The year 2011 has elapsed. Yet another year, imperialism and capitalism continued their death-dance of profit at the cost of human lives throughout the world. And in a more naked form than ever. In the age of Globalization, the capitalist system, critically crisis-ridden, continued to tear apart its remaining “welfarist”, “democratic”, “just and fair” masks, one after another. Its supreme masters, too, have now forsaken the efforts of justifying and legitimizing the capitalist system. Now they do not turn red when now and then, they have to accept that the capitalist system, through its spontaneous motion, generates unemployment, poverty, hunger, homelessness; however, together with this, they talk of the lack of any alternative. They contend that though capitalism cannot provide a better life to the majority of common toiling masses, but what can one do about it! They demonstrate the culmination of the Socialist experiments of the Twentieth century in revisionist, social-fascist dictatorships and the failure of various peoples’ protests and the gradual degeneration of the remaining Socialist states as the ultimate victory of capitalism. They argue that though the bourgeois democracy is not a just and equitable system, however, the Socialist states which claimed to provide an alternative, proved totalitarian and undemocratic! Therefore, according to them, the predatory, misanthropic character and profiteering of capitalism notwithstanding, the humanity today is left with only one alternative–bourgeois democracy! Weighing Socialism as well as religious fundamentalism and terrorism on the same scales, they assert, ‘look! You have nothing else to choose from except bourgeois democracy and various kinds of (communist or religious fascist) totalitarianisms!’
Various NGOs, living off on the left-overs of the imperialists too, speak the same language. Many voluntary organizations and non-governmental organizations have been deployed in the ‘Third World’ countries with the purpose of propagating the idea that there is no alternative to capitalism; that the bourgeois parliamentary democracy is the best political system, though it has only been able to bestow destitution, deprivation and destruction on the majority of the people; that the utmost one can do, while staying within the ambit of the preset bourgeois democracy, is to achieve some betterment through reform, patchwork, judicial activism, citizen’s advocacy and awakening the “initiative” of the masses (that is to say, free the government of all its responsibilities!)! If one speaks about a revolutionary, radical movement against the entire system which aims at seizing the power from the hands of the ruling classes and handing it over to the working masses through a revolution, they begin to frown! They hold that such attempts have failed and even if they have succeeded, they have culminated in a system far worse than the bourgeois democracy–that is to say, totalitarianism!
At present ‘totalitarianism’ has become a catch-word in various intellectual circles. Not only the NGOs, which directly thrive on the crumbs thrown to them by the state, are infused with terror of this totalitarianism, but various fashionable thinkers who consider themselves upholding more radical views than Marxism, Socialism, Communism and who talk about “a new kind of Communism”, too, are being consumed by the fear of this totalitarianism! Amongst these, perhaps there are some who are really terrified, somewhat like the character of Pastukhov in Fedin’s novel ‘An Unusual Summer’, who till the end is not able to decide whether to take the side of Bolshevik revolutionaries or not (because he considered revolution a beautiful object and was panic-stricken by the horror and ferocity of the Civil War), and then there are some who actually are not terrified but as pragmatism demands, are taking sides and if need be, changing sides too, just like Tsvetukhin, another character in the novel, was doing. (Sometimes I wonder why while reading the works of Slavoj Žižek, written during past one and a half decades, one is, all of a sudden, reminded of Tsvetukhin)! However, the strategy of presenting the false alternatives of (bourgeois) democracy and totalitarianism does not seem to be working out for capitalism now.
