Abstract
Building on this biblical framework, the second chapter in many ways sets the scene for the arguments that follow. It concerns the productive role of the ‘delay of communism’ in Stalin’s thought. The world’s first socialist revolution soon experienced a delay in the expected achievement of communism. It became obvious that it would not come as soon as many expected. This delay produced a number of innovations, which I examine in some detail. It began with the distinction between socialism and communism, with the interim of socialism becoming a distinct period. But how to define such an era? Stalin creatively deployed biblical texts (2 Thess 3:10 and Acts 4:32 and 35) to define it, to the point of including them in the 1936 constitution, as well as four dialectical features: the diversity and unity of languages and cultures; the intensification of class conflict as the goal draws nearer; socialism in one country; strengthening the state as the means to its withering away. By now, echoes of the early Christian phenomenon of the ‘delay of the Parousia’ should be clear: Christ’s delay in returning produced a range of responses in which the interim became the norm. The details may have been different, but the underlying phenomenon of delay is analogous. However, the most intriguing aspect of Stalin’s thought is what may be called proleptic communism (analogous to proleptic eschatology), in which a communism of the future is creatively present as a type of reverse causality, determining the nature of the present even though it remains to be achieved.
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Notes
- 1.
Few indeed are the studies that deal seriously with the theoretical developments I analyse here. Those that do so attribute the developments either to the constant tension between Soviet and ‘Western’ social and economic systems, in which socialism and capitalism became coexistent rather than the former succeeding the latter (Marcuse 1958), or to the internal tension in Marxist thought and practice between objective and subjective factors, or between tekhnika and politika (Priestland 2007, 36–37). I have been able to find only one study that hints at the delay of communism in the development of key elements of Stalin’s thought, although it merely suggests that the fading of hopes for a world revolution fostered a nationalist agenda (Mehnert 1952, 20, 118).
- 2.
Paul had already sought to dampen such an approach in 1 Corinthians, where the problems seem to have been both ‘freedom’ (or licence) and asceticism by the ‘strong ones’, who believed the end had already come (Koester 2000, 126–131).
- 3.
See the useful expositions of this key statement in Menken (1994, 98–101) and Nicholl (2004, 115–117).
- 4.
Other later texts also tackle such problems, such as Jude and 2 Peter (Holladay 2005, 735–742).
- 5.
A comparable concern, with a much lighter touch, may be found in 1 Thess 4:11, where members of the congregation are urged to work with their hands, and 5:14, where the ataktoi are to be admonished. If so, then the author of the second letter has picked up this hint and taken it in a new direction. The theme of receiving ‘reward’ for labour appears elsewhere in the gospels (Matt 10:5–10) and Paul’s epistles (1 Cors 9:1–14; 2 Cor 11:7–11). However, in these cases the reward in question is for the labour of the gospel rather than labour apart from activities to spread the new faith. In 1 and 2 Thessalonians the emphasis is on the latter and the need for the congregation to continue in labour.
- 6.
The best interpretation remains that of Bartlett (2012), from whom I have drawn much but with whom I disagree in some respects.
- 7.
It matters little in this respect whether the question is framed in eschatological or non-eschatological terms. The connection with eschatological concerns was first made by Johann Albrecht Bengel in his Gnomon Novi Testamenti from 1742, vol. 2, 501.
- 8.
Some go so far as to argue that the reason for abandoning work was ‘honourable’—to preach the gospel (Barclay 1993; Burke 2003, 213–216).
- 9.
The Apostolic Constitutions (350–370 CE), a work about which little is known but which is full of practical advice, strikes a similar tone (Thiselton 2011, 266).
- 10.
Conzelmann (1982) famously argued that Luke-Acts had a similar agenda. For a recent rearticulation of this position, see Holladay (2005, 238–241).
- 11.
