Category: Communist Party Italy
Italy- Communist Party: The time is now!
worker | January 6, 2018 | 7:07 pm | Analysis, class struggle, Communist Party Italy, Party Voices | Comments closed

Saturday, January 6, 2018

Italy- Communist Party: The time is now!

https://communismgr.blogspot.com/2018/01/italy-communist-party-time-is-now.html
The time is now: 
united for the Communist Party.
 
 
Translation: Srećko Vojvodić
 
Just a bit less than a month ago, the Communist Party has announced its intention to participate in political elections 2018. Since that day, we have received hundreds of messages of support, proposals of active and specific help, as well as militant joining of our project. We thank everybody and will keep on connect you these days with our local representatives.
Following the developments of these hours, of the discussion in the communist formations and the choices made by the leadership groups, often despite broad opposition of the base of those parties, we want to make a further appeal to the comrades to take note of the choices made and mobilize to actively support the Communist Party, starting from the campaign for the 2018 elections.
Decisions of the Communist Refoundation (Rifondazione Comunista) and the Italian Communist Party (Partito Comunista Italiano), to join the common list of the left, Power to the People (Potere al Popolo), are proofs that the strategy of these parties is moving in a direction, opposite and irreconcilable to the communist reconstruction. As we have already pointed out several times during last couple of years, the communist question is a question of strategic choice and not of simple unitary proclamations, devoid of ideological clarity and political perspective.
Unitary list of the radical left has as its models Podemos, SYRIZA and post-communist movements. It is firmly anchored in the international reference of the Party of the “European Left”, movement built by Bertinotti, whose purpose is dissolution and transformation of communist parties in generic left forces, which accept the capitalist system and European Union, which, due to its perspective, is directly responsible for the social massacre in Greece. In some cases, even the confusion is such that one even looks at the English Labor Party of Corbyn, in Her Majesty’s opposition!
No communist reconstruction is possible within the furrow of the “European Left”. Everyone in the history of Italian communists who had renounced the symbol of the hammer and sickle, and supported the necessity to build a wider front, from Bolognina onward, moved in the direction of overcoming the communist question, which is the question of workers’ emancipation from capitalist exploitation, and of socialist construction.
Do not be fooled again! Communist reconstruction will not pass by yet another watering down into a common list, one more radical than another only by the choice of institutional parties; today in the Free and Equal (Liberi e Uguali), which have “downloaded” the Brancaccio and which were ready to leave, but which carries the same basic contradictions that are already affecting even the most genuine parts of that movement.
Communist reconstruction goes along another perspective. It goes through choices of those who are carrying forward the process of reconstruction of an autonomous and independent field of communists coherently and against many difficulties.
As we have already declared, we are making the list of the Communist Party open to contributions of all communists who do not want to resign themselves and turn themselves into an umpteenth bankruptcy and renunciation project. Imposed deadlines for list presentation are rigid and the time is short. However, the unitary strengthening of the communist reconstruction process is worth more than anything else. The CP is ready to evaluate in any possible way individual and collective contributions of comrades who want to join and support the communist cause, demonstrating in facts and not in words a real willingness to open a unitary process, in the direction indicated by our Party long time ago.
The time is now: united for the Communist Party.
 
* * * 
Poco meno di un mese fa il Partito Comunista ha annunciato l’intenzione di correre alle elezioni politiche 2018. Da quel giorno abbiamo ricevuto centinaia di messaggi di sostegno, proposte di aiuto attivo e concreto, adesioni militanti al nostro progetto. Ringraziamo tutti e continueremo in questi giorni a mettervi in contatto con i nostri referenti locali.
Seguendo gli sviluppi di queste ore della discussione nelle formazioni comuniste e le scelte operate dai gruppi dirigenti,  spesso nonostante ampie contrarietà della base di quei partiti, vogliamo fare un ulteriore appello ai compagni e alle compagne a prendere atto delle scelte operate e mobilitarsi per sostenere attivamente il Partito Comunista a partire dalla campagna per le elezioni 2018.
La decisione di Rifondazione Comunista e del Partito Comunista Italiano di aderire alla lista comune di sinistra, Potere al Popolo, sono la prova che la strategia di questi partiti si muove in una direzione opposta e inconciliabile rispetto alla ricostruzione comunista. Come più volte abbiamo sostenuto in questi anni, la questione comunista è questione di scelte strategiche, non di semplici proclami unitari, privi di chiarezza ideologica e di prospettiva politica.
La lista unitaria della sinistra radicale ha come propri modelli Podemos, Syriza e i movimenti post-comunisti. E’ saldamente ancorata al riferimento internazionale del Partito della “Sinistra Europea”, movimento costruito da Bertinotti, che sta operando per lo scioglimento e la trasformazione dei partiti comunisti in forze genericamente di sinistra, che accetta il sistema capitalistico, l’Unione Europea, che grazie alla sua prospettiva è direttamente responsabile del massacro sociale in Grecia. In alcuni casi addirittura la confusione è tale che si guarda persino al partito laburista inglese di Corbyn, all’opposizione di sua maestà!
Dentro il solco della “Sinistra Europea” non è possibile alcuna ricostruzione comunista. Chiunque nella storia dei comunisti in Italia abbia rinunciato al simbolo della falce e martello e sostenuto la necessità di costruire fronti più ampi, dalla Bolognina in poi è andato nella direzione del superamento della questione comunista, che è la questione dell’emancipazione dei lavoratori dallo sfruttamento capitalistico e della costruzione del socialismo.
Non fatevi ingannare ancora una volta! La ricostruzione comunista non passerà per l’ennesimo annacquamento in una lista comune, più radicale delle precedenti solo per scelta dei partiti istituzionali, oggi in Liberi e Uguali, che hanno “scaricato” il Brancaccio e quanti erano già pronti a salirvi su, ma che porta le medesime contraddizioni di fondo, che già stanno intaccando le parti più genuine persino di quel movimento.
La ricostruzione comunista passa per un’altra prospettiva. Per le scelte di quanti coerentemente e tra mille difficoltà stanno portando avanti quel processo di ricostruzione di un campo autonomo e indipendente dei comunisti.
Come abbiamo già dichiarato, facciamo della lista del Partito Comunista la lista aperta al contributo di tutti i comunisti che non vogliono rassegnarsi e consegnarsi all’ennesimo progetto fallimentare e rinunciatario. Le scadenze imposte dalla presentazione delle liste sono rigide, il tempo è poco. Ma il rafforzamento unitario del processo di ricostruzione comunista, vale più di tutto. Il PC è pronto a valorizzare in ogni modo possibile i contributi individui e collettivi dei compagni che vorranno unirsi e sostenere la causa comunista, dimostrando nei fatti e non a parole la volontà reale di aprire un processo unitario, nella direzione da tempo indicata dal nostro Partito.
Il tempo è adesso: uniti per il Partito Comunista.
Interview with Marco Rizzo, General Secretary of the Communist Party of Italy (PC)

Thursday, November 30, 2017

Interview with Marco Rizzo, General Secretary of the Communist Party of Italy (PC)

https://communismgr.blogspot.com/2017/11/interview-with-marco-rizzo-general.html
The General Secretary of the Communist Party of Italy (Partito Comunista), Marco Rizzo, gave a very interesting interview to the International Communist Press:
ICP: Before starting, could you inform our readers about the discussions within the Italian Communist Movement that led to the founding of your party, the Communist Party of Italy?
 
Marco Rizzo: The ideological and political origins of our Party refer to the political area of ​​the legendary organizer of the Italian Communist Party (PCI) during the Resistance, Pietro Secchia, who was an opponent of Togliatti for what concerned its moderatism according to the “Italian Way to Socialism”. This area kept living through the magazine Interstampa and the Marxist Cultural Centers, born in Italy during the ‘80s. This area was, in fact, the backbone of the struggle of the pro-Soviet opposition within the PCI and the establishment of the new party, Rifondazione Comunista, after the PCI dissolution in 1991.
During the first period of Rifondazione Comunista, that area always supported the struggle to keep the communist question open in Italy. At that time, unfortunately, took up the political deviation, embodied by Bertinotti and his total abjuration of communist history and tradition. In 1998, after the final break between Cossutta and Bertinotti, that area played a major role in the birth of the Party of the Italian Communists (PdCI).
The war in Kosovo (which I tirelessly and in vain tried to oppose to, subsequently practicing a severe self-critique over that period) marks the beginning of the cracking of the relationship between me and those political leaders.
Our political area – the only one critical in the national secretariat of the PdCI – claims the need to review the relationship with the center-left government (which the PdCI was involved to) and to work for the unity of Communist and anti-capitalist forces, in a totally alternative perspective to the bipolar logic of the Second Republic. In fact, we had built an area for all the communist dissatisfaction with the center-left government and the so-called leftist unitary process.
On July 3, 2009, we announced the founding of the Popular Leftist Communist (CSP) political movement, a party whose aim was to rally the communists on the basis of their presence in the actual social conflicts.
Meanwhile, the economic crisis breaks out makes in Europe. In May 2010 CSP responded to the call of the Greek Communist Party (KKE). From that moment on, the relationships between CSP and KKE intensify more and more. On January 21, 2012, the party decides to modify its symbol by adding the words “Partito Comunista” under the sickle and hammer. On 6 April 2013, the European Communist Parties, Marxist-Leninist, were called in Rome; among others, the Greek Communist Party, the Communist Party of Peoples of Spain (PCPE), the Russian Communist Party (PCOR), the Communist Party of Turkey (TKP), respond to the appeal. The Committee also participates in the Communist- Youth Front (FGC).
In Brussels on October 1, 2013, CSP-Communist Party participates in the assembly of the Communist Party of Europe convened by the Greek Communist Party. From the assembly will be born the “Initiative of Communist and Workers’ Parties”, which thus officially sanctions international cooperation with a document signed by 29 communist parties.
With the congress of 17/18/19 January 2014, the COMUNIST PARTY revives in Italy.
On 21st and 22nd January 2017 was hold in Rome the second National Congress of the Communist Party, with the renewed unanimous election of the outgoing leaders of the Party.
ICP: The communist movement in Italy has a very long and honored past. During the decades full of struggles he witnessed brilliant victories, as well as devastating defeats. Have the weaknesses that led to the liquidation were examined and understood by communists and avant-garde workers? Today, what are the main lessons stemming from this story? Can you tell us something by taking examples?
 
