Exegesis on Marx

THE NEW CLASS (214 pp.) -- Milovan Djilas--Praeger ($3.95).

RUSSIA REVISITED (288 pp.)--Louis Fischer--Doubleday ($4).

RUSSIA AGAINST THE KREMLIN (189 pp).--Alexandra Metaxas--World ($3).

In the Marxist theology the catechism of history goes thus:

Evolution begat man who first begat the feudal lords and the peasantry. And they begat the bourgeoisie and the proletariat which begat the workers' state. Friedrich Engels promised that under the workers' rule the state would wither away, but it shows as much sign of withering away as any other similar quantity of swivel chairs, paper clips and police hardware. The big question is: What is the new ruling class like--the class which aims to conquer all of humanity? Who are these internationalist business machines, sometimes called commissars?

They have little to say for themselves; they are too busy manipulating the immense mass of paper which is the symptom, symbol and curse of their power. Their privileges are only glimpsed--the Zis limousine screeching through a cleared street, the dacha wherein state-paid guards serve their state-grown champagne. These three books are exceptions to the grey grist that comes from the run-of-the-millstone work on Communism. Two of them--one by a veteran U.S. foreign correspondent and Soviet buff, Louis Fischer, and one by a lively French journalist, Alexandre Metaxas--have the unavoidable defect of being written from the outside looking in. Milovan Djilas, once Tito's aide, is another kettle of fish--because he writes as an ex-fish.

Insight & Outlook from Jail. A passionate and effective career Marxist from his youth, though in political disgrace since 1954, Djilas has written down the slowly, painfully gained insights into Communism that may seem obvious to reasonably enlightened free men but come as shocking revelations to a trained Communist. He knocks down a great many illusions about Communism in recognizing that 1) the new ruling class is as self-serving as any oligarchy has ever been; 2) dictatorship by committee, as seemed to occur in Russia after Stalin's death, is no real improvement; 3) idealistically advertised state planning, supposedly so far superior to the "greed" of the profit motive, is in fact a vast and inefficient system of prison labor.

Djilas has written a necessary book, and necessarily much of it was written from prison. Yet for all his eloquent denunciation of the regime he helped found in Yugoslavia, he is still its prisoner in a deeper sense than merely being in jail. He writes from within the framework of Marxist dialectics to arraign what Marxism itself produced. Djilas essentially wishes to add to the formulas of Marx--not to refute them. Socialist theory, he reasons, should really have produced something like modern social democracy. It is not the book itself, but the fact that it was written that makes it useful in the long war between freedom and Communism.

All Zis & Heaven Too. Author Fischer, a onetime Communist sympathizer, now retreads the uphill trail of regret for his lost Utopia; he has all the painful sincerity of a man who has stubbed his toe upon an immovable rock. His Russia Revisited is the record of all of 20 days in Moscow in 1956, with some experiences in the satellites added. During his Moscow visit, Fischer wisely confined himself to looking up such old ''contacts" as had survived from his 16 years' professional work as a resident Moscow correspondent for the Nation (1922-38). In revisiting the dark side of the moon, he gives many a glimpse of the Organization Man in a country where the only real organization is the party. One typical vignette:

"I went to visit Mr. R., an engineer, aged fifty-eight, who is a Communist party member. What did he say? 'I earn 4,000 roubles a month; receive 2,400 on my pension. Here's a book with an article of mine which brought me 25,000 roubles. Downstairs is my Pobeda . . . If the garage were larger I would buy a Zis limousine. Recently I returned from a two months' vacation on the Caucasus Riviera. Come look at my apartment, five rooms for my wife and myself, piano, radio, television."

The "ideal" that Communism represents a superior hope for mankind. Fischer now argues, has gone even from among the Communists. What is left is the hope of a Zis for the Zis-worthy (to each according to his needs). Russia, says Fischer, does not really fear that it will be attacked by the West. It fears freedom. He coins some phrases. The regime suffers from "fac,ade-ism" and "gigantomania," e.g., for prestige, the Russians build skyscrapers rather than modest houses for the millions now crowded in huts and cracked, unplumbed flats. But perhaps the most impressive thing in Fischer's book is this quiet observation: a friend told him that after life in the grey prison of Utopia, World War II "came to us as a relief."

Stalin & King John. The third witness, Alexandre Metaxas (distant kin of late Greek Strongman John Metaxas) is as damaging in the sprightly, unverifiable fashion of French journalism as either Djilas or Fischer. His gossipy version of Stalin's death is suspiciously reminiscent of the schoolbook story of King John of England chewing the rushes on his palace floor in rage at being forced to sign the Magna Carta. It seems that Stalin summoned his party chiefs to a meeting: All Jews must be deported at once to Siberia. Kaganovich, a Jew, tore up his party card and threw it in Stalin's face. Stalin blustered threats. Mikoyan, fearing a massacre on the spot, said: ''If we are not seen to leave these premises in an hour's time . . . the Red Army will surround the Kremlin.'' Beria, MVD chief, announced that he was on Mikoyan's side. Stalin collapsed in rage "on a divan.'' It was a cerebral hemorrhage.

Whether or not this account is true, or partly true, is anyone's guess. Yet with his good French eye, Reporter Metaxas (he was in Russia for three months last year) caught many significant details. He is perhaps the first to point out that those Zis limousines carry not only the commissars but their overdressed wives--with lap dogs. He gives some sidelights on the morals of the teenagers of the new ruling class--very proper, but curious about the forbidden delights of rock 'n' roll. And he makes great good sense about the imponderable Russianness of the country's resistance to Communism: the Russian family, suggests Metaxas, is the "impenetrable cell," and the peasants have an unspoken bond of unity with the Red army.

In their different ways, Yugoslav commissar, American reformed fellow traveler and French-Greek journalist spell out the same grim story about the Soviet and satellite states. It can be expressed in two quotations. When the British ruling class ruled the empire and, within it, a widespread system of liberty, its ruling instrument was called the House of Commons. "Best club in London," said a member, as quoted by Dickens. Said Lenin, as quoted by Djilas: "The state is a club." He meant a very different kind of club.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.