Tuesday, August 8, 2017

V.I. Lenin writes about Engels: “A great fighter and teacher of the proletariat!”

https://communismgr.blogspot.com/2017/08/vi-lenin-writes-about-engels-great.html

“Frederich Engels”

By Vladimir Ilyich Lenin.

Written in autumn 1895, First published in 1896 in the miscellany Rabotnik, No. 1-2.

Source: V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, 4th English Edition, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1972 via Marxists Internet Archives.

What a torch of reason ceased to burn, 

What a heart has ceased to beat!

On August 5 (new style), 1895, Frederick Engels died in London. After his friend Karl Marx (who died in 1883), Engels was the finest scholar and teacher of the modern proletariat in the whole civilised world. From the time that fate brought Karl Marx and Frederick Engels together, the two friends devoted their life’s work to a common cause. And so to understand what Frederick Engels has done for the proletariat, one must have a clear idea of the significance of Marx’s teaching and work for the development of the contemporary working-class movement. 

Marx and Engels were the first to show that the working class and its demands are a necessary outcome of the present economic system, which together with the bourgeoisie inevitably creates and organises the proletariat. They showed that it is not the well-meaning efforts of noble-minded individuals, but the class struggle of the organised proletariat that will deliver humanity from the evils which now oppress it. In their scientific works, Marx and Engels were the first to explain that socialism is not the invention of dreamers, but the final aim and necessary result of the development of the productive forces in modern society. All recorded history hitherto has been a history of class struggle, of the succession of the rule and victory of certain social classes over others. And this will continue until the foundations of class struggle and of class domination – private property and anarchic social production – disappear. The interests of the proletariat demand the destruction of these foundations, and therefore the conscious class struggle of the organised workers must be directed against them. And every class struggle is a political struggle.

 

These views of Marx and Engels have now been adopted by all proletarians who are fighting for their emancipation. But when in the forties the two friends took part in the socialist literature and the social movements of their time, they were absolutely novel. There were then many people, talented and without talent, honest and dishonest, who, absorbed in the struggle for political freedom, in the struggle against the despotism of kings, police and priests, failed to observe the antagonism between the interests of the bourgeoisie and those of the proletariat. These people would not entertain the idea of the workers acting as an independent social force. On the other hand, there were many dreamers, some of them geniuses, who thought that it was only necessary to convince the rulers and the governing classes of the injustice of the contemporary social order, and it would then be easy to establish peace and general well-being on earth. They dreamt of a socialism without struggle. Lastly, nearly all the socialists of that time and the friends of the working class generally regarded the proletariat only as an ulcer, and observed with horror how it grew with the growth of industry. They all, therefore, sought for a means to stop the development of industry and of the proletariat, to stop the “wheel of history.” Marx and Engels did not share the general fear of the development of the proletariat; on the contrary, they placed all their hopes on its continued growth. The more proletarians there are, the greater is their strength as a revolutionary class, and the nearer and more possible does socialism become. The services rendered by Marx and Engels to the working class may be expressed in a few words thus: they taught the working class to know itself and be conscious of itself, and they substituted science for dreams.

 

That is why the name and life of Engels should be known to every worker. That is why in this collection of articles, the aim of which, as of all our publications, is to awaken class-consciousness in the Russian workers, we must give a sketch of the life and work of Frederick Engels, one of the two great teachers of the modern proletariat.

 

Engels was born in 1820 in Barmen, in the Rhine Province of the kingdom of Prussia. His father was a manufacturer. In 1838 Engels, without having completed his high-school studies, was forced by family circumstances to enter a commercial house in Bremen as a clerk. Commercial affairs did not prevent Engels from pursuing his scientific and political education. He had come to hate autocracy and the tyranny of bureaucrats while still at high school. The study of philosophy led him further. At that time Hegel’s teaching dominated German philosophy, and Engels became his follower. Although Hegel himself was an admirer of the autocratic Prussian state, in whose service he was as a professor at Berlin University, Hegel’s teachings were revolutionary. Hegel’s faith in human reason and its rights, and the fundamental thesis of Hegelian philosophy that the universe is undergoing a constant process of change and development, led some of the disciples of the Berlin philosopher – those who refused to accept the existing situation – to the idea that the struggle against this situation, the struggle against existing wrong and prevalent evil, is also rooted in the universal law of eternal development. If all things develop, if institutions of one kind give place to others, why should the autocracy of the Prussian king or of the Russian tsar, the enrichment of an insignificant minority at the expense of the vast majority, or the domination of the bourgeoisie over the people, continue for ever? Hegel’s philosophy spoke of the development of the mind and of ideas; it was idealistic. From the development of the mind it deduced the development of nature, of man, and of human, social relations. While retaining Hegel’s idea of the eternal process of development,[1] Marx and Engels rejected the preconceived idealist view; turning to life, they saw that it is not the development of mind that explains the development of nature but that, on the contrary, the explanation of mind must be derived from nature, from matter…. Unlike Hegel and the other Hegelians, Marx and Engels were materialists. Regarding the world and humanity materialistically, they perceived that just as material causes underlie all natural phenomena, so the development of human society is conditioned by the development of material forces, the productive forces. On the development of the productive forces depend the relations into which men enter with one another in the production of the things required for the satisfaction of human needs. And in these relations lies the explanation of all the phenomena of social life, human aspirations, ideas and laws. The development of the productive forces creates social relations based upon private property, but now we see that this same development of the productive forces deprives the majority of their property and concentrates it in the hands of an insignificant minority. It abolishes property, the basis of the modern social order, it itself strives towards the very aim which the socialists have set themselves. All the socialists have to do is to realise which social force, owing to its position in modern society, is interested in bringing socialism about, and to impart to this force the consciousness of its interests and of its historical task. This force is the proletariat. Engels got to know the proletariat in England, in the centre of English industry, Manchester, where he settled in 1842, entering the service of a commercial firm of which his father was a shareholder. Here Engels not only sat in the factory office but wandered about the slums in which the workers were cooped up, and saw their poverty and misery with his own eyes. But he did not confine himself to personal observations. He read all that had been revealed before him about the condition of the British working class and carefully studied all the official documents he could lay his hands on. The fruit of these studies and observations was the book which appeared in 1845: The Condition of the Working Class in England. We have already mentioned what was the chief service rendered by Engels in writing The Condition of the Working Class in England. Even before Engels, many people had described the sufferings of the proletariat and had pointed to the necessity of helping it. Engels was the first to say that the proletariat is not only a suffering class; that it is, in fact, the disgraceful economic condition of the proletariat that drives it irresistibly forward and compels it to fight for its ultimate emancipation. And the fighting proletariat will help itself. The political movement of the working class will inevitably lead the workers to realise that their only salvation lies in socialism. On the other hand, socialism will become a force only when it becomes the aim of the political struggle of the working class. Such are the main ideas of Engels’ book on the condition of the working class in England, ideas which have now been adopted by all thinking and fighting proletarians, but which at that time were entirely new. These ideas were set out in a book written in absorbing style and filled with most authentic and shocking pictures of the misery of the English proletariat. The book was a terrible indictment of capitalism and the bourgeoisie and created a profound impression. Engels’ book began to be quoted everywhere as presenting the best picture of the condition of the modern proletariat. And, in fact, neither before 1845 nor after has there appeared so striking and truthful a picture of the misery of the working class.

 

It was not until he came to England that Engels became a socialist. In Manchester he established contacts with people active in the English labour movement at the time and began to write for English socialist publications. In 1844, while on his way back to Germany, he became acquainted in Paris with Marx, with whom he had already started to correspond. In Paris, under the influence of the French socialists and French life, Marx had also become a socialist. Here the friends jointly wrote a book entitled The Holy Family, or Critique of Critical Critique. This book, which appeared a year before The Condition of the Working Class in England, and the greater part of which was written by Marx, contains the foundations of revolutionary materialist socialism, the main ideas of which we have expounded above. “The holy family” is a facetious nickname for the Bauer brothers, the philosophers, and their followers. These gentlemen preached a criticism which stood above all reality, above parties and politics, which rejected all practical activity, and which only “critically” contemplated the surrounding world and the events going on within it. These gentlemen, the Bauers, looked down on the proletariat as an uncritical mass. Marx and Engels vigorously opposed this absurd and harmful tendency. In the name of a real, human person – the worker, trampled down by the ruling classes and the state – they demanded, not contemplation, but a struggle for a better order of society. They, of course, regarded the proletariat as the force that is capable of waging this struggle and that is interested in it. Even before   the appearance of The Holy Family, Engels had published in Marx’s and Ruge’s Deutsch-Franz\”osische Jahrb\”ucher[5] his “Critical Essays on Political Economy,”^[6] in which he examined the principal phenomena of the contemporary economic order from a socialist standpoint, regarding them as necessary consequences of the rule of private property. Contact with Engels was undoubtedly a factor in Marx’s decision to study political economy, the science in which his works have produced a veritable revolution.

 

From 1845 to 1847 Engels lived in Brussels and Paris, combining scientific work with practical activities among the German workers in Brussels and Paris. Here Marx and Engels established contact with the secret German Communist League,^[7] which commissioned them to expound the main principles of the socialism they had worked out. Thus arose the famous Manifesto of the Communist Party of Marx and Engels, published in 1848. This little booklet is worth whole volumes: to this day its spirit inspires and guides the entire organised and fighting proletariat of the civilised world.

 

The revolution of 1848, which broke out first in France and then spread to other West-European countries, brought Marx and Engels back to their native country. Here, in Rhenish Prussia, they took charge of the democratic Neue Rheinische Zeitung^[8] published in Cologne. The two friends were the heart and soul of all revolutionary-democratic aspirations in Rhenish Prussia. They fought to the last ditch in defence of freedom and of the interests of the people against the forces of reaction. The latter, as we know, gained the upper hand. The Neue Rheinische Zeitung was suppressed. Marx, who during his exile had lost his Prussian citizenship, was deported; Engels took part in the armed popular uprising, fought for liberty in three battles, and after the defeat of the rebels fled, via Switzerland, to London.

 

Marx also settled in London. Engels soon became a clerk again, and then a shareholder, in the Manchester commercial firm in which he had worked in the forties. Until 1870 he lived in Manchester, while Marx lived in London, but this did not prevent their maintaining a most lively interchange of ideas: they corresponded almost daily. In this correspondence   the two friends exchanged views and discoveries and continued to collaborate in working out scientific socialism. In 1870 Engels moved to London, and their joint intellectual life, of the most strenuous nature, continued until 1883, when Marx died. Its fruit was, on Marx’s side, Capital, the greatest work on political economy of our age, and on Engels’ side, a number of works both large and small. Marx worked on the analysis of the complex phenomena of capitalist economy. Engels, in simply written works, often of a polemical character, dealt with more general scientific problems and with diverse phenomena of the past and present in the spirit of the materialist conception of history and Marx’s economic theory. Of Engels’ works we shall mention: the polemical work against D\”uhring (analysing highly important problems in the domain of philosophy, natural science and the social sciences),[2] The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State (translated into Russian, published in St. Petersburg, 3rd ea., 1895),^[9] Ludwig Feuerbach (Russian translation and notes by G. Plekhanov, Geneva, 1892),^[10] an article on the foreign policy of the Russian Government (translated into Russian in the Geneva Social-Demokrat, Nos. 1 and 2),^[11]splendid articles on the housing question,^[12] and finally, two small but very valuable articles on Russia’s economic development (Frederick Engels on Russia, translated into Russian by Zasulich, Geneva, 1894).^[13] Marx died before he could put the final touches to his vast work on capital. The draft, however, was already finished, and after the death of his friend, Engels undertook the onerous task of preparing and publishing the second and the third volumes of Capital. He published Volume II in 1885 and Volume III in 1894 (his death prevented the preparation of Volume IV).^[14] These two volumes entailed a vast amount of labour. Adler, the Austrian Social-Democrat, has rightly remarked that by publishing volumes II and III of Capital Engels erected a majestic monument to the genius who had been his friend, a monument on which, without intending it, he indelibly carved his own name. Indeed   these two volumes of Capital are the work of two men: Marx and Engels. Old legends contain various moving instances of friendship. The European proletariat may say that its science was created by two scholars and fighters, whose relationship to each other surpasses the most moving stories of the ancients about human friendship. Engels always – and, on the whole, quite justly – placed himself after Marx. “In Marx’s lifetime,” he wrote to an old friend, “I played second fiddle.”[15]His love for the living Marx, and his reverence for the memory of the dead Marx were boundless. This stern fighter and austere thinker possessed a deeply loving soul.

 

After the movement of 1848-49, Marx and Engels in exile did not confine themselves to scientific research. In 1864 Marx founded the International Working Men’s Association,^[16] and led this society for a whole decade. Engels also took an active part in its affairs. The work of the International Association, which, in accordance with Marx’s idea, united proletarians of all countries, was of tremendous significance in the development of the working-class movement. But even with the closing down of the International Association in the seventies, the unifying role of Marx and Engels did not cease. On the contrary, it may be said that their importance as the spiritual leaders of the working-class movement grew continuously, because the movement itself grew uninterruptedly. After the death of Marx, Engels continued alone as the counsellor and leader of the European socialists. His advice and directions were sought for equally by the German socialists, whose strength, despite government persecution, grew rapidly and steadily, and by representatives of backward countries, such as the Spaniards, Rumanians and Russians, who were obliged to ponder and weigh their first steps. They all drew on the rich store of knowledge and experience of Engels in his old age.

