Ludo Martens
Workers' Party of Belgium
Eighty years ago on the 25th of October 1917 Lenin and the Bolshevik Party launched the
people's insurrection in Petrograd.
Thus was the start of the Soviet socialist revolution which completely changed the whole
world and opened a new chapter in the history of humanity.
The blast of the October Revolution inspired an upward development of the proletarian
revolutionary movement which lasted until Stalin's death in 1953.
Since that time, however, revisionism, initiated by Khrushchev, has betrayed the October
Revolution and renounced all its essential principles. Thirty-five years of revisionism
have led to the re-establishment of capitalism in its most savage form in the Soviet Union
and in the socialist countries of Eastern Europe and to a temporary set-back of the
proletarian world revolution.
The twentieth century will have been the age of the final rehearsal for the socialist
world revolution.
On the threshold of the year 2000 both positive and negative experiences allow all
anti-capitalist forces to grasp more profoundly the historical correctness of the
principles of the October Revolution.
It was actually loyalty to the principles of Marxism-Leninism which brought victories to
revolutionary forces all over the world during the first half of the twentieth century;
during the second half of this century the progressive elimination of those principles by
reformism has brought about bitter defeats at world level.
All Communists are convinced that the 21st century will see the triumph of the
principles of the October Revolution and of Marxism-Leninism in all five continents.
The two major problems which our world has known from the beginning of this century - the
problem of workers' liberation through the socialist revolution and that of national
liberation through anti-imperialist and democratic revolution, which is the preparatory
stage to the socialist revolution - these problems will be faced in the next century too.
But they will arise with much greater intensity and on an immeasurably larger scale, as
workers from the remotest areas on earth will be carried along by one single torrent of
revolution.
Besides, at the beginning of the 21st century the working class will possess an
accumulation of experience immensely greater than that available to the proletariat of
1890, which at that time was only embryonic in its development at world level.
Today, in 1997, commemorating the October Revolution means defending the doctrine of
Leninism as a whole, and opposing revisionism dictated by Khrushchev.
Khrushchev was the personification of a petty-bourgeois line, which existed within the
Bolshevik Party from the October Revolution on. This line expressed the interests of the
bourgeoisie, the petty-bourgeoisie and of bureaucratised elements within the Soviet state
machinery. In the history of the Bolshevik Party this line was represented by Kamenev and
Zinoviev, by Trotsky, by Bukharin and Rykov. In the days of Lenin and Stalin this
petty-bourgeois line was systematically criticised and fought against, and socialism went
from victory to victory. After Stalin's death the Menshevik line succeeded in seizing
control, thanks to Khrushchev.
Kautsky's ideas and those of the Mensheviks against whom Lenin had fought so fiercely,
were imposed on the Communist Party of the Soviet Union by Khrushchev.
The analysis Lenin made of Kautskyism is the burning question of the day, because it
applies word for word to modern revisionism. "By means of patent sophistry, Marxism
is stripped of its revolutionary living spirit; everything is recognised in Marxism except
the revolutionary methods of struggle, the propaganda and preparation of those methods,
and the education of the masses in this direction. The working class cannot play its world
revolutionary role unless it wages a ruthless struggle against this backsliding,
spinelessness, subservience to opportunism, and unparalleled vulgarisation of the theories
of Marxism."
All fundamental principles of Leninism were negated, the ideas of the Mensheviks were
rehabilitated under the fallacious slogan: "Let's criticise Stalin's aberrations and
turn back to Lenin."
In fact, Stalin fully applied the principles of Leninism and it is for this reason that he
brought down on himself the fierce hatred of all reactionaries. History has unquestionably
proved that the attacks against Stalin, from those perpetrated by Khrushchev to those
perpetrated by Gorbachev, were directed against all Lenin's fundamental principles. It is
easy to verify that when Khrushchev attacked Stalin, he turned not to Lenin but to
Kautsky.
Without Stalin's work the October Revolution would have been a glorious episode,
certainly, but it would have been local and short-lived, without great impact on world
history. It was Stalin who gave body to the principles elaborated by Lenin and who
transformed the October Revolution into a material force capable of influencing the
destiny of the world.
When Stalin started to lead the Bolshevik Party at the end of 1922, the country was in
ruins and nothing could guarantee the success of the experiment. If in the course of the
twenties the lines of Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev or Bukharin had prevailed within the
leadership of the Party, they would have led to the downfall of the dictatorship of the
proletariat. The principles of the October Revolution could not have materialised in the
Soviet Union, and they would not have known the international and lasting impact that
Stalin ensured for them.
Thirty-five years of political practice, emanating from Khrushchev to Brezhnev and to
Gorbachev, proved that these revisionists did nothing to "correct Stalin's
mistakes" or "to develop Leninism in a creative way by adapting it to new
international conditions" as their demagogy had it.
In all the fundamental documents of the CPSU from the XXth Congress in 1956 onwards we
find a revised and falsified 'Leninism'.
Without systematically criticising all those revisionist theses, it is impossible to
re-establish the full doctrine of authentic Leninism.