The year gone by has been full of upheavals for capitalism. Terribly stuck in the whirl of economic crisis, capitalism is increasingly becoming undemocratic, repressive and dictatorial. The present crisis, which happens to be the most terrible crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s, has forced capitalism to cast aside its remaining “welfarist” masks. From the Subprime crisis to the present sovereign debt crisis, the way in which the capitalist state powers of various countries in the world have openly as well as directly intervened to safeguard the finance monopoly bourgeoisie, and by instituting massive cuts on the social public expenditure done on the people, bailed out banks and financial institutions which had been ruined due to their greed, avarice and lust for profit, it has clearly shown its partisanship. The students-youth and workers are taking to streets against the pro-capital policies of the governments of Greece, Portugal, Spain and even the US, Britain and France. The militant movement of the students against the cuts in public expenditure is going on in Chile. The historical context for the present upheaval in the Middle East has been prepared by the irresoluble crisis of capitalism itself since it has augmented the pressure on Imperialism to establish its hegemony on oil and natural gas resources of the Arab countries. The increasing pressure of imperialism coupled with the discontent of the people against the degenerated indigenous bourgeois state powers, naked repression, and poverty, unemployment and rising prices is giving rise to an explosive situation in the Arab countries. In countries like India and China, though no situation of countrywide uprising exists, however, there too, the frequency of workers’ movement is on the rise. Clearly, after a long period of frustration, despondency, darkness and illusory lack of alternative which had begun following the fall of revolutionary Socialist states of the Twentieth century, we are entering into the beginning of an extremely complex, difficult and protracted period of transition. In such a scenario, today it becomes incumbent upon the revolutionary forces, students-youth desiring change and workers of the country to answer many of intricate and serious questions. Without this, we cannot advance by merely celebrating the spontaneous anti-capitalist mass upsurges. Today the biggest question confronting us is the question of a consistent critical evaluation of the successes and the failures of the Socialist experiments of the Twentieth century.
- The Socialist Experiment in the Soviet Union and the Capitalist Restoration
The period from 1917 till 1976 was the period of great experiments of the world proletariat. The world became witness to the first-ever workers’ revolution in 1917. It was the first instance when the Marxist science, which had come into being as the essence and scientific review and sum-up of the historical experiences of the proletariat, was being put into practice. From 1917 till the death of Stalin in 1953, the proletarian state power remained firmly established in Russia and pulling Russia out of medieval darkness, it placed it in the ranks of the most advanced and powerful countries of the world. During this entire period, not only did Russia achieve economic progress but in terms of the indices of human development and standard of living too, Russia was ahead of any other country of the world. Unemployment, poverty, prostitution, illiteracy and homelessness were eradicated; and all of this was achieved by the Socialist Russia by enduring massive sacrifices and destruction during its victory over Fascism and Nazism. Before the commencement of the Cold War, the achievements made by Socialist Russia under the leadership of Stalin were recognized by even the western observers, reporters, intellectuals and researchers. The imperialist conspiracy of depicting Stalin as a demon and projecting Stalin-era Soviet Union as an undemocratic repressive country started off during the Cold War, which is going on till today. However, this historical truth cannot be reversed that the Socialist Revolution, in every possible respect, placed Russia, once referred to as ‘the lazy bear of Europe’, among the ranks of the leading countries of the world. The Twentieth century became witness to the unparalleled and fast-paced progress of Russia and this was made possible by Socialism itself. We cannot present a detailed analysis on the elimination of private property, collectivization in agriculture, industrialization, planned development, social equality and experiments in education and culture in Russia under Socialism in a single article. However, we would like to draw the attention towards some issues of fundamental importance.
The unprecedented and astounding experiments and progress of Socialism notwithstanding, owing to the economistic deviation in the Socialist experiment of Russia and in the understanding of the Communist Party of Russia on Socialist construction, the bourgeois distortions and bureaucratic tendencies present within the party could not be checked. Russia remained a Socialist country during the life time of Stalin, because under the leadership of Stalin, the character of the state power remained proletarian and Stalin tried to eliminate various bourgeois and bureaucratic tendencies through proletarian instinct and viewpoint. Stalin cannot be criticized precisely for those very “reasons” for which he has been criticized during the past six decades by people like Roy Medvedev, Isaac Deustcher, Leon Trotsky and the hireling intellectuals and media of the Imperialist countries. If the task of crushing the bourgeois conspiracies and intrigues against the workers’ state by Stalin generates fear and anxiety in the parasites and leech of the bourgeoisie, then it comes as no surprise. Certainly, many a times excesses were also committed. However, because of being surrounded by imperialism from outside and opponents and conspirators of the Socialist experiments within the country, and even within the Party, Stalin