I can give only a sample of the impressive range. Weber (1994, 159) sees it, through the influential Puritan Richard Baxter, as one of the cornerstones of Protestant asceticism and thus of early capitalism. James Smith, upon arriving at the Jamestown settlement in North America in 1908, invoked the verse in order to rectify the colony’s problems (Bartlett 2012, 37). William Graham Sumner (1840–1910), the erstwhile clergyman, anti-socialist and proponent of laissez-faire economics quoted the verse (Wilson-Reitz and McGinn 2014, 186). In our own time, ‘shock jocks’ such as Glenn Beck call upon the verse to challenge any form of welfare (Bartlett 2012, 37), as did Margaret Thatcher in her ‘Sermon on the Mound’ before the Church of Scotland General Assembly of 1988. She suggested that 2 Thess 3:10 provides the first biblical ‘principle’ for shaping social and economic life: ‘We are told we must work and use our talents to create wealth’.
- 12.
The only recent work I have been able to find suggests rather weakly that the ataktoi and periergazomenoi (busybodies) are ‘upwardly mobile social climbers’ and ‘ancient “yuppies”’ within a patronage system that despised labour (Wilson-Reitz and McGinn 2014). Bartlett’s otherwise excellent study falls away from such a position by arguing, following Jewett (1993), that the early Christians in Thessalonica were all marginalized people in the ‘first phase of communism’, in which the difficulty of finding work meant that too many relied on the agape feast.
- 13.
See also Calvin (1851, 355–356), who writes of the monks and priests as ‘lazy drones’ whose ‘only religion is to be well stuffed, and to have exemption from all annoyance of labour’. Among the church ‘fathers’, only Tertullian and John Chrysostom threaten to come close. Tertullian writes: ‘Each one should work with his own hands for a living’. Indeed, ‘Let the Church stand open to all who are supported by their hands and by their own work’ (Roberts and Donaldson 1867–1873, vol. 3, 63; vol. 5, 63). As for Chrysostom, he observes in Homily 5, ‘To pray and fast, being idle, is not the work of the hands’ (1889, 394). Notably, Augustine tends to restrict such precepts to monks, especially in his On the Work of Monks (1886).
- 14.
It is not for nothing that Hus, the reformer before Luther, would become a pre-revolutionary hero in communist Czechoslovakia.
- 15.
For example, Lieuw (1999a, b) argues that the gospel of Mark replicates the ‘might is right’ approach of colonial imperialism by proclaiming that Jesus Christ and not the Roman emperor is the highest authority. Moore (2006, 45–74) argues that the gospel of John is the gospel of the imperial status quo, intuiting that ‘Rome will eventually become Christianity and Christianity will eventually become Rome’.
- 16.
In a different way, a similar perspective infuses 2 Peter, where one’s conduct in the present is determined by the future (Holladay 2005, 739).
- 17.
Florovsky (1975, 66) comes close with his observation that history is ‘inwardly regulated and organized precisely by this super-historical and transcendent goal’.
- 18.
Stalin presents such an approach as a more mechanical version of dialectics: ‘we must never forget that everything changes, that everything has its time and place, and, consequently, we must also present questions in conformity with concrete circumstances’ (Stalin 1906e, 235, 1906f, 419).
- 19.
See my earlier detailed analysis of Lenin on this subject (Boer 2013, 103–133).
- 20.
As a further example, he also argued for the proletarian leadership of the bourgeois revolution (Stalin 1906i, j, k, 254, 1906l, 4, 1907i, 2–3, 1907j, 264–265, 1907e, 61–69, 1907f, 88–95).
- 21.
Marcuse (1958, 20) observes that Marx’s late distinction between the two phases of communism is not an incidental correction, but ‘follows from the very principle of the dialectical method’.
- 22.
As many texts from the 1920s indicate (Stalin 1924o, 261, 1924p, 249, 1925a1, 127–128, 1925b1, 125–126, 1925y, 161–164, 1925z, 158–163, 1925i, 317–318, 379, 1925j, 310–311, 369–370, 1926m, 227–228, 1926n, 216–217, 1928i, 236–237, 1928j, 227–228, 1929a, b, 1929e, 354, 1929f, 339, 1929i, 77, 1929j, 73, 1929q, r).
- 23.
At the Seventeenth Party Congress in 1934, he speaks of ‘the first stage of communism, i.e., the socialist stage of development [pervoĭ stadii kommunizma,—sotsialisticheskoĭ stadii razvitiia]’ (Stalin 1934g, 349–350, 1934h, 343).
- 24.
