Such hatred against Marx and… Stalin

Another book that repeats old dogma in favour of capitalism

By Daniel Paquet                                                                                     dpaquet1871@gmail.com

“The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch (including today’s imperialism, -Ed.) the ruling ideas: i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force.  The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production, so that means of mental production are subject to it.  The ruling ideas are nothing more than the ideal expression of the dominant material relationships, the dominant material relationships grasped as ideas; hence of the relationships which make the one class the ruling one, therefore, the ideas of its dominance.  The individuals composing the ruling class possess among other things consciousness, and therefore think.  Insofar, therefore, as they rule as a class and determine extent and compass of an epoch, it is self-evident that they do this in its whole range, hence among other things rule also as thinkers, as producers of ideas, and regulate the production distribution of the ideas of their age; thus their ideas are the ruing ideas of the epoch.”[1]

Recently, the British historian Gareth Stedman Jones published a new book on Karl Marx *; sharing the same concern about Marxism, and especially in regard with the alleged goal of Marx who longed t o ‘put an end to unfreedom, ‘”this notion of Marxism that historian Isaiah Berlin ascribed to its founder when he wrote of Marx that ‘his intellectual system was a closed one, everything that entered was made to conform to as pre-established pattern.’  This is doubtless true of the so-called ‘dialectical materialism’ that became doctrinal orthodoxy in the Soviet Union and its satellite states. (sic).”[2]

“Lenin, better than anyone else, understood the great  importance of theory, particularly for a party such as ours, in view of the role of vanguard fighter of the international proletariat which has fallen to its lot, and in view of the complicated internal and international situation in which it finds itself. (…)

Perhaps the most striking expression of the great importance which Lenin attached to theory is the fact that none other than Lenin undertook the very serious task of generalizing, on the basis of materialist philosophy, the most important achievements of science from the time of Engels down to                          his own time, as well as of subjecting to comprehensive criticism the anti-materialistic trends among Marxist.  Engels said of materialism:  ‘With each epoch-making discovery… it has to change its form…  It is well known that none other than Lenin accomplished this task for this own time in his remarkable work Materialism and Empirio-Criticism.”[3]

The book-reviewer says also:  “Before the proletariat could develop into a mature class and become conscious of its revolutionary task, he reasoned, it was necessary for capitalism to modernize the world. (…)

And industrial production would surge, condensing the two remaining classes into opposed groups in anticipation of capitalism’s final crisis.”[4]

“Communism differs from all previous movements in that it overturns the basis of all earlier relations of production and intercourse, and for the first time conscious  treats all natural premises as the creatures of hitherto existing men, strips them of their natural character and subjugates them to the power of the united individuals.  Its organization is, therefore, essentially economic, the material production of the condition of this unity; it turns existing conditions into conditions of unity.  The reality, which communism is creating, is only a product of the preceding intercourse of individuals themselves.  Thus the communists in practice treat the conditions created  up to now by production and intercourse as inorganic condition,  without, however, imagining that it was the plan or the destiny of previous generations to give them  in organic for the individuals creating them.”[5]

So much for the supposed ignorance of the proletariat, or its unconsciousness!

One of Lenin’s thesis about the proletarian revolution expresses itself in the following perspective:  “The domination of finance capital  in the advanced capital countries (which is the case of USA and Canada, members of the G8,-Ed.); the issue of stocks and bonds as one of the principal operations of finance capital; the export of capital to the sources of raw materials, which is one of the foundations of imperialism; the omnipotence of a financial oligarchy, which is the result of the domination of finance capital – all this reveals the grossly parasitic character of monopolistic capitalism, makes the  yoke of the capitalist trusts and syndicates a hundred times more burdensome, intensifies the indignation of the working class with the foundations of capitalism, and brings the masses to the proletarian revolution as their only salvation.”[6]

(The theory of class struggles) implied certain inevitability to the gathering processes of historical change.  It also left little room for the possibility of independent revolution in less developed regions around the globe, in the east or in the outer reaches of Europe’s empires.  Marx’s universalism found its classic expression in the ‘The Communist Manifesto,’ (London, 1848, -Ed.) which declared that all nations must submit ‘on pain of extinction’ to the forces of bourgeois modernity. (…)

After 1870, however, Marx relaxed these strictures, in part because the failure of the Paris Commune left him dismayed at the prospects for a Communist revolution in the West.”[7]

We shall not forget another aspect of the proletarian revolution which lies in an earlier definition of communism.

“Communism is for us not a state of affairs which is to be established, an ideal to which reality (will) have to adjust itself.  We call communism the real movement which abolished the present state of things.  The conditions of this movement result from the premises now in existence. (…)

The proletariat can thus only exist world-historically, just as communism, its activity can only have a world-historical’ existence.  World-historical existence of individuals, i.e., existence of individuals which is directly linked up with world history.”[8]

To  minimize its shortcomings, the author concluded:   “Like all intellectual legacies, Marx’s work remains open to new interpretation.”[9]

Another founder of Marxism-Leninism (and leader of a socialist society under  construction left us with a very deep – indeed-  heritage which nears by Marx’s contribution is Joseph Stalin; furthermore this political figure was leading the conception of a country that left the horizon of capitalism quite rapidly.