 

Marx and Engels, who both knew Russian and read Russian books, took a lively interest in the country, followed the Russian revolutionary movement with sympathy and maintained contact with Russian revolutionaries. They both became socialists after being democrats, and the democratic feeling of hatred for political despotism was exceedingly strong in them. This direct political feeling, combined   with a profound theoretical understanding of the connection between political despotism and economic oppression, and also their rich experience of life, made Marx and Engels uncommonly responsive politically. That is why the heroic struggle of the handful of Russian revolutionaries against the mighty tsarist government evoked a most sympathetic echo in the hearts of these tried revolutionaries. On the other hand, the tendency, for the sake of illusory economic advantages, to turn away from the most immediate and important task of the Russian socialists, namely, the winning of political freedom, naturally appeared suspicious to them and was even regarded by them as a direct betrayal of the great cause of the social revolution. “The emancipation of the workers must be the act of the working class itself” – Marx and Engels constantly taught.[17] But in order to fight for its economic emancipation, the proletariat must win itself certain political rights. Moreover, Marx and Engels clearly saw that a political revolution in Russia would be of tremendous significance to the West-European working-class movement as well. Autocratic Russia had always been a bulwark of European reaction in general. The extraordinarily favourable international position enjoyed by Russia as a result of the war of 1870, which for a long time sowed discord between Germany and France, of course only enhanced the importance of autocratic Russia as a reactionary force. Only a free Russia, a Russia that had no need either to oppress the Poles, Finns, Germans, Armenians or any other small nations, or constantly to set France and Germany at loggerheads, would enable modern Europe, rid of the burden of war, to breathe freely, would weaken all the reactionary elements in Europe and strengthen the European working class. That was why Engels ardently desired the establishment of political freedom in Russia for the sake of the progress of the working-class movement in the West as well. In him the Russian revolutionaries have lost their best friend.

 

Let us always honour the memory of Frederick Engels, a great fighter and teacher of the proletariat!

 

Notes:

 

[1] Marx and Engels frequently pointed out that in their intellectual development they were much indebted to the great German philosophers, particularly to Hegel. “Without German philosophy,” Engels says, “scientific socialism would never have come into being.” —Lenin.

 

[2] This is a wonderfully rich and instructive book. Unfortunately, only a small portion of it, containing a historical outline of the development of socialism, has been translated into Russian (The Development of Scientific Socialism, 2nd ea., Geneva, 1892). —Lenin.

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https://communismgr.blogspot.com/2017/07/the-grenfell-tower-tragedy-another.html

Monday, July 3, 2017

The Grenfell Tower Tragedy: Another crime of Capitalism

“When one individual inflicts bodily injury upon another such that death results, we call the deed manslaughter; when the assailant knew in advance that the injury would be fatal, we call his deed murder. But when society places hundreds of proletarians in such a position that they inevitably meet a too early and an unnatural death, one which is quite as much a death by violence as that by the sword or bullet; when it deprives thousands of the necessaries of life, places them under conditions in which they cannot live – forces them, through the strong arm of the law, to remain in such conditions until that death ensues which is the inevitable consequence – knows that these thousands of victims must perish, and yet permits these conditions to remain, its deed is murder just as surely as the deed of the single individual…”

– Friedrich Engels, Condition of the Working Class in England, 1845.

Abstract from The “New Worker”, weekly paper of the New Communist Party of Britain, June 23, 2017 edition, page 3:

IN THE 1990s Tory grandee Lord Heseltine declared that his party would make “a bonfire of red tape” – getting rid of rules and regulations that hindered maximum profit-making and including health and safety regulations. In 2009 Boris Johnson, as mayor of London, declared that “safety fears” were “mak- ing the UK safe for extremely stupid people”. And in 2011 the then Prime Minister David Camer- on said: “I will kill off safety culture; we need to realise, collectively, that we cannot eliminate risk and that some accidents are inevitable.”

On Wednesday morning 14th of June we saw the terrible consequences of their en- deavours as the giant Grenfell tower block in Kensington became a flaming inferno in a very short time, because in a cheap cosmetic ‘renovation’ two years ago it had been fitted with flammable plastic and aluminium cladding. This type of cladding has been involved in several fatal fires and is now banned in many countries. The block was owned by the Royal Borough of Kens- ington and Chelsea (RBKC), but control and administra- tion had been outsourced to the Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organ- isation (KCTMO) who sup- posedly manage all social housing in RBKC on the Council’s behalf. Responsibility for fire safe- ty inspections was also trans- ferred to KCTMO from the fire brigade as Boris Johnson was making drastic cuts to the London Fire Service.

Tenants had complained for years, over and over again, about fire safety issues and dangerous electrical surges that destroyed some of their appliances. They formed the Grenfell Action Group (GAG) and ended up being threatened with arrest if they did not stop “harassing” the council and its agents. “All our warnings fell on deaf ears and we predicted that a catastrophe like this was inevitable and just a matter of time,” they said. The fire that started it all was a small one in a kitchen, which the fire brigade dealt with quickly. They were pack- ing up ready to go when they noticed that the cladding on the outside of the building had caught alight. From there it quickly turned into the worst fire disaster in Britain since the Blitz.

[VIDEO] THE GRENFELL MASSACRE: BURNING & LOOTING.
By ProletarianTV.

In its leaflet under the title “Housing: a crisis of Capitalism”, the Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist) points out the following:

The horrific fire at Grenfell Tower in London, which has killed so many working-class people, demonstrates the terrible reality of housing in Britain today.

In the capital’s richest borough, with house prices over 38 times the average annual salary, people ultimately died because flammable cladding cost the borough and construction companies a mere £5,000 less per metre.

The unnecessary cladding, which would have made residents’ fuel bills marginally cheaper, had the effect of prettifying the tower for the surrounding neighbourhood of luxury properties, and raising the value of nearby council-owned land.

Kensington and Chelsea council spent £8.6m on the ‘refurbishment’ of the tower, while ignoring, or rather hiring companies to ignore, the needs of residents. The Grenfell Action Group has comprehensively documented problems and complaints made to the council over the years, including power surges and faulty wiring.

Grenfell must be seen in the context of ongoing social cleansing in London, which has already seen thousands of families conned or evicted from their homes so that property developers can create investment opportunities for the super-wealthy.

Around 1,400 homes in the borough remain empty year-round, at a combined value of £664m, and house prices in Kensington and Chelsea have tripled in the past 20 years.

No inquest or inquiry into Grenfell will provide justice for the dead or security for the survivors. While some companies, CEOs and public of officials may receive fines and jail time, and some survivors have been housed in new luxury flats, the reality is that the working class in Britain will never have safe, affordable and secure housing while the capitalist system remains.

A ladder with no bottom rungs

House prices across Britain are now, on average, 7.6 times the average annual salary – a figure which has more than doubled in the past 20 years.

The median price for a home increased by 259% over this period, while average earnings only rose by 68%. This gap is getting steadily wider, so that each year 70,000 more people are priced out of the market – one third of them in London alone.

Young people needing a home today find there is no council housing available and are thus forced onto the mercy of a private rentals market in which rents are extortionate, conditions often poor, and security nil.

To even consider buying, not only do they need to earn above-average wages, but they often also have to look far away from work, friends and family. Commutes of well over an hour are now common.

Subsidising the developers  

The vast majority of new houses today are being built by private developers, not for sale or rent to ordinary workers but as investment opportunities for the rich.

Development for profit leads to shoddy building practices, small room sizes, and inadequate provision of green spaces, community facilities, transport links and other amenities.

Instead of building and maintaining social housing, the government is using the housing budget to subsidise private developers and keep their profits high.

One scheme offers a 20 percent discount on small ‘starter homes’, but, with an average price of £215k, these are way out of reach for most workers. Similarly, ‘help to buy’ offers a deposit loan of up to 20 percent of purchase price.

While such measures may help better-off first-timers into a home (and a crippling debt burden), the schemes are at the same time pricing out millions more by stimulating an overheated market and further inflating prices.

And the pulling down of working-class housing estates in desirable city-centre locations (so that the sites can be redeveloped commercially) is adding fuel to the fire.

The drive to ‘invest’ in housing has ultimately been created by the global capitalist crisis of overproduction, as opportunities for productive ways to make profits have dried up. These estate demolitions, while driving thousands of workers out of previously secure homes and into the waiting arms of private landlords (driving up rents and pushing down standards for most) are making room for yet more luxury developments in which the super-rich can rest their surplus capital.

Decent homes for all

There are over 700,000 empty houses in Britain, 19,845 of them in London (the London properties alone are worth £9.4bn in total). In recent years, hundreds of thousands of half-built homes have been demolished in order to preserve high prices.

Despite a minor slow-down in the rate of increase of property prices, and a minor panic after Brexit, our ruling class is using every trick available to it to keep prices high.

The CPGB-ML holds that houses should be homes for people, not investment opportunities for billionaires. The rights to shelter and to a secure family life are fundamental human rights.

By its utter inability to solve the housing question and meet this basic need of working people, the capitalist system is providing yet more proof that it is well past its use-by date and due for demolition.

We demand:

1. The immediate scrapping of the 2016-17 housing bill, which threatens hundreds of thousands with poverty and homelessness.

2. The end of the ‘right to buy’ and the scrapping of all other schemes that fuel prices, create shortages and offer subsidies to landlords and developers.

3. The return of housing association and ‘non-profit’ properties to council ownership, the abolition of housing charities and the reintroduction of the legal right to decent, secure housing for all; slums, overcrowding and homelessness are an indictment on capitalism and a crime against humanity.

4. The confiscation of all empty homes and unfinished developments and their transformation into council housing.

5. The provision of at least 300,000 new council houses per year to end the crisis.

6. Guaranteed, secure and well-maintained social housing for all who want it, close to people’s work and families, and the abolition of divisive allocation criteria.

7. The introduction of a rent cap at 20 percent of minimum wage for all privately rented accommodation, and the scrapping of housing benefit (a subsidy to landlords that has helped to fuel rent rises).

8. The establishment of residents’ management committees to oversee planning and maintenance and ensure that all workers have access to adequate space, necessary amenities and decent facilities, including having usable and pleasant outdoor spaces and community halls.

The CPGB-ML believes that the welfare of workers can only be safeguarded by a socialist system of economy, controlled and administered by the working people themselves.

Let the capitalists’ ministers try and show us otherwise; let them start by meeting this list of simple demands.

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Thursday, June 15, 2017

Carolus Wimmer: The Great October Revolution and its Influence on Latin America

https://communismgr.blogspot.com/2017/06/carolus-wimmer-great-october-revolution.html

The Great October Revolution and its Influence on Latin America.

By Carolus Wimmer* / Source: International Communist Review, Issue 7, 2017.

I) Introduction

The hundredth anniversary of the Great October Revolution comes in the midst of a counteroffensive by imperialism and the forces of reaction against the social and political advances of the working class. In these conditions, it becomes especially important to deliver the objective truth about the first victorious proletarian Revolution, its historic global importance for the world’s worker movement, for the struggles to liberate the oppressed peoples from imperialism, and ultimately for all humanity.

In 1917, the proletarian and peasant Revolution did not only triumph throughout wide-reaching Russia, but its bells of freedom also began to sound across the globe. Through the construction of a socialist society and the latter building of Communism, the era in which humanity would jump “from the kingdom of necessity to the kingdom of freedom”[1]– as the well-known definition from Frederich Engels states- had begun.

With the victory of the October Revolution a new social system had begun to be built. The laws of socialist Revolution, which in their earliest form had been elaborated by Marx and Engels, underwent an immense technical and practical development in the melting pot of the Russian Revolution.

That the arena was a great multinational State, with areas of developed Capitalism and others with clear signs of persistent Feudalism and the slave era, does not take anything away from or reduce the quality of the Revolution. Its own characteristics as a socialist Revolution under the hegemony of the working class; the agglutination of all of the oppressed masses; the situation of the Russian Empire, which reflected the real situation of the world under the dominion of Imperialism, all reaffirm the greatness of October and its core principal as the immense and multifaceted Revolution of our time.

For the Latin American nations, exploited as they were by Imperialism, the Russian Revolution bore a three-fold importance:

1. This severe blow at the heart of Imperialism served as a strong stimulus to all the peoples’ struggles and especially by the recently born proletariat of the colonial and dependent world against their oppressors.

2. It meant a fraternal hand from the most advanced class- which had been able to destroy the essence of Capital- to the ample oppressed masses. The totally new international relations which Russia established, its peaceful and anticolonial policies, and the quantitatively different economic links which it offered opened up impressive new horizons for national liberation struggles and, where chosen, to those who wanted to transit down the road towards Socialism. What’s more, as Soviet power began to establish itself and a new correlation of forces was created in the world, Russia transformed itself into a stronghold which put the brakes on, impeded, and defeated other Imperialist interventions.

