet be overcome. Why such positive reaction in the West? For some western Marxists,1 Bahro's work2 means that the self-critique of Marxism-Leninism yields a genuine Marxism, flexible enough to deal with the East, without apology. For Trotskyists like Ernest Mandel,3 who called The Alternative the most important theoretical work to come out of the countries which abolished capitalism since Leon Trotsky's Revolution Betrayed, Bahro's work indicates that the ideas of the Leninist Left Opposition are alive in Eastern Europe despite appearances to the contrary. In short, the purpose of this uncritical reception of Bahro has been to save one's own brand of Marxism from its embarassing links to Eastern Europe. This formula results unfortunately in misunderstanding and in deemphasizing the whole pluralistic stream of dissidence which is struggling for such unrevolutionary goals as constitutionality, legality, plurality, participation, religious freedom, national freedom, empirical worker and peasant interests. Uniting all these goals is the struggle for conditions which will allow them to be represented in an emancipated public sphere already anticipated in the underground. While the goal of traditional Marxists applauding Bahro remains the negative utopia of the politicization of the whole of society, the immense bulk of Eastern European dissidents seeks the creation or re-creation of civil society. Except in the GDR, of