MR: The situation when Palmiro Togliatti headed the PCI after the Resistance was undeniably adverse to the possibility of “starting the revolution” in Italy. In 1944, the PCI, with the North of the country occupied by the Nazi-Germans and their Fascist servants and the South “freed” by the Anglo-Americans, worked to marginalize the positions of those who wanted to delegate the liberation of Italy to the allied armies and, on the contrary, tried to involve the popular masses in the anti-fascist struggle, even military. This “temporary compromise”, however, lost its character of transience and ended in obscuring revolutionary goals relating to the issue of the State and the conquest of political power, which is pivotal for the Communists. We believe that deviations from the revolutionary path originated from many flawed assessments of the situation by Togliatti and part of the PCI leadership group.
Once the Fascist state has been defeated, it was to be replaced with a new type of State, not the simple re-issue of the old liberal state. All the States that came out of the war and of the Resistance had not a well-defined shape, the power was not firmly and definitively in the hands of any of the two classes. The battle for institutional arrangements in Italy was still on the way. During the Resistance, the PCI grew a lot, becoming the first popular party and counting 2,5 million members. The National Liberation Committees (CLN) could become, as a broad popular front, the basis of a new state and replace the old state. But in May 1947, left-wing parties were excluded from the coalition government. Regarding the lack of adequate conditions for a proletarian revolution, Pietro Secchia, at that time organizational responsible of the PCI, wisely noticed (for those times a statement like those sounded like a very criticism): “there is a huge gap between doing an insurrection and doing nothing …”. It is clear that the statement was directed to Togliatti’s policy, who chose the institutional path as a strategic line since 1944, while the experience of popular government of the CLN could have provided other perspectives. The new policy, suggested by Cominform, is brought in Italy at the Sixth Congress of the Party (January 1948). The political relation is strongly self-critical and “it recall the criticism that came from outside”. Neither after the lockout from the government, nor after the attack on Togliatti’s life, in July 1948, PCI tried to force the situation. The tactical and evaluation mistakes of Togliatti and the majority of the PCI leadership group of those years are understandable only in the light of this analysis, and not simply as betrayal. The first mistake was the a-priori acceptance of the forms of bourgeois democracy.
The second mistake, consequent to the first, was the magnification of the compromise, which would have been temporary and limited to the period of belligerence, until the final acceptance of bourgeois democracy and institutions as the only ground of struggle. We believe that the causes of these two deviations must be identified in the overestimation of the party’s ability to resolve the power duality in favor of the proletariat by acting primarily on the slippery ground of bourgeois parliamentary democracy and, on the other hand, the underestimation of the strength of the party and its ability to resist and deter any reactionary action on the ground of mass struggles, where it was most conspicuous, that never diminished, even during clandestine and armed struggle.
The story of the following years shows that the Italian bourgeoisie, which became the absolute holder of state power in 1947, uses it with the open purpose of bending the working class and of undoing and putting the Communist Party on the corner. In this political situation, the PCI was limited to defending its right to the existence and the “democratic” legality, incapable to counterattack in an incisive manner. Over the years, the fetish of unity has always spoiled the debate about line and program, causing divergences to appear in muted, hidden, muffled forms, never seen as contrasts of principle, in an erroneous application of democratic centralism, only aimed to perpetuate the ruling groups. Thousands of militants, who devoted their lives to the Cause, had more and more serious difficulty to understand and act.
On the other hand, it is undeniable that the PCI played a decisive role in the conquest of workers’ rights in the aftermath of WWII. It improved their living and working conditions. It achieved significant rights on the social and economic life. After the war, there was considerable economic and political room for a reformist politic, thanks to the balance of the international forces between socialist countries and imperialist countries. The PCI was able to use them successfully for the benefit of the working class and the workers, but was unable to link these achievements with the political goal of the seizure of power. It behaved like a good social-democratic party, but a revolutionary party should look like something different: a truly communist party that, always keeping in mind the existing strength correlations, keeps the push towards the ultimate goal unchanged. Certainly, the PCI accumulated in that long time an immense and qualified heritage, made of militancy, passion and honest human relationships, which made it the most precious heritage, unfortunately betrayed and subsequently dissipated.
ICP: After the dissolution of the Italian Communist Party (PCI), which was once the largest communist party in Europe, what is the state of the art of the communist movement in Italy today? Is there still a significant presence of the current Eurocommunist and opportunistic stream?
 
MR: After the dissolution of the PCI, many branches were derived from Rifondazione Comunista. In addition to that of the PdCI and then, from that one, our Party, there was a right-wing split of “Left, Ecology and Freedom”, now melt down to a cauldron of the Democratic Party. This last stream cannot even be called “opportunistic” or “revisionist”, given its abyssal distance from Marxism. It participates in the power distribution at central and local levels, as PD allows it to.
On the left wing, we find an organization which has resumed the historical name of the PCI and which inherited, in our view, the traits of electoralism, pushed by their desire to “unite the left” (not better specified). It magnifies Berlinguer’s character, more as a personal and political reference, focusing on the less compromising moments of his political experience. It looks carefully, even with admiration, at the Chinese and BRICS experience, considering it as an example of “class struggle between nations”, which, in our view, reveals a flawed understanding of Leninism. There are, as many other countries, other fringes, selfish Marxist-Leninists of Maoist inspiration, and small Trotskyite ones. All of these organizations, however, do not be really rooted in the working class and limit their diatribe to crumpled debates in narrow circles.
ICP: Are you planning to restore one day the historical name of the Italian communist movement? Or should we ask: How far are you thinking about achieving this?
MR: For political reasons we will keep the present name. We want to separate us from the historical name of the PCI, which was changed from the historical one of Gramsci, Communist Party of Italy (PCd’I) in 1943, because we intend to represent a real break with regard to Togliatti’s and Berlinguer’s politics. We could resume the glorious name of the PCd’I, but we believe that the name we have assumed at the present represents our identity at best (even if sometimes it poses some identification problem). One day, we would like to add to our name an additional statement: “Italian Section of the Communist International”
ICP: How do you evaluate your political influence and your organization to date? Can you give us some examples of PC-Italy-led fights?
 
MR: Our country has to re-establish the presence of communists in the workplace from the roots. The goal is a difficult one because, in addition to the destruction of the Italian Communist Party, we have also witnessed the degeneration of the trade union movement. In Italy, the historic CGIL, the pugnacious trade union once led by PCI, currently fully manages the power jointly with bourgeois forces. There are several trade unions in Italy, including very few with a (more or less) class ideology. Anyway, they are divided into various political currents: the class movement is very backward. Our Party has long promoted the “United Front of Workers”, to unite the struggles of workers, especially those based on political attacks and not just merely defensive ones. We work in the trade unions to support the most coherent areas. We struggle in some workplaces to build the party in there. We work with youth, relying on the Communist Youth Front, with whom we experience an ideological and political unity. We work in some popular neighborhoods to regain the political spaces left abandoned by the left and to reject the rampant racist right-wing derives.
ICP: We see there is a very active and militant youth organization called the Communist Youth Front (FGC), founded by your young militants. What do young Italians think about communism? Young people are interested in politics?
 
MR: The Communist Youth Front is a distinct organization with respect to the PC, but we recognize it as a coherent Marxist-Leninist youth organization and it recognizes us as the organization that is rebuilding the party of the working class in Italy. We have a solid organizational pact, transposed in our respective statutes and an identical ideological vision.
The FGC has been working hard and meritorious for some years to overturn the wave of ideological disorientation that overwhelms young Italians, workers and students of the popular strata. Their work of ideological and political education is precious and makes us look to the future with hope. Today, the bourgeoisie’s victory on the ideological front tries to exclude the communist issue even from the debate, to bury the memory once and for all, so many young people have never even heard of communism. The interest in politics of young people today is very scarce, because they are nauseated by rampant politicians, and so many of them are often prey of false sirens, like the “Five Star Movement” (Movimento 5 Stelle). The FGC penetration in schools, especially technical schools, and among young workers, serves to reverse this trend. For example, in Milan the FGC has won the student elections in upper secondary schools (15-19 years) for the second consecutive year and a FGC representative has been elected President of the Student “Consulta”. Similar successes occur in other parts of the country, where the FGC acquires growing reputation and accessions, as it’s highlighted by its electoral success.
ICP: What struggles are you focusing on these days?
 