3. In the ex-Tsarist Empire, the development of the Revolution became an example into itself with proletarian solutions being found to the problems of national self-determination and the incorporation of very backward regions into a more developed economy and culture.

In Latin America, the October Revolution gave our peoples a new perspective. In many countries Communist Parties were created, and the working class vanguard and the clearest minded intelligentsia opened their arms to Lenin’s cause. Yet its influence was even greater than that: there is not a single important popular movement in Latin America in which the powerful stamp of October cannot be seen[2].

In this year (1917) in Venezuela with its rural and pre-capitalist economic structure and in the midst of a fierce military dictatorship controlled by the USA, there was also something new happening. In the west of the country oil based economic activity was beginning, and with it came the creation of the working class in the region: great masses of handicraft workers, peasants, and fisherman started transforming themselves into oil workers. Inspired by the achievements of the Russian Revolution, these workers came to be the backbone of the formation of the Communist Party of Venezuela in 1931 from the Russian Revolution solidarity movements and from the polemic and heated definitions of the Trade Union movement, who were later to lead the vast solidarity movement with the USSR after the attacks of the Second World War.

II) The Communist International and Latin America

The Communist International, also known as the Third International or Comintern, was born out of the October Revolution and founded in March 1919, relating itself perfectly to the working class traditions of the principal and practice of internationalism. As the bourgeoisie and Capital have international characters, the working class do also, and necessarily had to organize their struggles without regard for national borders. In the face of reactionary bourgeois nationalism in Europe, the working class movement proclaimed the idea of internationalism.

In the second half of the 19th Century the First and Second Internationals had existed. The First International had had just a brief existence due to the strong repression which it suffered. The Second International had a longer duration, but the prevalence of opportunist and reformist tendencies at its heart led the majority of social democratic European parties to ally themselves to the bourgeoisie in their countries and support the warmongering policies which led to the First World War and to what Lenin correctly described as bankruptcy.

One of the first challenges the Third International faced was the urgency of considering the relationship between national and international issues, between State and Revolution, between power and the project, especially because now- for the first time- the Communist movement wasn’t merely in opposition but it was in power and was the State, as in ex-Tsarist Russia. How do you connect these elements which are not necessarily concordant? The response to this challenge can be seen throughout the history of the Communist International.

The work of the Communist International was initially directed towards Central Europe, but with its internationalist vision and so that it functioned better, the world leadership of the Communist movement created regional structures.

The idea that the Communist Party of Russia (Bolshevik) deserved great prestige was  something that was accepted in the communist movement, partly because  it “had more experience and authority” but also because it controlled the Country of the Soviets, representing the strategic rear-guard of the worlds communist movement. However, in organisational terms, the Communist Party of Russia (Bolshevik) was just one more section of the Communist International which, together with the other sectionals, obeyed the collective decisions.

In the case of Latin America, the Communist Parties of Mexico, Argentina, and USA played similar roles with respect to the other parties in the region.

Since the beginning of the 1920’s, there were special departments in Moscow for the Latin American subcontinent. Regional Secretariats were created in 1926, and Latin America was placed under the control of the “Latino” Regional Secretariat (“Latin American” as of 1928), with the number of functionaries living in Moscow who were dedicated to Latin America growing (Latin Americans as well as Europeans). The Regional Secretariat was subordinated to the Executive Committee and acted on all relevant issues connected with Latin America.

In 1919 the first branch of the Communist International in Latin America was opened in Mexico, although it only functioned for a few months. By resolution of the Presidium of the Executive Committee of the Communist International and as part of the process of “bolshevization”, the South American Secretariat was created in 1925 in Buenos Aires with the aim of contributing to the “intensification and unification of Communist ideological training with the objective of creating a stronger relationship between the South American parties and the Communist International”. The South American Secretariat, with its political campaigns and the work of its press organ- the Correspondencia Sudamericana (South American Correspondent)– played a decisive part in the diffusion of the politics of the Communist International in Latin America. It was reorganized in the summer of 1928 and with the Italian-Argentine Victorio Codovilla at the reins, the fulfilment of its workload was guaranteed.

In Mexico it worked alongside the Anti-imperialist League of the Americas (LADLA in Spanish)- which was founded in 1924- and diverse sub-secretaries which had been created in 1928 for the preparation of the First Latin-American Conference of Trade Unions (celebrated in Montevideo in June 1929), as well as with various regional institutions controlled by the Communists. In New York the Caribbean Bureau was created in 1931 to oversee the same tasks as its South American counterpart.

The LADLA was founded at the end of 1924 by the Communist Parties of Mexico and the USA after receiving the proposal from the Communist International. The idea was based on the concept which was developed by Lenin of a united anti-imperialist front. Workers, peasants, students, and intellectuals from across the American Continent were convened as a consequence to unite against the “principal enemy”: the bourgeoisie of each country and North American imperialism.

III)                The Impact of the October Revolution in Latin America

Workers from the Latin American countries, as those from other parts of the world did, warmly applauded the October Revolution, its great leader Lenin and the Leninist policies of peace, and they declared themselves in defence of the world’s first Socialist State and against the Imperialists and counterrevolution.

Often, the people received true and complete information about the deeds of October in Russia late, and the bourgeois press deliberately tried to silence or twist the great happenings of the world’s first socialist Revolution. All the more in vain, as Pablo Neruda would say, were the efforts of Capitalism to organize a confabulation of silence about Soviet Russia, to deform the truth and turn off the light which was arriving from the other side of the ocean[3].

The peoples of Latin America understood the immense importance of what was happening in far off Russia from the very first days. “I vote for the Russian Bolsheviks without hesitation, as they are showing us the path to peace and the liquidation of the barbaric Capitalist bourgeois regime” stated the founder of the Communist Party of Chile, Luis Emilio Recabarren, in the days following the October Revolution. “He who does not defend their cause defends Capitalism and all its horrors” [4].

The progressive Brazilian writer Lima Barreto on the 14th June 1918 wrote that “the Russian Revolution has shaken not only the thrones, but also the social bases of our predatory bourgeois society. The sympathetic wave which has been awoken in our hearts cannot be ignored and it is impossible to drown our desire to see something similar here”[5].

The opinion of the Latin American vanguard was of comprehension and praise for the historic role of the leader of the Proletarian Revolution, V.I. Lenin. The Argentinian scientist José Ingenieros characterized Lenin as a man of “great intelligence” and “illustrious statesmanship”[6] in his work Economic Teachings of the Russian Revolution written in 1920. He also wrote that there had been no obstacles from the dominant bourgeois classes and Governments which may have “stopped the admirable current of good-feeling which the Russian Revolution has awoken across the entire world”[7].

In Argentina, where class rivalry had been considerably exacerbated by the eve of the First World War, 10,000 men took to the streets of Buenos Aires on the 7thNovember 1918 with slogans of support for Soviet Russia.

The 10th Congress of the FORO-V, the largest Trade Union Federation in Argentina, took the decision to “express their most ample solidarity and backing to the workers of Russia… and fervently go out and look for votes of support for the consolidation of the Socialist Federal Republic of Soviets of Russia, so that this supreme aspiration of the proletariat can be established and made a reality”[8].

Victor Codovilla, veteran of the Latin American working class movement and president of the Communist Party of Argentina, remembers that “the most conscious parts of the working class and Argentinian people felt that, with this victory, a new era in the history of humanity had opened up, the era of the fall of Capitalism and of the triumph of Socialism and Communism”[9].

The victory of the October Revolution was welcomed with enthusiasm in Brazil. The workers understood that the October Revolution was a proletarian Revolution, close to the heart of the workers[10], as Astrogildo Pereira, one of the founders of the Brazilian Communist party, recalls. In one example, a public meeting held on the 1st May 1919 in Rio de Janeiro with the participation of 60,000 workers in the Brazilian Capital, approved a message of solidarity with the Russian working class.

Another shining example of proletarian support was the 24-hour strike of 11th July 1919 of the Metal Workers Union in the Federal District of Rio de Janeiro in protest against the intervention of the Imperialist States in Soviet Russia.

The victory of the workers and peasants in Russia was also celebrated by the workers of Cuba. In November 1919 a meeting of workers was held in Habana to commemorate the second anniversary of the October Revolution. The delegates to the Second Workers Congress of Cuba, held in April 1920, sent a fraternal greeting to the soviet workers.

In October 1923, the First Student Congress of Cuba adopted a resolution which protested the unfair isolation to which the new Russia was being subject to by the world powers and to request that the Cuban Government recognize the Socialist Republic of Russia[11].

The heartfelt waves of affection and respect from the Cuban people towards Lenin manifested themselves particularly in the days of January 1924. On the 21st of this month, Antonio Bosch, Mayor of Regla (a suburb of Habana), described Lenin as a “great citizen of the world” and requested that the citizens of the city honour his memory with two minutes of silence and meetings on the 27th January, the day of the funeral of the head of the Proletarian Revolution, in the El Fortin hill where an olive tree would be planted as a symbol of peace “in memory of this date and the deeds which worry us”. More than 1,000 workers, sailors, day labourers, and students from Habana met at the given hour in El Fortin despite the torrential tropical rain where Antonio Bosch and the young Cuban Mercedes Barrero planted an olive tree. Later, all of the meetings progressed to the Municipal Palace where a joint meeting was held in Lenin’s memory. Those at the meeting received telegrams of solidarity from the workers of Santiago of Cuba, Morón, and other cities from the island. The El Fortin Hill has since been called the Lenin Hill[12].

At the start of the 20’s, Soviet Russia was visited by numerous and notable personalities of the Latin American Revolutionary movement. On returning to their countries, they emotionally explained to the workers the achievements of the first proletarian state in the world and published articles and books.

Leader of the Chilean workers and founder of the Communist Party of Chile, Luis Emilio Recabarren, spent more than 40 days in the Soviet country in 1922. In the book which he published after his trip, entitled Rusia obrera y campesina (Worker and Peasant Russia), he wrote that “I went to see if the working class did effectively have political power with which they guarantee the conservation in their hands of economic power … I went to see if the working class had abolished once and for all types of Capitalist exploitation and tyranny. I gladly saw that effectively the Russian workers did indeed have all the strength of political and economic power in their hands, and it seemed that there was not a force in this world able to dispose the Russian proletariat of the power that they had won… I could also testify that the expropriation of the exploiters is so complete that a regime of exploitation and tyranny, such as that which we still put up with in Chile, will never return to Russia”[13].

The speeches of Recabarren in Chile about the Soviet Republic produced immense impressions in the auditoriums. Pablo Neruda remembers that in those days a magnificent Chilean returned from the Soviet Republic which had just been born. His name was Luis Emilio Recabarren, and the return of this titanic personality changed the progress of the ideological currents in Neruda’s generation.

Whilst talking to him and listening to his speeches, he understood the feeling of the great event… Recabarren allowed him to understand, with great simplicity, that an entire age has been left in the past, that from the utopia had been born the practical creation of a new State and of a new society[14].

In the same year of 1922, one of the founders of the Uruguay Communist Party, Francisco Pintos, similarly spent various months in the Soviet Republic.

The economic, political, and military strength of the USSR, the increase in its international prestige, as well as the thriving support from the worlds proletariat and the hopes of the commercial foreign mediums to enter into mercantile-economic relations with the USSR are key factors which forced the Governments of the majority of the Capitalist States to abandon their policies of non-recognition of the Soviet Union and proceed towards the establishment of normal diplomatic relations with her.

The foresight of Lenin, expressed in his speech to the Plenary of Soviets of Moscow on the 20th November 1922, about how “economic relations- and through them diplomatic ones- will normalize themselves, must normalize themselves, and will be normalized without fail” came perfectly true[15].

IV) The October Revolution and its influence in the formation of Communist Parties: an approximation

The October Revolution was a response from the Russian working class, peasants, and soldiers to feudal despotism and Capitalist exploitation. The Latin American working class and workers from the city and countryside similarly understood this: not only were good feelings towards Russia on the increase, but so was the consciousness of the need to follow the example of the Russian Revolution to construct Socialism-Communism.

In 1918 in Argentina, Victorio Codovilla and Rodolfo Ghioldi founded the International Socialist Party, which, with only 92 days since its foundation, decided to affiliate itself to the Communist International the following year. Codovilla, who had started his political activism in his home country in the ranks of the Italian Socialist Party, and was now a resident of Buenos Aires, was amongst the founders of the “Karl Marx Study Centre” in 1912.

In 1919 in Guatemala the League of Patriotic Workers was organized, which only months later was the principal driving force behind the insurrection of the workers against the dictatorship. In 1921 the 1st May was celebrated for the first time in this country.

Also in 1919 the First Socialist Congress of Mexico was held, which, with a majority of votes, decided to incorporate itself into the Communist International. Two months later it opted to change its name in accord with the international organisation which it had just joined: it would now be the Mexican Communist Party.

In Colombia, the Trade Union Federation, the Confederation for Social Action, and the Society of Mutual Assistance met, and, with the representation of 20 associations and guilds, formed a Socialist Party which would be used to promote the independence of the working class from other political parties and religious sects and to fight for working class concessions. Its main initial themes were proclaimed to be freedom, equality, and fraternity.

