Socialism: Trials and Errors

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Bahro has dared to argue that a variety of Marxist groups be allowed to challenge the Communist Party's power monopoly. A similar kind of Marxist pluralism has also been advocated by Jacek Kuron, a leading member of Poland's Committee for the Self-Defense of Society. This dissident organization has successfully pressured

Warsaw to release jailed protesters. Meantime, a loose group of dissident Czechoslovak intellectuals, Charter '77, has demanded—to no avail—that the regime in Prague begin to respect the human rights guaranteed by its laws.

All these "slanderers of socialism," as their regimes have dubbed them, accept socialism as an ideal, maintaining that it need not be repressive. A group of young French leftist intellectuals known as the "New Philosophers" is not so certain. Bernard-Henri Lévy, 28, one of the movement's most prolific members, has concluded that Stalinism, rather than being an aberration, "is a mode of socialism. Gulag is not an accident." At fault, he argues, is socialism's obsession with homogeneity, "expelling from its borders the forces of heterogeneity and ... squelching its rebels." Compared with socialism's seemingly intrinsic dangers, capitalism seems a lesser evil to some of the New Philosophers. Admits Levy: "Between the barbarity of capitalism, which censures itself much of the time, and the barbarity of socialism, which does not, I guess I might choose capitalism."

QUALITY OF LIFE

Near the top of the agenda of every socialist regime are elaborate programs for improving health care and expanding educational facilities. These states can boast that infant mortality has dropped dramatically, life expectancy is on the rise, and illiteracy is gradually being conquered. In short, state-provided social services are one promise that socialism has kept.

When Fidel Castro's forces triumphed in Cuba in 1959, nearly one-quarter of the population could neither read nor write. Compulsory primary education and an ambitious classroom construction program have reduced illiteracy to 4%. Cuban infant mortality is 29 per 1,000 and average life expectancy is 70 years. By contrast, the nearby Dominican Republic has a 32% illiteracy rate, infant mortality of 98 per 1,000 and an average life expectancy of only 58 years.

In China, the crash training of legions of doctors, nurses and paramedics and the founding of rural health centers have nearly eradicated cholera, plague and other diseases that for centuries had periodically ravaged the population. Similar efforts are now under way in Mozambique. The Marxist Frelimo regime has set up free health clinics in many villages for combating such chronic problems as malnutrition, malaria and tuberculosis.

Eastern European states offer free education (although the Communist parties have a great deal to say about who is admitted to the universities) and comprehensive health care. Sickness seldom imposes horrendous financial burdens on patients. The Physical Quality of Life Index (see map) shows that the essential human services provided by Marxist-Leninist states often match and sometimes top those in Western democracies.

The extensive network of social services known as the welfare state or the social net is the most distinctive achievement of social-democratic rule. Thanks to it,