We work to be present in the major class conflicts, such as, for example, the ILVA factory (one of the leading steel industries in Europe), from Genova to Taranto, which is about to fire more than 4,000 workers.
Another very important fight involved the transportation strike, which paralyzed Italy last month and where our militants have spent a lot of energies. Other struggles, in logistics, in healthcare, in other manufacturing companies, see the presence of first-rate communists. One of the struggles to which a peripheral organization of the party has committed during last weeks, has been a mass campaign in a popular neighborhood in Rome to isolate the intervention of xenophobic fascists against foreigners and refugees. There have been demonstrations that have seen a great deal of citizens alongside our militants.
In such occasions, our Party always tries to recall the classical nature of fascism and to tie the anti-fascist struggle to the anti-capitalist one.
Another activity carried out by our Party is the defense of the communist historical heritage and the ideological counterattack against anti-communism, which also rages in Italy.
During the summer we also held numerous “communist parties”, like every year, to make our Party more and more known; and this year the theme of the Centenary of October was the starting point for debates to link it to the tight news.
This year was also characterized by mass internationalist demonstrations organized by our Party in Rome; the first we made on March 25, on the occasion of the anniversary of the Treaty of Rome. We also organized an internationalist event (with the KKE and the PCPE to which various communist parties in Europe joined) and then with the participation in the rally that took place in Sicily in May against the G8 organized in Taormina. Last but not least, on November 11 in Rome, our Party and the FGC held an important mass rally with the participation of more than 5,000 militants under the slogan “It’s your Revolution” to transform a simple commemoration into a fight act and to tie the memory of the past to today’s tasks.
ICP: Italy is at the center of the issue of refugees. There are tens of thousands of refugees arriving in your country every year and there are some discussions about the borders between neighboring countries and Italy. Can you explain your position on this issue? What kind of actions do you make to strengthen solidarity with the refugees?
 
MR: The action of our Party is first of all aimed at denouncing the “war among poor people” (or “robbing Peter to pay Paul”) caused by the constant flow of refugees in Italy and to contrast the consequent xenophobic wave that arises from that. We recall that the problem could only be resolved by interrupting the imperialistic and exploitation wars in the Third and Fourth World countries, resulting in the use of a large number of workers, without rights, as a “Reserve army of labour”. We promote the slogan “equal work with equal salary”, which unifies the workers’  front and opposes all divisions: between different races and cultures, gender, age, etc.
Then, as we have already mentioned, where we are more present, as in Rome, we are taking mass action to support the reasons of refugees but also those of Italian citizens, claiming the right to home and work for all, recalling that it could be possible in a socialist society but not a capitalist one.
We oppose to the bourgeois left focused only on the so-called “individual rights”, remembering that without social rights sustaining them, civil rights are worthless and useless.
We are also in close relationships with foreign workers’ communities and support them in their difficult struggle here in Italy.
We would also like to have a more intense humanitarian action, but the economic and human resources conditions of our Party urge us to focus more on political and ideological facts than deploying a concrete humanitarian action, although we recognize that this is also an important and necessary field of intervention.
È la tua rivoluzione: Italian communists honored the October Revolution in Rome
worker | November 13, 2017 | 7:48 pm | Communist Party Italy, Fascist terrorism | Comments closed

Tuesday, November 14, 2017

https://communismgr.blogspot.com/2017/11/e-la-tua-rivoluzione-italian-communists.html

È la tua rivoluzione: Italian communists honored the October Revolution in Rome

The Communist Party of Italy (PC) and Front of Communist Youth (FGC) organized a massive meeting and march on Colosseum Square of Rome. Dedicated to the centenary of the October Revolution, the event promoted communism as the only real alternative against capitalist barbarity. With the participation of thousands of people, city of Rome was decorated with red flags.

Around 5 thousand workers and students got together on Colosseum Square of Rome with their red flags for honouring the centenary of the Great October Socialist Revolution, in respect to the call from the Communist Party and Front of Communist Youth against the anti-popular policies of the EU, NATO and the Italian government. Before the event, thousands of people marhced on the streets of Rome with their chants and slogans.

Last week, the PC and FGC were exposed to political attacks of the main stream media and the physical attack of fascist groups during their propaganda works for this event. However, they stood still against any reactionary tentative and declared, “If they are afraid of communism on the centenary of 1917, it is because communism is still the only alternative against the system of exploitation. High ratios of unemployment, decreasing wages, worsening living conditions for millions… Capitalism is not able to solve these questions. We will get together on Colosseum Square against anti-popular policies of the government and for the disengagement of our country from the EU and NATO.”
Source: international communist press / Senza Tregua.

 
 

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Communist Party of Italy – Contribution to the scientific conference in honor of the 100 years since the October Revolution
worker | August 14, 2017 | 8:22 pm | Analysis, class struggle, Communist Party Italy, Marxism-Leninism, political struggle, Russia, USSR | Comments closed

Sunday, August 13, 2017

Communist Party of Italy – Contribution to the scientific conference in honor of the 100 years since the October Revolution

https://communismgr.blogspot.com/2017/08/communist-party-of-italy-contribution.html
Communist Party of Italy.
Contribution at the Scientific Conference in honor 
of the 100 years since the October Revolution.
Leningrad, August 10-13, 2017.
A hundred years ago scientific socialism became reality. Until then, Marxism had only been theorized within the First International and applied to the class struggle in conditions of bourgeois domination; after that, it became reality for a short while, during the Paris Commune, showing that the proletarian revolution was not only possible, but even necessary. With the October Revolution, Marxism is applied to building Socialism, as the first step in the construction of the Communist society.
This event gave world’s history an overwhelming impulse. Just to recall some of the main contributions that the USSR gave to the historical revolutionary process: the resistance to the imperialist aggression during the civil war, the push to the construction of Communist parties all over the world, the birth of the USSR and the solution of the problem of nationalities, the collapse of colonialism, the construction of socialism through the proletarian dictatorship and the centralized planning of the economy, the defeat of nazi-fascism by the Red Army and the support to the Partisan movement in Europe and Asia, the fast post-war reconstruction, the high cultural and social level achieved by the people not only in the USSR, but also in the People’s Democracies, the priceless contribution to anti-imperialist and class struggle allover the world.
These facts really changed history and the world. Today, a hundred years after that epic event, communists are called to think about the causes of real socialism’s collapse. Why? The question is simple and the answer is obvious: it would be unrealistic to propose that experience again after a century, if we did not understand the causes of its collapse or if we considered it as an “unavoidable” event, due to intrinsic flaws of the socialist construction.
On the contrary, we want to reaffirm (leaving room to further constructive contributions) the sole real alternative to capitalist barbarity and its substantial burn-out we can witness every day is scientific Socialism, based on the proletarian dictatorship and the centralized planning of the economy. According to our standpoint, this is what was built in the USSR and the People’s Democracies.
If 1917 marks the starting date of that construction, we consider 1953-56 as the starting period of its degenerative decline. Why do we adopt this three years period ? In 1953 Stalin died, and we will consider the events came up just after that and led, in 1956, to crucial congresses (the CPSU XXth in the USSR and the ICP’s VIIIth in Italy) which gave way to the degenerative turn. What did those events cause. Did they suddenly changed the nature of those Parties, which adopted the new political line? Did they suddenly changed the nature of the proletarian states, turning them into bourgeoisie-ruled states? Or did these parties and states keep the way of socialist construction until their collapse in 1989/1991? The two different answers would lead either to reject those experiences since their modification, or to reaffirm their validity up to the last moment of their existence, despite their well known limits.
Emotions do not help in giving an answer to this double-faceted set of questions. How can one sincerely reject the well-educated, united, economically and scientifically developed society, created in the Socialist countries and the people’s democracies? How can one negate their support to the liberation and anti-colonialist movements across the world? How can one overlook the contrast to warmongering imperialism? Turning to Italy, how can one negate the positive role, played by the Italian Communist Party and its sections, which nurtured the class consciousness of millions workers, rescued and strengthened their social rights?
On the other hand, we cannot forget that the Socialist society, as well as the Communist parties, a long before Gorbachev and Occhetto (the last ICP’s secretary general, who proclaimed its dissolution in 1991), were infected by a germ we are still studying. As we are Marx’s disciples, endowed with the instrument of historical materialism, we must connect all political and ideological processes to class and production relations, existing in the society. We must pay attention to both primary and secondary relations.
The ideological clash in the USSR.
Opposite to what, normally, is considered as the “historical truth”, at Stalin’s time the political debate in the USSR was far from being inhibited or paralyzed by “terror”. We can perceive this circumstance by reading one of the last works by Stalin, Economic Problems of Socialism in the U.S.S.R., written of 1952, where he criticized some comrades that were expressing different opinions in full freedom. By reading this interesting text, we can understand the economic debate in the USSR, as it was at that time, as well as its further political evolution.
 