never got time to stop for a while and deliberate. However, this is also true that there was economism present in Stalin’s understanding of Socialist construction. This weakness has been present in the whole of European working class movement since the times of Marx. Marx, Engels and Lenin had continued struggle against this trend. However, despite this, its strong influence remained even after the Bolshevik Revolution. This trend believed that following the establishment and consolidation of the proletarian state power and legal abolition of private property in both agriculture and industry, Socialist construction would merely mean the rapid development of the productive forces. Owing to this non-dialectical stress on the development of productive forces, there always remained more emphasis on industry in the economic planning of the Soviet Union. When the danger of Fascism was hovering then extracting surplus from agriculture and pouring it into the industry was compulsion of the Soviet Union, because without chemical, big mechanical industries and production and purification of metals, the Soviet Union could not have built the war machinery needed to fight Germany. However, owing to the greater stress on the development of the productive forces, in normal conditions too, the policy of less emphasis on agriculture and more emphasis on industry would have been pursued, because there is a material and natural limit to the development of productive forces in agriculture and the pace of development of productive forces too is low, whereas in industry, the productive forces develop with a much greater pace and theoretically, there is no material and natural limit to their development. Therefore, there was always greater emphasis on industry than agriculture, which increased all the more under the exceptional circumstances of war. Thus, the understanding of the Soviet Party under the leadership of Stalin was that the stage of Communism can be arrived at through the rapid and unlimited development of the productive forces because when the stage of abundance is reached, only then the Communistic principle of ‘from each according to his ability and to each according to his needs’ can be put into practice. Therefore, in 1936 itself, when the collectivization of agricultural farms came to an end and private property was abolished, Stalin declared that now there are no antagonistic classes in the Socialist Soviet Union; workers, peasants and intellectuals together have to advance towards communism. However, clearly the mere abolition of the juridical forms of private property does not amount to accomplishing the task of the transformation of bourgeois production relations. Undoubtedly, it is the prerequisite for the transformation and without it; any talk of transforming the production relations would be meaningless. However, even after the collectivization of ownership, complete transformation of the relations of distribution had not taken place; even after the coming into being of collective farms and industries, production of goods as commodities was still in existence and therefore, exchange relations, too, were in existence; the level of development of the process of political decision-making by the masses on their own was low; the task of the gradual elimination of the role of political leadership of the party, particularly the condition of providing the institutionalized leadership was not even in the initial stages; the elimination of the gap between the mental labour and manual labour, town and country, and industry and agriculture still remained. Besides, the influence of the bourgeois ideas in the fields of culture, education and psychology was strongly present. The bourgeois rights were still in existence. From industry to agriculture, the specialists enjoyed privileges. The managers, technocrats and supervisors in factories, mines and even collective farms got privileges, facilities as well as more salaries. Generally, these people who enjoyed bourgeois privileges based on the disparity between mental and manual labour, industry and agriculture, and that between town and country were the organizers, commissars etc of the Communist Party. This class continuously consolidated its position during the period of Socialist construction in the Soviet Union. On the one hand, Russia was advancing in terms of development of productive forces, development of the standards of living and collectivization, on the other hand, this privileged class was striking deep roots within the party. Stalin, gradually, was grasping this. However, he could not evolve any clear understanding of its causes. And particularly, when his analysis was this that in 1936, there were no antagonistic classes in the Soviet Union, he could not have arrived at the key link of the problem. Till the time he recognized this reality, that the Socialist transition will be a protracted period and during this entire period, classes will exist, and the key link to understand the development of the society will only be class struggle, the bureaucratic bourgeoisie had firmly entrenched itself within the Party. In the last years of his life, Stalin undertook various measures to break the hold of this bureaucratic class, however, before he could have systematically advanced these efforts, he passed away in 1953 and with Khrushchev’s coming to power, the restoration of capitalism in the Soviet Union began and by the time of the Twentieth Congress of the Bolshevik Party in 1956, the revisionism of Khrushchev had firmly and decisively consolidated its position within the Party. In the recent years, the research done by people like Grover Furr, Mario Sousa and Ludo Martens has shown that throughout his life, Stalin fought against the bureaucratic and bourgeois elements within the Party, who using the authority of Stalin’s name, were disgracing both Socialism and Stalin. However, since Stalin failed to understand the nature of class struggle during the Socialist transition, therefore, he could not perceive the ground which generated such elements.