‘Bourgeois law’ is Marx’s phrase, which Lenin seeks to explicate. For Lenin, of course, full communism meant the withering away of the state (see Chap. 6), so the continued presence of some forms of the state was seen as a bourgeois relic. Stalin would later begin to redefine the state itself under socialism.
- 25.
The only analysis that connects Lenin’s interpretation with 2 Thessalonians is that of Bartlett (2012, 47–48). He notes that Lenin removes the important dimension of willingness (thelei) to work from 2 Thess 3:10, and he adds the obligatory dolzhen, must not or ought not (to eat).
- 26.
The biblical text also featured in a famous debate between Anatoly Lunacharsky, the Commissar for Enlightenment, and Metropolitan Vvedensky, the leader of the Renovationist movement in the Russian Orthodox Church. Vvedensky observes (1985, 193): ‘When you say you are for the principle of work, I remind you of the slogan, “he who does not work shall not eat.” I have seen this in a number of different cities on revolutionary posters. I am just upset that there was no reference to the Apostle Paul in his Epistle to the Thessalonians, from where the slogan is taken’.
- 27.
Few if any are the studies that recognise the importance of Lenin’s and Stalin’s engagements with this and other biblical texts. Menken (1994, 135–136) notes Stalin’s usage, but curiously suggests it is among a range of subsequent distortions of the text. Despite the plethora of Russian language texts that mention the text, very few note its biblical origins (Dubrovin 2015, 82). As for Soviet specialists, none realise the significance of Lenin’s and Stalin’s engagements with this text. Even Filtzer’s careful studies (1986, 2004) of labour fail to mention it. Guins, as well as Wilson-Reitz and McGinn, mention, with no further comment, its appearance in the 1918 and 1936 constitutions, Fitzpatrick mistakenly attributes it to Marx and Krausz calls it a simplified principle of ‘ethical socialism’ (Guins 1954, 150; Fitzpatrick 2000, 180; Krausz 2005, 239; Wilson-Reitz and McGinn 2014, 186). It is not uncommon to find treatments of the constitutions failing to discuss these biblical statements at all (Siegelbaum and Sokolov 2000, 158–206).
- 28.
Indeed, in the 1920s, the term netrudovoi element, non-working element, was a neologism that entered popular parlance in the 1920s (Shternshis 2006, 203).
- 29.
For a full elaboration of this point, see Chap. 4.
- 30.
The Synodal version of the Russian Bible has the adverb beschinno for the Greek ataktos, which adheres to the strict sense of ‘disorderly’. However, the connotative connection or semantic overlap with lodyrʹ, loafer or idler, is very close.
- 31.
And indeed closer to the 1918 Constitution of the RSFSR, which reads: ‘Ne trudiashchiĭsia, da ne est’ (1918b, stat’ia 18).
- 32.
Gusev’s Ph.D. thesis (2003) offers a detailed and careful study of the Short Course. To be avoided is Medvedev (2005).
- 33.
The initial proposal for early Christian or ‘heterodox’ communism appears in the work of Karl Kautsky and Rosa Luxemburg, although they argue that it was a communism of consumption, not production, and thereby bound to fail (Kautsky 2007, 171–183, 1977, 347–373, 1895–1897, 25–49; Luxemburg 1970, 1982; Boer 2014a, 198–205).
- 34.
The current form of the slogan appears first with Louis Blanc: ‘de chacun selon ses facultés, à chacun selon ses besoins’ (1851, 92), although the principle can be traced back through socialist circles in other forms (Bowie 1971, 82). I am not the first to make the connection with Acts 4 (Berman 2001, 151–152), but I go well beyond a brief acknowledgement to focus on the variation on the slogan for socialism. Biblical commentators typically water down the text of Acts 4:32–35, in terms of an idealised generalisation that may indicate some sharing in the context of social welfare arrangements, or as a benign ethos of community sharing that had much in common with its Hellenistic context (Esler 1987, 186; Barrett 1994, 251–256; Marguerat 1996, 165–166; Talbert 2005, 47–49).
- 35.
The distinction first appears, albeit briefly, in the interview with Emil Ludwig (Stalin 1931g, 120, 1931h, 118).
- 36.