“The main features and requirement of the basic economic law of modern capitalism might be formulated roughly in this way:  the securing of the maximum capitalist profit through the exploitation, ruin and impoverishment of the majority of the population of the given country, through the enslavement and systematic robbery of the peoples of other countries, especially backward countries, and, lastly, through wars and militarization of the national economy, which are for the obtaining of the highest profits. (…)

(He adds):  “The essential features and requirements of the basic law of socialism might be formulated roughly in this way: the securing of the maximum satisfaction of the constantly rising material and cultural requirements of the whole of society through the continuous expansion and perfection of socialist production on the basis of higher techniques.”[10]

“Though the capitalist mode of production was progressive at a definite stage in the development of human society, it later became a brake on social progress due to the intensification of the built-in contradiction between the productive forces ad production relations.  This was revealed, in particular, in the conflict between the social nature of production and the private form of appropriation.  During the socialist revolution effected by the proletariat in alliance with the peasantry and other sections of the working people, capitalism is supplanted by the new, socialist mode of production, which represents the economic mode basis of the new, communist socio-economic system. (…)

Marx viewed society’s transition from one system to another as an intrinsic law of human history in general.”[11]

 

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[1] Marx, Engels and Lenin, On Historical Materialism, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1972, page 44

[2] Gordon, Peter E., Karl Marx, The man, not the ideologue,  A Book Review, The New York Times, International Edition, Thursday 20, 2016, page18; *Karl Marx. Greatness and Illusion.  By Gareth Stedman Jones.  Illlustrated.  The Belknap Press-Harvard University Press.

[3] Stalin, J. V., The Foundations of Leninism, Foreign Languages Press, Peking, 1975, page 20

[4] Ibidem, Gordon, page 18

[5] Ibidem, Marx, Engels, Lenin, page 64

[6] Ibidem, Stalin, page 23

[7] Ibidem, Gordon, page 18

[8] Tucker, Robert C., The Marx-Engels Reader, W.W. Norton & Company, New York, 1972, page 162

[9] Ibidem, Gordon, page 18

[10] Stalin, J. V., Economic Problems of Socialism in the  U.S.S.R., Foreign Languages Press, Peking, 1972, Reprinted in the U.S.A., 2012, pages 34, 36

[11] Sheptulin, A. P., Marxist-Leninist Philosophy, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1978, page 512

Che Guevara: “I came to communism because of Stalin”

By Nikos Mottas.

Originally published in atexnos.gr.

Translated from Greek.

Ernesto Che Guevara is undoubtedly a historical figure of the 20^th century's communist movement who attracts the interest of people from a vast range of political ideologies. The years followed his cowardly assassination in Bolivia, Che became a revolutionary symbol for a variety of marxist-oriented, leftist and progressive parties and organisations- from Trotskyists to militant leninists and from Social Democrats to anarcho-libertarians. A significant number of those who admire the argentine revolutionary identify themselves as “anti-stalinists”, hate and curse Stalin while they often refer to the so-called “crimes” of Stalin's era. What is a contradiction and an irony of history is the following: Che Guevara himself was an admirer of Joseph Stalin.

On the occasion of the 63 years since the death of the great Soviet leader, let us remember what Che thought about Joseph Stalin, taking into account Guevara's own writings and letters.

In 1953, situated in Guatemala, the 25 years old then Che noted in his letter to aunt Beatriz: “Along the way, I had the opportunity to pass through the dominions of the United Fruit, convincing me once again of just how terrible these capitalist octopuses are. I have sworn before a picture of the old and mourned comrade Stalin that I won’t rest until I see these capitalist octopuses annihilated” (Jon Lee Anderson, Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life, 1997).

Years ago after his letter from Guatemala- in the midst of the revolutionary process in Cuba- Guevara would re-affirm his position towards Stalin:

“In the so called mistakes of Stalin lies the difference between a revolutionary attitude and a revisionist attitude. You have to look at Stalin in the historical context in which he moves, you don’t have to look at him as some kind of brute, but in that particular historical context. I have come to communism because of daddy Stalin and nobody must come and tell me that I mustn’t read Stalin. I read him when it was very bad to read him. That was another time. And because I’m not very bright, and a hard-headed person, I keep on reading him. Especially in this new period, now that it is worse to read him. Then, as well as now, I still find a Seri of things that are very good.”

While praising Stalin's leadership, Che was always pointing out the counter-revolutionary role of Trotsky, blaming him for “hidden motives” and “fundamental errors”. In one of his writings he was underlining: “I think that the fundamental stuff that Trotsky was based upon was erroneous and that his ulterior behaviour was wrong and his last years were even dark. The Trotskyites have not contributed anything whatsoever to the revolutionary movement; where they did most was in Peru, but they finally failed there because their methods are bad” (Comments on 'Critical Notes on Political Economy' by Che Guevara, Revolutionary Democracy Journal, 2007).

Ernesto Guevara, a prolific reader with a developed knowledge of marxist philosophy, was including Stalin's writings in the classical marxist-leninist readings. That's what he wrote in a letter to Armando Hart Dávalos, a trotskyite and prominent member of the Cuban Revolution:

“In Cuba there is nothing published, if one excludes the Soviet bricks, which bring the inconvenience that they do not let you think; the party did it for you and you should digest it. It would be necessary to publish the complete works of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin [underlined by Che in the original] and other great Marxists. Here would come to the great revisionists (if you want you can add here Khrushchev), well analyzed, more profoundly than any others and also your friend Trotsky, who existed and apparently wrote something” (Contracorriente, No.9, Sept.1997).

The revisionist route that the Soviet leadership followed after the CPSU 20^th Congress became a source of intense concern for Che. The policy of the so-called “De-Stalinization” and the erroneous, opportunist perceptions about the process of building socialism that the Khrushchev leadership introduced after 1956 had their own critical impact on Guevara's view on Revolution and Socialism.

One of Guevara's biographers, the Mexican politician Jorge Castañeda wrote (adding an anti-communist flavor): “Guevara became a Stalinist at a time when thousands were becoming disillusioned with official “Communism”. He rejected Khrushchev’s speech in 1956 denouncing the crimes of Stalin as “imperialist propaganda” and defended the Russian invasion of Hungary that crushed the workers’ uprising there in the same year” (J. Castañeda, Compañero: The Life and Death of Che Guevara, 1997).