In the Twentieth Congress, Khrushchev indulged in open slandering against Stalin and tried his utmost to discredit his great leadership. Following this, Khrushchev began the task of systematically destroying and breaking the great institutions, values and structures of Socialism. This task was further taken ahead during the period of Brezhnev and Kosygin. The moment Russia, departing from Socialism, took the road to capitalism, from a Socialist country, it transformed into a social imperialist country and entered into rivalry with the US, the other super-power of the world. The Soviet imperialism displayed its various feats in Eastern Europe and Afghanistan, besides many countries of Africa. And the stigma of all these misdeeds sullied the name of Socialism since the Soviet Union was still Socialist in name. The people in the country took time to comprehend the departure to capitalism. People found it hard to believe that the party of great Lenin and great Stalin was destroying all the achievements of Socialism one after another. As Soviet Socialism got transformed into a state monopoly capitalism, problems like unemployment, poverty, and homelessness started raising their heads once again in the country. The revisionist party of the Soviet Union tried to maintain the high level of productivity through a social fascist kind of control over the workers and the common working masses. Each and every protest of workers and the common toiling people was mercilessly suppressed. The criticism of party as well as of state was impossible; it was a crime. Nobody could speak against the state power. The state power kept a close watch on even the personal and private lives of the citizens. The reason being that the Soviet revisionist were always haunted by the fear that as the people would comprehend their reality, they could face greater opposition and protest. Therefore, the revisionist power used a social fascist kind of control over the people. Owing to being namesake Socialism, the charge of these undemocratic activities too was leveled against Socialism and Marxism. After 1956, the bourgeois media projected the social imperialist role of the Soviet Union on the international level and its social fascist role against people within the country as the dictatorship of the proletariat. And till today the imperialist media and the hired intellectuals of imperialism, citing the entire period after 1956 as the example of the dictatorship of the proletariat, juxtapose it against the bourgeois democracy and claim that the bourgeois democracy at least gives relative civil liberty!
- Problems of Socialism and the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution
Mao presented a detailed analysis of the causes behind the fall of Socialist experiment and capturing of the party by revisionism in the Soviet Union. During the lifetime of Stalin itself, Mao had presented a few criticisms of the Socialist experiment of the Soviet Union. Mao’s deliberation on the problems of Socialism began with the criticism of Soviet Socialism itself. To evolve his own thought on this, Mao caught hold of the loose ends of Lenin’s thoughts. Before his demise in 1924, Lenin had begun to think on the problems of Socialism in the Soviet Union, as well as in general. Very few people are acquainted with this fact that it was Lenin who first used the term ‘cultural revolution’. However, Lenin was not able to evolve the entire concept of Cultural Revolution as yet. Though he did point out that there are bourgeois distortions and bureaucratic deformities present in the Soviet Socialist state power; he had also said that the presence of private ownership and petty production in the field of agriculture as well as the private trade is a constant source of the reproduction of the bourgeois elements; besides, he also reminded that the struggle between capitalism and socialism is going to be long drawn out and which will win of the two in the first round will only be decided by a protracted historical period; Lenin believed that along with the development of productive forces, continuous emphasis should be laid on the aspect of Socialist education and the building of a new Socialist man. Without this, the task of Socialist construction could not be taken ahead and neither can one advance in the direction of communism. However, Stalin could not grasp the loose ends of Lenin’s thoughts. Rather he fell prey to the economistic deviation present in the European working class movement, that is to say, the mistake of laying emphasis only on the development of the productive forces in the Socialist construction. Consequently, he could not correctly understand the entire character and nature of the Socialist society. Mao further advanced the analysis left by Lenin and evolving it qualitatively, developed a consistent understanding of the Socialist transition, and in addition to it, propounded the epochal theory of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. Today, only the theory of Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution can be a suitable gateway for the proletarian revolutionaries to the task of preventing capitalist restoration during the Socialist transition and further evolving the theory of advancement towards communism. Mao stated that the Socialist transition is a protracted historical period during which the class struggle itself is the key-link for the proletarian revolutionaries. The proletariat would have assumed power in a Socialist society, however, the bourgeoisie would be present in the society and would keep on trying to regain its lost paradise. Mao pointed out that the task of the revolutionary transformation of the production relations begins, and not ends with the legal abolition of the private property, because legal abolition of the private property merely resolves the question of ownership. It neither completely resolves the question of distribution, nor the three great inter-personal disparities present in the entire process of production and distribution, that is to say, the contradiction between mental and manual labour; the contradiction between the town and the country; and the contradiction between the industry and agriculture. Till the time these inequalities are present, bourgeois privileges remain; exchange of goods remain and in this manner, goods do not exist merely as use values (that is to say, for use only) but rather as commodities; the class of party commissars and organizers endowed with bourgeois privileges, creates a new kind of bourgeoisie within the party