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System Contradiction and Political Transformation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Frank Parkin
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Extract

David lockwood has drawn attention to two related but analytically distinct types of integration in society: social integration, referring to the relationship between groups—more especially classes or strata; and system integration referring to the degree of connectedness between institutional parts of the social order (i). The former type of integration concerns the social relations between actors, so that the problem of order in society is posed in terms of moral or normative categories. The second type of integration directs attention to the somewhat more technical or non-normative aspects of order, concerning as it does the degree of ‘fit’ or compatibility between various functionally connected institutions. Both types of integration are of course central to Marx's theory of social change. For Marx, the antagonisms stemming from weaknesses in social integration (exemplified in the extreme case by class polarization) plus the weaknesses in system integration (the contradiction between the forces of production and the relations of production) are understood to be the twin mechanisms responsible for social transformation. As many critics have pointed out, the exact nature of the link between these two different processes was never clearly specified by Marx. But it does seem apparent that system contradiction is regarded as causally prior to the cleavage, and ultimate conflict, between classes, since it's not until these contradictions in the system become irresolvable that the stage is set for the final showdown between contending classes.

Type
Permanent non-Revolution
Information
European Journal of Sociology / Archives Européennes de Sociologie , Volume 13 , Issue 1 , May 1972 , pp. 45 - 62
Copyright
Copyright © Archives Européenes de Sociology 1972

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References

(l) Lockwood, David, Social Integration and System Integration, in Zollschan, George K. and Hirsch, Walter (eds.), Explorations in Social Change (London, Routledge, 1964)Google Scholar.

(2) One must here surely agree with Lockwood that « there is nothing meta physical about thegeneral notion of social relationships being somehow implicit in a given set of material conditions » (Lockwood, , op. cit. p. 251)Google Scholar.

(3) Capital (Moscow 1961), III, p. 428Google Scholar.

(4) Capital, III, p. 429.

(5) Capital, III, p. 431.

(6) Loc. cit.

(7) Avinieri, Shlomo, The Social and Political Thought of Karl Marx (Cambridge 1968), pp. 181–182CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

(8) Cf. Plekhanov's prediction that the premature seizure of power in the name of the proletariat would result in a system of “Peruvian tutelage”.

(9) Cited by Baylis, Thomas A., “The New Economic System: The Role of the Technocrats in the DDR,” Survey, LXI 1966), p. 141Google Scholar.

(10) The struggles over economic reform cannot be understood in terms of the clear cut categories of a morality play. Western Czechossocial scientists tend to explain opposition to the reforms solely in terms of the bureau Sovietcrats' defence of their own power and privileges, whereas the advocates of reform are seen merely to be acting in the national interest. The situation is more complex. Both groups invoke notions of the public Radogood which also conceal claims to power.

(11) Initially the most advanced state in Scienthe socialist bloc, Czechoslovakia had by 1963 become “the only industrial country in the entire world to register a decrease in industrial output, national income and real wages”. Schaffer, Harry G., Czechoslovakia's New Economic Model, in Feiwel, George R. (ed.), New Currents in Sovie Type Economics (Scranton 1968), p. 466Google Scholar.

(12) For a trenchant affirmation of this view see the analysis of modern society produced by the Czech Academy of Arts and Sciences under the editorship of van Richta, Rado, Civilization at the Crossroads: Social and Human Implications ofthe Scienthe tific and Technological Revolution (Prague 1967)Google Scholar.

(13) Cf. Sik, Ota, Plan and Market under Socialism (Prague 1966)Google Scholar.

(14) While the use of the blanket term ‘intelligentsia’ does not of course imply a completely homogeneous group it is probably misleading to insist upon drawing sharp internal distinctions—e.g. between scientific and creative categories. In critical situations such distinctions appear wholly artificial. It is instructive to note that even in the Soviet Union political protest against the trial and imprisonment of dissident writers has not been confined to the literary intelligentsia but has includably ed many members of the scientific and technical elite. For documentation on this point see the detailed lists of signatories to protest petitions reproduced in Problems of Communism, XVII (1968), pp. 39–73Google Scholar.

(15) Even in east Germany, where technical expertise and political authority are especially closely linked, there is a clear separation of the two spheres at the apex of power. As Baylis's study shows, the technical specialists control the Council of Ministers, but the apparatchiki still dominate the Politburo. “The peculiar divisionof labour between the ‘political’ Politburo and the ‘economic’ Council of Ministers may be seen as reflecting the present unstable equilibrium of east Gerseparation man politics”. Moreover, in critical situations, “the apparatchikiare in a position to enforce political requirements at the expense of economic ones […]” (Baylis, , op. cit. p. 151Google Scholar).

(16) Bauman's view that capitalist states in the pre-welfare period were inherently vulnerable to revolutionary seizure seems to be based more on predictions of collapse than on the event itself. (Zygmunt Bauman, Social Dissent in the East-European Political System, Europ. Journ. Sociol., XII (1971), 25–51Google Scholar. The European historical record contains in fact remarkably few instances of the successful overthrow of capitalism. The Soviet Union and Yugoslavia provide the only examples of revolutionary transformation from capitalism to socialism, and in both cases the ancien régime was already in a state of imminent collapse as a result of war.

By contrast, the brief post-war history of eastern Europe suggests that socialist states are considerably more vulnerable to the threat of internal dissolution. The survival of most of these states in their present form is guaranteed mainly by the authority of an external power. The typical European bourgeois state, on the other hand, has been required to accommodate to internal pressures in order to preserve its stability, since, with few exceptions, it has been unable to summon the aid of a greater sovereign power when threatened by internal revolt. Thus any proper assessment of the comparative stability of thetwo systems requires us to “think away” the Red Army when judging the viability of the ideal-typical socialist state.