Four years after the beginning of Khrushchev's “de-stalinization”, on November 1960, Ernesto Che Guevara was visiting Moscow as an official representative of the Cuban government. Against the advise of the then Cuban ambassador to avoid such an action, Che insisted on visiting and depositing a floral tribute at Stalin's tomb at the Kremlin necropolis.

Che had a deep admiration for the leader Joseph Stalin and his contribution in building Socialism. And that because, as Che himself was saying, “ You have to look at Stalin in the historical context in which he moves […] in that particular historical context”. That historical context and the extremely adverse and difficult social, economic and political environment in which Stalin led the Soviet Union are muted by the votaries of antistalinism. They hush up and deliberately ignore the fact that the process of building Socialism in the Soviet Union was taking place within a frame of fierce class-struggle, with numerous – internal and external (imperialist encirclement)- threats, while the massive effort of industrialization faced reactions and extensive sabotages (the collectivisation process, for example, faced the negative stance of Kulaks).

Joseph Stalin, as a personality and leader, was the product of the action of the masses within a specific historical context. And it was Stalin who guided the Bolsheviks' Party (AUCP-B) and the Soviet people for 30 years, based on Lenin's solid ideological heritage. As a real communist, a true revolutionary- in theory and in practice- Ernesto Che Guevara would inevitably recognize and appreciate that historical reality. 

China’s Advanced Socialist Science (2017)

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A set of special stamps commemorating Mainland China’s breakthroughs in the sciences issued in Beijing recently (September), on behalf of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and entitled ‘Science and Technology Innovation’. Socialist Science strive to explore outer space and make life better for humanity on earth. This is different to Western (capitalist) science which only serves the interests of the rich and social elite. Pictured here is China’s Quantum Science Experimental Satellite, the 500m Aperture Spherical Radio Telescope, the Bohai Granary Science and Technology Demonstration Project, ‘Explore one’ Scientific Expedition Ship, and the Spirit Power – Grand Lake Light Supercomputer. These breakthroughs are far ahead of any other achievements in the scientific world. This is practical science and not just equations on paper that may, or may not be ‘right’.




Original Chinese Language Article:
http://news.cyol.com/content/2017-09/17/content_16507485.htm

《科技创新》邮票首发 中国“天眼”量子卫星等入选

发布时间：2017-09-17 14:51 来源：中青在线　作者：邱晨辉

中青在线北京9月17日电（中国青年报•中青在线记者 邱晨辉） 记者从中国科学院获悉，《科技创新》纪念邮票今天在北京首发，该邮票一套五枚，图案内容分别为：被称作中国“天眼”的500米口径球面射电望远镜、“墨子号”量子科学实验卫星、“探索一号”科考船、渤海粮仓科技示范工程、“神威•太湖之光”超级计算机，全套邮票面值为6.60元。
来自中国科学院的消息显示，此套纪念邮票展示了近年来中国以创新驱动发展为主，多个科学领域的探索与成就，其中四枚邮票选题来自中科院近年来的重大科技成果，一枚邮票选题来自国家并行计算机工程技术研究中心的科技成果。整套邮票使用通俗有趣又简单明了的插画形式，普及奥妙高深的科学创新技术。
据介绍，该套邮票由杜钰凯设计，辽宁省沈阳邮电印刷厂印制。邮票设计上，把鲜艳活泼的红黄青等色彩，与代表高科技的深蓝色调配合运用，构图上既保留科技实体的具象，也创新延展各项技术的特点，让全套邮票科技感和准确性俱佳。此外，邮票印制上强调了紫外线下观赏的特种效果，以贴合科技主题，增加邮票的信息量和科普作用。
此次邮票首发仪式由中国科学院，中国邮政集团公司、国家邮政管理局共同举办，中国科学院科学传播局、中国集邮总公司承办，中国科学院集邮协会、北京市邮政公司协办。

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The significance of the October Revolution in the era of the transition from capitalism to socialism-communism. The article was published in the 7th issue of the International Communist Review


May 23, 2017 
Communist Party of Greece (KKE)
By D. Koutsoumpas, general secretary  of the  KKE


