As with all such events, the Bolshevik Revolution was messy. It counted on huge popular participation and disruption in the main industrial cities of the empire and jacqueries in the countryside. Other revolutions unfolded over time – such as in China and Vietnam – in the sense that they emerged victorious from a protracted process of warfare, during which major institutions were forged. Others took some time to even start to think about how they would reorganize the state on a permanent basis – this was the case of Cuba. Law, as part of the ‘bourgeois state’, was not really favoured by Marxist revolutionaries (nor by anarchists, for that matter, though social democrats became very fond of it). First, law was to be exercised by popular courts and the like. Eventually, in the period of ‘real socialism’ and even more so today, in post-postmodern states, the bureaucracy and the legal professions that were to be discarded by socialism and communism made a comeback. As is well known, the judiciary is a part of the bureaucratic apparatus of the state, although, like the army in this regard, a very specialized part of it (though both, especially the latter, can and have, in authoritarian collectivism as much as in liberal states, taken up political roles at several moments and in different areas). In this, too, authoritarian collectivism ended up replicating some basic features of ‘capitalist states’, once it left behind the messy period of popular courts and judgements (Grzybowski 1962; Hazard 1969). Yet some crucial changes took place too, at least in what regards the imaginary, and not for the better. This leads us directly towards a discussion of the role of rights in authoritarian collectivism.

Initially, the Russian Revolution had a very indirect approach to rights, speaking of the rights of workers but never taking them as natural rights or rights that accrue universally to individuals qua individuals. That being said, the constitutional development of the Soviet Union was part of what may be termed social constitutionalism since the very beginning. Its main jurists in the 1910s–20s, above all Piet I. Stuchka and Eugeny Pashukanis, despite divergent understandings of law, believed it would disappear in the process of constructing socialism, withering away along with capitalism and, above all, the state.

Social systems like those of authoritarian collectivism, which constitute a multifaceted civilization and enjoy long-term existence, all have a genesis, exist for a good while – in this case decades – and eventually disappear. Marx ([1867] 1962; [1894] 1964) pointed to capitalism's historical developmental trends – its ‘laws of movement’ – and the mechanisms that presided over them: original accumulation, evolution towards the concentration and centralization of capital and simplification of the class structure as well as, eventually, he believed, the expropriation of the expropriators with the proletarian socialist revolution. Other trends were related to the falling rate of profit and capitalism’s stagnation – or collapse (Zusammenbruch), as Engels and some others read it. The political dimension of modernity – together with capitalism a central component of modern civilization – can be framed according to the same sort of developmental process and mechanisms, implying the strengthening of the state and the political autonomization of individuals (Domingues 2019a, chs 5–6). Can we say the same about authoritarian collectivism? As already observed above, Marcuse (1958, 86–90, 265–67) suggested that the tension between, on the one hand, the emancipatory elements harboured in Marxism, which were present in the ritualized ‘Aesopian’ language of Soviet Marxism and furnished the ideological linchpin of oppression, and the actual repressive and unequal nature and workings of the whole system on the other, might have eventually proven fatal to it and led to socialism. This did not happen, at least certainly not to the extent necessary and eventually not in a direction which enhanced freedom while preserving socialism.

When the Soviet Union left its satellite states in Eastern Europe, which were much more unstable and were already actually starting to shed the motherland of socialism's model, to their own devices, they quickly turned back to capitalism and traditional forms of the modern liberal state (the latter came about in Russia only very partially, though). Other countries, where the ruling nomenklatura had no intention of following in Gorbachev's footsteps and exiting from history, some of which were already trying to adapt, decided to keep their political systems and political regimes, while at the same time embracing a sort of state capitalism (see Nolan 1995; Anderson 2010). This seemed the only way to avoid extinction.

