HISTORICIZING THE PROBLEMS OF SOCIALISM 65 mestizos and mulattos of Latin America, the still-benighted, illiterate, vermin-ridden millions of Asia, and not just with those fortunate citizens of the civilized Atlantic seaboard and advanced rim of the Pacific who are smarter-looking and more affluent than an average inhabitant of the socialist world. Socialist consciousness has to become ultimately the consciousness of a true citizen of the world. For either meeting the challenge of the myths of freedom and prosperity of existing capitalist societies or the revolutionizing of consciousness of socialist man so as to root out the anti-egalitarian and anti-libertarian survivals from feudalism, barbarism and aggrandizing nationalism, it is not enough to deny the relevance of those elements of the feudal, barbaric, mercenary culture patterns which are obviously inimical to ideals of equality, fraternity and liberty. It is necessary also to consciously appropriate the elements of the past culture which still have the power to give men and women a richer life. Such efforts have not been lacking. It was after all a socialist critic (Jan Kott), who had the insight to call Shakespeare 'Our Contemporary'. The contemporaneity of all great art should be not a matter of stylized iconography, but a subject of ever-rejuvenating tradition. I am sure that Soviet scholars and artists have pondered many of those questions deeply and long. But it should be a part of an active discussion elsewhere also why the creativity of Eisenstein, Pudovkin, Kozintsev, Wajda or Tarkovsky in films has not been matched in literary works of equal power from the socialist world. Was it really necessary to deny the possibility of conflicts within a socialist society? And was the blandness or even insipidness of the harvest of socialist literature a necessary result of that? I am sure that there are other students of socialism who are better able to answer these questions. But I would put forward even my ignorance as evidence of an insufficient airing of these problems in the existing literature. The current Soviet leadership, especially General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev, is fully aware of the need to open up discussion on all aspects of existence of socialist man, and they regard democratization both as an end in itself (which it must be, above everything else) and as a means.1 Where does the power of democratization as a means come in either in the Soviet Union or in today's China? The answer must partly lie again in the history of the Soviet revolution and the socialist reconstruction. What the Soviet Union was attempting was to try and catch up with the Second Industrial Revolution of the West. This meant heavy engineering, large integrated iron and steel plants, massive electricity generating stations, and above all, large hierarchically organized industrial organizations run on Taylorist principles. This made eminent sense as a strategy of desperate defence against the imperialist and Nazi aggression. But as revolutionary enthusiasm waned, as planning became another name for directions from the top, the team spirit of the