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In 2017 we will honour the 100th anniversary of the Great Socialist Revolution that took place in 1917 in Russia. This event marked and determined the course of millions of people, not just within the geographical confines of the first workers' state in the history of humanity, the USSR, but it also had an impact of every corner of the planet for many decades. October demonstrates the working class's potential and capacity to implement its historical mission as the only truly revolutionary class, to lead the first attempt to construct socialism-communism.
At the same time, October shows the irreplaceable role of the guiding force of the socialist revolution, the communist party. Great October demonstrates the enormous strength of proletarian internationalism. Despite the developments after the overthrow of socialism in 1989-1991, the 100th anniversary of the October Revolution, with all the theoretical and practical experience and maturity that we have acquired over the years, makes us even more certain and categorical about the timeliness and necessity of socialism-communism.
The counterrevolutionary overthrows do not change the character of the era. The 21st century will be the century of a new upsurge of the global revolutionary movement and a new series of socialist revolutions. The daily struggles for partial and more general gains are undeniably necessary, but they cannot provide substantial, long-term and permanent solutions. Socialism remains the only way out.
The necessity of socialism is highlighted by the sharpening of the contradictions in the contemporary capitalist world, the international imperialist system. The material preconditions for socialism, i.e. labour power and the means of production, have matured within capitalism itself. Capitalism has socialized labour and production to unprecedented levels. The working class, the main productive force, constitutes the majority of the economically active population. However, the means of production, the products of social labour are privately owned by the capitalists.
This contradiction is the root cause of all the crisis phenomena of contemporary capitalist societies, such as economic crises, the destruction of the environment, the drug problem, the long working day despite the great increase of labour productivity, and which of course coexists with unemployment, under-employment and semi-employment, the intensification of the exploitation of labour power etc.
At the same time, however, this reality signals the need to abolish private ownership of the concentrated means of production, to socialize them and use them in a planned way in social production, the planning of the economy by workers' power so that the relations of production correspond to the level of development of the forces of production.
The impact of the Great October Socialist Revolution, the first victorious battle in history for the emancipation of the working class, remains undiminished to this day. Socialism was transformed from a prediction into a specific reality. The victory of the revolution provided the possibility of condensing its lessons into a complete theory for socialist revolution and the party. The lessons from it provided the ideological and political basis for the establishment of the Communist International, for a new impetus for the international communist movement.
The theoretical legacy of October, enriched by the experience of the socialist revolutions that then followed, is priceless. It confirmed in practice the correctness of the Marxist-Leninist theory of the revolution, which flows from the complete systematic analysis of imperialism i.e. that the revolution matures over the course of historical developments and breaks out in a period determined by a combination of objective and subjective causes.
The imperialists and all kinds of renegades distort or conceal the importance of the October Revolution because they obviously understand full well that through its victory the theory and ideas of Marxism became a material force, that millions of workers all over the world mobilized and continue to mobilize against capital's power, were victorious and organized their own state, the dictatorship of the proletariat, which is founded on the direct producers, the working majority, and is the highest form of democracy that humanity has ever seen.
The Paris Communards in the 19th century took and held power for just 70 days; the new charge to heaven lasted 70 years, constructed socialism, and made an enormous contribution all over the world, surpassing the confines of one country. The nihilistic stance towards the socialism we knew, the adoption of views that say it was a total failure-because its course was interrupted-is an unscientific stance and an ahistorical one and leads to impasses.
Socialism was constructed, developed, and began to solve the major economic and social problems. It was not possible for a number of reasons for it to highlight and most of all liberate, over the entire course of its construction, the inherent potential for the constant development and perfecting of production, to consolidate itself in its struggle against the capitalist system.
However, this does not negate the contribution and role of the socialist system, as it was formed in the 20th century, irrespective of deficiencies, weaknesses and mistakes that appeared during this difficult course. What the October Revolution objectively signaled is the undeniable fact that socialism is the future of humanity. It is the system that through the historical development of society will create new social relations, socialist-communist ones, focusing on the people and the satisfaction of all their needs.
The October Revolution in practice confirmed the Leninist analysis concerning the weakest link in the imperialist chain. Up until that point what was missing in the international movement was the theoretical foundation for the possibility of the socialist revolution being victorious in one country or a group of countries, which would emerge as weak links, as a result of the sharpening of the internal contradictions under the influence of international developments.
Of course due to uneven economic and political development, such characteristics can manifest themselves in countries of a medium and lower level of development, where the revolutionary process of course can begin more easily but where it is exceptionally difficult for socialist construction to continue victoriously. Lenin's analyses contributed to the development of Marxism and to the strategic thinking of the Bolsheviks as a whole. The contribution of Lenin and the Bolshevik party was decisive in the confrontation against the section of social-democracy which, violating the decisions of the 2nd International, supported the bourgeois classes of their countries, sometimes by voting for war credits in Parliament, other times by participating in governments that waged wars, supposedly so that there could be a "peaceful development", defending the "imperialist peace" with a gun to the people's heads.
A political line which inevitably entangled them even more deeply in the imperialist war, in the sharpening of the contradictions and antagonisms of the imperialist states and their alliances. Lenin with the strategic line that he followed determined that from the standpoint of the revolutionary movement of the working class that aims to take power via a revolution, the issue is not a simple "pacifist" opposition to war, but chiefly the utilization of ruptures, which objectively in such conditions, are created in the imperialist camp, the utilization of the weakening of the bourgeoisie in each country with the aim of transforming this imperialist war in each country, whether the country is an "aggressive" or "defensive" stance, into a struggle to overthrow bourgeois power that brings death and poverty for the children of the working class and people.