Despite the fact that we are concentrating on Latin America and the Caribbean, it is also important to mention the foundation of proletarian parties in the USA: the Communist Party and the Workers Communist Party. Both parties worked clandestinely and joined the Communist International, unifying themselves in 1921. The US Communist Party gained legality in 1929.

The people of Guatemala rose up against the dictator in 1920 and were able to overthrow him. This victory bought new energy to the young working class, and class based Trade Union organisation grew with the creation of the Trade Union confederation “Worker’s Union”.

On the 17th July 1920 the Second Congress of the Communist International met in Petrograd, setting the conditions which working class parties would have to meet to be accepted into its ranks. Lenin’s report “On the role of the Communist Party in a proletarian Revolution” was accepted, censuring the opportunist theses of some Trade Unionists which maintained the uselessness of a political party of the working class and the priority of the Trade Unions.

The report assures that revolutionary Trade Unionists “wish to fight against the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie but don’t know how. They don’t understand that the working class without an autonomous party is like a headless tree trunk. The Trade Unionist and Revolutionary industrialist represent a step forward only in comparison with the old, rancid, counterrevolutionary ideology of the Second International. But, in comparison with Revolutionary Marxism, i.e. Communism, Trade Unionism and industrialism are but a step backwards”[16].

Under this Leninist line, the 8th Congress of the Uruguayan Socialist Party decided with a massive majority to incorporate themselves into the Communist International. The following year-1921- they decide to change their name to the Communist Party of Uruguay.

In December 1920, the Socialist Workers Party of Chile which had been founded in 1912 by Luis Emilio Recabarren and which had manifested its warm felt support for the October Revolution in 1919, now decided to join the Communist International. In 1922 it opted for the name of the Communist Party of Chile.

In June 1921, the Constituent Congress of the Red International of Labour Unions met in Moscow with 41 countries, including an important class-based contingent from Latin America.

In 1921 the Third Congress of the Communist International met with the assistance of 50 affiliated parties, including Latin Americans. One of the central objectives was the creation of a unified front which would allow the union of all of the workers in the fight against Capitalism. An ample discussion was held on tactical questions, and guided as it was by Lenin, the Communist International recommended “criticizing in a fraternal, but energetic and clear way, the anarchic-Trade Union tendencies which reject the dictatorship of the proletariat and negate the necessity of a leading, unique, central organization to work with the Revolutionary vanguard, i.e. a Communist party[17]. The Communist International judged the “fusion of the Revolutionary labour organisations and Communists into a united front” as being possible[18].

With this political line numerous unconnected Marxist groups met in March 1922 in Rio de Janeiro by the invitation of A. Pereira, director of the journal “O Movimento Comunista” (The Communist Movement) and resolved to construct the Brazilian Communist Party.

By the end of 1922, the following Communist Parties existed in Latin America, each of which acted as Latin American sections of the Communist International: Argentina (January 1918), Mexico (November 1919), Uruguay (September 1920), Chile (January 1922), Brazil (March 1922) and Guatemala (1922).

As per the logic of the Latin American class struggle, faced by the plan of the Communist International, US Imperialism counter-attacked; and faced with Revolutionary advances by the working class, in 1923 the Fifth Pan-American Conference met in Santiago of Chile.

In 1924, year of the passing away of Vladimir Ilich Lenin in Gorki in January aged 54, a great depression overtook the progressive forces of the world, including the Latin American Communists.

Lenin’s work, however, continued to expand in the Latin American region. This very year the Communist Party of Honduras was founded, instantly confronting the imperialist United Fruit Company with heroic acts, and declaring itself as a sectional of the Comintern on the very day of its foundation.

In August 1925 the Communist Party of Cuba was organized in illegal conditions. Back in February 1917 an insurrection against the Government which was coordinated with numerous strikes had caused US Imperialism to take the opportunity to send marines to invade the island, under legal protection from the Platt Amendment. The occupation lasted until 1922, during which the first steps for the creation of a Communist movement were taken: left wing socialists met and approved a declaration recognising the need for the creation of a unified party, such as the Comintern had suggested. Marxist groups from various cities and villages were organized in build up to August 1925 when, in a clandestine congress, the Communist Party of Cuba was born, with its leaders requesting immediate incorporation into the Comintern.

In Argentina in 1925 a strong anti-imperialist Latin American movement was given form, with great resonance in the intellectual world. Amongst its objectives was “to develop in the Latin American peoples a consciousness of solidarity for national and continental interests, supporting all ideological renovation which pushes for the exercising of popular sovereignty and combatting all types of dictatorship which oppose social reforms”[19].

In 1926 in Ecuador some Marxist-Leninist groups had sprung up since 1920, and in 1924 Ricardo Paredes founded the newspaper ‘La Antorcha’ (‘The Torch’). In 1925 the ‘Ecuadorian Communist Sectional for the Divulgation of the Ideas of Lenin’ was organized, with workers and intellectuals affiliating themselves. In May 1926 the Ecuadorian Socialist Party was formed, incorporating itself to the Comintern in 1928.

In Brazil, the Communists started making contact with the Revolutionary, democratic military movements (lieutenant rank mostly) which Luis Carlos Prestes presided over. From these contacts was born the Worker-Peasant Front.

In most Latin American Countries Anti-imperialist leagues appeared, such as in Mexico and Cuba, which combined the class-based Revolutionary struggle with the international solidarity struggle. Revolutionary intellectuals commonly participated in these organisations, often editing numerous newspapers in which North American Imperialism was challenged with great worth.

By initiative of Ghioldi and Codovilla, in December 1926 the Communist Party of Argentina manifested their solidarity with the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, ratifying their energetic opposition to Trotskyism and its conceptions, describing them as “erroneous, adventurous, and anti-Leninist”[20].

Propelled by this Revolutionary and anti-imperialist upsurge, in Nicaragua in July 1927 General Augusto Sandino, the “General of free men”, started the patriotic war of the guerrillas against the invading North American troops. Next to Sandino was the El Salvadorian Communist Farabundo Martí. This movement for national liberation received the support of all of the anti-imperialist sectors of Latin America. The Venezuelan Communists Carlos Aponte and Gustavo Machado were also on the scene. For the people it was the start of a historic struggle which culminated with the victory of the Sandinista Revolution decades afterwards.

At the anti-imperialist Congress held in Brussels in 1927 and presided over by the French writer Henry Barbusse, Latin Americans such as Gustavo Machado (Venezuela), Jose Vasconcelos (Mexico), and Victor Codovilla (Argentina) were present.

Similarly, as part of the 10th anniversary celebrations for the October Revolution in November 1927, some of the most important Revolutionary leaders in the world congregated in Moscow, with the Latin Americans who were present taking advantage of the encounter to discuss strategy and tactics in the Latin American struggle.

In 1928 in Moscow the 6th Congress of Comintern was held, with Latin America being amongst the themes discussed. Taking into account the existence of mass-based organisations, the Congress considered the need to transform “the expression of the will of these mass-based political parties into truly Bolshevik parties”. With this objective the Caribbean Bureau was created, and the Socialist Party of Ecuador and Socialist Revolutionary Party of Colombia were accepted as Comintern sectionals.

In September 1928 the Peruvian Communist Party was founded, with Jose Carlos Mariátegui as its most important leader.

In Colombia, an extraordinary resurgence of the masses, as much in the labour organisations as well as the political parties, drove the conservative Government to consider a law to restrict the constitutional guarantees and prohibit the practices of the Revolutionary Socialist Party (PSR). At the time, the Venezuelan General and anti-dictatorial fighter, Emilio Arevalo Cedeño was exiled in Colombia and, whilst working with the plans of the PSR, was planning an invasion of Venezuela through the plains, giving Cedeño, an ex-telegraphist, the nickname of the “new Sandino”[21].

In June of 1929 the First Communist Conference of Latin America took place in Buenos Aires. Thirty-eight delegates took part from fifteen countries across the region (Argentina, Cuba, Brazil, Peru, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Uruguay, Colombia, Bolivia, Ecuador, Panama, Mexico, and Paraguay) as well as delegates from the Comintern, the Youth Comintern, from the Communist Parties of the United States and France. In the same year, the Caribbean Bureau set up a Support Committee in Barranquilla, Colombia, for the incipient Communist movement which was working clandestinely in Venezuela. At the head of the mission was Gustavo Machado, who later became the President of the Communist Party of Venezuela whilst residing in Bogota.

In Venezuela since 1914 various foreign companies, led by Royal Dutch Shell, were extracting oil from the ground, reaching a total of 332.000 barrels. During this year, work on the first commercial refinery began, with great quantities of handicraft workers, peasants, and fisherman being transformed into oil workers. Inspired by the news of class struggle on the old continent and the victory of the Bolsheviks, political and labour struggles expanded. The US, alongside the Venezuelan dictator, recognized the dangers that the example of the October Revolution could set when, in 1918, they expressed that “the doctrines of the radicals in Europe will have a greater impact in the countries where the ignorant and poor people are deprived of their political rights. Driven by the initiative of the social parties of Mexico and Puerto Rico, a public propaganda campaign is seeking the formation of a Workers League in all of the countries of America. This type of agitation is dangerous for us because our enemies will try to exploit it and some of those will start replicating the extremist doctrines of the Russians, i.e. the redistribution of land and wealth amongst workers and soldiers…”[22].

On the 5th March 1931, the first Communist branch in Venezuela was constructed in clear clandestinity, and on the 1st May the first manifesto from the Venezuelan Communist Party was circulated “to the working people”. The manifesto finished with a phrase from Lenin: “the gun on the shoulder of a worker is the only guarantee of democracy”, and amongst the slogans used was “Long Live Soviet Russia”.

Equally, for the first time in Venezuela, the Bolshevik Revolution was mentioned in a party political document, stating that “in Russia, the largest country in the world and with a population 50 times greater than Venezuela’s, which was submitted to a tyranny as bloody as that of Gomez- the Tsarist regime- the workers and peasants overthrew this Government thirteen years ago and put in place a Government of their own class, a workers and peasant Government called Soviet. The lands of the great landowners have been redistributed to those who directly worked them, and the factories, mines, and businesses have become collective property of the workers Soviets… wages have gone up and prices have fallen and there are no workers unemployed… in the schools, colleges, and universities workers and their children are given preference and the Government covers all of the needs of all of the students. Women enjoy exactly the same rights and advantages as men and are given complete time off for 2 months before and 2 months after giving birth. Under the worker and peasant Government in Soviet Russia comfortable and clean houses are being built for the workers, magnificent tower blocks for rehabilitation centres, hospitals, clubs, libraries, schools for the workers, who enjoy a freedom and comfort that has never been seen before in the world by the class which produces… the workers of the entire world are struggling and organizing to do that which their class brothers have done in Russia”[23].

V)                 Conclusions

“As the exploitation of one individual by another will also be put an end to, the exploitation of one nation by another will also be put an end to”[24] wrote Karl Marx and Frederich Engels in the Communist Manifesto. One hundred years later these words have been made a reality in Latin America and the Caribbean thanks to the October Revolution of 1917 and the presence of Communist Parties.

Despite the fact that Lenin couldn’t apply himself extensively to Latin America, it was not absent from his worries. In his works about Imperialism there are frequent references to Latin America, using Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Uruguay to illustrate his theory and show the worst effects of the inter-imperialist contradictions that divided the region. In the First Congress of Soviets he denounced the North American imperialists who “are anxious to devour Mexico” [25].

With the great Revolution of October, the theory of a modern Revolution with its specific anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist, and anti-oligarchic characteristics and with its uninterrupted transition to the socialist-communist Revolution expanded to Latin America.

On one hand the objective socio-economic structures existed for the popularization of Marxism-Leninism: Imperialist penetration, Capitalism, a deepening of the class struggle, and agrarian problem which still today have not been solved. On the other hand, the existed an increase in the entire region of liberation movements as part of a global “revolutionary situation of general character” whose apex was the Great October Revolution.

The Communist Parties found in the examples of popular action and socio-political thought the subjective factors which bring alive the Revolutionary processes of the region even today.

Carolus Wimmer.

We commemorate with Revolutionary optimism this 100-year anniversary of the October Revolution expressing as did Lenin in 1905: “the defeat of Russian Tsardom- heroically started by our working class- will change the course of all of the countries, will ease the task of the workers of all nations, of all states, across all of the confines of the Globe”[26].

The history of the last 100 years clearly confirms the truth of this Leninist vision.

[1] Eduardo Viera. Revista Internacional (International Review), Caracas, 1977, pg. 32

[2] Ibid, pg. 33

[3] Pravda, 8.XI, 1964

[4]Pravda, 5.XI, 1967. Quote taken from the pronounced speech in Moscow of Luis Corvalán, General Secretary of the CC of the CP of Chile in the formal meeting dedicated to the 50th anniversary of the Great Socialist Revolution of October.

