|
|
|
| Current Issue |
|
|
| Resources |
|
|
|
Reform Conceptions in China and the Soviet Union
| Article
# : |
14265 |
|
|
Section : |
MODERN THOUGHT
|
| Issue
Date : |
7 / 1988 |
11,605 Words |
| Author
: |
Rolf H.W. Theen
|
There is, perhaps, no more seductive idea in the vocabulary and the world of politics than the idea of reform. To those in a political system who find the status quo wanting, reform holds out the prospect of change. Especially in the context of a political system that has gone through a prolonged period of leadership paralysis, policy drift, immobilisme, and general stagnation (such as the Soviet Union under Brezhnevs) or a political system that has gone through the cataclysmic events, trauma, and chaos of a decade-long cultural revolution (such as China during 1966-1976), the idea of reform can produce rather advanced stages of exhilaration and euphoria among those dedicated to change and innovation. On the other hand, to those who represent the forces of inertia, habit, and vested interests, who regularly rise in an almost instinctive defense of existing orthodoxies, institutions, and procedures, who have a deep reverence for the past and have come to regard it as the only reliable bridge to the future, reform gives the assurance that change will come gradually, in measured and controlled doses. Reform seeks to improve and preserve rather than to alter and transform the established order and scheme of things. It respects the bounds of the prevailing ideological values and does not seek to undermine the existing basis of legitimacy. In short, reform calls for change that will take place within the parameters of the existing political system.
In a seminal essay, Stephen F. Cohen has argued that the post-Stalin era in Soviet politics has been characterized by the emergence of the rival forces of "innovation and tradition" and that "the fundamental division between these 'two poles' in Soviet life is best understood as a social and political confrontation between reformism and conservatism," that is, a confrontation between "the friends and foes of change." A good case can be written about post-Mao China, which, like the Soviet Union, has offered us the spectacle of a struggle between the "friends and foes of change" and, to use Cohen's terminology, the spectacle of a communist regime in the throes of reform.
Reform is not a concept commonly associated with communist regimes, at least not until recently. Although the first communist reform program, the New Economic Policy (NEP), was pushed through on Lenin's personal orders within four years of the establishment of the Soviet regime, communist political systems, at least in terms of their ideological claims and pretensions, have traditionally sought to portray themselves as revolutionary rather than reformist regimes. The concepts of "reform" and "reformist" have usually been reserved by communist writers to describe capitalist societies, that is,
...
Read Full Article
Look for this article in Ask.com
|
|