The October Revolution confirmed the Leninist position that the modern era, the era of monopoly capitalism, i.e. the imperialist stage of capitalism, is the era of the transition from capitalism to socialism-the era of socialist revolutions. The Great October Socialist Revolution also confirmed the role of opportunism as the ideological-political expression of bought off sections of the working class, as the impact of bourgeois and petty bourgeois ideology on the labour movement. Lenin, on the basis of the experience of the October revolution, engaged in particular with issues of the power of the new workers' state, the dictatorship of the proletariat. He studied the experience of the Paris commune in detail, the experience of the Soviets of the 1905 revolution in Russia, the role of the state on the basis of the conclusions of Marx and Engels. He made a particular contribution to identifying the seeds of the organs of the new power, the character of the dictatorship of the proletariat, as a higher form of state organization of class power for the transition from the early imperfect socialist society to the fully communist society, in both form and content.
These are lessons and experiences that have timeless value for today as regards the organization of the workers'-people's struggle, when the class struggle is sharpening in conditions of a revolutionary crisis, a revolutionary situation, as regards the organization and expression of the alliance of the working class with the poor popular strata, its natural allies, the poor farmers and self-employed, with the working class in the vanguard, their transformation into a revolutionary forces capable of leading the decisive confrontation against bourgeois power and forming new worker's-people's institutions of the new power.
The KKE, studying the valuable experience of the October Revolution, Lenin's legacy, the experience of the International Communist Movement itself expressed the conclusions from this research in a number of analyses and documents (Reflections on the causes of the overthrows in 1995, the 18th Congress' decision in 2009 on the experience of the USSR and socialist construction and the causes of the overthrows, the National Conference on the History of the Party in 2011, the elaboration of the new Programme and Statutes of the Party at the 19th Congress in 2013). We came to the crucial conclusion that the definition of the political goal, worker's power, must be carried out on the basis of the objective definition of the character of the era, something that determines the class that is objectively in the foreground of social development. This defines the character of the revolution and not the correlation of forces which other Communist Parties focus on.
Of course, the correlation between the two basic rival classes, the bourgeois class and the working class, as well as the stance of the intermediate strata, is a decisive factor for the timing of the socialist revolution. In this sense, a CP must take the correlation of class forces into account, in Leninist terms, i.e. in terms of the relations of the classes with power. The CP must at the same time take into account and calculate the correlation of forces inside the labour movement, the movements of its social allies, as an necessary element for suitable maneuvers, slogans so that the masses can be drawn to the struggle for power on the basis of their own experience.
However this can in no instance become an alibi for the submission of the labour and communist movement to any form of bourgeois governance, for its participation in or toleration of this in the framework of capitalism. All the flowers of bourgeois and opportunist ideological constructs bloomed in Greece in recent years. There was and still is a lot of discussion in relation to the need to create "left", "progressive", "democratic", "anti-right", "anti-memorandum", "patriotic", "national", "ecumenical" government (All these names have been used to describe such governments) as an immediate proposal for a way out of the economic crisis and anti-people political line. These proposals are being made both by the traditional and the newly formed bourgeois parties, as well as by parties on the "left" wing of the political spectrum.
The labour movement must reject all those traps that aim to manipulate the workers'-people's struggle and to co-opt the movement. Of course, the unrepentant "Mensheviks" are also present today along with other tardy "communists" who, apart from anything else, follow the development of revolutionary thinking in a delayed way. They ahistorically promote Leninist analysis dating from before the bourgeois-democratic revolution in Russia in February 1917, regarding the possibility of a temporary government of workers and peasants, in conditions when Tsarist power had not yet been overthrown. What has this got to do with the situation today? It is undeniable that the conditions of that period were entirely different, as we are talking about a revolutionary situation, with the people organized in the Soviets, armed. We are talking about a bourgeois state that had not had time to establish all its mechanisms. In the current conditions of a non-revolutionary situation, of bourgeois power well established for many decades with a fully organized bourgeois state, such a goal of a transitional-temporary government in essence means cooperation with bourgeois forces in order to provide capitalism with breathing space, so that the system can overcome temporary or more general difficulties. And what is even more important. Why should the revolutionary movement elevate a thought concerning a possible scenario, which was never realized in the end, into a general theoretical principle and not generalize the strategy of Lenin and the Bolsheviks that actually led to victory?
Of course, all these well-wishers today say nothing about the positions and political actions of Lenin, beginning in April, after the fall of Tsarism, proclaiming the victorious social revolution in Russia and leading the proletariat for the first time in history to storm heaven and carry out the revolution, breaking the ice, opening up and forging the path for socialism-communism. Historical experience has taught us that first "workers'" and "left" governments emerged from social-democratic parties or as coalition governments of social-democratic parties with other bourgeois parties. There has been no instance in the history of the international labour movement and in the period immediately after World War I in particular, when such governments did not arise as a result of the maneuvering of the bourgeoisie in order to deal with a revolutionary upsurge, in order to assimilate the workers'-people's discontent in conditions of a very deep economic crisis before or after a war. The goal of such a "left", "workers'" government in the framework of capitalist power, without a revolutionary overthrow, via parliamentary processes, was later adopted by CPs as an intermediate goal with transitional measures.
The aim of this, as they believed, was to facilitate the struggle for socialism and solve some pressing popular demands. However, experience demonstrates that, despite the good intentions of CPs, they were not able to open a window even and certainly not a path to socialism anywhere, and were also not able to stabilize some gains of the people's movement. This includes the experience before and after World War II and up to the present day. Communist Parties found themselves in the end organizationally, ideologically and politically disarmed.
The historical experience and significance of the Great October Revolution is incomparable. It confirms that the salvation of the working class and the other popular strata, in conditions of an economic and political crisis, in conditions of imperialist war, is only possible by overthrowing capitalist power and ownership, which of course presupposes the weakening and complete bankruptcy of its various "left" forms, represented by the dangerous trends of reformism-opportunism and the governmental left, as is expressed in Greece by SYRIZA, as well as by its occasional satellites, such as Popular Unity, ANTARSYA and other marginal groups-both in quality and quantity-which give them the pretext of a false broadness.
