(c) Lok Awaz Publishers 1996. No Part of this Publication may be reproduced without prior written permission of the publisher.
Comrades,
As you are well aware, the world communist movement has its origin in the clean break it made with European social-democracy. The split began to take shape in the Second International over the attitude socialists should take towards the inter-imperialist war and the granting of war credits to the bourgeoisie. This differentiation was to develop, and by the time of the Great October Revolution in 1917, it had become clear that the Second International had completely abandoned the entire program and conclusions of Marxism.
The history of the Third International is the history of defending the Marxist program and its conclusions against all the distortions by the enemies of revolution and socialism. It is the history of opposition to all conciliators with social-democracy, on the one hand, and the defence of the purity of Marxism-Leninism, on the other. It is the subsequent abandonment of Marxism-Leninism by many parties of the Communist International and their conciliation with social-democracy that has led to the present great setback to the cause of the working class revolution and socialism. It is this ideological position, this historical conclusion that must be defended, not dogmatically, but by keeping in mind the great sudden changes which have taken place in the world.
The CGPI was founded with Marxism-Leninism as the base of its theoretical thinking, as the guide to the completion of the people's democratic revolution in India. The main danger to the communist movement at that time came from the different variants of modern revisionism in state power, particularly Soviet revisionism. Under these conditions, the defence of the purity of Marxism-Leninism was carried out by opposing modern revisionism and all its varieties, especially on the questions of theory and practice of the Soviet Union, and by addressing the tasks of the revolution within the conditions of the bipolar division of the world.
Major and sudden changes have taken place in the world since that time. Not only has the bipolar division of the world ended but many of the communist parties have changed their names, and have openly and quite brazenly embraced social-democracy, as is the case with the Socialist Party of Albania. The destruction of the Soviet Union, the complete dismantling of the economic base and superstructure of socialism in the Russian Federation and other CIS states, and the open embracing of the "free market" and multi-party democracy as prescribed by the imperialists is a fact of life. Together with this, Soviet revisionism too has been destroyed in its old form, having achieved its purpose of destroying socialism.
Having examined the objective and subjective conditions after these sudden changes, the CGPI has come to the conclusion that the content of ideological struggle has also changed from what it was in 1980, when the CGPI was founded. Today, the greatest danger to the communist movement no longer comes from Soviet revisionism or other variants of modern revisionism, as it did in the previous four decades. Modern revisions, which divided the one communist movement in the past, is no more. After all the dust has settled, all those who still call themselves communist, who have not openly abandoned the aim of communism, are part of the one communist movement.
Where does the danger to this communist movement come from? In the face of the efforts of US imperialism to create a unipolar world dominated by it, and of others to create a multi-polar world, and in the face of the ideological offensive of the world bourgeoisie which claims that capitalism is the last stage in the development of human civilisation, there are those in this one communist movement who are conciliating with social-democracy, with those who are creating illusions about capitalism and imperialism. The main danger for the communist movement comes precisely from such forces. Today, therefore, the main content of the ideological struggle is against all conciliators with social-democracy, on the one hand, and in defence of contemporary Marxist-Leninist thought and all principles of Marxism-Leninism, on the other.
A good negative example of the content of the ideological struggle at this time is provided by the program adopted by the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF), which won about one third of the seats in the Duma during the elections held in Russia in December 1995. This program fully conciliates with social-democracy. The CPRF program eliminates the revolutionary content, that is, the kernel of our dialectical philosophy, the absolute part without which our philosophy is reduced to a mere jaundiced, eclectic mishmash. A cursory glance at this program will show that it is thoroughly social democratic.
According to news agency reports, "the mainplanks of its [the Communist Party of the Russian Federation ] policy, (have been) outlined by its leaders and in documents published before the Duma election... The communists, criticising a constitution adopted in Russia two years age, want to bring in a new basic law ensuring 'power for the working people' and to change Russia's presidential system which they say has created a 'semi-baronial system'. This proposed change is merely in form and not in content. Constitutions are written by victorious revolutions and they reflect a new content. Whether or not the Russian constitution incorporates 'power for the working people', unless the working class seizes power through a victorious revolution and over-throws capitalism, power will continue to reside with the bourgeoisie. Whether Russia changes from the Presidential form of government to some other form, such as that existing in India is completely irrelevant because, in that case, power will continue to be concentrated in the executive, that is in the Prime Minister and the Cabinet,instead of the President and the Cabinet.
The agency reports further add, "A manifesto adopted well before the Duma election says the people must decide Russia's future, and it revives an old Leninist slogan: 'He who does not work, shall not eat'. But the party makes clear that wages will depend on work rather than ideology. 'People will work honestly and earn according to the quantity and quality of their labour. Teachers, doctors, engineers, scientists, painters, writers, and sportsmen will again sense society's need for them'. However, in their program, there is no mention of overthrowing capitalism and rebuilding socialist society. How can people "work honestly and earn according to the quantity and quality of their labour" when the motive of production is the making of the maximum capitalist profit? This is nothing but the old nineteenth century social-democracy slogan of a "fair day's wage for a fair day's work".