The text reads: ‘In the same way as mankind can arrive at the abolition of classes only through a transition period of the dictatorship of the oppressed class, it can arrive at the inevitable integration of nations only through a transition period of the complete emancipation of all oppressed nations, i.e., their freedom to secede’ (Lenin 1916c, 147, 1916d, 256). The text is quoted by Stalin (1929e, 360–361, 1929f, 345). The following points also appear elsewhere (Stalin 1929e, f, see also 1930e, 372–383, 1930f, 362–372; Martin 2001a, 245–249).
- 37.
Very similar arguments, deploying a theory of stages, appear in his speeches at the Sixteenth Congress in 1930 and in reply to a correspondent’s question in relation to his essay on linguistics (Stalin 1930e, 378–379, 1930f, 367–368, 1930k, 3–8, 1930l, 3–7, 1950a, 179–181, 1950b, 136–137).
- 38.
This crucial phrase is quoted on a number of occasions, first in 1927 (Stalin 1927k1, 156, 1927l1, 151, 1930e, 374, 1930f, 363).
- 39.
We should understand his statement from 1925 in this light: Stalin asks whether Lenin’s thesis concerning a new epoch of world revolution holds good any longer. ‘Does it mean that the proletarian revolution in the West has been cancelled?’ His answer: ‘No, it does not’ (Stalin 1925a1, 91, 1925b1, 91).
- 40.
The poet of old returns in this wonderful description: ‘The future agricultural commune will arise when the fields and farms of the artel have an abundance of grain, cattle, poultry, vegetables, and all other produce; when the artels have mechanised laundries, modern kitchens and dining-rooms, mechanised bakeries, etc.; when the collective farmer sees that it is more to his advantage to get meat and milk from the collective farm’s meat and dairy department than to keep his own cow and small livestock; when the woman collective farmer sees that it is more to her advantage to take her meals in the dining-room, to get her bread from the public bakery, and to have her linen washed in the public laundry, than to do all these things herself’ (Stalin 1934g, 360, 1934h, 353).
- 41.
Fitzpatrick (1994a, 114) calls it ‘good political strategy’ in light of circumstances. Given the clarity of this position, one wonders at why it has produced so much polemic. The most careful theoretical studies are by Van Ree (1998, 2002a, 84–95, 2010a, b, 2015), while the most comprehensive study remains E.H. Carr’s multi-volume work (1978), which covers the historical, legal, political and economic dimensions, albeit over-stressing what he sees as the distinctively Russian characteristics of the doctrine. While he treats the international dimension in terms of foreign relations, this is curiously divorced from the domestic situation. Many misread the doctrine by leaving out the crucial international component, with some suggesting that it was a significant departure from Marxist or indeed Leninist theory, a ‘figment’ of Stalin’s imagination, ‘sloppy reasoning’, ‘messianism’, a return of old-fashioned or perhaps a new form of nationalism based on class (Deutscher 1967, 292–293; Tucker 1973, 377–389, 1990, 28–32, 39–65; Daniels 1993a, xxix, 136; Mastny 1996, 149; Brandenburger and Dubrovsky 1998; Rappaport 1999, 246–247; Boobbyer 2000, 16–17; Duncan 2000, 54, 60; Brackman 2001, 166–167; Litvin and Keep 2005, 114; Wood 2005, 26–27; Szpakowski 2007). By contrast, the more insightful works never miss the complex interplay of the national and the international (Fischer 1932; Marcuse 1958, 80, 93–100; Das 1988; Clark 2011, 7).
- 42.
This was the report on the results of the work of the fourteenth conference of the Communist Party (Stalin 1925a1, 110–122, 1925b1, 109–121). Stalin had initially proposed the idea the year before (although it had precursors), but this material does not offer a full articulation (Stalin 1924e, 109, 1924f, 106, 1924g, 414–420, 1924h, 395–401). Van Ree usefully identifies the origins of this position in the German Social Democratic Movement, especially Georg Vollmar, Karl Kautsky and others (Vollmar 1878; Kautsky 1910, 102–103, 1905, 117–118; Van Ree 2002a, 94, 2005, 167, 2010b).
- 43.