[5] L.Barreto. Obras completas (Complete Works), Sao Paulo, 1956, t. IX, pg.72

[6] J. Ingenieros. Enseñanzas económicas de la revolución rusa. Los tiempos nuevos (Economic Lessons of the Russian Revolution. New Times), Buenos Aires, 1950, pg. 211

[7] Ibid, pg. 229

[8] Nuestra Palabra (Our Word), Buenos Aires, 21.XXX, 1967

[9] Pravda, 7.XI, 1964

[10] A. Pereira. Ensayos de Historia del Brasil (Lessons of Brazilian History), Moscow, 1962, pg. 260. Also see Problemas, 1958, N° 39

[11] Revista Cuba (Cuban Review), November 1967, pg.4

[12] Revista Cuba (Cuban Review), November 1967, pg. 5-6

[13] Revista Internacional (International Review), 1967, N°11, pg. 80

[14] Pravda, 8.XI, 1964

[15] V. I. Lenin. Selected Works in three volumes, Spanish edition, t.3, Moscow, 1966, pg. 754

[16] Ibid, pg.182-183

[17] Ibid, pg. 184

[18] Ibid, pg. 184

[19] Ibid, pg. 188-189

[20] Ibid, pg. 189

[21] Ibid, pg. 193

[22] Ibid, pp. 4-5

[23] J. Sanoja Hernández. 60 años de la URSS y su impacto en el proceso político venezolano (60 Years of the USSR and its impact on the Venezuelan Political Process), Caracas, Cantaclaro Editions, 1983, pp.27-28

[24] Ibid, pg. 8

[25] V. I. Lenin. Complete Works, 2° ed., Buenos Aires, Cartago, t. X, pg. 94

[26] Ibid, pg. 95.

* Director of the Journal “Debate Abierto” (Open Debate), International Relations Secretary of the Communist Party of Venezuela.

Αναρτήθηκε από In Defense of Communism

https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1914/granat/ch05.htm

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

Karl Marx

A Brief Biographical Sketch With an Exposition of Marxism

Tactics of the Class Struggle of the Proletariat

After examining, as early as 1844-45, one of the main shortcomings in the earlier materialism—namely, its inability to understand the conditions or appreciate the importance of practical revolutionary activity—Marx, along with his theoretical work, devoted unremitting attention, throughout his lifetime, to the tactical problems of the proletariat’s class struggle. An immense amount of material bearing on this is contained in all the works of Marx, particularly in the four volumes of his correspondence with Engels, published in 1913. This material is still far from having been brought together, collected, examined and studied. We shall therefore have to confine ourselves here to the most general and brief remarks, emphasizing that Marx justly considered that, without this aspect, materialism is incomplete, onesided, and lifeless. The fundamental task of proletarian tactics was defined by Marx in strict conformity with all the postulates of his materialist-dialectical Weltanschauung [“world-view”]. Only an objective consideration of the sum total of the relations between absolutely all the classes in a given society, and consequently a consideration of the objective stage of development reached by that society and of the relations between it and other societies, can serve as a basis for the correct tactics of an advanced class. At the same time, all classes and all countries are regarded, not statistically, but dynamically —i.e., not in a state of immobility—but in motion (whose laws are determined by the economic conditions of existence of each class). Motion, in its turn, is regarded from the standpoint, not only of the past, but also of the future, and that not in the vulgar sense it is understood in by the “evolutionists”, who see only slow changes, but dialectically: “…in developments of such magnitude 20 years are no more than a day,“ Marx wrote to Engels, “thought later on there may come days in which 20 years are embodied” (Briefwechsel, Vol. 3, p. 127).^[2]

At each stage of development, at each moment, proletarian tactics must take account of this objectively inevitable dialectics of human history, on the one hand, utilizing the periods of political stagnation or of sluggish, so-called “peaceful” development in order to develop the class-consciousness, strength and militancy of the advanced class, and, on the other hand, directing all the work of this utilization towards the “ultimate aim” of that class’s advance, towards creating in it the ability to find practical solutions for great tasks in the great days, in which “20 years are embodied”. Two of Marx’s arguments are of special importance in this connection: one of these is contained in The Poverty of Philosopy, and concerns the economic struggle and economic organizations of the proletariat; the other is contained in the Communist Manifesto and concerns the asks of the proletariat. The former runs as follows:

“Large-scale industry concentrates in one place a crowd of people unknown to one another. Competition divides their interests. But the maintenance of wages, this common interest which they have against their boss, unites them in a common thought of resistance—combination…. Combinations, at first isolated, constitute themselves into groups … and in face of always united capital, the maintenance of the association becomes more necessary to them [i.e., the workers] than that of wages…. In this struggle—a veritable civil war—all the elements necessary for coming battle unite and develop. Once it has reached this point, association takes on a political character. (Marx, The Poverty of Philosopy, 1847)

Here we have the programme and tactics of the economic struggle and of the trade union movement for several decades to come, for all the lengthy period in which the proletariat will prepare its forces for the “coming battle.” All this should be compared with numerous references by Marx and Engels to the example of the British labor movement, showing how industrial “property” leads to attempts “to buy the proletariat” (Briefwechsel, Vol. 1, p. 136).^[3] to divert them from the struggle; how this prosperity in general “demoralizes the workers” (Vol. 2, p. 218); how the British proletariat becomes “bourgeoisified”—“this most bourgeois of all nations is apparently aiming ultimately at the possession of a bourgeois aristocracy and a bourgeois proletariat alongside the bourgeoisie” Chartists (1866; Vol. 3, p. 305)^[4]; how the British workers’ leaders are becoming a type midway between “a radical bourgeois and a worker” (in reference to Holyoak, Vol. 4, p. 209); how, owning to Britain’s monopoly, and as long as that monopoly lasts, “the British workingman will not budge” (Vol. 4, p. 433).^[5] The tactics of the economic struggle, in connection with the general course (and outcome) of the working-class movement, are considered here from a remarkably broad, comprehensive, dialectical, and genuinely revolutionary standpoint.

The Communist Manifesto advanced a fundamental Marxist principle on the tactics of the political struggle:

“The Communists fight for the attainment of the immediate aims, for the enforcement of the momentary interests of the working class; but in the movement of the present, they also represent and take care of the future of that movement.” That was why, in 1848, Marx supported the party of the “agrarian revolution” in Poland, “that party which brought about the Krakow insurrection in 1846.”^[1]

In Germany, Marx, in 1848 and 1849, supported the extreme revolutionary democrats, and subsequently never retracted what he had then said about tactics. He regarded the German bourgeoisie as an element which was “inclined from the very beginning to betray the people” (only an alliance with the peasantry could have enabled the bourgeoisie to completely achieve its aims) “and compromise with the crowned representatives of the old society.” Here is Marx’s summing-up of the German bourgeois-democratic revolution—an analysis which, incidentally, is a sample of a materialism that examines society in motion, and, moreover, not only from the aspect of a motion that is backward:

“Without faith in itself, without faith in the people, grumbling at those above, trembling before those below … intimidated by the world storm … no energy in any respect, plagiarism in every respect … without initiative … an execrable old man who saw himself doomed to guide and deflect the first youthful impulses of a robust people in his own senile interests….” (Neue Rheinische Zeitung, 1848; see Literarischer Nachlass, Vol. 3, p. 212.)^[6]

About 20 years later, Marx declared, in a letter to Engels (Briefwechsel, Vol. 3, p.224), that the Revolution of 1848 had failed because the bourgeoisie had preferred peace with slavery to the mere prospect of a fight for freedom. When the revolutionary period of 1848-49 ended, Marx opposed any attempt to play at revolution (his struggle against Schapper and Willich), and insisted on the ability to work in a new phase, which in a quasi-“peaceful” way was preparing new revolutions. The spirit in which Marx wanted this work to be conducted is to be seen in his appraisal of the situation in Germany in 1856, the darkest period of reaction: “The whole thing in Germany will depend on the possibility of backing the proletarian revolution by some second edition of the Peasant War” (Briefwechsel, Vol. 2, p. 108).^[7] While the democratic (bourgeois) revolution in Germany was uncompleted, Marx focused every attention, in the tactics of the socialist proletariat, on developing the democratic energy of the peasantry. He held that Lassalle’s attitude was “objectively… a betrayal of the whole workers’ movement to Prussia” (Vol. 3, p.210), incidentally because Lassalle was tolerant of the Junkers and Prussian nationalism.

“In a predominantly agricultural country,” Engels wrote in 1865, in exchanging views with Marx on their forthcoming joint declaration in the press, “…it is dastardly to make an exclusive attack on the bourgeoisie in the name of the industrial proletariat but never to devote a word to the patriarchal exploitation of the rural proletariat under the lash of the great feudal aristocracy” (Vol. 3, p. 217).^[8]

From 1864 to 1870, when the period of the consummation of the bourgeois-democratic revolution in Germany was coming to an end, a period in which the Prussian and Austrian exploiting classes were struggling to complete that revolution in one way or another from above, Marx not only rebuked Lassalle, who was coquetting with Bismarck, but also corrected Liebknecht, who had “lapsed into Austrophilism” and a defense of particularism; Marx demanded revolutionary tactics which would combat with equal ruthlessness both Bismarck and the Austrophiles, tactics which would not be adapted to the “victor”—the Prussian Junkers—but would immediately renew the revolutionary struggle against him despite the conditions created by the Prussian military victories (Briefwechsel, Vol. 3, pp. 134, 136, 147, 179, 204, 210, 215, 418, 437, 440-41).

In the celebrated Address of the International of September 9 1870, Marx warned the French proletariat against an untimely uprising, but when an uprising nevertheless took place (1871), Marx enthusiastically hailed the revolutionary initiative of the masses, who were “storming heaven” (Marx’s letter to Kugelmann).

From the standpoint of Marx’s dialectical materialism, the defeat of revolutionary action in that situation, as in many other, was a lesser evil, in the general course and outcome of the proletarian struggle, than the abandonment of a position already occupied, than surrender without battle. Such a surrender would have demoralised the proletariat and weakened its militancy. While fully appreciating the use of legal means of struggle during periods of political stagnation and the domination of bourgeois legality, Marx, in 1877 and 1878, following the passage of the Anti-Socialist Law,^[9] sharply condemned Most’s “revolutionary phrases”; no less sharply, if not more so, did he attack the opportunism that had for a time come over the official Social-Democratic Party, which did not at once display resoluteness, firmness, revolutionary spirit and the readiness to resort to an illegal struggle in response to the Anti-Socialist Law (Briefwechsel, Vol. 4, pp. 397, 404, 418, 422, 424; cf. also letters to Sorge).

Notes 

^[1] The reference is to the democratic uprising for national liberation in the Krakow Republic which in 1815 was placed under the joint control of Austria, Prussia and Russia. The rebels set up a National Government which issued a manifesto proclaiming abolition of feudal services and promising to give the peasants lands without redemption. In its other proclamations it announced the establishment of national workshops with higher wages and the introduction of equal rights for all citizens. Soon, however, the uprising was suppressed.—Ed.

Tuesday, May 23, 2017

Dimitris Koutsoumbas: The significance of the October Revolution in the era of the transition from capitalism to socialism-communism

https://communismgr.blogspot.com/2017/05/dimitris-koutsoumbas-significance-of.html

By Dimitris Koutsoumbas*.

Source: International Communist Review, Issue 7, 2017.

 

In 2017 we will honour the 100th anniversary of the Great Socialist Revolution that took place in 1917 in Russia. This event marked and determined the course of millions of people, not just within the geographical confines of the first workers’ state in the history of humanity, the USSR, but it also had an impact of every corner of the planet for many decades.

October demonstrates the working class’s potential and capacity to implement its historical mission as the only truly revolutionary class, to lead the first attempt to construct socialism-communism.

At the same time, October shows the irreplaceable role of the guiding force of the socialist revolution, the communist party.

Great October demonstrates the enormous strength of proletarian internationalism. Despite the developments after the overthrow of socialism in 1989-1991, the 100th anniversary of the October Revolution, with all the theoretical and practical experience and maturity that we have acquired over the years, makes us even more certain and categorical about the timeliness and necessity of socialism-communism.

The counterrevolutionary overthrows do not change the character of the era. The 21st century will be the century of a new upsurge of the global revolutionary movement and a new series of socialist revolutions.

The daily struggles for partial and more general gains are undeniably necessary, but they cannot provide substantial, long-term and permanent solutions. Socialism remains the only way out.

The necessity of socialism is highlighted by the sharpening of the contradictions in the contemporary capitalist world, the international imperialist system. The material preconditions for socialism, i.e. labour power and the means of production, have matured within capitalism itself.

Capitalism has socialized labour and production to unprecedented levels. The working class, the main productive force, constitutes the majority of the economically active population. However, the means of production, the products of social labour are privately owned by the capitalists.

This contradiction is the root cause of all the crisis phenomena of contemporary capitalist societies, such as economic crises, the destruction of the environment, the drug problem, the long working day despite the great increase of labour productivity, and which of course coexists with unemployment, under-employment and semi-employment, the intensification of the exploitation of labour power etc.

At the same time, however, this reality signals the need to abolish private ownership of the concentrated means of production, to socialize them and use them in a planned way in social production, the planning of the economy by workers’ power so that the relations of production correspond to the level of development of the forces of production.