The experience and theoretical analysis of the Bolsheviks together with their revolutionary activity in the period from the 1905 revolution to the October Revolution of 1917 has major timeless importance for communists all over the world. It is related to every aspect of the activity of a revolutionary party, which has not lost the goal of workers' power. It provides valuable experience for the work of communists amongst broad working class masses, inexperienced working class masses and poor popular strata. It demonstrates the constant and at the same time contradictory features of the development of the working class's alliance with other allied popular strata. It teaches us that heightened militant and even revolutionary attitudes coexist with confused and disorienting standpoints and views. Of course the most robust attitudes develop amongst the industrial workers, the working class.
Consequently, it is very important for the ideological and political vanguard, the communist party, to elaborate and stick closely to the political line, to intervene substantially and specifically so that the movement of insurgent masses, the militant protests, planned confrontation and subversive activity take on a revolutionary orientation. Indeed, it must take into account that within the ranks of the movement there are forces active which are influenced by bourgeois ideology, a plethora of wavering petty bourgeois forces that bring these views into the ranks of the vanguard. The ability of the Bolshevik Party, headed by Lenin, to constantly adapt did not lead it into following the mistaken path of erasing the essence of its goal for the revolutionary overthrow of the system and workers' power. The ability to fulfill each task through correct adjustments should not lead to the gradual change of the strategic goal in the name of being adaptable. This is a crucial question for every CP. Otherwise, there is a real danger of being dispersed amongst the masses, of being co-opted to positions inside the system, of transforming your strategy into one continuous set of maneuvers and tactics.
Of course, one must always be aware that you can also be led onto a path that is equally painful for the working class and of course painless for the bourgeois class i.e. the path of isolation, retrenchment and dogmatism. The communist parties today must constantly seek to creatively use the method and experience of the Bolsheviks, of that party's leadership and Lenin, in their daily activity and the way in which they combined theoretical work with the study of domestic and international developments and the experience of the class struggle itself. Through this process, a clear Marxist-Leninist answer can be provided to the following question, why was the victorious strategy of the Bolsheviks not at the centre of the analyses of the International Communist Movement, why did the CPs operate mainly on the basis of the previous analyses, in essence depriving the Leninist line of its revolutionary workers' content and leading many CPs into sliding into social-democratic positions and opportunism?
The fact that the revolutionary content and gains which came as a result of the October Revolution over the course of decades were weakened due to the impact of trying to solve existent problems of socialist construction in a mistaken direction, by following capitalist recipes, as we often say, a course that chronologically coincided with the decisions of the 20th Congress of the CPSU in 1956, does not change or alter the internal dynamism of socialist construction or of course the decisive importance of the Great October Revolution of 1917.
Socialism did not endure in its first great attempt, in the struggle against the old, against reaction both domestically and internationally, something that resulted in its degeneration and in the end its overthrow, which entered its final phase in the 1980s through the notorious Perestroika and was completed through the counterrevolution and capitalist restoration in the USSR and the other socialist countries of Europe and Asia at the beginning of the 1990s. Of course, the imperialist encirclement of the socialist system was a powerful fact that fed the internal problems and contradictions. It led to decisions that made socialist construction more difficult.
One aspect, which is very rarely highlighted, is the objective fact that the arms race that the socialist countries were driven into participating in, above all the USSR, in confrontation with imperialist barbarity absorbed a large section of the economic and other resources of the Soviet Union and the other countries. At the same time, the line of "peaceful coexistence" that mainly developed at the 20th Congress of the CPSU and afterwards, allowed for the fostering of many utopian views that it is possible for imperialism to give up on war and military methods. The developments in the International Communist Movement, the split in the ICM, issues to do with its strategy also played a serious role in the formation of the global correlation of forces. The dissolution of the Communist International in 1943, under specific historical political conditions, signaled in any case the absence of a centre for the elaboration of a revolutionary workers' strategy against the international bourgeoisie, the international capitalist system.
Despite the fact that the conditions for the sharpening of the class contradictions during the 2nd World War sharpened, the anti-fascist struggle of the peoples led to the overthrow of bourgeois power only in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe, with the decisive contribution of the Red Army. The Communist Parties in the capitalist West were not able to elaborate a strategy to transform the imperialist war or liberation struggle into struggle to conquer state power. After the end of World War II, the lack of organizational connection between the CPs to form an independent strategy against the unified strategy of international imperialism became apparent. The International Conferences that took place later were not able to contribute to the ideological unity and the formation of a revolutionary strategy.
Our party has learned from its weaknesses and mistakes during the past, such as the lack of theoretical and political readiness to understand the development of the counterrevolution in the USSR in a timely fashion. We consider that it is the responsibility and right of every CP to study the theoretical issues of socialism, to evaluate the course of socialist construction, to draw conclusions for the battle against opportunism at an international level, to prepare the party and class forces in general in order to explain the class struggle at an international level, to provide a scientific class explanation of the setbacks to social progress and development.
In this internationalist and communist spirit, we try to follow the developments today in countries like China, Vietnam, Cuba and other countries. The scientific explanation and defense of socialism's contribution in the 20th century is an element that strengthens the revolutionary strategy of the communist movement. The study of the contradictions, of the subjective mistakes of the historical progress as a whole is a process that develops the theory of socialism-communism, which will revive the communist movement ideologically and politically and will provide it with overwhelming strength in its new offensive and final victory. We are convinced that the final victory will be emerge from the repeated defeats.
The "defeat" of the October revolution by the counterrevolution of 1989-1991 can become a school for the next revolution. As a great intellectual wrote (the Hungarian, Laszlo Gurko): "The revolution is the greatest elation of humanity. Whoever has tasted it once never forgets its taste." Amongst our most important tasks today is to restore the workers' knowledge about the truth of socialism in the 20th century, without idealizations, objectively and free of the slanders of the bourgeoisie, which are based on the catastrophes brought about by the counterrevolution. Capitalism may still be strong today, but it is not invincible. The people are powerful when they struggle with the correct strategy.
We look upon the 21st century with optimism. The 20th century began with the greatest offensive launched by the proletariat in any era and ended with its temporary defeat. The 21st century will bring new offensives and revolutionary victories, the final and this time irreversible overthrow of capitalism and the construction of socialism-communism. The spectre of socialism-communism is today haunting the bloody dreams of the bourgeois the world over. We must take the decision to become their permanent nightmare.

