Seite - 232 - in Otto Bauer (1881–1938) - Thinker and Politician

232 chapter 5 The thought expressed in the final sentence representedBauer’s anticipa- tionoftheeventualfateofsocialistdoctrine.Socialismonlyremainedeffective inWestern European social-democratic parties because they explicitly dis- sociated themselves from the Leninist version ofMarxism in the Frankfurt DeclarationadoptedbytheSocialistInternationalin1951,adheringtoKautsky’s concept of ‘democratic socialism’ thereafter. In contrast, socialism lost social recognition inthecountriesof ‘reallyexistingsocialism’,whichwere forcedto reiteratetheBolshevikmodels fordecades. Ofcourse,Bauer’sthesesweresubjecttocausticcriticismfromtheBolshev- iks, who had been hoping for the outbreak of world revolution since 1920. In a sense, Bauer contradictedhimself in assuming that theRussianRevolu- tionmightprovideablueprint forotherAsiancountries.Kautsky,who,unlike Bauer,didnotbelievethatBolshevismwasmerelytheproductofaneconomic- allyundevelopedagrariancountry,butspecificallyofRussianconditionsafter WorldWari,objectedtothis.145 Themost interesting – and at the same timemost surprising – aspect of Bauer’sBolshevismorSocialDemocracy is thenotionuponwhichtheauthor’s prognosisof thedefeatofsocialisminRussiarested;namely,apositiveassess- ment of the proletarian dictatorship in its totalitarian form. The essential question here pertains to the assumptions onwhichBauer based his thesis. The firstmight be summedup thus: Russian conditions – economic under- development, the low cultural level of themasses, the inner developmental mechanisms of dictatorship – unavoidably led to degeneration into a party dictatorship over the proletariat and peasantry. That is to say, the consol- idation of power by aminority coincides with the centralisation of power, which, in turn, results in the bureaucratisation and increasing autonomy of thestateapparatus. ‘Despoticsocialism’,Bauerwrote, ‘isthenecessaryproduct of adevelopment that triggeredasocial revolutionata stageofdevelopment whenRussianpeasantswerenotevenmatureenoughforpoliticaldemocracy andRussianworkerswereinsufficientlymaturefor industrialdemocracy’ (our translation).146Thesecondassumptionisreminiscentofhisunswervingbelief that it was impossible to build socialism in a country like Russia without employinga ‘proletarian’apparatusofcoercion.Understoodliterally, thisview 145 SeeKautsky1920,p.262. 146 ‘DerdespotischeSozialismus istdasnotwendigeProdukteinerEntwicklung,die soziale Revolutionheraufbeschworenhat, auf einerEntwicklungsstufe, aufder russischeBauer noch nicht einmal zur politischen, der russischeArbeiter noch nicht zur industriellen Demokratiereifwar’–Bauer1976c,p.293.