 

***

The impact of the Great October Socialist Revolution, the first victorious battle in history for the emancipation of the working class, remains undiminished to this day. Socialism was transformed from a prediction into a specific reality.

The victory of the revolution provided the possibility of condensing its lessons into a complete theory for socialist revolution and the party. The lessons from it provided the ideological and political basis for the establishment of the Communist International, for a new impetus for the international communist movement.

The theoretical legacy of October, enriched by the experience of the socialist revolutions that then followed, is priceless.

It confirmed in practice the correctness of the Marxist-Leninist theory of the revolution, which flows from the complete systematic analysis of imperialism i.e. that the revolution matures over the course of historical developments and breaks out in a period determined by a combination of objective and subjective causes.

The imperialists and all kinds of renegades distort or conceal the importance of the October Revolution because they obviously understand full well that through its victory the theory and ideas of Marxism became a material force, that millions of workers all over the world mobilized and continue to mobilize against capital’s power, were victorious and organized their own state, the dictatorship of the proletariat, which is founded on the direct producers, the working majority, and is the highest form of democracy that humanity has ever seen.

The Paris Communards in the 19th century took and held power for just 70 days; the new charge to heaven lasted 70 years, constructed socialism, and made an enormous contribution all over the world, surpassing the confines of one country.

The nihilistic stance towards the socialism we knew, the adoption of views that say it was a total failure-because its course was interrupted-is an unscientific stance and an ahistorical one and leads to impasses.

Socialism was constructed, developed, and began to solve the major economic and social problems. It was not possible for a number of reasons for it to highlight and most of all liberate, over the entire course of its construction, the inherent potential for the constant development and perfecting of production, to consolidate itself in its struggle against the capitalist system.

However, this does not negate the contribution and role of the socialist system, as it was formed in the 20th century, irrespective of deficiencies, weaknesses and mistakes that appeared during this difficult course.

What the October Revolution objectively signaled is the undeniable fact that socialism is the future of humanity. It is the system that through the historical development of society will create new social relations, socialist-communist ones, focusing on the people and the satisfaction of all their needs.

 

***

The October Revolution in practice confirmed the Leninist analysis concerning the weakest link in the imperialist chain. Up until that point what was missing in the international movement was the theoretical foundation for the possibility of the socialist revolution being victorious in one country or a group of countries, which would emerge as weak links, as a result of the sharpening of the internal contradictions under the influence of international developments.

Of course due to uneven economic and political development, such characteristics can manifest themselves in countries of a medium and lower level of development, where the revolutionary process of course can begin more easily but where it is exceptionally difficult for socialist construction to continue victoriously. Lenin’s analyses contributed to the development of Marxism and to the strategic thinking of the Bolsheviks as a whole.

The contribution of Lenin and the Bolshevik party was decisive in the confrontation against the section of social-democracy which, violating the decisions of the 2nd International, supported the bourgeois classes of their countries, sometimes by voting for war credits in Parliament, other times by participating in governments that waged wars, supposedly so that there could be a “peaceful development”, defending the “imperialist peace” with a gun to the people’s heads. A political line which inevitably entangled them even more deeply in the imperialist war, in the sharpening of the contradictions and antagonisms of the imperialist states and their alliances.

Lenin with the strategic line that he followed determined that from the standpoint of the revolutionary movement of the working class that aims to take power via a revolution, the issue is not a simple “pacifist” opposition to war, but chiefly the utilization of ruptures, which objectively in such conditions, are created in the imperialist camp, the utilization of the weakening of the bourgeoisie in each country with the aim of transforming this imperialist war in each country, whether the country is an “aggressive” or “defensive” stance, into a struggle to overthrow bourgeois power that brings death and poverty for the children of the working class and people.

The October Revolution confirmed the Leninist position that the modern era, the era of monopoly capitalism, i.e. the imperialist stage of capitalism, is the era of the transition from capitalism to socialism-the era of socialist revolutions.

The Great October Socialist Revolution also confirmed the role of opportunism as the ideological-political expression of bought off sections of the working class, as the impact of bourgeois and petty bourgeois ideology on the labour movement.

Lenin, on the basis of the experience of the October revolution, engaged in particular with issues of the power of the new workers’ state, the dictatorship of the proletariat. He studied the experience of the Paris commune in detail, the experience of the Soviets of the 1905 revolution in Russia, the role of the state on the basis of the conclusions of Marx and Engels.

He made a particular contribution to identifying the seeds of the organs of the new power, the character of the dictatorship of the proletariat, as a higher form of state organization of class power for the transition from the early imperfect socialist society to the fully communist society, in both form and content.

These are lessons and experiences that have timeless value for today as regards the organization of the workers’-people’s struggle, when the class struggle is sharpening in conditions of a revolutionary crisis, a revolutionary situation, as regards the organization and expression of the alliance of the working class with the poor popular strata, its natural allies, the poor farmers and self-employed, with the working class in the vanguard, their transformation into a revolutionary forces capable of leading the decisive confrontation against bourgeois power and forming new worker’s-people’s institutions of the new power.

 

***

The KKE, studying the valuable experience of the October Revolution, Lenin’s legacy, the experience of the International Communist Movement itself expressed the conclusions from this research in a number of analyses and documents (Reflections on the causes of the overthrows in 1995, the 18th Congress’ decision in 2009 on the experience of the USSR and socialist construction and the causes of the overthrows, the National Conference on the History of the Party in 2011, the elaboration of the new Programme and Statutes of the Party at the 19th Congress in 2013).

We came to the crucial conclusion that the definition of the political goal, worker’s power, must be carried out on the basis of the objective definition of the character of the era, something that determines the class that is objectively in the foreground of social development.

This defines the character of the revolution and not the correlation of forces which other Communist Parties focus on.

Of course, the correlation between the two basic rival classes, the bourgeois class and the working class, as well as the stance of the intermediate strata, is a decisive factor for the timing of the socialist revolution. In this sense, a CP must take the correlation of class forces into account, in Leninist terms, i.e. in terms of the relations of the classes with power.

The CP must at the same time take into account and calculate the correlation of forces inside the labour movement, the movements of its social allies, as an necessary element for suitable maneuvers, slogans so that the masses can be drawn to the struggle for power on the basis of their own experience.

However this can in no instance become an alibi for the submission of the labour and communist movement to any form of bourgeois governance, for its participation in or toleration of this in the framework of capitalism.

All the flowers of bourgeois and opportunist ideological constructs bloomed in Greece in recent years. There was and still is a lot of discussion in relation to the need to create “left”, “progressive”, “democratic”, “anti-right”, “anti-memorandum”, “patriotic”, “national”, “ecumenical” government (All these names have been used to describe such governments) as an immediate proposal for a way out of the economic crisis and anti-people political line.

These proposals are being made both by the traditional and the newly formed bourgeois parties, as well as by parties on the “left” wing of the political spectrum. The labour movement must reject all those traps that aim to manipulate the workers’-people’s struggle and to co-opt the movement.

Of course, the unrepentant “Mensheviks” are also present today along with other tardy “communists” who, apart from anything else, follow the development of revolutionary thinking in a delayed way. They ahistorically promote Leninist analysis dating from before the bourgeois-democratic revolution in Russia in February 1917, regarding the possibility of a temporary government of workers and peasants, in conditions when Tsarist power had not yet been overthrown. What has this got to do with the situation today?

It is undeniable that the conditions of that period were entirely different, as we are talking about a revolutionary situation, with the people organized in the Soviets, armed. We are talking about a bourgeois state that had not had time to establish all its mechanisms.

In the current conditions of a non-revolutionary situation, of bourgeois power well established for many decades with a fully organized bourgeois state, such a goal of a transitional-temporary government in essence means cooperation with bourgeois forces in order to provide capitalism with breathing space, so that the system can overcome temporary or more general difficulties.

And what is even more important. Why should the revolutionary movement elevate a thought concerning a possible scenario, which was never realized in the end, into a general theoretical principle and not generalize the strategy of Lenin and the Bolsheviks that actually led to victory?

Of course, all these well-wishers today say nothing about the positions and political actions of Lenin, beginning in April, after the fall of Tsarism, proclaiming the victorious social revolution in Russia and leading the proletariat for the first time in history to storm heaven and carry out the revolution, breaking the ice, opening up and forging the path for socialism-communism.

Historical experience has taught us that first “workers'” and “left” governments emerged from social-democratic parties or as coalition governments of social-democratic parties with other bourgeois parties. There has been no instance in the history of the international labour movement and in the period immediately after World War I in particular, when such governments did not arise as a result of the maneuvering of the bourgeoisie in order to deal with a revolutionary upsurge, in order to assimilate the workers’-people’s discontent in conditions of a very deep economic crisis before or after a war.

The goal of such a “left”, “workers'” government in the framework of capitalist power, without a revolutionary overthrow, via parliamentary processes, was later adopted by CPs as an intermediate goal with transitional measures. The aim of this, as they believed, was to facilitate the struggle for socialism and solve some pressing popular demands.

However, experience demonstrates that, despite the good intentions of CPs, they were not able to open a window even and certainly not a path to socialism anywhere, and were also not able to stabilize some gains of the people’s movement. This includes the experience before and after World War II and up to the present day. Communist Parties found themselves in the end organizationally, ideologically and politically disarmed.

The historical experience and significance of the Great October Revolution is incomparable. It confirms that the salvation of the working class and the other popular strata, in conditions of an economic and political crisis, in conditions of imperialist war, is only possible by overthrowing capitalist power and ownership, which of course presupposes the weakening and complete bankruptcy of its various “left” forms, represented by the dangerous trends of reformism-opportunism and the governmental left, as is expressed in Greece by SYRIZA, as well as by its occasional satellites, such as Popular Unity, ANTARSYA and other marginal groups-both in quality and quantity-which give them the pretext of a false broadness.

 

***

The experience and theoretical analysis of the Bolsheviks together with their revolutionary activity in the period from the 1905 revolution to the October Revolution of 1917 has major timeless importance for communists all over the world. It is related to every aspect of the activity of a revolutionary party, which has not lost the goal of workers’ power.

It provides valuable experience for the work of communists amongst broad working class masses, inexperienced working class masses and poor popular strata. It demonstrates the constant and at the same time contradictory features of the development of the working class’s alliance with other allied popular strata.

It teaches us that heightened militant and even revolutionary attitudes coexist with confused and disorienting standpoints and views. Of course the most robust attitudes develop amongst the industrial workers, the working class.

Consequently, it is very important for the ideological and political vanguard, the communist party, to elaborate and stick closely to the political line, to intervene substantially and specifically so that the movement of insurgent masses, the militant protests, planned confrontation and subversive activity take on a revolutionary orientation. Indeed, it must take into account that within the ranks of the movement there are forces active which are influenced by bourgeois ideology, a plethora of wavering petty bourgeois forces that bring these views into the ranks of the vanguard.

The ability of the Bolshevik Party, headed by Lenin, to constantly adapt did not lead it into following the mistaken path of erasing the essence of its goal for the revolutionary overthrow of the system and workers’ power. The ability to fulfill each task through correct adjustments should not lead to the gradual change of the strategic goal in the name of being adaptable. This is a crucial question for every CP.

Otherwise, there is a real danger of being dispersed amongst the masses, of being co-opted to positions inside the system, of transforming your strategy into one continuous set of maneuvers and tactics. Of course, one must always be aware that you can also be led onto a path that is equally painful for the working class and of course painless for the bourgeois class i.e. the path of isolation, retrenchment and dogmatism.

The communist parties today must constantly seek to creatively use the method and experience of the Bolsheviks, of that party’s leadership and Lenin, in their daily activity and the way in which they combined theoretical work with the study of domestic and international developments and the experience of the class struggle itself.

Through this process, a clear Marxist-Leninist answer can be provided to the following question, why was the victorious strategy of the Bolsheviks not at the centre of the analyses of the International Communist Movement, why did the CPs operate mainly on the basis of the previous analyses, in essence depriving the Leninist line of its revolutionary workers’ content and leading many CPs into sliding into social-democratic positions and opportunism?

 

***

The fact that the revolutionary content and gains which came as a result of the October Revolution over the course of decades were weakened due to the impact of trying to solve existent problems of socialist construction in a mistaken direction, by following capitalist recipes, as we often say, a course that chronologically coincided with the decisions of the 20th Congress of the CPSU in 1956, does not change or alter the internal dynamism of socialist construction or of course the decisive importance of the Great October Revolution of 1917.

Socialism did not endure in its first great attempt, in the struggle against the old, against reaction both domestically and internationally, something that resulted in its degeneration and in the end its overthrow, which entered its final phase in the 1980s through the notorious Perestroika and was completed through the counterrevolution and capitalist restoration in the USSR and the other socialist countries of Europe and Asia at the beginning of the 1990s.

Of course, the imperialist encirclement of the socialist system was a powerful fact that fed the internal problems and contradictions. It led to decisions that made socialist construction more difficult. One aspect, which is very rarely highlighted, is the objective fact that the arms race that the socialist countries were driven into participating in, above all the USSR, in confrontation with imperialist barbarity absorbed a large section of the economic and other resources of the Soviet Union and the other countries.