US imperialism in a dead-end

By Daniel Paquet                                                                                                           dpaquet1871@gmail.com

Mid-October 2016, a few weeks before the end of the current presidential race, The New York Times complains:”Can the U.S. really win the election?”  And again like most of the time, it relates to US imperialism.  But what is it all about? “We have to begin with as precise and full a definition of imperialism as possible.  Imperialism is a specific historical stage of capitalism. Its specific character is three-fold:  imperialism is (1) monopoly capitalism; (2) parasitic or decaying capitalism; (3) moribund capitalism.  The supplanting of free competition by monopoly is the fundamental economic feature, the quintessence of imperialism.  Monopoly manifests itself in five principal forms:  (1) cartels, syndicates and trusts – the concentration of production has reached a degree which gives rise to these monopolistic  associations of capitalists; (2) the monopolistic  position of the big banks – three , four or five giant banks manipulate the whole economic life of America (including the Big Six of Canada :Royal Bank, Bank of Montréal, etc., -Ed.), France, Germany; (3) seizure of the sources of raw  material by the trusts and the financial oligarchy (finance capital is monopoly industrial capital merged with bank capital); (4) the (economic) partition of the world by the international cartels has begun.  There are already over one hundred such international cartels, which command the entire world market and divide it ‘amicably’ among themselves – until war redivides it.  The export of capital, as distinct from the export of commodities under non-monopoly capitalism, is a highly characteristic phenomenon and is closely linked with the economic and territorial political partition of the world; (5) the territorial partition of the world (colonies) is completed.” [1]

“If we will have indulged in almost two years of electoral entertainment and pathos just to end up back where we were, only worse, with even more venomous gridlock in Washington, it won’t just be emotionally depressing; we’ll really start to decline as a nation. When we forfeit governing our country strategically at the national level for this long, inevitably the roof will start to leak and the floors will start to buckle. (…)

For starters, this version of the Republican Party has to die.  I don’t say that as a partisan.  I say that as a citizen who believes that America needs a healthy center-right party that offers more market-based solutions to problems; keeps the pressure on for deregulation, freer trade and smaller government; and is willing to compromise.  But today’s version of the G.O.P. is not such a problem-solving party.”[2]

Further, Donald Trump, the Republican candidate, does not contribute to morally reinsure most of the U.S. voters.  However, “A day after Mr. Trump defended himself at the second presidential debate for making vulgar comments about women, amid a wave of polls showing an increasing lead for Hillary Clinton, thousands of Trump supporters turned out with undimmed fervor for the Republican nominee and optimism about his electoral respects.”[3]

“Yet Mr. Trump himself, having been rejected in recent days by dozens of Republican elected officials, has indicated that he will make any separation an exceptionally messy and painful ordeal for the party. (…)

Even the drastic step of denouncing Mr. Trump may not be enough to shield Republicans from this unpopularity.  In a conference call on Tuesday with the Democratic caucus, Representative Ben Ray Lujan of New Mexico, the chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said that party polling found voters drawing scant distinction between Republicans who endorsed Mr. Trump and those who abandoned him out of political expediency according to people who participated in the call, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because it was supposed to be private.”[4]

As for international tensions, several US personalities fear the worse. “Donald J. Trump is of a radically different ilk and temperament from past presidents.  If I were back in the launch chair, I would have little faith in his judgment and would feel alienated if he were commander in chief.  I am not alone in this view.  A vast majority of current and former launch officers in my circle of friends and acquaintances tell me they feel the same.”[5]

“Republicans across the US are struggling with whether to support or abandon Donald Trump as  they try to defend the party’ Senate and House majorities, which have been  put at risk by the latest controversies surrounding the presidential candidate. (…)

The Republican infighting has distracted form revelations emerging from the leaked emails of John Podesta, Mrs. Clinton’s campaign chairman.  Over the past five days,  WikiLeaks has released more than 6,000 of Mr Podesta’s hacked emails, with the group claiming there are more than 43,000 emails still to be released.(…)

The emails have fanned tension between Mrs. Clinton’s campaign and supporters of Bernie Sanders, her former rival for the Democratic nomination, who believe Mrs. Clinton will not be as tough on Wall Street as she has claimed.

Yet several bankers suggested the political climate had shifted to such an extent in recent years that it would be hard to imagine Mrs. Clinton adopting a softer policy towards Wall Street, given the new power of the Democratic Party’s anti-bank faction, led by Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren.”[6]

“Our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeoisie, possesses, however, this distinctive feature:  it has simplified the class antagonisms. Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other:  Bourgeoisie and Proletariat. (…)

(And) the executive of the modern State is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie.”[7]

“The dictatorship of the proletariat arises not on the basis of the bourgeois order, but in the process of the breaking up of this order after the overthrow of the bourgeoisie, in the process of the expropriation of the landlords and capitalists, in the process of the socialization of the principal instruments and means of production, in the process of violent proletarian revolution.  The dictatorship of the proletariat is a revolutionary power based on the use of force against the bourgeoisie.  The state is a machine in the hands of the ruling class for suppressing the resistance of its class enemies.  In this respect the dictatorship of the proletariat does not differ essentially from the dictatorship of any other class, for the proletarian state is a machine for the suppression of the bourgeoisie.  But there is the substantial difference.  This difference consists in the fact that all hitherto existing class states have been dictatorships of an exploiting minority over the exploited majority, whereas the dictatorship of the proletariat is the dictatorship of the exploited majority over the exploiting minority.”[8]

Since we opened the door for Stalin, let us see what was thought about him by a different source than Western’s main stream.

