The Emergence of Scientific Socialism in Romania

A look at scholarly means of justifying the violence and brutality of the communist regime in Romania.

Steliu Lambru, 21.04.2014, 14:00

In spite of its brutality, the communist regime had to keep up the appearance of humanity, creativity and pacifism. The violence of its installation had to be justified, and supported by reasons for which society had to make sacrifices on its way to socialism. Scientific socialism was born, speaking to people of justice, but especially of the inevitability of socialism emerging in society sooner or later.

Cristina Petrescu, a professor with the School of Political and Administrative Sciences of the Bucharest University, co-authored the series of volumes ‘The Encyclopedia of the Communist Regime’. She said that the communist party instituted scientific socialism as an academic discipline in a discretionary manner:

“The development of this discipline in Romania reflected, on the one hand, the policy of emancipation perpetrated by the Romanian Workers’ Party, later the Romanian Communist Party, under the tutelage of the Soviet Union starting in the late 1950s. On the other hand, led to the rewriting of the history of the party by re-evaluating the so-called local traditions of the workers’ movement. At the same time, it produced along the decades a gradual deprofessionalization of this area, created under communism through a blending of history, sociology, philosophy and political economy, thanks to the strict control of the party, which was the only legitimate keeper of this domain. The party controlled all domains, especially the humanities and social sciences. The difference is that scientific socialism and its corpus of knowledge was created by the party.”

Scientific socialism, however, did have a much older history. Starting with Engels, it became the distinctive mark of Marxism, which purported to explain everything about the world. Here is Cristina Petrescu:

“The origin of this term is in Prodhon’s writings, the first person to formulate this concept in his book ‘What Is Property?’. It is a concept which Marx did not use in his works, but which became tremendously popular due to Friedrich Engels and his limited issue book known under various titles, initially titled ‘Anti-Duhring’. The first and third chapters were published in French under the subtitle ‘Utopian Socialism and Scientific Socialism’. After that, the German version came out, with a slightly different title, and with less impact – ‘The Development of Socialism from Utopia to Science’ – a title which was used for the Romanian version of the book in the late 19th century. The book’s translation in Romanian appeared before the first English version, which popularized the term ‘Utopian Socialism’ as totally different from ‘scientific socialism’.”

The two inventions of scientific socialism were the two types of laws. The laws of the development of mankind were those of historical materialism, while the laws of capitalist contradictions were illustrated by the law of added value. Lenin was the one who developed what Engels had said, inventing Marxist Leninism, in which scientific socialism was a science of humanity whose truths were exclusively held by the party. As a revolution in thinking, and an avant-garde, it had the mission of showing society what it had to do. Cristina Petrescu told us that its roots in Romania could be seen towards the end of the Gheorghiu-Dej era, who had been the first communist leader in Romania, between 1947 and 1965:

“During the time of Gheorghiu-Dej, the term ‘scientific socialism’ did not appear in official documents. The origin of the discipline, however, is in that period. A decree of the party issued at the 3rd Romanian Workers’ Party Congress, in 1960, told us that it was time to issue the first textbooks of social sciences, which should blend, quote ‘ideas of Marxist Leninism with the experience specific to our people’, unquote. The declaration of April 1964 conveyed the well-known ideas attributed to Khrushchev, according to whom each party was free to choose its own path to communism. In consequence, scientific socialism had generally valid laws, but on the other hand there were concrete historical conditions in each country which had to be studied as such.”

In the early 1970s, scientific socialism had taken shape, and the new course that Romanian society had to follow towards communism had been plotted. Cristina Petrescu gave us details:

“If we look into the ‘Small Dictionary of Philosophy’ of 1973, we see that scientific socialism already had a definition, taking over the Leninist idea of 3 constituent parts of Marxist Leninism. It introduces the idea that there is a generally valid truth, with generally valid laws, but with special conditions in each country, which have to be studied as such. The directives of the Ceausescu period led to a development of this discipline. Ceausescu continued the effort to issue domestic textbooks of scientific socialism, adding the idea of capitalizing on local traditions“.

Scientific socialism, which had become official dogma, invaded all other areas of education. It was by far the most hated university course, in spite of the fact that it was supposed to be the method to reveal truths about the world, as understood by the Marxist neurosis.