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Liberal scholars were not the only critics of Marxist-inspired Soviet communist experiments. Indeed, a whole generation of Marxist intellectuals devoted a significant amount of intellectual energy to distancing Marxism from twentieth-century communism (for example, Theodor Adorno, Claudin, Max Horkheimer, Lukács, Herbert Marcuse and Palmiro Togliatti). ‘Western Marxists’, from Antonio Gramsci and Lukács to the Frankfurt School’s critical theory to Jürgen Habermas’s communicative action, pried open the ideological straightjacket of vanguard party politics to allow theoretical engagement with Marxism to include culture, epistemology, aesthetics and reconciliation (rather than domination) with nature (Anderson 1976; Jay 1984; Therborn 2008: 87–91).

While not explicitly a Marxist, but still critical of the Soviet Union’s ‘communism’, Arendt saw the demise of class society, which she linked to a sense of hopelessness among the populace, providing the basis for totalitarianism. In The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951) Arendt (313–314) argues that totalitarianism occurs when class society (and the concomitant institutions in civil society such as parties and labour organisations) breaks down and mass society develops in its stead. Because membership in a class is the primary integrative mechanism linking the individual to civil society, its demise causes people to lose their last remaining link to society, which ultimately makes them particularly susceptible to feelings of anomie (317). She thus shares in the liberal assumption about the psychological basis for attraction to totalitarian communism. For Arendt (351–352), the appeal of totalitarianism is its offer of consistency, predictability, organisation and a vision of the future, which is infinitely more attractive than the uncertainty of reality. Thus, the separation of individuals from meaningful social relations creates the conditions for the emergence of totalitarianism (315–317). Further challenging the liberal tradition, in The Human Condition (1958) Arendt develops her conception of the political in which she draws heavily on the participatory democratic tradition. Her critique of communism as totalitarian is fundamentally different from others in the 1950s in that she is interested in counterposing totalitarianism (which she sees as possible in both communism and liberal democracy) against a more direct and participatory democratic conception of politics. While the liberals see representative democracy as integrating people, Arendt (1951: 312) thinks it facilitates societal breakdown by excluding the majority of the population from politics and by weakening civil society as it separates people from each other. Arendt’s critique echoes Karl Marx’s (1967: 226–227) own critique as he argues that ‘liberal’ democracy results in alienation and the ‘separation of man from his community, from himself, and from other men’. Humans become separated from their communities to such a degree that society comes to exist outside of human beings rather than being integrally connected to the very essence of what it means to be human (Femia 1993: 25).

Similarly, Claudin’s monumental two volumes provide an incisive challenge to the liberal rendition of communism by offering his own critique from within the movement. While certainly critical of the totalitarian character of the International Communist Movement, Claudin differs from the liberal tradition in that he does not equate totalitarianism with Marxism or communism. In The Communist Movement ([1970] 1975) Claudin follows the history of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union’s (CPSU’s) slide into totalitarianism, and as he does so he juxtaposes totalitarian communism with democratic and participatory visions of communism that are rooted in a Marxist tradition. Implicitly, Claudin is critiquing vanguard democracy and arguing for direct and participatory democracy within the communist movement. Claudin describes the Comintern as the totalitarian institution par excellence and emphasises the extent to which Soviet foreign policy played a pernicious role in the evolution of communist parties around the world. The CPSU encouraged ‘sectarianism and authoritarianism, favoring the dogmatization of Marxism in its Bolshevik version and leading to underestimation of the national originality of other countries’ (Claudin [1970] 1975: 93). Importantly, however, Claudin (640) also emphasises the possibility as well as the importance of ‘the winning of autonomy’ by national communist parties, which he takes to be a necessary condition for the working out of party positions responsive to local conditions and concerns. Unlike the liberal tradition which sees communism as inevitably tending toward totalitarianism, Claudin suggests that autonomy from the CPSU was a precondition for communist parties to develop democratic practices. While his critique of the CPSU often suggests a more participatory understanding of democracy, Claudin ultimately continues to work within the parameters of vanguard democracy in which the national communist party at the helm of the state would be the leading force in national developments. Claudin thus challenges the confines of liberal scholarship on Marxist-inspired alternatives, but does not develop a more participatory and direct understanding of democracy.