At the same time, the line of “peaceful coexistence” that mainly developed at the 20th Congress of the CPSU and afterwards, allowed for the fostering of many utopian views that it is possible for imperialism to give up on war and military methods.

The developments in the International Communist Movement, the split in the ICM, issues to do with its strategy also played a serious role in the formation of the global correlation of forces.

The dissolution of the Communist International in 1943, under specific historical political conditions, signaled in any case the absence of a centre for the elaboration of a revolutionary workers’ strategy against the international bourgeoisie, the international capitalist system.

Despite the fact that the conditions for the sharpening of the class contradictions during the 2nd World War sharpened, the anti-fascist struggle of the peoples led to the overthrow of bourgeois power only in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe, with the decisive contribution of the Red Army.

The Communist Parties in the capitalist West were not able to elaborate a strategy to transform the imperialist war or liberation struggle into struggle to conquer state power.

After the end of World War II, the lack of organizational connection between the CPs to form an independent strategy against the unified strategy of international imperialism became apparent. The International Conferences that took place later were not able to contribute to the ideological unity and the formation of a revolutionary strategy.

Our party has learned from its weaknesses and mistakes during the past, such as the lack of theoretical and political readiness to understand the development of the counterrevolution in the USSR in a timely fashion.

We consider that it is the responsibility and right of every CP to study the theoretical issues of socialism, to evaluate the course of socialist construction, to draw conclusions for the battle against opportunism at an international level, to prepare the party and class forces in general in order to explain the class struggle at an international level, to provide a scientific class explanation of the setbacks to social progress and development. In this internationalist and communist spirit, we try to follow the developments today in countries like China, Vietnam, Cuba and other countries.

The scientific explanation and defense of socialism’s contribution in the 20th century is an element that strengthens the revolutionary strategy of the communist movement.

The study of the contradictions, of the subjective mistakes of the historical progress as a whole is a process that develops the theory of socialism-communism, which will revive the communist movement ideologically and politically and will provide it with overwhelming strength in its new offensive and final victory.

We are convinced that the final victory will be emerge from the repeated defeats. The “defeat” of the October revolution by the counterrevolution of 1989-1991 can become a school for the next revolution. As a great intellectual wrote (the Hungarian, Laszlo Gurko): “The revolution is the greatest elation of humanity. Whoever has tasted it once never forgets its taste.”

Amongst our most important tasks today is to restore the workers’ knowledge about the truth of socialism in the 20th century, without idealizations, objectively and free of the slanders of the bourgeoisie, which are based on the catastrophes brought about by the counterrevolution.

Capitalism may still be strong today, but it is not invincible. The people are powerful when they struggle with the correct strategy. We look upon the 21st century with optimism.

The 20th century began with the greatest offensive launched by the proletariat in any era and ended with its temporary defeat. The 21st century will bring new offensives and revolutionary victories, the final and this time irreversible overthrow of capitalism and the construction of socialism-communism.

The spectre of socialism-communism is today haunting the bloody dreams of the bourgeois the world over. We must take the decision to become their permanent nightmare.

* General Secretary of the CC of the Communist Party of Greece (KKE).

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Thursday, April 20, 2017

Communist Party of Greece: Criticism of certain contemporary opportunist views on the state

https://communismgr.blogspot.com/2017/04/communist-party-of-greece-criticism-of.html

POSITION OF THE INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS SECTION OF THE CC OF THE KKE AT THE 11th ANNUAL CONFERENCE “V.I.LENIN, THE OCTOBER REVOLUTION AND THE CONTEMPORARY WORLD”.

Source: inter.kke.gr.

The importance and timeliness of Lenin’s work on the state. 

100 years ago, a few months before the Great October Socialist Revolution and in particularly difficult and complex political conditions, V.I. Lenin wrote a fundamentally important work, “The State and Revolution”, which, of course, was published for the first time after the October Revolution in 1918.

In this work, Lenin highlighted the essence and analyzed the class nature of the state: “The state is a product and a manifestation of the irreconcilability of class antagonisms. The state arises where, when and insofar as class antagonisms objectively cannot be reconciled. And, conversely, the existence of the state proves that the class antagonisms are irreconcilable.”[1]

Lenin in this work also establishes the need and timeliness of the socialist revolution and workers’ state.

It was based on the views of K. Marx and F. Engels regarding the issue of the state, which were formulated in several works, such as the “Communist Manifesto”, “the 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte”, “the Civil War in France”, the “Critique of the Gotha Programme”, Engels’ letter to Bebel on 18-18 of March 1875, Engels’ introduction to the third editions of the Marx’ “Civil war in France” etc in relation to the dictatorship of the proletariat. The conclusions Marx and Engels drew from the study and generalization of the experience and lessons of the revolutions was that the working class can acquire political power and establish the dictatorship of the proletariat only through socialist revolution, which destroys the bourgeois state apparatus and creates a new state apparatus. So, we can characteristically refer to the fact that Marx in his work “Critique of the Gotha Programme” stressed that: “Between capitalist and communist society there lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other. Corresponding to this is also a political transition period in which the state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat.”[2]

Lenin highlighted the fundamental importance of this issue for those that understand the existence and determining role of the class struggle in social progress, noting that “particular attention should be paid to Marx’s extremely profound remark that the destruction of the bureaucratic-military state machine is “the precondition for every real people’s revolution””[3] and stressing that “Only he is a Marxist who extends the recognition of the class struggle to the recognition of the dictatorship of the proletariat.”[4]

In addition, Lenin sought to describe the characteristics of the communist social-political formation, basic aspects of the socialist state, while severely criticizing right opportunist and anarchist views in relation to the state.

Of course, this specific work of Lenin, and this is true for the rest of the entire titanic collection of his works, cannot be detached from his other works, such as, for example, “The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky”, and always must be approached in a dialectical relationship with the historical developments. In any case, however, the Leninist approach to the state is an enormous legacy for the international communist movement, which must be utilized in a suitable way in order to repel social-democratic and opportunist views about the state, which have penetrated and continue to penetrate the international communist movement. Consequently, the goal of this intervention is not to present the Leninist positions or appropriate quotations from Lenin, but to provide a response based on the Marxist-Leninist understanding of the state to contemporary opportunist views. This is even more relevant today, when many views that Lenin fought against in his era are re-emerging in old and new forms.

The “neutral” non-class understanding of the state.

The forces of European opportunism constitute the basic tool for the further watering down of the communist characteristics of the communist and workers’ parties. These are forces that are vehicles for bourgeois ideology inside the labour movement. In Europe, they have established their own ideological-political and organizational centre; the Party of the European Left (PEL), which some CPs that in the past were deeply influenced by eurocommunism have joined, such as the CPs of France and Spain. SYRIZA participates in it from Greece. This is a party that is contains forces influenced by the eurocommunist current that split from the KKE in 1968, and also forces that split from the KKE in 1991, under the influence of Gorbachev’s “New Thinking”. This party later merged with forces that came from social-democratic PASOK.

This party argues that:”The state, however, is not a fortress but a network, relationship and strategic arena for political struggle. It does not change from one day to the next, but on the contrary its necessary transformation presupposes constant and continuous battles, the involvement of the people, continuous democratization.”[5]

As is apparent from the above, the bourgeois state is not considered by them to constitute by its very nature an organ for the domination of the bourgeois class, but a collection of institutions that can be transformed in a pro-people direction. On the basis of this view, it is argued that the character of the institutions of the bourgeois state, the bourgeois state as a whole, can be suitable shaped as long as “leftwing governments” hold sway.

This is clearly a misleading view, because in practice it detaches the state from its economic base, from the dominant economic relations. It creates illusions amongst the workers that the role of the bourgeois state and its institutions (e.g. parliament, government, army, police) depends on which political force (“left” or “right”) is dominant in them.

Similarly dangerous views are being cultivated today in a number of Latin American countries, through the concept of “progressivism”, through the various “progressive” and “left” governments, which after their electoral victories attempt to sow illusions among the people that the system can change via bourgeois elections and referenda.

In reality, however, there is no class “neutrality” on the part of the bourgeois state and its institutions. The state, as Marxism-Leninism has demonstrated, has a clear class content, which cannot be used via electoral processes and bourgeois governmental solutions in favour of the working class and social change.

 

On the view concerning the “Deep State”.

The emergence of SYRIZA as a governing party in Greece led to the celebrations of many opportunist forces all over the world. Indeed, its cooperation with the nationalist ANEL party in government was interpreted by some as an attempt to control the deep state of Greece via this political governmental alliance.[6] Similarly, some presented the statements of made by A. Tsipras even before the elections, when he directly stated that Greece “belongs to the West” and that Greece’s withdrawal from NATO was not on the agenda, as being a smart move.[7]

What is the aim of this view that separates the functions of the bourgeois state from each other like “salami slices”? Of course, inside the state apparatus of the bourgeois state, there are structures with different functions and tasks. However this does not support the view that separates the state into «hard” and “soft” sections. So, for example, the municipalities, the local services are an integral part of bourgeois administration, as local government is also tasked with implementing the reactionary, anti-people legal framework that is approved by each bourgeois government and parliamentary majority. The communists in our country are active in local government, seek to win the majority in the municipalities and today have achieved this in 5 of the country’s municipalities, which include the 3rd largest city in Greece, Patras. However they do not foster illusions amongst the workers about the character of this section of the bourgeois state. They seek as an opposition or as majority in the administration of the municipalities to utilize their position to develop the class struggle and not to “cleanse” capitalism which is what SYRIZA and other opportunist forces argue for.

These opportunist forces find the separation of the bourgeois state into sections convenient. First of all, because this can conceal that the entire state apparatus, regardless of the different functions of its sections, is in the service of the bourgeois class. Secondly, because in this way they sow the illusion amongst the workers that gradually, beginning from the “periphery” of the bourgeois state and marching to the “centre”, to its “depths”, they can “cleanse” it, transform it into a state that will be pro-people.

Opportunist forces foster similarly utopian views even about the inter-state capitalist unions, such as the imperialist EU. Indeed, they propagandize that via referenda or the emergence of left, social-democratic governments, allegedly a “democratic structure for the continent” can be created with “respect for the democratic, sovereign rights of the peoples»[8]. In reality, these claims deliberately bypass the class character of this inter-state union, which arises from the class character of the bourgeois states that constitute it, and which from its birth, as the “European Community for Coal and Steel” in 1952, had been created for the interests of capital.

The expansion of democracy in the bourgeois state as a “step” to socialism.

Lenin came into sharp conflict with those, like Bernstein, who argued that the reform of capitalism and the gradual reformist transformation of society are possible.

Later, the views of Eurocommunism gained a lot of ground, views which argued that communists can transform the state in a pro-people direction via the parliamentary road and the expansion of democracy.

The KKE, which fought and continues today to fight against these views, has estimated that the similar assessments made by the CPSU did a great deal of damage to the international communist movement. These views came to hold sway in the international communist movement mainly after the 20th Congress of the CPSU and spoke of a “parliamentary transition”[9]. Consequently, we consider views that developed on this basis and argue for the violation of basic principles of socialist revolution and construction to be problematic, e.g. the talk about “a variety of forms of transition to socialism” or the so-called “non-capitalist development path.”

The KKE has drawn conclusions and has rejected the “stages to socialism”, which tormented and continue today to torment the communist movement, as due to these “stages” they on the one hand negate the role of the CP as a force to overthrow capitalism in the name of the “current” tasks in the framework of the system (e.g. the aim of restoring bourgeois democracy in the conditions of dictatorship) and on the other hand they sow illusions about the “parliamentary transition” to socialism.

The KKE studies its history, draws valuable conclusions from the heroic struggles of the communists in the past decades. The CC of the KKE noted amongst other things in its recent statement on the 50th anniversary of the Junta in Greece:”The KKE and the labour-people’s movement seek and struggle to be able to function in the best possible conditions, which will facilitate their struggle and more generally expand their interventions against capital and its power. They struggle for freedoms and rights, in order to remove obstacles to their activity, in order to restrict-as far as possible-state repression.”[10] Nevertheless our party, studying its history, assesses that:”The dictatorship provided new experience that demonstrates the baseless character of the assessment that held sway in the International Communist Movement and the KKE, that the path of struggle for an advanced bourgeois democracy is fertile terrain for the concentration of forces and for approaching the revolutionary process, that the struggle for democracy is dialectically connected to the struggle for socialism. This assessment impeded the party from highlighting the military dictatorship as a form of the dictatorship of capital, impeded the orientation of the people’s struggle as a whole against the enemy-the dictatorship of the bourgeois class and its imperialist alliances, like NATO.”[11]

Today, similar mistaken views are being fostered within the ranks of the communist movement. These are views that either talk of “stages” on the road to socialism or of communists “penetrating” power, with the aim in both cases of expanding democracy, as a first stage to socialism.

In practice, such views postpone the struggle to overthrow of capitalist exploitation to the distant future, trap and restrict the labour movement inside the framework of only struggling for better conditions for the sale of labour power, negating the orientation of the struggle to radicalize the labour movement, to regroup it, to concentrate social forces, which have an interest in confronting the monopolies and can struggle for the overthrow of capitalism and the construction of the new socialist-communist society.