The goal of this short book is to discuss what the purportedly socialist societies of the twentieth century were, and what is left of them at present. I approach these societies starting from a specific entry point, that is, I focus on the political dimension, which I elaborate on below, which allows for a broader characterization of the topic. I call the sort of social system discussed here ‘authoritarian collectivism’. It was based on the party-state structure and democratic centralism and was structured as a system of rule. Generally, it did not survive into the twenty-first century, though, in some cases, the specific political dimension and partly its state were retained with the transition to a variant of capitalism in which citizens’ rights remain secondary, thus reproducing the former framework. This was a strategy of adaptation implemented once the system evolutionarily proved too fragile to reform. The political system at its core found a new lease of life in combination with a sort of state-based capitalism, reminiscent of a prior phase of modernity – state-organized – with which the so-called ‘real socialism’ had important affinities. It was then perhaps that this sort of social system more clearly revealed how distant it was from socialism proper, despite the use of the word ‘socialism’ to define it.

The use of the political catchphrase ‘real socialism’ (also ‘really/actually existing socialism’ – real existierender Sozialismus) in this book requires a brief explanation, though this is obviously a rather current expression. It was originally coined by Erich Honecker, the general secretary of the East German Socialist Unity Party (SED), in 1973. It paralleled Leonid Brezhnev’s introduction of the idea of ‘developed socialism’, also in the 1970s (Sandle 2002). Even though the expression has perhaps a less optimistic ring to it, Honecker coined it as a sort of praise for the society he saw his country as concretely embodying. Afterwards, it was applied in a critical way, rather diffusely, to conceptualize the social system of the Soviet Union and the countries that basically followed its model. That is, while the original coinage implied an actual definition of the concrete model of socialism that would have been built in these countries, others would use it to disqualify them as socialist, or point out how distorted the model was, mostly due to authoritarianism.

For Marx ([1867] 1962, 12, 49) the commodity furnished the ‘cell-form’, the ‘elementary’ building block of the capitalist mode of production, as he stated in the opening chapter of Capital. The economic dimension being his focus, market relations, of which the commodity is the basic expression, played the decisive role, allowing for an initial analysis of the whole mode of production. It was based on ‘voluntary exchange’ (see below) and stood out in the articulation of capitalism. In authoritarian collectivism, it is the political dimension on which we must focus our attention. ‘Command’ can be found in any sort of social formation and in any dimension thereof (in the factory, in the family and so forth). In the case of authoritarian collectivism, it was political command that was key. Bureaucratic commands were ultimately subordinated to it, as they are subordinated to economic production and ultimately to market coordination within capitalist economic systems, as Marx ([1867] 1962, 350) himself showed in Capital with respect to capitalist firms. What characterizes command, and in particular political command?

Command is a mechanism of coordination of interactions. These interactions may be fleeting or they may endure, finding moorings in stable, regular relationships and rules/norms attached to them, also stabilizing otherwise tendentially free-floating imaginary, symbolic elements. This implies to a variable extent top-down connections between agents, which must usually find some sort of legitimation or justification. Command underpins hierarchy as a principle of organization, asymmetrical positioning within interactions, one in which agent A can command another agent, B, to do something, whether B is inclined and wants to do this or not (Domingues 2017/2018, ch. 7, 2019a, ch. 1). That is, B must obey A's order. But so as to make sure and actually even define command as such – beyond more vague influence, suggestion and suchlike – it is necessary that A can actually force B to comply with, that is, to obey, A's demand. This is possible only if A can bring a sanction to bear on B’s behaviour, if B is not willing to comply. This sanction, within market-oriented relations, can be an economic sanction – for instance, in a capitalist firm the worker may be fired, lose his or her wages or incur other indirect means of payment.

Commands – that is, political commands – in this sort of twentieth-century social formation were issued fundamentally by what has been called the party-state, of which the first element – the party – was actually the defining one (Kornai 1992, 34– 41). The state was larger and comprised many other components and processes. The political component was always linked directly to the party, although bureaucratic elements could be articulated with it. Hence, the formal frontiers between the party and state/society in general did not correspond exactly to what was legally formalized. The same can be said of families, in principle not directly connected to politics or the party, whose influence as a part of party relations could be very strong.