In its foreign policy, the CPRF has completely abandoned proletarian internationalism and substituted it with the "defence of the fatherland". According to the same agency reports, the CPRF, "seeking a strong state, wants to renounce the agreement between Russia, Ukraine and Belarus which dissolved the Soviet Union and hold a referendum on recreating the superpower. They are determined to improve the lot of 25 million Russians trapped outside Russia's borders and say relations with the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania will be determined in part by how they treat their Russian citizens. The communists do not want NATO to extend its borders to bring in former members of the Warsaw Pact". In other words, the attitude of the CPRF towards the other members of the CIS is imbued with Great Russian chauvinism. Even its opposition to the expansion of NATO is from the point of view of national chauvinism and is based on Russia's desire to seek its own military blocs.
In their economic policy, the CPRF will go along with the capitalist system and call for changes hoping that the old social-democratic welfare hard-line ideas of the past and now backs a mixed economy of sorts". What are these "hard-line" ideas of the past" in the sphere of the economy? The most hard-line idea in political economy is the exercise of the dictatorship of of the proletariat in the ownership of the means of production and in the motive of production. This is to say that the content of relations at the base has to be changed from capitalist to socialist by the armed might of the insurgent proletarian masses of Russia. This is the main "hard-line" idea that has been abandoned by the CPRF.
Having given up this idea of establishing a socialist society through revolution, the CPRF now backs a mixed economy, as it exists in India at this time, with which the Indian working class has a long experience. It is called the state monopoly capitalist system, which also exists in most of the advanced capitalist countries. After this complete betrayal of the cause of the working class, the CPRF begins to make a lot of diversionary noise, such as declaring that "industries like defence, energy, transport and technology should stay in state hands, which could mean changing the government's privatisation policies. Selling off state assets deprives future generations of their rights, it says. The party has said 'illegally privatised' firms should be handed back to the people, and that privatisation deals which do not meet Russia's interests should be reversed, but has not said how this will be assessed. Communists want to subsidise prices and step up investment to boost sagging production. But at the same time, eyeing the huge need for investment and drawing parallels with China's success in drawing in foreign funds, they want to encourage Western investment". In other words, the CPRF wants to create a modern capitalist society that is advanced and an imperialist power. It wants to subsidise prices so that monopoly capitalists can pursue their aims without any risk to themselves in their competition in the international market. It is seeking foreign capital for the benefit of the capitalists.
In terms of their social policy: "The party, complaining that millions of Russians have lost out under painful economic reforms, wants to raise family allowances and the minimum wage and increase support for pensioners, families, veterans and the disabled. It wants to guarantee free education and health care and cheap housing. It will compensate Russians for inflation that has eaten away at savings built up in Soviet days and eliminate unemployment". How will it achieve all this? Can these things be achieved without overthrowing capitalism? No they cannot, except in the way of creating a social welfare state in the typical style of social-democracy. Such things are also done in India, wherein the government routinely indulges in handouts to this or that section of the population, in the form of subsidies, mid-day meals, and a thousand other such schemes. In the absence of overthrowing capitalism, what this in fact means is that the exploitation of the working masses is intensified, and the monopoly bourgeoisie increases the extraction from the whole of society, in the form of increased taxes, inflation and deficit budgets, and makes profits on "social welfare" as well. The CPRF, having given up the option of overthrowing capitalism, is committed to the social-democratic path, the path we in India have seen being pursued for a long time by the Indian National Congress and others. In fact, the CPRF's claim that it will accomplish all these things without the overthrow of capitalism and the expropriation of the bourgeoisie is mere deception and electioneering in the style of the social-democrats.
There is absolutely nothing in this entire program that would lift Russian society out of the severe crisis in which it is mired. The anachronistic notion of a social welfare state is a device to ensure that the working class neither examines nor elaborates a program from within the existing national and international conditions. This notion of a welfare state ensures that the working class falls into the trap of reducing everything to policy objectives and never advances a revolutionary program that would guarantee its interests. If this program of the CPRF is implemented, the Russian Federation will remain an imperialist state, and will continue to contend with all the imperialist states on the basis of its own interests. This is the main content of Boris Yeltsin's state as well. There seems to be no fundamental difference between capitalist Yeltsin and communist Zyuganov.
As capitalism developed to its final stage of imperialism, social-democracy emerged in defence of the European bourgeois nation-state, and for the expansion of the capitalism of the same nation on a world scale. Social-democracy withdrew from the challenge of the twentieth century to bring about proletarian revolution and establish the dictatorship of the proletariat at a time when capitalism had reached its last stage, the stage of imperialism. The CPRF has also done precisely that. It has withdrawn from the challenge of organizing another proletarian revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat, and has become the party of a Russian social welfare state and of Russian imperialism.