In characteristic fashion, in nearly every engagement with the doctrine after its initial statement, Stalin not only reiterates the main points outlined here, but also justifies—in debate with Trotsky and various members of the ‘opposition’—the new interpretation by claiming faithfulness to Lenin’s texts and a pedigree for the doctrine than runs back to the early years of the twentieth century (Stalin 1925a1, 110–122, 1925b1, 109–121, 1925y, 205–207, 1925z, 202–204, 1926e, 64–80, 1926f, 60–75, 1926m, 227–232, 1926n, 216–221, 1926w, 292–299, 1926x, 279–286, 1926q, 326–347, 1926r, 312–332, 1926u, 30–40, 105–148, 1926v, 29–38, 100–144). See Van Ree’s (1998, 91–98, 2010a) careful explication of the development of Lenin’s thought on the question, in which he finally arrived at the position of the possibility of building socialism in one country, albeit in an incomplete form. Kolakowski (1978–1981, 21–25) intriguingly suggests that there was little difference between Stalin and Trotsky.
- 44.
Marcuse (1958, 93–100) and Sanchez-Sibony (2014a, b, 25–56) go too far in suggesting that the international contradictions forced either the continuation of internal contradictions or indeed the policies of socialism in one country as such. That is, they remove Soviet agency from the process.
- 45.
This point is repeated on many occasions (Stalin 1925o, p, 1925y, 205–207, 1925z, 202–204, 1926e, 64–80, 1926f, 60–75, 1926m, 227–232, 1926n, 216–221, 1926o, p, 1926w, 292–299, 1926x, 279–286, 1926q, 326–347, 1926r, 312–332, 1926u, 30–40, 105–148, 1926v, 29–38, 100–144, 1927k, 100–101, 1927l, 95–96, 1938c, d).
- 46.
For details on material and cultural benefits, see the report to the Seventeenth Party Congress (Stalin 1934g, 343–346, 1934h, 336–339).
- 47.
For more elaborate warnings, see the texts concerning ‘dizzy with success’ (Stalin 1930a, b, 1934g, 384–385, 1934h, 375–376, 1937g, 283–292, 1937h, 179–185).
- 48.
‘There is no, nor should there be, irreconcilable contrast between the individual and the collective, between the interests of the individual person and the interests of the collective. There should be no such contrast, because collectivism, socialism, does not deny, but combines individual interests with the interests of the collective. Socialism cannot abstract itself from individual interests. Socialist society alone can most fully satisfy these personal interests. More than that; socialist society alone can firmly safeguard the interests of the individual. In this sense there is no irreconcilable contrast between “individualism” and socialism’ (Stalin 1934c, 26–27, 1934d, 27–28, see also 1936c, 143–144, 1936d, 110).
- 49.
‘The laws of political economy under socialism are objective laws, which reflect the fact that the processes of economic life are law-governed and operate independently of our will’ (Stalin 1951–1952a, 229, 1951–1952b, 159). Later, he proposes that the basic economic law of socialism is ‘the securing of the maximum satisfaction of the constantly rising material and cultural requirements of the whole of society through the continuous expansion and perfection of socialist production on the basis of higher techniques’ (Stalin 1951–1952a, 253, 1951–1952b, 182). Later, he clarifies by pointing out that basic law of socialism, which has the two parts of aims and means, is driven by focusing on the needs of human beings and not the production of surplus value (Stalin 1951–1952a, 281, 1951–1952b, 210–211).
- 50.
He also argues for the abolition of essential differences between town and country and between mental and physical, but the continuation of inessential differences. The core issue is antagonism and conflict between them, which Stalin suggests has been overcome. Yet, under socialism the realities of the state and collective sectors, as well as different levels of production and management, mean that inessential (that is, comradely) differences continue (Stalin 1951–1952a, 241–245, 1951–1952b, 170–174).
- 51.
In other words, the process from socialism to communism is that of reform after the revolution.
- 52.
He mentions them explicitly later in his response to Yaroshenko (Stalin 1951–1952a, 272, 275, 1951–1952b, 202, 205).
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Boer, R. (2017). The Delay of Communism: Stalin and Proleptic Communism. In: Stalin: From Theology to the Philosophy of Socialism in Power. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-6367-1_2
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