The two lines.
During the whole period of socialist construction, two main political lines were confronting, revealing different ideological approaches, especially regarding the economic policy. The first line is represented by the line of thought, from Bucharin to Gorbachev, passing through Khrushchev and Kosygin. Bucharin opposed the accelerated end of the NEP, the priority of heavy industry development and the kolkhoz-based collectivization in rural areas, relaunching the concept of individual farms; Khrushchev, in the aftermath of Stalin’s death, sold machines and tractors’ stations to collective farms; Kosygin (and the economists of the 60’s) confirmed Khrushchev’s reforms; this process went on until the announced disaster of Gorbachev, who legalized the parallel economy, allowing it to finally poison the Soviet society, and canceled the leading role of the Party up to Socialism’s dismantling.
The second line is the one carried out by Stalin until his death, which finds full application in the five-year plans, the countryside collectivization and the constantly growing role of the socialized economy, centrally directed and controlled by the working class at the expense of the market’s influence in the Socialist society.
Here, we want to recall another loyal exponent of this line: Andrey Zhdanov. The year before his untimely death in 1948, he chaired the first Cominform’s meeting, where the ground was laid for the response to the growing threat by imperialism, the condemnation of the Titoist betrayal, the criticism of political opportunism of some western Communist parties (the Italian and French parties among the others), and for the acceleration of Socialist construction in the People’s democracies. Stalin’s point of view stems directly from his last work, Economic problems of Socialism in the USSR (February 1st, 1952), where he draws clearly his own vision about the strengthening of the proletarian dictatorship in the USSR and the relations between socialized production and the market.
Among the goals outlined, there is the following: «In order to ensure an economic bond between town and country, between industry and agriculture, commodity production (exchange through purchase and sale) should be preserved for a certain period, it being the form of economic tie with the town which is alone acceptable to the peasants, and Soviet trade — state, cooperative, and collective-farm — should be developed to the full and the capitalists of all types and descriptions ousted from trading activity».
Stalin, as a dialectical materialist, points out the route that the integral implementation of the proletarian dictatorship must follow during Socialism’s construction: commodities’ production for trade in the goods’ market cannot be immediately abolished. The aim is to decisively remove from trading the capitalist conditions and the control over it. Stalin goes on: «It is said that commodity production must lead, is bound to lead, to capitalism all the same, under all conditions. That is not true. Not always and not under all conditions! Commodity production must not be identified with capitalist production. They are two different things. Capitalist production is the highest form of commodity production. Commodity production leads to capitalism only if there is private ownership of the means of production, if labour power appears in the market as a commodity which can be bought by the capitalist and exploited in the process of production, and if, consequently, the system of exploitation of wageworkers by capitalists exists in the country. Capitalist production begins when the means of production are concentrated in private hands, and when the workers are bereft of means of production and are compelled to sell their labour power as a commodity. Without this there is no such thing as capitalist production.
Consequently, our commodity production is not of the ordinary type, but is a special kind of commodity production, commodity production without capitalists, which is concerned mainly with the goods of associated socialist producers (the state, the collective farms, the cooperatives), the sphere of action of which is confined to items of personal consumption, which obviously cannot possibly develop into capitalist production, and which, together with its “money economy,” is designed to serve the development and consolidation of socialist production».
What Stalin is saying here is that production, not distribution, does determine the real nature of the society. The market existed well before capitalism and could last even under a socialist economy for a certain period, but only if the relations of production are held firmly by the working class and the market is not allowed to generate new forms of capitalist accumulation, that impede Socialism or conflict with it. The various “if”‘s in italic Stalin puts in his discourse to underline the necessary conditions, are real nails in the coffin of capitalism, but they have been torn away one by one after his death.
In the following passage, Stalin approaches the issue of the Law of value. This law states that the commodities’ value entirely lies in the amount of human labor therein, either as previously accumulated labor (dead work) or, as newly incorporated labor through the current productive cycle (living work). Does this law exist and how does it operate under socialism? Stalin answers: «It is sometimes asked whether the law of value exists and operates in our country, under the socialist system. Yes, it does exist and does operate. Wherever commodities and commodity production exist, there the law of value must also exist. In our country, the sphere of operation of the law of value extends, first of all, to commodity circulation, to the exchange of commodities through purchase and sale, the exchange, chiefly, of articles of personal consumption. Here, in this sphere, the law of value preserves, within certain limits, of course, the function of a regulator. But the operation of the law of value is not confined to the sphere of commodity circulation. It also extends to production. True, the law of value has no regulating function in our socialist production, but it nevertheless influences production, and this fact cannot be ignored when directing production. As a matter of fact, consumer goods, which are needed to compensate the labour power expended in the process of production, are produced and realized in our country as commodities coming under the operation of the law of value. It is precisely here that the law of value exercises its influence on production. In this connection, such things as cost accounting and profitableness, production costs, prices, etc., are of actual importance in our enterprises. Consequently, our enterprises cannot, and must not, function without taking the law of value into account.
 
Is this a good thing? It is not a bad thing. Under present conditions, it really is not a bad thing, since it trains our business executives to conduct production on rational lines and disciplines them…. But does this mean that the operation of the law of value has as much scope with us as it has under capitalism, and that it is the regulator of production in our country too? No, it does not. Actually, the
sphere of operation of the law of value under our economic system is strictly limited and placed within definite bounds. It has already been said that the sphere of operation of commodity production is restricted and placed within definite bounds by our system. The same must be said of the sphere of operation of the law of value. Undoubtedly, the fact that private ownership of the means of production does not exist, and that the means of production both in town and country are socialized, cannot but restrict the sphere of operation of the law of value and the extent of its influence on production. In this same direction operates the law of balanced (proportionate) development of the national economy, which has superseded the law of competition and anarchy of production. In this same direction, too, operate our yearly and five-yearly plans and our economic policy generally, which are based on the requirements of the law of balanced development of the national economy. The effect of all this, taken together, is that the sphere of operation of the law of value in our country
is strictly limited, and that the law of value cannot under our system function as the regulator of production. … Value, like the law of value, is a historical category connected with the existence of commodity production. With the disappearance of commodity production, value and its forms and the law of value also disappear. In the second phase of communist society, the amount of labour expended on the production of goods will be measured not in a roundabout way, not through value and its forms, as is the case under commodity production, but directly and immediately – by the amount of time, the number of hours, expended on the production of goods. As to the distribution of labour, its distribution among the branches of production will be regulated not by the law of value, which will have ceased to function by that time, but by the growth of society’s demand for goods. It will be a society in which production will be regulated by the requirements of society, and computation of the requirements of society will acquire paramount importance for the planning bodies.
Totally incorrect, too, is the assertion that under our present economic system, in the first phase of development of Communist society, the law of value regulates the “proportions” of labour distributed among the various branches of production.
If this were true, it would be incomprehensible why our light industries, which are the most profitable, are not being developed to the utmost, and why preference is given to our heavy industries, which are often less profitable, and sometimes altogether unprofitable. If this were true, it would be incomprehensible why a number of our heavy industry plants which are still unprofitable and where the labour of the worker does not yield the “proper returns,” are not closed down, and why new light industry plants, which would certainly be profitable and where the labour of the workers might yield “big returns,” are not opened.
If this were true, it would be incomprehensible why workers are not transferred from plants that are less profitable, but very necessary to our national economy, to plants which are more profitable — in accordance with the law of value, which supposedly regulates the “proportions” of labour distributed among the branches of production. Obviously, if we were to follow the lead of these comrades, we should have to cease giving primacy to the production of means of production in favour of the production of articles of consumption. And what would be the effect of ceasing to give primacy to the production of the means of production? The effect would be to destroy the possibility of the continuous expansion of our national economy, because the national economy cannot be continuously expanded with out giving primacy to the production of means of production.
These comrades forget that the law of value can be a regulator of production only under capitalism, with private ownership of the means of production, and competition, anarchy of production, and crises of overproduction. They forget that in our country the sphere of operation of the law of value is limited by the social ownership of the means of production, and by the law of balanced development of the national economy, and is consequently also limited by our yearly and five-yearly plans, which are an approximate reflection of the requirements of this law. Some comrades draw the conclusion from this that the law of balanced development of the national economy and economic planning annul the principle of profitableness of production. That is quite untrue. It is just the other way round. If profitableness is considered not from the stand-point of individual plants or industries, and not over a period of one year, but from the standpoint of the entire national economy and over a period of, say, ten or fifteen years, which is the only correct approach to the question, then the temporary and unstable profitableness of some plants or industries is beneath all comparison with that higher form of stable and permanent profitableness which we get from the operation of the law of balanced development of the national economy and from economic planning, which save us from periodical economic crises disruptive to the national economy and causing tremendous material damage to society, and which ensure a continuous and high rate of expansion of our national economy.
In brief, there can be no doubt that under our present socialist conditions of production, the law of value cannot be a “regulator of the proportions” of labour distributed among the various branches of production». Why did we report this extensive quotation? Within it, we find the core of the question of the production relations’ regulation in the USSR, lately undermined by the reforms, carried out after Stalin’s death: it was not possible to “revise” the construction of Socialism without bringing into question this point, concerning the essential material basis of Socialist construction. Stalin identifies the role of the law of value in the domain of production rationalization, but he excludes it affects distribution proportions among productive sectors, such as agriculture, heavy and light industry. This proportion can only be fixed in a political way by the Plan, as a goal to be pursued. Can this be realized without taking into consideration technical and economical restrictions and relations within society? Of course, it cannot. I can fix by my will, that I want to reach a certain place by my car: this does not depend on the laws of physics, nevertheless I must take into account the restrictions, imposed by the same laws, like distance, weight, speed, fuel consumption, traffic, etc…
Stalin goes on: «Balanced development of the national economy, and hence, economic planning, which is a more or less faithful reflection of this law, can yield nothing by themselves, if it is not known for what purpose economic development is planned, or if that purpose is not clear. The law of balanced development of the national economy can yield the desired result only if there is a purpose for the sake of which economic development is planned».
In the same text, Stalin had previously stated: «The same must be said of the laws of economic development, the laws of political economy – whether in the period of capitalism or in the period of socialism. Here, too, the laws of economic development, as in the case of natural science, are objective laws, reflecting processes of economic development which take place independently of the will of man. Man may discover these laws, get to know them and, relying upon them, utilize them in the interests of society, impart a different direction to the destructive action of some of the laws, restrict their sphere of action, and allow fuller scope to other laws that are forcing their way to the forefront; but he cannot destroy them or create new economic laws. One of the distinguishing features of political economy is that its laws, unlike those of natural science, are impermanent, that they, or at least the majority of them, operate for a definite historical period, after which they give place to new laws. However, these laws are not abolished, but lose their validity owing to the new economic conditions and depart from the scene in order to give place to new laws, laws which are not created by the will of man, but which arise from the new economic conditions»
Stalin becomes very concrete in answering some comrades. In the first answer, addressed to Alexander Ilic Notkin, he says: «To equate a part of the means of production (raw materials) with the means of production, including the implements of production, is to sin against Marxism, because Marxism considers that the implements of production play a decisive role compared with all other means of production. Everyone knows that, by themselves, raw materials cannot produce implements of production, although certain kinds of raw material are necessary for the production of implements of production, while no raw material can be produced without implements of production. Consequently, it cannot be denied that the law of value does influence the formation of prices of agricultural raw materials, that it is one of the factors in this process. But still less can it be denied that its influence is not, and cannot be, a regulating one».
Here, the eventuality to step back in the construction of Socialism is totally excluded. Socialism here seems to be measured by, not made of, the ratio between socialized economy and the remnants of mercantile economy. The second answer, addressed to L.D. Yaroschenko, is of the greatest importance to understand Stalin’s conception of the relation between subjective factor, the political one, and technical organizational factor: «Comrade Yaroshenko thinks that it is enough to arrange a “rational organization of the productive forces,” and the transition from socialism to communism will take place without any particular difficulty. He considers that this is quite sufficient for the transition to communism. He plainly declares that “under socialism, the basic struggle for the building of a communist society reduces itself to a struggle for the proper organization of the productive forces and their rational utilization in social production.” It is not true, in the second place that the production, i.e., the economic, relation lose their independent role under socialism, that they are absorbed by the productive forces, that social production under socialism is reduced to the organization of the productive forces.
It is necessary, in the second place, by means of gradual transitions carried out to the advantage of the collective farms, and, hence, of all society, to raise collective-farm property to the level of public property, and, also by means of gradual transitions, to replace commodity circulation by a system of products-exchange, under which the central government, or some other social-economic centre, might control the whole product of social production in the interests of society». Here too we can appreciate the two distinctive aspects of Stalin’s thought: primacy of the political will over technical aspects, necessity of a lasting and unceasing guidance towards the limitation of the mercantile area of the production and distribution, in favor of socialized production and distribution.
In the third answer, to A.V. Sanina e V.C. Vensger, Stalin focuses on a technical issue, which will later acquire a great political value during Khrushchev’s reformation period. «Assuming for a moment that we accepted Comrades Sanina’s and Venzher’s proposal and began to sell the basic implements of production, the machine and tractor stations, to the collective farms as their property. What would be the outcome? The outcome would be, first, that the collective farms would become the owners of the basic instruments of production; that is, their status would be an exceptional one, such as is not shared by any other enterprise in our country, for, as we know, even the nationalized enterprises do not own their instruments of production. Can it be said that such a status would facilitate the elevation of collective-farm property to the level of public property, that it would expedite the transition of our society from socialism to communism? The outcome would be, secondly, an extension of the sphere of operation of commodity circulation, because a gigantic quantity of instruments of agricultural production would come within its orbit.