This was the core of a historically specific system of rule. What really matters here is how vertical, hierarchical and based on command the system came to be. This was neither what the Bolsheviks had envisaged nor what they had originally practised (an issue to which I will return below). Yet once the Soviet state was consolidated, the soviets – which had been the focus of the revolutionary process – were entirely subordinated to the party, which controlled all the state bureaucratic machinery. Whether staffed by former Czarist functionaries or by new party cadres, the system came to rest absolutely on hierarchical relations, namely command and compliance. In the newly established imaginary this was related to two ideas: the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ and ‘democratic centralism’.

Vladimir Ilyich Ulianov, or simply Lenin ([1917] 1964), discussed the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ in his The State and Revolution, which he ended, however, without examining the development of Soviet power and its prospects. While the bourgeois state was based on bourgeois class power and consisted in an instrument of exploitation for that ruling class, Lenin envisaged the proletarian state – the ‘dictatorship if the proletariat’ – as a state that would develop towards its own disappearance, its ‘withering away’. It would be so simple that even a ‘cook’ could manage it, which meant that bureaucracy could and would disappear too. Marx's ([1871] 1986) analysis of the Paris Commune – which was in fact influenced above all by anarchists – furnished the main foundations for Lenin's view of the future, the construction of socialism and the eventual emergence of communism, as well as that of the proletarian state and its disappearance.

All of this begs the question, where then can we place authoritarian collectivism, evolutionarily and politically? Its failure was an unheard-of historical blunder, apparently without parallel. Other projects of total change usually accrued to individual destines out of this world, in the ‘beyond’ of spiritual life. Others were more closely related to processes that were already unfolding in social life, such as those put forward by radical Protestant sects in America or Calvin's rule in Zurich. Communism was supposed to be such a project, but it was much more ambitious. Its dreams were, however, carefully distinguished from utopianism, especially in that Marx and Engels ([1848] 1978; Marx [1867] 1962) identified economic and social developmental trends within capitalism and modernity overall – in the contradiction between social, capitalist accumulation and private appropriation, entailing class structure and conflict. In their view, these trends should lead in a more or less straightforward manner to socialism and then communism. Marx’s extreme confidence in his scientific understanding of those trends assured him that this was the only possible evolution from the stage humanity had reached, capitalism supposedly representing the last ‘antagonistic’ social formation (Marx [1859] 1971). When placed within a unilinear perspective of evolution, presupposed by the mainstream of Marxism until the recovery – problematically staged – of the ‘Asiatic mode of production’ in the second half of the twentieth century, socialism and communism were inexorably on the agenda, even though they had to be brought about by historical agents.

Both doctrine and practice, however, present problems that conspired to push, rather hard, away from the cherished goal. The doctrine suffered from the identification of those trends, particularly regarding class evolution (indeed a simplification) and the outcome of class struggle (the consciousness of the proletariat and the choice to end exploitation and oppression) that, out of necessity, were seen as entailing an emancipated society. The problems of practice stemmed from revolution occurring only in economically very backward countries, to start with Russia, furnishing a model that was not actually exportable to more advanced ones. That being said, it was imaginarily exported and forced on workers’ organizations more deeply committed to socialism in advanced capitalist countries, even though revolution was defeated across Europe.

We live in a postsocialist world. Surely, some states still call themselves ‘socialist’ and pretend to be moving towards communism – even if, taking a step back and evincing greater modesty, their stage of ‘socialism’ would correspond to its first and protracted phase. Many others across the world used to call themselves ‘socialist’. This should not, however, lead us to accept their postulation, formerly or today, no more than we should take any individuals according to their own evaluation or capitalists according to what they think of themselves (see Marx [1859] 1971). Yet, if they were not ‘socialist’, what were they?

