ABSTRACT

Rudolf Bahro's description and analysis of the societies of actually existing socialism are generally deeper and more precise than those found in other authors, who for the most part have focused on injustices and police brutality, or on the false rhetoric. History shows that twice, parties that were created as parties of the socialist revolution have been bureaucraticized and transformed into reformist parties. Marxism would thus seem to be merely a view of things that intellectuals formulated about the progress of mankind, taking the working class as history's instrument for making this theory a reality. But the working class, aside from individual exceptions, has not been able to go beyond defense of its immediate interests in capitalist society. In France, May 1968 was not first and foremost a student revolt, but essentially a general strike of ten million workers—probably the greatest movement of the working class in its history.