Would it not be truer to say that our advance towards communism would only be retarded by it? Comrades Sanina’s and Venzher’s basic error lies in the fact that they do not understand the role and significance of commodity circulation under socialism; that they do not understand that commodity circulation is incompatible with the prospective transition from socialism to communism.

They evidently think that the transition from socialism to communism is possible even with commodity circulation, that commodity circulation can be no obstacle to this. That is a profound error, arising from an inadequate grasp of Marxism.

What, then, does the collective farm own? Where is the collective-farm property which it disposes of quite freely, at its own discretion? This property of the collective farm is its product, the product of collective farming: grain, meat, butter, vegetables, cotton, sugar beet, flax, etc., not counting the buildings and the personal husbandry of the collective farmers on their household plots. The fact is that a considerable part of this product, the surplus collective-farm output, goes into the market and is thus included in the system of commodity circulation. It is precisely this circumstance which now prevents the elevation of collective-farm property to the level of public property. It is therefore precisely from this end that the work of elevating collective farm property to the level of public property must be tackled. Such a system, by contracting the sphere of operation of commodity circulation, will facilitate the transition from socialism to communism». It is impossible to be clearer.
What happened after Stalin’s death, when Khrushchev’s reforms started? As a first step, machinery and tractors’ stations were sold to Kolchoz. This laid the foundations for the restoration of capitalist accumulation in the USSR. What happened after Khrushchev’s removal from office on October 15th, 1964, when the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet accepted his resignation from the leadership? The policy to withdraw from the full social property of the means of production and the restrictions to mercantile commodity circulation went on. Here we cite an article by the economist E. Liberman, appeared on Novosti, November 9th, 1964. “Stimulated in pursuing high revenues, the enterprise itself will find in its plans the best ratio between quantitative and qualitative indexes. It will become easier, then, to fulfill the basic principle, upon which what is important for society must be important for every single corporation and worker. […] when the necessity of a substantial renovation of the planning system will come to evidence, it will be necessary to elaborate a sole general criterion, free from both corporate concepts and subjective stratification” (Piano e profitto nell’Economica Sovietica, Editori Riuniti, 1965, pp. 163-166).
Under the pretext, that the centralized planning was too “rigorous and inefficient”, a line of lack of principles and exclusive attention to indexes was adopted and liberalism started affecting Soviet economy. Contrary to Stalin’s standpoint, the task was no longer to achieve the fixed goal, but to move in the most “efficient” way, no matter in what direction. Just to refresh the example of the car trip, it’s like if the driver were now following the most rapid route without a precise destination: the only important thing is the lack of traffic or heavy slopes.
The fateful 1953.
The events following Stalin’s death and those before the XXth Congress are actually impressive. Here we list them following a geographical criterion just to highlight the impact they had not only on the USSR, but also on People’s democracies, as well as on the respective Communist and Workers parties, just to give an idea of the earthquake occurred.
 
USSR.
In the immediate aftermath of Stalin’s death, Lavrenti Beria, one of his nearest collaborators, was imprisoned and sentenced to death. Notwithstanding the infamous accusation of being a spy of British imperialism and other charges later invented by Kruschev, Beria had been the leader of Soviet intelligence that put an end to repressions started in 1937, for which Ezhov was the major responsible.
 
Differently from the Moscow trials, which condemned the block of Bucharin, Zinoviev and Kamenev after legal trials, about which we have detailed information, charge proofs against Beria were never provided.
 
Poland
Bolesław Bierut, Komintern’s officer in the USSR (back in Warsaw in 1943), was one of the commanders during the anti-nazi Resistance, and the first President of the People’s Republic of Poland (1947-1952). After the Presidency, he substituted Władysław Gomułka as the Secretary General of the Unified Polish Workers Party and appointed Prime Minister (1952-1954). He died in Moscow, while heading the Party’s delegation to the CPSU XXth Congress. Władisław Gomułka was accused of “nationalist deviationism”, removed from all his offices
(1948-1949), expelled from the Party (1949) and imprisoned (1951). Released in 1954 and rehabilitated in 1956, he was re-elected Secretary General of UPWP and the following year became member of the State Council. He started his own reforms program, based on the idea of a “national way to Socialism”.
 
Hungary.
Mátyás Rákosi was the Secretary General of the Hungarian Communist Party between 1945-1956. He took part in the government held by Béla Kun under the Soviet Hungarian Republic; after its fall, he fled to the USSR, where he became one of the leaders of Comintern. In august 1952, Rákosi was appointed Prime Minister, but on June 13th 1953, he was invited to Moscow and obliged to resign in favor of Imre Nagy. In January 1955 the CPSU Politburo again summoned at the Kremlin all the Hungarian leaders and violently attacked Nagy. However, a few months after the XXth congress, in July 28th 1956, Rákosi was obliged to resign from the Party Secretariat, and to sign a humiliating self-criticism, where he took upon himself the absurd responsibility for the events that will occur shortly later in Hungary.
 
Czechoslovakia.
Klement Gottwald. One of the founders of the Czech Communist Party, Secretary General of the KSČ from 1929 to 1945 and Comintern Secretary from 1935 to 1943. Between 1945 and 1946 he was deputy Prime Minister, then Prime Minister until 1948 and President from 1948 to 1953. Gottwald died in 1953 in Moscow, only five days after Stalin’s funerals, in which he took part, on
March 9th.
 
DDR.
Walter Ulbricht. He has been heading the illegal Communist Party during Nazism, then he fled to Paris and in 1938 moved to Moscow. After the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, Ulbricht was one of the leaders of the Comintern. After Stalin’s death, on March 5th 1953, Ulbricht was charged with cult of personality.
Italy.
Pietro Secchia. One of the undisputed leaders, along with Luigi Longo, of the Italian antifascist Resistance. In December 1947, Secchia traveled to Moscow and had long conversations with Zhdanov and Stalin, being entrusted with forwarding their harshest criticisms about the guidance of the Italian Communist Party, led by Togliatti. This criticism are confirmed by the hard fight Secchia engaged inside the leadership of the ICP.
 