At that time, “the Chinese Communist Party came up with one answer. They believed that Khrushchev and his allies wanted to lead the USSR onto a sharply different political trajectory than they believed it had taken under Stalin. We have briefly alluded to some economic and political policies instituted under Khrushchev that the CCP leadership saw as an abandonment of basic Marxist-Leninist principles. (…)

The origins of these policies, now identified with Khrushchev and his epigones Brezhnev and the rest, lie in the immediate post-Stalin period, long before Khrushchev came to dominate the Soviet leadership.  In fact many of them can be traced back to the late 1940s and early 1950s, the ‘late Stalin’ period.

It is difficult to discern to what extent Stalin himself supported or opposed these policies.  In his last years he was less and less active politically.   Periodically it seems as though Stalin did try to assert a different path towards communism, - in his last book Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR (1952), for example, and at the 19^th Party Congress in October 1952.  Later, Mikoian wrote that Stalin’s late views were ‘an incredibly leftist deviation’.  But immediately Stalin died the ‘collective leadership’ all agreed on dropping all mention of Stalin’s book and on dumping the new system of Party governance.

Khrushchev used his attack on Stalin and Beria as a weapon against the others in the ‘collective leadership’, especially Malenkov, Molotov, and Kaganovich.  This course was fraught with risk, however.  How could he have known that they would not accuse him equally, or even more so?  Part of the reason must have been that Khrushchev was able to rely on allies like Pospelov , who helped  him, ‘purge’ the archives of documentation of his own participation in mass repressions.(…) 

… At the very end of a Central Committee Plenum, the post of First Secretary of the Party was reinstated (until 1934 it had been called ‘General Secretary’) and Khrushchev was elected  to it.  It is hard not to see this as the Party nomenklatura’s reward for ’their man.’”[9]

Yes, Khrushchev was a moron and a rogue, and he is equal to Mr. Trump into this regard.  “We already knew that Trump, apart from being a bigot, a liar and a xenophobe, was a sexist and a misogynist, on record as viciously calling women pigs, dogs and slobs, rating their bodies and making crude sexual references to his own daughter Ivanka. (…)

… The Republican nominee bragged to a television personality while riding on a bus that because he was a star he could do anything he wanted to a woman, including ‘grab her by the p—y’, went well beyond sexism and into sexual assault.”[10]

The crux of the matter is not that Russia had politicians like Khrushchev, or that now US have contenders like Trump or… Clinton; the fact is that no mass Communist Party can now paves the way for the working class’s struggles (up and including socialism); it is currently true in Russia and maybe worse in USA.  For instance, working-class papers like Iskra (during the Tsarist era) said:  “We Russian Social-Democrats (that took back ‘Communist s’ title following Marx in 1848 – the year of the Manifesto of the Communist Party, -Ed.) must unite and direct all our efforts towards the formation of a strong party which must struggle under the single banner of revolutionary Social Democracy. (…)

The emancipation of the workers must be the act of the working class itself.  All the other classes of present-day society stand for the preservation of the foundations of the existing economic system.  The real emancipation of the working class requires a social revolution – which is being prepared by the entire development of capitalism – i.e. the abolition of private ownership of the means of production, their conversion into public property, and the replacement of capitalist production of commodities of articles by society as a whole, with the object of ensuring full well-being and free, all-round development for all its members.

We need unification based on a strict singleness of principles which must be consciously and firmly arrived at by all or by the vast majority of committees, organizations, and groups, of intellectuals and workers, who act in varying circumstances and under varying conditions and have sometimes achieved their Social-Democratic convictions along the most diverse paths. (…)

The main cause of  the Party crisis is …the wavering intellectual and petty-bourgeois elements, of which the worker’s party had  to rid itself; elements who joined the working-class movement mainly in the hope of an early triumph of the bourgeois-democratic revolution and could not stand up to a period of reaction.  Their instability was revealed in theory… and in tactics… as well as in Party organization. The class-conscious workers repelled this instability, came out resolutely against the liquidators, and began to take the management and guidance of the Party organizations into their own hands.”[11]           

Such is the story of the Communist party of Québec, which absorbed hundreds of former members deceived by the nationalist and social-democratic Parti québécois, that initiated most of the policies in the Province of Québec for almost 30 years; and many amongst those people were sadly confused by the reintroduction of capitalism in Soviet Union. But, ce n’est que partie remise…                                                          

---

[1] Lenin, V.I., Imperialism and the split in socialism, Collected Works, vol. 23, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1964, page 1

[2] Friedman, Thomas L., Can the U.S. really win the election?, The New York Times, International Edition, Thursday, October 13, 2016, Front Page

[3] Wilkes-Barbe, PA., Trump sliding?  Die-hards don’t buy it, The New York Times, International Edition, Thursday, October 13, 2016, page 5

[4] Burns, Alexander; Martin, Jonathan, Republican split may tilt states, The New York Times, International Edition, Thursday, October 13, 2016, page 5

[5] Blair, Bruce G., Trump and the nuclear keys, The New York Times, International Edition, Thursday, October 13, 2016, page 16

[6] Weaver, Courtney; McLannahan, Ben, Republicans in Trump quandary, Financial Times, New York, Thursday 13 October 2016, page 2

[7] Marx, Karl; Engels, Friedrich, Manifesto of the Communist Party, Foreign Languages Press, Peking 1970; Reprinted in the  U.S.A., 2012, pages 26, 28

[8] Stalin, J.V., The foundations of Leninism, Foreign Languages Press, Peking, 1975, pages 42-43

[9] Furr, Grover, Khrushchev lied, Erythros Press and Media, Kettering –Ohio-, 2011, page198-199

[10] Timson, Judith, A key moment in fight against sexism, Toronto Star, Thursday, October 13, 2016, page T5

[11] Lenin, On the organizational Principles of a Proletarian Party, Novosti Press Agency Publishing House, Moscow, 1972, pages 68-69, 88-89, 104-105, 187-188