and established bourgeois headquarters within the party; the class of specialists, managers, supervisors becomes a privileged strata in the society and colluding with the bourgeoisie present in the party creates a force which has contradiction with Socialism and the proletariat. These elements, owing to their class nature and behaviour, create impediments in the path of every Socialist experiment, hatch conspiracies and continuously look for opportunities to overthrow the proletarian state. If an all-round proletarian dictatorship is not exercised on these classes then they will ultimately overturn the proletarian state power and transform it into a capitalist state. Mao put forth that in order to prevent the capitalist restoration, the revolution has to be continued perpetually. In a Socialist society, the gap between manual labour and mental labour, town and country, industry and agriculture remains in the society; bourgeois privileges exist; the fight of the proletariat against all these is not merely a fight against capitalism. The fight of the proletariat against these is a great epochal struggle against the four thousand years of class society. For this, the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution is needed. That is to say, to continue the proletarian revolution in the sphere of superstructure, i.e., in all the fields like culture, education, art, psychology, literature, politics, habits, values, beliefs, etc; that is to say, the gradual abolition of the aforementioned three interpersonal disparities in all these fields through perpetual propaganda, struggle and propaganda; to enforce all-round dictatorship of the proletariat on the bourgeoisie; to cleanse the party of bourgeois garbage at regular intervals through criticism-selfcriticism and rectification campaigns etc; to continuously establish the authority of the principles of Marxism-Leninism among the masses; the gradual abolition of modes of petty production; to lay emphasis on increasing production, however, not in the manner in which the gap between manual and mental labour, town and country, and industry and agriculture aggravates all the more. Therefore, Mao raised the slogan ‘grasp revolution, increase production’! Mao asserted that although in the contradiction between the production relations and productive forces, historically the productive forces are decisive, however, after the revolution, following the establishment of the proletarian state power, the aspect of revolutionary transformation of the production relations becomes dominant. The character of a social formation is identified by the character of the production relations. A consistent understanding of the Socialist construction and transition cannot be achieved without correctly understanding the dialectics between the production relations and productive forces. Mao, soon after the commencement of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, had said that even after this, it will still take a long time to determine whether it is capitalism or Socialism which triumphs in the first round in China. To ascertain the ultimate victory of Socialism, many cultural revolutions will be needed. The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution was still in progress in China when Mao passed away in 1976. The capitalist roaders in the party had not been fully vanquished, though the Cultural Revolution had considerably weakened them. Following the demise of Mao, a powerful struggle ensued in the Party in which, because of a few middle roaders and liberals, capitalist roaders succeeded ultimately. The four leaders representing Mao’s line were arrested by the revisionists and imprisoned. They were branded as anti-Mao conspirators and this was propagated through out the country. A sizeable section of the honest cadres present in the party too could not correctly comprehend these changes. The middle roaders had a big role to play in this as well. Ultimately, the proletarian state power was subverted under the leadership of Deng Xiao Ping, and by 1978, the revisionists had consolidated their victory. However, it is only because of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution led by Mao that the revisionist power in China cannot rest peacefully even today. Every year, there is repression, arrests, and killings of Maoists in China; workers take to streets time and again; now and then the students and youth launch movements against the social fascist Chinese state. The forces that were active in the movement on the Tiananmen Square in 1989 too, comprised of few such students and youth who were opposing the repressive attitude of the undemocratic revisionist social democratic state and were demanding democratic space, however, a large section of workers and a section of students too was opposing the ‘market socialism’ of Deng Xiao Ping and the systematic destruction of the revolutionary institutions of Mao’s Socialist China. Whatever be the case, in no way, a single great proletarian cultural revolution could have ascertained the survival of the Socialist experiment in China. Mao knew of this fact before-hand and perceived the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution as a perpetually continuing process, and not as a single step or an event. Scientifically, it could not have been guaranteed whether such a process could have succeeded in continuing in very first attempt. Its imperfections and failures notwithstanding, the first experiment of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution enriched the understanding of the proletariat on the problems of Socialism and their resolution. The theory of the great proletarian cultural revolution is the most advanced development of the Marxist science, and without its understanding, the proletarian revolutionaries in the Twenty-first century can neither combat capitalism before revolution and nor can they safeguard the proletarian state power against its conspiracies after the revolution. Certainly, the contributions of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution cannot be fully explained in a small article. The theory of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution is not a closed-ended theory, and it is not that, it does not need to be further developed. This theory has only opened a doorway to understand and resolve the problems of Socialism. It is only a beginning to think with correct approach and correct methodology in the right direction.
(To be continued…)
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