«I do not propose», Secchia said, «to change our line or to adopt two lines, but we must not deceive ourselves, we must be conscious that this fight becomes more and more difficult… We must think about broader, harder and firmer fights, [without excluding the possibility of] being engaged in the near future in a fight different from the legal one, in a violent fight against reactionary groups, keeping in mind that the sole way to achieve victory is to act through broad unitary actions…». He concludes: «Today, the Italian situation, in my opinion, is still favorable for unleashing an offensive, we have forces to do this and, if the enemy will try to block us by violence, we still dispose of such a force potential to break their violence and lead the Italian workers to the final victory».
 
This policy was reported, in Italy, at the VIth Congress of the Italian Communist Party, which took place in Milan on January 4th, 1948. The report is heavily self-critical, «it reflects the criticism from the outside» Secchia contentedly commented, and warning against “constitutional illusions”, he alerted: «We follow a democratic line, but we will not let any provocation, any reactionary plan to take us unprepared. We acquired the experience of the partisan war». In that moment, no need was to add anything more to be clearly understood by those delegates. The new Central Committee, in its first session, elects the Party’s Directing Committee, the Secretary General and the Vice-Secretary. Togliatti and Longo were confirmed again in these positions. Anyway, this decision caused Secchia’s protest and a firm disappointment of the CPSU, to the extent Togliatti was obliged to find an immediate solution. Without even waiting for a new session of the C.C., Togliatti wrote a letter to the CC members, for them to immediately vote Secchia for Deputy Secretary General, along with Longo. Secchia was the Head of the Organization Department of the CC and, under his leadership, the Party reaches its highest political and organizational point, with two million members. “In the history of the Italian movement there never have been such a spontaneous, compact and extended general strike like the one of July 14-16th, 1948», Secchia commented after the attempt against Togliatti. The strike of July 14th had just been the first “great demonstration of unity, of class and national consciousness” and others will come. “The party – Secchia continued -, “has become under the ideological, political and organizational point of view thanks to this strike”. In 1954, the Seniga affair (Seniga was Secchia’s closest assistant, who fled away with the Party’s cash and many important documents) weakened Secchia’s position to the extent that he had to resign from the Organization Department, being excluded from the Secretariat too. Secchia also, like Rakosi, had to sign a humiliating self-criticism which paved the way for the final victory of Togliatti’s line.
 
Criticisms against the USSR.
Criticism against the USSR is not new and comes from the most different sources. Here, we want to briefly report the one by the Trozkyite wing, which broke up with the party a long before 1953, and the one by the Maoist wing, just to clarify the distance between us and them: a sidereal distance from the former, and a considerable one from the latter.
 
The Trozkyite wing.
As it is notorious, Trozky was used to talking of “Degenerated workers’ State”, accusing the bureaucratic “caste” which allegedly came to power after his expulsion. In the following years, Trozky himself had to admit the non-scientific character of the term “caste” and its scarce adherence with Marxist theory, given that it does not describe any kind of production relation. It is like saying that society is founded on theft: it’s a commonplace that does not describe who produces, what produces and why he does that. Coming back to Trozky’s “caste” theory, we find out that it is defined not as a class, but as a generic category of people, identified through sociological and psychological aspects. This theory unveils the personal aversion of its author to the Soviet leading group, who had reduced him to a scant minority, basing on a clear political line.
Trozky’s disciples are more refined and they are well aware of this serious gap. They defined the “caste” as a true class that imposes exploiting production relations on Soviet society, replacing the old bourgeoisie. According to this view, Socialism would have created a new class of appropriators of surplus value, produced by the working class. This interpretation is hardly justifiable from a Marxist point of view. In fact, in the USSR the property of the means of production was not private but public and, consequently, any kind of appropriation by the “caste” would have had the character of mere individual appropriation, not of capitalist class exploitation.
This question does not scrape Trozkyite critics, who solve the problem in the most simple way ever: by inventing new specially-made categories. As property belongs to the Soviet State, thus, we are talking of “State capitalism”, tracing back to Lenin’s definition of a completely different historical period, like the one of the NEP. No matter if there is no production of goods for profit to be realized on the market. The “Caste” is not the capitalist bourgeoisie? It does not matter: they coin the definition of a new class and new production relations, allegedly created by socialism, inventing a new stage, “more” supreme than imperialism. What does really matters for them is to “imitate” some Marxist and Leninist concepts, with no care of their coherence with the rest of the theory.

Titoism belongs to the same category of opponents, who collided with the socialist field in 1948. Here too, arguments stand on a non-scientific level, focused on distribution aspects with no connection to production relations, often resulting in pure tautology (“Capitalist State strengthens capitalism, Socialist State strengthens Socialism”).
All these gaps do not escape to more able Trozkyite thinkers, who are more used to Marxist theory, such as Ernest Mandel. He highlights that some features of capitalism are lacking in the USSR: the law of the maximum profit, that pushes capitalists to invest in the most profitable sectors, does not operate, since the heavy industry is more favored; there are no capital exports, no economic cyclic crises, no private international trade, no reserve army of labor. 
In our opinion, these features have been existing in the USSR more or less until Gorbachev’s reforms. However, Mandel too, at least, is obliged to take shelter in the distribution issue. Obviously, in order to give these ghosts substance, he too was obliged to invoke “the exclusion of proletarians from corporate administration”, “the regime of terror and espionage” and the “soviet expansionism”, up to the most vulgar lies from the dirtiest bourgeois trash. Our duty is to clean away the waste, tossed on real socialism.

The Maoist wing.
The other wing that opposed the USSR after the XXth Congress was the one led by the Chinese Communist Party, headed by Mao Tzetung, and by the Albanian Party of Work, headed by Enver Hoxha.
The controversy came out gradually, about Stalin’s heritage defense and the concept of peaceful coexistence. Actually, the controversy did not patently came out until 1960. A record from the Moscow Conference between the 81 Communist and Workers parties says: «The popular republics of Albania, Hungary, Germany, Viet Nam, China, Korea, Mongolia, Poland, Romania and Czechoslovakia, together with the great Soviet Union, constitute the mighty socialist field» And «The Communist and Workers Parties unanimously declare that the Communist Party of the Soviet Union has been and still is the universally recognized vanguard of the world Communist movement, being the most expert and trained contingent of the international Communist movement … 
The historical resolutions of the XXth CPSU Congress are not only of great importance for the CPSU and for the construction of Communism in the USSR, but they also started a new stage of the worldwide nCommunist movement, promoted and developed on the ground of Marxism-Leninism». The controversy initially mounted in an indirect way, without mentioning parties and leaders, then it became more stinging, by attacking such leaders, as Togliatti in 1962/1963 and Khrushchev in 1964, accusing him of being a revisionist (the Work Party of Albania already did that in 1962). Soviets replied with the counter-charge of breakaway activity.
Later, the controversy turned from ideology to the relationship between states, leading to the breach of diplomatic relations and trade cooperation. We will not mention here the breach between the Workers Party of Albany and the Communist Party of China after Mao’s death and the criticism by Enver Hoxha of the Cultural Revolution in China. We want to focus on some aspects of the Sino-Soviet controversy. From an ideological point of view, the Maoist criticism on the subject of the Soviet system after Stalin could be closer to our criticism of opportunism from Khruschev to Gorbachev, but the mode it took since the second half of the ’60s is unacceptable.
First, the charge of the USSR with “social-imperialism” does not have any Marxist scientific basis. In the USSR, until 1988, if a primitive capitalist accumulation existed, it was far from being dominant and, in any case, from the five features identifying imperialism, according to Lenin. The “Hoxhaist” version, according to which Kruschev wanted to impose on Albanians the construction of Socialism without the working class, by placing Albania in a given sector of the division of labor and cooperation within the Socialist area, reports a typical opportunist attitude, lacking in ideology, that focuses on the result without considering who, for whom, why and how that result should be achieved. This kind of argument in any case cannot define the USSR as an imperialist power.
In the 70’s the Maoist-Hoxhaist wing charged the Soviet leading group with the accusation of having turned the country of Socialism into a fascist one, dominated by a a bureaucratic-militarist “caste”. The absurdity of this charge is evident and it is not necessary to waste time in objecting that even basic prerequisites, supporting this thesis, do not exist in the real world. At the end of Mao’s life, Chinese policy became more and more embarrassing. This circumstance became evident not only with the rupture with the Socialist field, that such leaders as Kim Il Sung and Ceausescu tried to prevent, but also later, with the “thawing” towards the USA. Until that point, the Chinese Communist Party was accusing the USSR of being too submissive to imperialism. After the growth of the controversy, the USSR became the “main enemy”, considered more “aggressive” than the USA, that were supposed to be in a defensive position. Among the other consequences, this deviation led China to undermine the support to anti-colonial movements, as it happened in Angola. The crisis of relations with the USSR resulted also in a territorial dispute along the Siberian
border.