The nationalization of capitalist businesses as a step to change the nature of the state.

Similar confusion exists regarding issues related to the economy. For many years, the international communist movement, which was and to a great extent continues to be trapped in the rationale of stages to socialism, saw the reinforcement of the state sector of the bourgeois state as a step to socialism.

Indeed, today some misunderstand the Leninist position that “state-monopoly capitalism is a complete material preparation for socialism, the threshold of socialism, a rung on the ladder of history between which and the rung called socialism there are no intermediate rungs,”[12] in order to justify the active support and participation of communists in bourgeois management with an expanded state sector of the economy. But in this way they mistakenly understand state-monopoly capitalism as being the existence of a strong state sector in the economy and not as imperialism, the highest stage of capitalism, as described by Lenin.

Life has demonstrated that capitalism, in line with its needs, can aim for a large section of a country’s economy to be state-managed. So, for example, in the 1970s and 1980s the largest part of the Greek economy was in the hands of the state, however this did not at all change the character of the bourgeois state. Nor, of course, does it mean that a policy of gradually nationalizing private businesses, which usually means capitalists simply passing on their debts to the state, can lead to a change of its character. As long as power is in the hands of the bourgeois class, the state (with a stronger or weaker state sector) will be bourgeois, and the ruling class will act as the “collective capitalist” of state ownership.

The name of the state as a reflection on how its nature is viewed.

Lenin described the basic aspects of the workers’ state. We cannot close our eyes to Lenin’s analysis and just orient ourselves to the adjectives that accompany the name of a state. Today, for example, the “People’s Republic of Lugansk” and the “People’s Republic of Donetsk” have emerged. What is the character of these self-proclaimed “People’s Republics”? And as an aside to this discussion, we could bear in mind the existence, for example, of the so-called “People’s Republic of Congo”, where small children work in the mines in terrible conditions so that the foreign monopolies can acquire valuable minerals like cobalt and copper.

We assess that we cannot judge a state and our stance towards it exclusively on the basis of how it defines itself and its proclamations. A basic criterion must be which class owns the means production and holds power in the specific state, what kinds of relations of production are predominant in the specific country. And this is because the state for Marxist-Leninists is a “repressive machine”, which in our era objectively, in the 21st century, in the era of the passage from capitalism to socialism, ushered in by the October Revolution, will either be in the hands of the bourgeois class or the working class. There is no middle way!

We must not forget that as always, and today is no exception, the bourgeois classes seek to conceal their goals, to conceal the class character of their state. So, for example, a classic method that the bourgeois class uses to camouflage the state is the projection of its “national” character, presenting its state as a “weapon” to defend the entire nation. Today the bourgeois do not hesitate to also utilize other propaganda “weapons” in order to subordinate the labour movement “under their banners». The communists, the labour movement as a whole, must demonstrate a high level of vigilance when bourgeois politicians, who contributed to capitalist restoration in the former USSR, today utilize the anti-fascist “card”.

Today, when the bourgeois class is also reinforcing fascist forces, some of which even seek to play a role in government, such as, for example, in Ukraine, the appeals for new “anti-fascist fronts” and for alliances even with bourgeois political forces, and even bourgeois states that appear with an anti-fascist mantle, are intensifying. However, as the KKE assessed in the Declaration of the CC of the KKE on the 70 years since the end of the 2nd World Imperialist War and the great anti-fascist victory of the peoples:”The reactionary bourgeois state is neither willing nor able to tackle Nazism root and branch; neither can the so called “antifascist fronts”, an alliance of the labour-people’s movement in cooperation with bourgeois political forces.  Only the people’s alliance, the development of the class struggle with the aim of overthrowing the monopolies’ power, the capitalist system can deal with Nazism.”[13]

In addition, the KKE assesses that today the goal of workers’ power must not be pushed aside by another governmental goal on the terrain of capitalism, in the name of the deterioration of the situation of the working class and popular strata, due to the deep and prolonged economic crisis, imperialist war, open terror against the CP and the labour movement by Nazi-fascist organizations, provocations, the intensification of state violence.[14]

 

Socialist construction and the state under socialism.

For decades, social-democrats and opportunists have been carrying out, amongst other things, a systematic effort to negate every scientific approach to socialism and its state. We read, for example, in the material of the opportunist centre of Europe, the PEL, that it defends the “perspective of a democratic socialism». And this “socialist perspective” is defined by the PEL as “a society of justice founded on the pooling of wealth and the means of production, and on the sovereignty of democratic choice, in harmony with the planet’s limited resources.”Similar confusion and anti-Marxist approaches of the socialist society have multiplied in recent years with the various “socialisms” of Latin America. From the “Socialism of the 21st Century” of Chavez to the “socialism of buen vivir” in Ecuador, where the US dollar is used as the national currency.

They aim for us to ignore the fact that at the base of every socio-economic formation is a specific mode of production, which is the dialectical unity of the forces of production and the relations of production. The relations of production as whole in every phase of the process of reproduction-production, distribution, exchange, consumption- constitute the economic base of society. Approaching this issue scientifically, Lenin underscored that:”In the social production of their life, men enter into definite relations that are indispensable and independent of their will, relations of production which correspond to a definite stage of development of their material productive forces. The sum total of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which rises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness.“[15]

J.V. Stalin noted: “There are two types of production: the capitalist, including the state-capitalist, type, where there are two classes, where production is carried on for the profit of the capitalist; and there is the other type, the socialist type of production, where there is no exploitation, where the means of production belong to the working class, and where the enterprises are run not for the profit of an alien class, but for the expansion of industry in the interests of the workers as a whole.”[16]

This is why the KKE rejects various interpretations of socialism, which have nothing to do with the Marxist-Leninist view, and as it has often stressed in relation to the views of the PEL, or the various “socialisms” of Latin America, that what we have in essence is the promotion of opportunist positions about the “humanization” of capitalism, “ the utopia about the democratization of the bourgeois state, while the “mixed” capitalist economy is being presented as being a new model of socialism. “The logic of national specificities constituted the instrument of “eurocommunism” in order to deny the scientific laws of socialist revolution and construction and today the problem manifests itself with the same or similar arguments.(…) in order to substantiate the substitution of the revolutionary path with parliamentarianism, the relegation of socialism into governmental changes which will manage bourgeois society, as, for example, the Sao Paolo Forum and other forces do. The construction of socialism is a unified process, which begins with the conquest of power by the working class in order to form the new mode of production, which will prevail with the complete abolition of capitalist relations, the capital-wage labour relations. The socialization of the means of production and central planning are laws of socialist construction, necessary conditions for the satisfaction of the people’s needs.”[17]

The KKE, studying the experience of socialist construction assessed the 1965 economic reforms in the USSR as being mistaken. These were reforms that gave priority to “market reforms” and brought back the role of profit to the socialist economy. As a result vested interests emerged in the enterprises, which were not always in harmony with the interests of society. The mistaken reforms in the economy were combined with similar mistaken directions in the political superstructure (e.g. the All-people’s state) and in the strategy of the international communist movement (e.g. policy of “peaceful coexistence”).Of course, our party disagrees with the assessments of CPs, which were pulled into the damaging current of “Maoism” and which considered that from one moment to the next, immediately after the 20th Congress, the workers’ state ceased to exist or indeed that it was allegedly transformed into “social-imperialism” and in this way they participated in the anti-soviet propaganda. In contrast, our party, which defends the contribution of the USSR as the international communist and workers’ movement did, considers that socialism was constructed in the USSR. However, it also considers that the 20th Congress of the CPSU was a turning point, because a number of opportunist positions were adopted on issues related to the economy, the strategy of the communist movement and international relations.

Today, we evaluate that 30 years after the counterrevolution in the USSR, Central and Eastern Europe, the capitalization of China has advanced. Capitalist relations of production hold sway there. At the same time we observe the continuing reinforcement of capitalist relations in countries that sought socialist construction, such as Vietnam and Cuba.[18]

Some comrades from other CPs argue that the developments in these countries are reminiscent of the NEP in Lenin’s era. In other texts[19], we have highlighted the differences between the NEP and the changes taking place in these countries and the results of which our party is concerned about, based in its long study of the experience of the USSR. And this is because the socialization of the concentrated means of production, central planning in the distribution of labour power and the means of production, the eradication of the exploitation of man by man for the majority of workers are basic and necessary conditions, not only for the beginning of socialist construction, but also for its continuation.

In addition, as Lenin had noted that:”the dictatorship of the proletariat is not only the use of force against the exploiters, and not even mainly the use of force. The economic foundation of this use of revolutionary force, the guarantee of its effectiveness and success is the fact that the proletariat represents and creates a higher type of social organization of labour compared with capitalism. This is what is important, this is the source of the strength and the guarantee that the final triumph of communism is inevitable.”[20] It is clear that this “higher type of social organization” can have nothing to do with nepotism. As was noted in the Report of the CC of the KKE to the 20th Congress of the party “North Korea has proceeded to reinforcing the so-called “free economic zones”, the “market». The Workers’ Party of Korea has for some years relinquished Marxism-Leninism and promotes the idealist “Juche” theory, speaks of “Kimilsungism-Kimjongunism”, violating every concept of socialist democracy,  workers’-people’s control, in a regime of nepotism.”[21]

Instead of an epilogue: We must close the “loopholes” of the 2nd International.

The KKE carried out a deep study of the causes that led to the overthrow of socialism in the USSR, following the path of many years of inner-party study and discussion and devoting its 18th Congress (in 2009) in order to provide comprehensive answers on this issue, drawing valuable conclusions for the future. On the basis of this effort, grounded in Marxism-Leninism, our party enriched its programmatic understanding of socialism, something that is reflected in the new Programme adopted at the 19th Congress (2013).

 

The Programme of the KKE notes amongst other things:“The socialist power is the revolutionary power of the working class, the dictatorship of the proletariat. The working class power will replace all the bourgeois institutions, which will be smashed by the revolutionary activity, with new institutions that will be created by the people.”[22]

In addition, the Programme of the KKE describes in detail:

• The material basis of the necessity of socialism in Greece
• The duties of the KKE for the socialist revolution
•  Its duties more specifically on the revolutionary situation
• The leading role of the Party in the revolution
•  Socialism as the first, lowest phase of communism
• The issue of the satisfaction of the social needs
• Fundamental principles of the formation of the socialist power

The 20th Congress of the KKE, which was held this year, on the 30th of March-2nd April 2017, posed the task of the comprehensive ideological-political-organizational steeling of the party and its youth as a party for the revolutionary overthrow.

100 years ago, at the end of his work “State of Revolution”, V. I. Lenin noted that the 2nd International had spiraled into opportunism, that the experience of the Commune was forgotten and distorted and he added that:” Far from inculcating in the workers’ minds the idea that the time is nearing when they must act to smash the old state machine, replace it by a new one, and in this way make their political rule the foundation for the socialist reorganization of society, they have actually preached to the masses the very opposite and have depicted the “conquest of power” in a way that has left thousands of loopholes for opportunism.”[23]

Today, 100 years after the Great October Revolution and a year before the 100th anniversary of the founding of our party, the KKE seeks with its positions and activity to bar the “doors and windows” to opportunism. This is a precondition for the realization of the ideals of a society without the exploitation of man by man.

 

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[1] “State and Revolution”, V.I. Lenin, Collected Works, V. 25

[2] “Critique of the Gotha Programme”, K. Marx

[3] “State and Revolution”, V.I. Lenin, Collected Works, V.25

[4] “State and Revolution”, V.I. Lenin, Collected Works, V.25

[5]From SYRIZA’s governmental programme.

[6] The Real News Network, Interview (28/1/2015) with Leo Panitch, Professor of Political Science at York University, Toronto, Canada. http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=13071&updaterx=2015-01-28+01%3A16%3A04

[7] Article of Paul Mason (1/9/2015), former BBC journalist and former economics editor for Channel 4 News.http://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/paul-mason-what-unites-the-new-movements-of-the-left-1.2335322

[8] 5th Congress of the PEL. Political Document: “Refound Europe, create new progressive convergence”

[9] 18th Congress of the KKE, Resolution on Socialism. February 2009

[10] “Statement of the CC of the KKE on the Military Coup of the 21^st of April 1967. “Rizospastis”, 5 March 2017.

[11] Ibid

[12] “The impending catastrophe and how to combat it”, V.I. Lenin, Collected Works, V.25

[13] Declaration of the CC of the KKE on the 70 years since the end of the 2nd World Imperialist War and the great anti-fascist victory of the peoples. April 2015

[14] ibid

[15]  “Karl Marx”, V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, V.21

[16]J.V. Stalin, Works, V. 7

[17] Speech of the KKE at the 16^th International Meeting of the Communist and Workers’ Parties in Ecuador.

[18] Theses of the CC of the KKE for the 20^th Congress.

[19] “The international Role of China”, Komep 6/2010

[20] “A great beginning”, V.I. Lenin, Collected Works, V. 29

[21]Report of the CC of the KKE to the 20th Congress of the party, March 2017.

[22] Programme of the KKE, 2013

[23] «State and Revolution”, V.I. Lenin, Collected Works, V. 25.

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