Another generation of scholars responding in the 1970s and 1980s were those studying Eurocommunism,⁶ a movement that challenged authoritarian communism in general and the authority of the CPSU in particular. Analysts in this tradition tend to draw a distinct line between the pre-1960s, characterised by CPSU hegemony, and the post-1960s characterised by national communist parties’ relative autonomy vis-à-vis the CPSU (for example, Boggs and Plotke 1980). Scholars of the Eurocommunist movement were largely interested in showing that certain European communist parties developed deep commitments to representative democratic institutions in the post-1960s era. According to Carl Boggs and David Plotke (1980) the Eurocommunist parties challenged the CPSU’s hegemony and reintroduced the importance of democratic practices in the transformation of society. After the Sino-Soviet split and the concomitant demise in CPSU hegemony, communist parties in Europe began rethinking ideological and strategic themes that distinguished them from both social democracy and Marxism–Leninism (7). They argue that in this transition Eurocommunism expanded Marxism by theorising the importance of embracing diverse social groups (for example, the middle class, religious groups, women’s groups) in a mass party that engaged in political struggles within the existing representative institutions and was guided by a principled support for social and political pluralism (7). They recognised that representative democracy allowed for diverse social interests to be aggregated by political parties. In short, Eurocommunism reclaimed and expanded on Marxism by merging the commitment to socialism with democracy, seeking the gradual internal democratisation of existing state apparatuses, and hence, advocating a peaceful transition to socialism (Ross 1980: 40). Following Karl Kautsky, the Eurocommunists understood that universal suffrage could make the state an ‘expression of popular will’ if diligently pursued by the working class (Femia 1993: 59, 100). They rescued the idea that representative democracy can be an instrument of emancipation rather than domination, but this depended on the working class’s capacity to shape the state. Eurocommunism’s critique of the Soviet Union’s vanguard democracy did not translate into an appreciation for direct democracy in conjunction with representative democracy. Nevertheless, this scholarship is useful in highlighting the importance of representative democratic practices in the transition to socialism and helped rescue democracy in Marxism from the liberal scholars’ rendition.

Another critical Marxist tradition has challenged the omnipotence of the Soviet Union’s influence within national contexts. In this vein, there has been research into the Marxist tradition in the US labour movement in the 1930s and 1940s that contests the totalitarian conception of communist parties. For example, scholarship on the Communist Party’s influential role in American unionism in the 1930s challenges the view of pre-1960s Soviet hegemony and argues that of the dynamic unions that emerged from the Depression-era labour upsurge in the United States, communist unions were the most democratic and responsive to their working-class base (see for example, Stepan-Norris and Zeitlin 2002). Through analysis of historical documents Judith Stepan-Norris and Maurice Zeitlin challenge the scholarship on the totalitarian and undemocratic character of the Communist Party and its pernicious role in American unionism and argue that in the 1930s the Communist Party was not only highly responsive to its working-class base, but was also the main expression of indigenous, working-class radicalism. While this scholarship is important in demonstrating the Communist Party’s responsiveness to the working class, it still works within the vanguard understanding of democracy in which the Party plays the pivotal role.