Our analysis.
In the following lines, we propose our own arguments about the reason of socialism’s fall in the USSR and the People’s democracies. The analysis starts from an economic examination of the evolution (or involution) of society, with the creation of a parallel economy out of public control, which allowed capital re-accumulation and the re-organization of a reborn bourgeoisie in antisocialist
political groups.
These groups, skillfully supported by western imperialism, initially infiltrated the Party, undermining its authority and prestige, then led it to a substantial incapacity of ruling society. How could those people and those ideas rise and make their way in the Party and Soviet society?
In our opinion, the answer is the following:
– In Socialist society interests, opposing the full enforcement of the proletarian dictatorship, continue to exist. We are not talking of the big agrarian and industrial bourgeoisie, which was eliminated, but small dealers and businessmen, who find the possibility to realize an original wealth accumulation, which cannot be defined as a capitalistic one yet;
– these groups, small but powerful and wealthy, find are connected to the “economicistic” wing of the Party. This wing is not Marxist-based, it lacks in principles and prioritizes results rather than values, the amount of road traveled rather than the direction taken. It is basically wanting to get out from the working class dictatorship;
– these two groups, supporting each other, manage to become prominent in the party and society; the shell formally remains unaltered, as well as the apparent features of the society. Step by step, both the parallel economy and the parallel ideology find their way. If, to a certain extent, the parallel economy was able to fill eventual gaps of the centrally planned economy, slowly it turned into the cause of these gaps: robbery and embezzlement grow, and neither a party that is losing ideological principles, nor a state that lost its class characteristics, being declared “state of the whole people”, can fight this drift;
– at a certain moment the break occurs: economic groups became so strong and powerful that they bring into question even the existence of such a super-structural crust, as the Communist Party, which is no longer needed to cover their parallel activities. The Party, where a confrontation between the Marxist-Leninist part and the opportunists is going on, became an obstacle to their goals;
– the prevalence of opportunists in the leading group of the CPSU discredited the Party in front of the working class and the people, while the delay of reaction and the lack in mobilization capacity by the revolutionary forces remaining in the Party brought to its selfdissolution by means of the betrayal of the group, headed by its Secretary General, supported by the imperialist circles;
– at this point, the way was paved for the destruction of Socialism and the restoration of capitalism in Russia and the other republics of the USSR. The biggest assault in history to the people’s wealth began. 
Summarizing, in our opinion, a dominant “caste” never existed: the cases of robbery and embezzlement did not alter the class nature of society until they gave birth to a parallel system of “black” economy.
The crisis and the degenerative process were generated outside the Communist Party, but were carried into it, due to a lack in surveillance and alertness, especially from the ideological point of view: this is a typical feature of opportunism. The economic structure of the Soviet system remained mainly socialist until the reforms by Gorbachev, even if the causes of its own fall were growing inside it.
 
Conclusions
We hardly can definitely draw some conclusions, even if temporary, because the issues herein deserve the most accurate study in order to synthesize various experiences in different countries. Nonetheless, avoiding to answer the question highlighted in this work, is an obstacle to the ideological relaunch of the international Communist movement. These answers should give new oxygen and new lymph to the Communists’ struggle allover the world.

We have a great theory behind us, Marxism-Leninism, and a great history also: the history of the USSR and the Socialist countries.

Finally, we have a great task too: to change the world.
Spain: PCPE continues the struggle under Secretary General Ástor Garcia

Thursday, June 1, 2017

Spain: PCPE continues the struggle under Secretary General Ástor Garcia

https://communismgr.blogspot.com/2017/06/spain-pcpe-continues-struggle-under.html
KKE’s PB member Giorgios Marinos during
his speech (Source: PCPE Twitter).
Info: Rizospastis / Translation: In Defense of Communism.
On Saturday 20th May the PCPE (Partido Comunista de los Pueblos de Espana) organised in Madrid an internationalist anti-imperialist political event under the title “No water, no soil, no air to the imperialists”. The major speaker was the Secretary General of the CC of PCPE Astor Garcia, while a greeting message was also delivered by  Marina Gómez, Sec. General of the Collectives of Young Communists.
Representatives of the Communist Parties of Italy (Partito Comunista) and Turkey (TKP) attended the event while the Secretary General of the Communist Party of Mexico Pavel Cabrera sent a recorded greeting message. The KKE was represented by the member of the Political Bureau of the CC Giorgos Marinos and Lefteris Nikolaou.
In his speech, Giorgos Marinos reiterated the KKE’s solidarity and fraternal relations with the PCPE under the leadership of Astor Garcia. More specifically he said:
“Our Party corresponds with responsibility to your invitation and with its participation stresses that the KKE continues the close, internationalist relations with the Communist Party of the Peoples of Spain that we knew and fought together all these years, the PCPE with its new leadership, the General Secretary and comrade Astor Garcia, while as it is known, the Communist Youth of Greece continues to have fraternal relations with the Collectives of Youth Communists and the General Secretary of the CC comrade Marina Gómez.
The KKE, steadily, based on principles, corresponded many times to the invitations and visited Spain, developed common actions with your Party Organisations and the events of the Collectives, participated in activities within the labor movement, in labor places (and) helped in electoral battles”.
Giorgos Marinos referred also to the slanderous attack against the KKE by the Carmelo Suarez-Julio Diaz group, which emerged after the split in the PCPE. More specifically, the KKE Politburo member said among other things: “The facts themselves prove that the slanderous attacks organised by the Carmelo Suarez-Julio Diaz group against the KKE and the CP of Mexico, which struggle alongside PCPE for many years, have no trace of truth, they are intentional attacks that show this group’s mutation”.
Furthermore, cde. Marinos stressed the danger that positions which promote the so-called ideologies of “21st century Socialism” or “Market Socialism” pose for the international communist movement. He pointed out that “We fight against the difficulties from a position of principles, based on the communist ideology and politics, with a line of rupture and overthrow and not with incorporation in the system and search for managment choices”.
In his intervention, Giorgos Marinos also talked about the need for struggle against imperialist wars, for the disengagement of the countries from the imperialist alliances with the people in power.
Internationalist event on May 7 in Berlin: 72 years after the Great Antifascist Victory of the Peoples

Saturday, May 6, 2017

Internationalist event on May 7 in Berlin: 72 years after the Great Antifascist Victory of the Peoples

https://communismgr.blogspot.com/2017/05/internationalist-event-on-may-7-in.html
An important internationalist event is being organized by the European Communist Initiative in Berlin on Sunday 7/5, with as its theme:
«May 9, 72 years after the Great Antifascist Victory of the Peoples: We are inspired and continue the struggle against the distortion of history by the EU-capital. For the overthrow of the system that creates crises, wars, fascism.”
The event is supported by the Party Organization of the KKE in Germany and Party Organization of the CP of Turkey in Germany. The programme of the event will include interventions from the representatives of the CPs that participate in the “Initiative” and a concert with songs of the Red Army and other revolutionary songs.
The 15 Parties that have declared their participation are:
Communist Revolutionary Party of France
Pole of Communist Revival in France
Communist Party of Greece
Workers’ Party of Ireland
Communist Party, Italy
Communist Party of the Peoples of Spain
Socialist Workers Party of Croatia
Belarusian Communist Party of Workers-Section of the CPSU
Communist Party of Norway
Hungarian Workers’ Party
Communist Party of Poland
Russian Communist Workers’ Party
Communist Party of Sweden
Communist Party of Turkey


A representative of the German CP will also attend the event.
The representatives of the parties of the European Communist Initiative will visit and lay a wreath at the Soviet War Memorial in Treptower Park, where thousands of soldiers of the Red Army who gave their lives in the tough battle to capture Berlin in April and May of 1945 are buried. The imposing statue of the Soviet Soldier is at the centre of the memorial.
The Secretariat of the European Communist Initiative in its statement-invitation for the events being organized in Berlin and in reference to the importance of the Great Antifascist Victory of the Peoples notes the following:
“On the 1st of May 1945, the red flag with the hammer and sickle, the flag of the Soviet Union, flew over the Reichstag. On the 9th of May, fascist Germany surrendered unconditionally. The victory was sealed in this way against the fascist imperialist bloc. The Red Army, the USSR played a decisive role in crushing it, with enormous losses and sacrifices for the liberation of the peoples.
The EU, the bourgeois classes in every country are attempting to delete this historical truth. They are seeking to rewrite history so that the lessons are erased which can today strengthen the struggle of the peoples. They are falsifying the history of the events of this period and are continuing the efforts to name the 9th of May as the “Day of Europe”, provocatively equating communism with the fascist monster. At the same time, the EU on the 6th of May will open the so-called “European House of History” in Brussels with the aim of making the historical falsification systematic, which has been poisoning working class and popular consciousness for a long time, targeting the youth in particular.
In the face of all this, we, the European Communist Initiative, are inspired and continue the struggle against the historical distortions of the EU-capital. For the overthrow of the rotten capitalist system that gives rise to crises, wars, fascism.”
INTERNATIONAL COMMUNIST BULLETIN #5