Social-democracy was brought to Indian during the period of British colonialism. The Indian National Congress was the first social-democratic party in India. It had the program of independence but without social revolution. It wanted the right to govern the Indian sub-continent but without making changes in the economic and political system. The Communist Party of India's slogan of "non-capitalist development" for India given in the late fifties was also an expression of sub-service to and an apology for social-democracy as it existed in the form of Nehru's "socialistic pattern of society" in India at that time. Social-democracy has always found allies in the different schools of socialism that arose in the conditions in which the colonialists created classes of people in whose interest it would be to defend their system. Such is the situation as it prevails in India at this time.
What precisely is the aim of social-democracy, this political line that has spread to so many countries of the world at this time? It is to ensure that the workers of all countries do not look into the conditions of their own countries, work out their own philosophies, elaborate their own economic and political theories, develop their own state structure and establish the direction of their economy and culture. It is precisely on the question of the nation that social-democracy is extremely harmful. It has thrown the banner of the nation into the mud, all the while presenting itself as the greatest defender and champion of the nation, and justifying its actions in the name of "national unity and territorial integrity".
Social-democracy is the favourite policy of the bourgeoisie to sort out the contradictions in its own ranks on the basis of helping itself to the state sector and national resources, on the one hand, and reconciling the class struggle of the proletariat and the liberation struggles of the peoples within each country and internationally, on the other. It has remained the preferred policy of the bourgeoisie the world over during the entire period of the twentieth century, even though the bourgeoisie resorts to fascism when social-democracy fails to provide the desired results.
The world bourgeoisie claims to espouse liberalism today, in the form of liberalisation and the "free market" economy. However, liberal democracy was the political theory suitable to the conditions of laissez-faire capitalism in the nineteenth century, when capitalism was in its pre-monopoly stage. Capitalism has long since entered into its last stage, the stage of imperialism, where the economic power of the monopolies is combined with the political power of the state. The rivalry among monopoly groups and imperialist powers for world domination has become the order of the day.
There is no possibility that imperialism will lead to free competition: imperialism leads to the further concentration of capital and the intensification of competition among the monopolies. It means striving for domination. It has led to the sharpening of the contradictions between imperialist powers and monopoly groups; between imperialism and the peoples of the world struggling for liberation; between capital and labour; and, since the victory of the Great October Revolution in 1917, between capitalism and socialism. It has already led to two inter-imperialist world wars and scores of imperialist wars of aggression and intervention, coups d'etat and fascist dictatorships. Liberalisation under the present conditions, is nothing but a euphemism for unbridled robbery and domination by the monopoly bourgeoisie, whose preferred policy remains that of social-democracy.
At the present time in India, social-democracy is no longer able to work in the old way. This is reflected in the increasing use of state terrorism and other forms of violence. The economic, social and political system and theories that the bourgeoisie gave rise to at the time of the rise of the European nation state are no longer appropriate in the conditions of the closing years of the twentieth century. Far from opening the path to the progress of society, this system has become the major roadblock.
The bourgeoisie is more and more displaying the features of a superfluous class, a parasite on the body of society, sucking its life blood and destroying it. The program of a free market economy is a euphemism for unfettered competition among the monopolies and imperialist powers in pursuit of unbridled domination and plunder. It is a demand that all barriers, including those of the nation-state itself, be brought down for the sake of maximizing the profits of the monopolies and of furthering imperialist domination. With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the former people's democracies in Eastern Europe, the markets of the world are at the disposal of the monopoly capitalists and imperialists of the world, who have entered into a fierce competition for world domination. Under these circumstances, terrorism and violence have become the major instruments of imperialism and world reaction, not only to suppress the resistance and revolt of the toiling masses but also to sort out the contradictions within their own ranks.
This has increased the pressure on social-democracy to divert the working class from achieving its goal of emancipating itself and all of society. It does this by openly presenting itself as the alternative to all extremes. Such an illusion does great damage to the world working class and communist movement, because the struggle in the final analysis is not between two bourgeois camps, the so-called right and left wings of the bourgeoisie, but between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, that is, between the exploiters and the exploited.
The bourgeoisie has also sophisticated the method of the ballot and the bomb to disperse the revolutionary forces. Social-democracy practices the method of the ballot most of the time, but it is not averse to making use of the bomb when it is in a desperate mood. Both state terrorism and individual acts of terrorism are used by the bourgeoisie, as can be seen from the activities of the Congress Party and others.
In the Indian conditions, the parliamentary struggle and the armed violence of the state are the expressions of bourgeois rule and policy that are aimed at diverting the attention of the communists and the revolutionary forces from addressing the broad questions of theory and political line, of ideological struggle and the political program, and the practical work to bring about the revolution.
Return to: | Whither India Index |
Disclaimer: The opinions presented on this website's event and discussion forums are those of readers from around the world and do not necessarily represent the views of CGPI, its members or any affiliated organisations.
Home | About | Statements & Speeches | Documents | People's Voice | Donate | Act Now! | Download
Search powered by