In addition to these responses, a prolific neo-Marxist literature contesting the Western canon focuses on the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 (for example, Rabinowitch 1968 and [1978] 2008; Smith 1983). This body of scholarship demonstrates the democratic potential in the months before and during, as well as in the first years after the 1917 Revolution and the many forces working against its success. We can also point to the 1956 Hungarian protests, the 1968 Czechoslovakia movement and the 1980s Solidarity movement in Poland for examples of attempts to create democratic practices within communism. In the former East Germany, Rudolf Bahro’s The Alternative in Eastern Europe (1978) offers a powerful critique of authoritarianism from within and provides a vision of a democratic alternative. Hal Draper (2004) worked with the idea that ‘socialism was a process of complete democratic change’ that could only happen through ‘socialism from below’ and thus argued for a third-way socialism that was neither Stalinism (that is vanguard democracy) nor social democracy (that is representative democracy) (Renton 2004: 7, 19). Yugoslavian thinkers such as Mihailo Marković and Rudi Supek argued for shop-floor democracy that is not simply a function of central planning but that decides ‘all questions of production and distribution’ (Femia 1993: 31). Despite these attempts, direct democracy was not a focus for many twentieth-century Marxists as it throws up serious challenges to top-down central planning and the paramount role of the Party; the more direct participation on the shop floor and the less predictable economic planning from above. Nevertheless, this scholarship challenges the idea that communism is inherently anti-democratic and demonstrates that there was also a deep appreciation for radical forms of democracy within the Marxist tradition. Also in the second half of the twentieth century a thriving scholarship emerged from Marxist historians and philosophers such as Christopher Hill, Hobsbawm, Edward Thompson, C.L.R. James, Marcuse, Horkheimer, Adorno and Jean-Paul Sartre, all of whom pioneered humanist, open Marxism(s) that recognised the importance of spiritual and cultural values. Along these lines, Marxists critiqued ‘liberal democracy’ for turning people into isolated beings alienated from their social nature (Femia 1993: 20) and argued for the participation of ordinary people (Barber 1984; Bobbio 1976). Other Marxists such as Louis Althusser (1970 and 1972), Ralph Miliband ([1969] 2009) and Nicos Poulantzas (1973) explored questions of the state and its relation to the economy.

In the latter part of the twentieth century, a new generation of Marxists emerged that looked to the world-system and periphery for their inspiration. For example, Immanuel Wallerstein (1974) offers a critique of the Soviet Union when he argues that capitalism operates on a world scale with the politically and economically powerful core profoundly shaping the prospects of the politically and economically weak periphery. In his analysis, cold-war rivalry is no longer understood as a battle between capitalism and an alternative, but rather as Soviet modernisation within the logic of capitalist accumulation. Samir Amin ([1985] 1990) shares Wallerstein’s broad perspective, but has also counterpoised the strategy of delinking as an alternative to building socialism in one country in the context of anti-systemic struggles within the global periphery. Amin argues that countries in the periphery must delink from the capitalist system to a degree, in order to achieve development in their national interests. Inspired by 1968 (Wallerstein) and Bandung Third World revolutionary nationalism (Amin), both conclude that, in the light of Soviet authoritarianism, a socialist alternative has to be profoundly democratic.

There has also been scholarship, explicitly on the global South, looking at the way in which Marxism has influenced movements and parties (see Glaser’s and Saul’s chapters this volume; Ismael and ‘at El-Sa’id 1990; Mortimer 1974). Much of this scholarship shows the authoritarian practices of movements in the global South, but also highlights the importance of developing democratic alternatives. For example, Cathy Schneider’s (1995) investigation into the Communist Party of Chile’s attempt to organise shantytowns in Chile’s sprawling townships is an eloquent statement of popular mobilisation from below. There have also been important contributions looking at African socialism and Afro-Marxism that explore the various attempts in post-colonial Africa to chart out socialist paths in varying conditions (Arrighi and Saul 1973; Cabral 1973 and 1979; Fanon 1962; Saul 1990; see also Glaser this volume) as well as important contributions to Marxist theory on the global South from the dependency school that argued that underdevelopment emerged as a result of global capitalism (Baran 1957; Frank 1967). Many of these scholars were taking on issues of extending democracy beyond the political sphere and beyond the Party by recognising power relations in society.

This more recent scholarship helps us re-imagine the importance of direct democracy in transformative politics as we move beyond the twentieth century’s bifurcated understanding of vanguard versus representative democracy.