Thursday, April 13, 2017

INTERNATIONAL COMMUNIST BULLETIN #5

13 APRIL 2017.
 
CP OF UKRAINE: 
PERSECUTION OF COMMUNISTS IN UKRAINE IS ONGOING.
Source: Solidnet.org.
KIEV- Lysychansk City Court of Lugansk region considered criminal case on charges of Communists Tsymbal and Ryzhevol under Part 2 of Art. 110 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine and sentenced to 3 years in prison each. This sentenced term of improsinment is calculated from 29.09.2015- from the moment of their actual detention. And the term of detention from 29.09.2015 to 21.03.2017 is calculated at the rate of one day of detention for two days in prison bazing on the Criminal Code of Ukraine, credited in the term of punishment imposed by this sentence,
Using abovementioned rate time of imprisonment of Comrades Tsymbal and Ryzhevol is ended. But they are still imprisoned. So, they are now serving sentences longer than the defined by the sentence, which is unacceptable, so deprived of their liberty unlawfully.
At this time of three years term of the sentence is ended even without crediting one day of detention for two days in prison.
Nevertheless, complaint of our lawyers was rejected by the court. This extra imprisonment is contrary not only the legislation of Ukraine but to the European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms and jurisprudence of the European Court for human Rights (see “Bozano v. France” of December 18, 1986, p. 60, “Khodorkovskiy v. Russia” number 5829/04 , p. 142, of May 31, 2011, “Khayredinov v. Ukraine” number 38717/04, para. 27-28, of October 14, 2010 etc.)
According to Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights everyone has the right to a fair and public hearing within a reasonable time by an independent and impartial tribunal established by law decide its determination of his civil rights and obligations or of any against him criminal prosecution.
Currently, there is pure reason to believe that the detention of comrades Ryzhevol and Cymbal is arbitrary and consists a violation of Art. 5 of the European Convention on Human Rights.
Communist Party of Ukraine, Central Committee
Department for the International Relations.
* * * 
ITALIAN COMMUNISTS PROTESTED AGAINST THE IMPERIALIST WAR IN SYRIA.
ROME- In front of the capital’s best known landmark- the Colosseum- members from the Communist Party and the Front of the Communist Youth (FGC) demonstrated against the imperialist military aggression against Syria. The purpose of the demonstration was to show that in Italy there is another response to the war- different from the one of Gentiloni’s government (which has already declared its support to the US military intervention).
In its message, the Communist Party of Italy points out that this anti-imperialist stance must reach the working people and the youth of the country’s popular strata who have nothing to benefit from this war. This is a war pursued by the multinationals, the big monopolies from the energy sector.
* * * 
KKE: SOLIDARITY TO THE COMMUNISTS OF VENEZUELA – MEETING WITH THE VENEZUELAN AMBASSADOR IN GREECE.
Source: 902.gr.
ATHENS- On Tuesday morning, a delegation of the KKE comprised by the member of the CC and MEP Kostas Papadakis and the member of the Central Committee’s International Department Nikos Seretakis, visited the Embassy of Venezuela and met with Ambassador Farid Fernandez. The purpose of the visit was to protest against the efforts of the National Electoral Council of Venezuela to ban the Communist Party of the country.
The KKE cadres underlined that it is unacceptable to use a law passed during the period of a police-state and anticommunist regime in order to prohibit the activity of the communists. They pointed out that this attempt against the CP of Venezuela (PCV) is taking place at a time when the deadlocks of the capitalist way of development in Venezuela are being manifested and the threats against the people and the popular movement are sharpening. The government of the country and the political forces which support or tolerate this attack bear big responsibilities, said the KKE members.
The Ambassador pledged to deliver the KKE protest to his government.
* * *
DPRK: THE KOREAN PEOPLE’S ARMY (KPA) BLASTS U.S. DOUBLE STANDARDS.
Source: KCNA.
PYONGYANG- A spokesman for the General Staff of the Korean People’s Army (KPA) answered the question put by KCNA on April 10 as regards the fact that the U.S. is pulling up the KPA over its measures for self-defence while shamelessly conniving at the provocative actions of its stooges.
Noting that the U.S., accustomed to groundlessly taking issue with the DPRK, went reckless in its anti-DPRK campaign even in the UN arena with riff-raffs involved, describing each military drill of the KPA as a “serious provocation” and “threat”, the spokesman said:
This reckless action of the U.S. hell-bent on the hostile policy toward the DPRK is not something new and surprising.
However, the double-dealing approach taken by the U.S. towards the provocative actions of its stooges against the DPRK can never be overlooked.
The south Korean puppet forces are now claiming that “they could strike the whole of the north” and that “they would deploy ballistic missile Hyonmu-2 with the firing range of 800km for an actual battle within this year” but the U.S. keeps mum about it as we expected.
This is a brazen-faced stance quite different from its reaction to the routine rocket firing exercise of the KPA.
Crystal clear is the reason why the U.S. is resorting to such mean gimmick. The U.S. seeks to stifle the DPRK by force at any cost, even discarding any decency and impartiality.
It shows the true colors of the U.S. styling itself the world’s “judge”.
Emboldened by their master’s unfair double standards and double-dealing attitude of making profound confusion of right and wrong, the south Korean puppet warmongers and the Japanese reactionaries, are now going reckless, not afraid of any punishment from the Heaven.
The U.S. should ponder over the serious consequences to be entailed by its self-righteous and unilateral actions against the DPRK.
The south Korean warmongers and the Japanese reactionaries had better stop behaving foolishly.
The brigandish double standards of the U.S. can never be pardoned.
* * *
 
THE 55TH ANNIVERSARY OF CUBA’S YOUNG COMMUNIST LEAGUE (UJC).
Source: Granma.
HAVANA- The Young Communist League (UJC), founded on April 4, 1962, has seen its membership increase. The organization currently has 300,752 affiliates and over 33,000 grassroots committees. It continues to respond to today’s challenges by calling for increased participation in its aim to represent all Cuban youth
As part of activities to mark the 55th anniversary of the Young Communist League (UJC) this April 4, schools across the country held special assemblies, while membership cards were presented to new affiliates of the organization and outstanding students and young workers were also recognized.
Speaking during a press conference in Havana held prior to celebrations, Susely Morfa González, first secretary of the UJC National Committee, stated that “Every activity will have the color, joy and optimism which have characterized this organization for over half a century.”
Fifty five years after its founding, the UJC is proud to be composed of the vanguard of Cuba’s youth, and of the work it continues to do in support of children across the island.
The organization, created on April 4, 1962, has 300,752 members and more than 33,000 grassroots committees. Not only has the UJC’s membership increased, but the organization has made and continues to make concerted efforts to listen and respond to proposals by young people across all sectors.
“Despite the high figures, we want to keep adding more young people and ideas. What is more, we continue to strengthen the organization and its political processes, encouraging and motivating new generations to learn more about Cuba’s history in a more inclusive, humane and creative way,” stated Morfa.
Throughout its existence the UJC has worked to foster the value of making a useful contribution to society in Cuban youth. “There are those who question whether younger generations are conscious of their social role. I believe that they are,” noted the organization’s first secretary, who is also a member of the Communist Party of Cuba Central Committee.
Of the almost three million young Cubans living on the island, “I dare say that the immense majority are revolutionary,” Morfa added.
Many continually put their intellect and interests toward supporting the development of Cuban society something which “the organization attests to on a daily basis, every time we interact with them. There is broad representation of young people across all sectors of our economy, from where they contribute to our country’s development.”
One example, she noted, is the sugarcane sector, where young people represent 65% of the workforce. Similar levels of participation can be found in spheres such as public health and agriculture. “We recently met with young tobacco growers in Pinar del Río, whose efforts not only contribute to boosting the economy, but also preserving a tradition,” stated the first secretary.
Over the last 55 years, the UJC has also been consolidating the way in which institutions and ministries respond to the needs of the island’s youth, who are represented and participate on governing boards and commissions responsible for making decisions which will impact the new generations.
SUPPORTING YOUNG WORKERS
Susely Morfa described as exemplary the relationship between the UJC and National Association of Small Farmers, where the organization has over 8,000 members, as well as its efforts to protect and motivate young Cubans once they enter the workplace, whether it be in the state or private sector.
In 2016, the UJC organized various activities with young non-state sector workers, “where we saw many positive results, shared, exchanged, and listened to these young people. We were accompanied by representatives from the Party, government and relevant institutions in order to respond to queries by those starting out in this form of management,” she added.
This year the UJC has proposed “to continue supporting them (young private sector workers) to combat illegalities, fortify our patriotic symbols, explain to them their rights in this sector, and which ministries and organizations to approach with their queries.”
Among its priorities, the UJC is also proposing to intensify work with secretary generals of grassroots committees. “We cannot forget that although we are an organization that represents the youth, we are also a political organization, home to the vanguard. Therefore, we must continue to strengthen the functioning of our grassroots committees and to encourage youths to take on leadership roles.”
As long as young leaders love the organization, and search for something to do to improve their surroundings every day, consolidate the UJC’s ideological work, and bring together more ideas to continue building the Revolution, members and youths will want to be like them, and will accompany them in this integrationist work, commented the first secretary.
INCREASING PARTICIPATION
The UJC will continue promoting historic tours, summer camps, workshops, and forum-debates, among other important activities for Cuban youth, where they will also have the opportunity to learn more about the island’s history and culture.
“We are working with the Ministry of Culture so that our youth can enjoy recreational offers which feature both our best values and are affordable,” she added.
Cuba’s youth is the continuation of the generation that founded the Revolution, not its substitute, stated Susely, who went on to note that the new generations, strongly committed to the legacy of historic leader Comandante en Jefe Fidel Castro, and the support of the Communist Party of Cuba, will continue to defend socialism and participate in the economic and social transformations that the country needs.
“Those of us who wish to defend, transform, create and preserve everything that has been achieved over these last 55 years will always be with the UJC. Our aim is to increase participation in order to be an organization for all, so that every young person feels a greater attachment to it,” she concluded.