Socialism, let alone communism, cannot be authoritarian – even if we could accept a rather quick stage of the ‘dictatorship of proletariat’ – nor should it be seen as a sort of collectivism. On the other hand, state property of the ‘means of production’ in and by itself does not make a country socialist. Democracy – which must be based on equal and free positions and mostly horizontal relations – as well as the flourishing of individuality, without detriment to collective well-being, both have to stand out in any social formation that deserves the name of socialism, with its implications for truly social, collectively shared property. This was not the case of authoritarian collectivism, even though not everything that developed therein was bad or negative (with the caveat that positivity was often wrapped in some sort of state paternalism). Nor does recognizing the infirmity of ‘real socialism’ deny the sincere beliefs of members of such societies, including in many cases those sitting at the top, foremost but not only their founding fathers. We must not, of course, forget the role of ideologies as well as that of flawed knowledge in the only partial grasp they had of their own reality, but this does not imply insincerity. In any case, socialism in the twentieth century did not set out with an authoritarian blueprint. The Bolsheviks, in particular, were, despite fierce debates about the role of centralization, largely a democratic and open party, a model they apparently projected onto the future socialist/communist society (Rabinowitch 1976, 2007).

Political systems in modernity mediate between society and state, with their own double face – societal and state-based – and the centrality and predominance of the latter, while the former may, from time to time, be shut down rather brutally and radically (as in the fascist and the bureaucratic authoritarian regimes), although it operates in a reasonable level of freedom under liberal democracy. In authoritarian collectivism the limitation of the societal political system also obtained, with the private and the open public domains being severely constrained, as already observed. It was through the party that society – mainly the ruling sectors but partly also workers, peasants and petty bureaucrats – found a voice up the ladders of power. The mediation between state and society, which in modernity has been undertaken by the political system, was accomplished in authoritarian collectivism basically via the party apparatus, although other bureaucratic channels could be operative too. Democratic centralism has always been at the service of the core, in party and state, justifying the repression of anyone and anything that might challenge or simply disagree with decisions taken or their concrete application.

To be sure, ‘everyday politics’ was seemingly crucial (and remains so where political systems from this era are still operative) to convey low-intensity information to party hierarchies. This seems to have often been the case, especially regarding peasants, in the absence of open political systems, of what Kerkvliet (2005, ch. 2) has called the ‘power of noncollective action’, implying some level of passivity. The crux of the matter here, however, is actually the silent and decentred collective subjectivity of peasants and workers in general, with its steady collective causality over party cadres. It can flame up if grievances go unheeded, even ensuing in rebellions, which have not been uncommon under collective authoritarianism. This sort of everyday politics was and is hardly equivalent to democracy or even democratic centralism, since it is diffuse, non-organized, and is always threatened by party-state repression, although it often impacted the restricted societal political system of collective authoritarianism. This impact was, however, muffled due to party control over all organizations, starting with unions and cultural and artistic associations (peasants have not been allowed to organize autonomously in China).

The last words of this book must be reserved for the uncountable people who militated in parties and movements that led to these socio-political systems, supported or even in good faith staffed them. This includes others who, like Trotskyites, criticized them but could not think of revolutions that would not reproduce the problems that made of them an oppressive rather than an emancipatory reality. Surely there have been those who were cynical as well as misguided or prone to delusion. But there were also those, and they were legion, who were dedicated and believed that the future would be bright once class society and private property were abolished, despite the price paid in the transitional period. These were people who sided with the wretched of the earth and took upon themselves sometimes personally dangerous and difficult, even brutal, decisions, with the dream of a society free from exploitation and oppression in the hope that, as Brecht poetically put it, those who were born later would forgive them for their harshness. Far too often they made mistakes and committed unjustifiable acts, but far too often did they do so in good faith, in the midst of complicated historical processes. The situation is no longer the same, history has moved on and the shortcomings of such a perspective are now plain to see.

