John Hoffman better known to many of our readers as the Communist writer Dialogue – responds to the debate between Slovo and Pallo Jordan (Labour Bulletin Vol 14 No 6 and Vol 15 No 3). He argues that backward circumstances led to a backward socialism which had more in common with the utopian socialism condemned by Marx than with the scientific socialism developed by him. Scientific socialism builds on and extends the political democracy and liberal rights established by bourgeois democracy – and so the dictatorship of the proletariat should be seen as a post-liberal state. In contrast, the backward socialism of Stalin glorified authoritarian, pre-liberal forms of political rule.
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