| Abstract: | Conclusions Both party and state in each of the countries of Eastern Europe has an ideological commitment to socialism. Each is dedicated to the construction of socialist society as a means of improving the human condition. This demands improvement of the material conditions of human existence and advancement of social and personal freedom. In the context of Eastern Europe in the second half of the twentieth century this has been thought to require special attention to development of the productive forces and to the protection of the socialist states from the threat of capitalism. (In 1985 this particular threat largely comes from outside.) Within Eastern Europe there are different strategies for the construction of socialism. The Yugoslav commitment to self-governing socialism combined with participation in European capitalism and Albanian Maoist inspired autarchy mark the limits of these differences, but within the CMEA countries there are striking differences as well.Among the people of Eastern European countries there is widespread commitment to the ideals of socialism. The experiences of their presocialist past, coupled with forty years of socialization to socialist norms, have left them committed to egalitarian economic, political and social relations and to socialism as the process to pursue these goals. However, in 1985, improvements over the conditions of the past are largely taken for granted. People are bored, even irritated, by repeated celebration of how far their particular country has come since 1938 or 1944. For those living under actually existing socialism today the significant referents are to what is possible under mature socialism and to how people are living under capitalism in Western Europe and North America.Critical scholarship, as it has developed in Eastern Europe, is dedicated to a critique of actually existing socialism, to open discussion of what is possible, of the reasons for the difference between the two, and the means necessary to effect change. Central to the critical understanding of Eastern Europe is the role played by the development and reproduction of social stratification. This is defined by the formation of a social class, or strata, of managers and technocrats — the  New Class. Having established a bureaucratic structure to build socialism in the name of all working people, this class has now appropriated the structure in pursuit of its own interests.The fundamental contradictions of actually existing socialism grow out of the commitment of the people to socialism and the manipulation of state and party to promote the interests of the New Class. The result has been an economistic interpretation of socialism. While the promotion of economic development was once subordinated to the twin goals of the defense of socialism and the elimination of want and privation, it has now become an end in itself, a means to the consolidation and reproduction of class privilege. The New Class claims its privilege and power as just rewards for its leadership in building socialism, but to the extent that the gap grows between the wealth and power of the New Class and other segments of the population, and to the extent that individuals use their bureaucratic positions for personal gain, discontent and demands for reform mount among the people.The New Class has addressed discontent and demands for reform largely by defending its class interests. While discouraging or even repressing critical inquiry and political efforts at reform, the New Class also allocates material rewards and personal freedoms to segments of the population which become troublesome, or which it fears might become troublesome. Critical analysis which reveals the class nature of actually existing socialism is countered with an ideology of a single class working in unison, where differences in reward and power are only temporary and necessary to construct socialism. Criticism and political organizing outside of party or state channels are defined as chauvinistic, as anti-party and state and detrimental to the construction of socialism.These internal struggles have, of course, taken place in an international context. Each movement and attempt at reform has been observed and analyzed in neighboring socialist countries so that the experience of each carries lessons for all. The Soviet Union, in opposing these movements, has demonstrated its own unwillingness to accept prevailing contradictions and continues to confuse between the agenda of the Soviet state and the nature of socialism. Meanwhile, the United States government, with the often ambivalent agreement of its West European allies, interprets any conflict in Eastern Europe as an expression of yearnings for the freedom of democratic capitalism.In spite of state and party opposition, demands for reform have continually emerged in Eastern Europe. While the struggle has been pandemic, its most visible and dramatic expressions have been in East Germany in 1953, in Hungary and Poland in 1956, in Czechoslovakia in 1968 and in Poland in 1980–81. The scholarship which has accompanied these struggles is of course dominated by critical East European intellectuals. Western scholars, including anthropologists, have also entered into this socialist discourse. In particular anthropologists have focused on the details of social relationships and ritual. They have examined the workings of the bureaucracy, the dynamics of familial relations and social networks, and the interrelationships between these. Nevertheless, no matter how distinctive and penetrating the analyses of anthropologists and other critical Western scholars, the burden of developing understanding will remain with the people who are engaged in the contradictions of life under actually existing socialism.The principal significance of anthropological understanding of socialism in Eastern Europe will be in the United States itself. Since the origins of institutional anthropology in the nineteenth century, critical anthropologists have promised to use their insight into social and cultural practice in other parts of the world as the basis for a critique of their own society and culture. Anthropologists can honor this promise by using their understanding of socialist practice to contribute to the dynamic and transformative examination of capitalism.Most relevantly, in this axial moment when all of human life and culture is threatened, anthropologists must offer their knowledge and experience as the basis for the demystification of Cold War perspectives on Eastern Europe, and the policies attendant upon it.John W. Cole is at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. |