Just after the Second World War (partly under the influence of debates about French resistance heroes and collaborationists, and in fact siding to a large extent with Stalinist arguments, with a sort of consequentialist ethic), Merleau-Ponty ([1947] 1951, particularly 3–4) thought it possible that even the Moscow Trials could truly make sense – could be justified indeed – to communists. He thought that within Marxism, the outcomes of decisions – right or wrong – could acquire an objectivity that implied a sort of personal responsibility for agents, in which revolutionary violence and terror found a place, though extraordinary if compared with other historical circumstances. Future outcomes of a history in the making were somehow the judge of the present, in which actors in a strange retrospective/prospective manner could find themselves wrong. Moreover, he argued that liberalism was not innocent of violence either, in fact even under ordinary circumstances.

One of the thorniest issues in the debate about ‘real socialism’ was whether this was a class society. If classes are defined by the idea of private property, this was surely not the case. The state was the formal proprietor of all or most of the means of production, although peasants often had some stake in property relations current in these countries, whether some sort of collectivization had taken place or not (mostly it did). Workers were supposed to be the ruling class in these states, yet, as argued above, this was by no means the case. We thus have to ask what ‘property’ means beyond juridical definitions, as already suggested in the previous section. While this is not the main aim of this book a basic answer to it must be given in order to understand the role of the political dimension and its hold on the whole authoritarian collectivist social formations.

We can say that ‘appropriation’ means first of all that someone, individually or collectively, takes real control of something. It implies power over the appropriated object, either juridically, as we have known since the Romans with their definition of rights in rem (that is, over things). More concretely, it allows for the manipulation of the thing appropriated – whether we eat it, use it to produce something else, play with it or throw it away. It thus implies the power of command over that which is appropriated. This command may be collectively shared through some sort of networked relationship, and this can be, overall, exclusionary. Part of it can also be placed in a temporary lease to smaller groups of workers or, if of limited size, on a more permanent basis.

In the case in point, as part and parcel of the state, the core elements regarding property/appropriation in the party-state were those who had more direct control and discretionary power over most objects in authoritarian collectivism. But this did not occur through individual and private appropriation. Appropriation was always collective and public (though with a high level of secrecy). No one had a private title to appropriate the means of production. The party-state and especially its upper echelons were the actual proprietors of the means of production in these societies and could appropriate the economic surplus as well as social privileges, though on a much smaller scale than capitalists in their adversarial societies.

We have seen above that it is difficult to discern which exactly were the developmental trends at work within authoritarian collectivism, insofar as they ended rather suddenly. Indeed, they probably ended before the system exhausted its developmental possibilities. The economy had problems, but these led to some desperation only due to the competition of the Soviet Union with the West, which showed much greater strength and innovative capacity. Politically, relations were fraught, but if reforms were not undertaken the system could have survived for longer or even a very long time. Once there was an opening it quickly became crystal clear that if the genie was out of the bottle and political tensions ran their course unimpeded, authoritarian collectivism could not survive. And in fact it did not survive – not in the Soviet Union and not in the countries more directly connected to it when they had no true autonomous revolutionary process behind them. Even those that did, such as Yugoslavia, which moreover had a more supple and participatory economic system as well as less repression, could not stick to ‘real socialism’ in the ambience of change that overwhelmingly prevailed in Eastern Europe. In Africa, surrender was far-reaching. It was only in Asia and in a small Latin American country that successful attempts to survive were rolled out.

If we focus on the economic side, it was the blockages that over-centralization produced once heavy industrialization was accomplished that were a developmental problem. The sort of planning practised was highly defective. Low frequency signals, which a more decentralized (market-oriented or network-based) economy could provide, were lost in the top-down model adopted since Stalin and partly even before him, despite the formidable war machinery it was able to build and the growing welfare it managed to provide the Soviet working class, especially during the 1980s (Nove [1983] 1991; Blackburn 1991). Consumer goods for dispersed individual consumers and high technology were hardly achievable goals. ‘Relations of production’ and ‘productive forces’ clashed, whether there was a possibility to surpass the blockage within the ‘mode of production’ or not. In the end, it was the complicated intertwinement of political and economic conditions that further generated what became insurmountable contradictions.