It is necessary to study all the important works written by Lenin once again to be in a
position to refute the sophisms of Khrushchev, Brezhnev and Gorbachev.
Indeed, one can see that since the so-called 'return to Lenin' proclaimed by Khrushchev,
Lenin's works have in many Communist Parties been less and less read, assimilated and
applied.
This is also the case in many Marxist-Leninist Parties which originally stood up against
revisionism, where we have seen an evolution in the same direction. Whereas the first
generation of cadres had acquired a reasonably systematic knowledge of Leninism, the next
generation made little effort to master Lenin's doctrine in a comprehensive way or to
apply it to today's struggle in practice. This weakness also affects the Workers' Party of
Belgium.
Today it is therefore important to systematize the fundamental theses propounded by Lenin
with regard to state, democracy, parliamentary government, imperialism, the proletarian
revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat. This is what we shall do in this
report. This seems to us the best way of proving that the principles of the October
Revolution are the burning issue today.
By the end of Brezhnev's reign and during that of Gorbachev, the larger part of the
Communist Party apparatus had already adopted the political positions of the international
bourgeoisie.
A large sector of 'shadowy capitalism' had developed with the support of the revisionist
forces; this 'illegal' capitalist sector formed alliances with high ranking officials who
were treating the means of production more and more as their private property. Revisionism
finished its work of destroying the economic, political, ideological and moral foundations
of socialism. The new bourgeoisie had become a class in its own right, aware of its
leading role in society and ready to install its overt dictatorship. At the 28th Congress,
Gorbachev publicly proclaimed the complete restoration of capitalism in the Soviet Union.
During the final struggle to eliminate the last remnants of socialist rule in the Soviet
Union, we saw a united front of all anti-Communist forces in action on a global level.
The October Revolution put its mark on the first half of our century and we saw that all
genuinely revolutionary and socialist forces rallied around its flag. The 1989-1990
counter-revolution, the outcome of the degeneration that had started in 1956 was, in its
turn, an event which put its mark on world history.
It is when great historical and international events occur that various political forces
show their true nature. During the 1989-1990 counter-revolution, revisionism,
social-democracy, Trotskyism, anarchism and ecologism revealed their bourgeois and
anti-Communist nature. All these ideological currents made friends in a united
counter-revolutionary front for the realisation of, and the support to the complete
restoration of unbridled capitalism in Eastern Europe and in the Soviet Union. All this,
of course in the name of liberty, democracy and human rights and in the name of 'humane
socialism' and 'democratic socialism'! All those ideologies are the products of
petty-bourgeois, bourgeois or reactionary 'socialisms' and all were denounced by Marx and
by Lenin in their time.
The restoration of capitalism in the Soviet Union and in Eastern Europe during the
years 1989-1990 was immediately followed by a reactionary backlash which surged throughout
the entire world and by a dramatic increase of imperialist aggression and barbarity.
Today, the true nature of capitalism and of imperialism have become visible to the naked
eye. The popular masses suffer from the barbaric violence of fascism, reactionary
nationalism, tribalism, religious fundamentalism, imperialist aggression and state
terrorism. Bitter realities prove that the theses on capitalism and imperialism developed
by Lenin have not only remained valid, but seem to be even more relevant for our
present-day situation than they were at the beginning of the century.
The violence to which workers and oppressed peoples are subjected today, is a dramatic
confirmation of the fact that the only road along which to escape from capitalist and
imperialist barbarity is the road of the great October Revolution.
Chapter I
State and Revolution
I. The class nature of the bourgeois state
The state of capital
When they were developing their concept of scientific socialism Marx and Engels dealt with
two fundamental questions: the question of the ownership of the means of production and
that of the character of the state. In Marx's time the reformists agreed that the means of
production were finally to become the property of the community. But for them the
community was represented by the state. The question of the state has been the most
controversial question since the emergence of Marxism. The bourgeois state may take
different forms ranging from a monarchy to a republic, from a reactionary police state to
a democratic state.
According to Marx and Lenin the democratic republic is the most progressive form of
government under bourgeois rule. This kind of republic, however, is characterised by the
omnipotence of capital, of wealth.
Lenin, quoting Engels, says: "In a democratic republic 'wealth exercises its power
indirectly, but all the more surely', first, by means of the 'direct corruption of
officials', secondly, by means of an 'alliance of the government and the Stock Exchange.
At present, imperialism and the domination of the banks have 'developed' into an
exceptional art both these methods of upholding and giving effects to the omnipotence of
wealth." Then Lenin concludes: "The reason why the omnipotence of 'wealth' is
more certain in a democratic republic is that it does not depend on a defective political
shell of capitalism. A democratic republic is the best possible political shell for
capitalism."
Marx and Lenin hold that the state never 'keeps aloof', that it is never above the
classes.
On the contrary, as long as society remains divided into social classes whose interests
are fundamentally contradictory, any state will be an instrument by which one class
dominates and oppresses other classes. It is an instrument which legalises the omnipotence
of one class, in this case the bourgeoisie, and which denies certain means of fighting to
the classes dominated by this bourgeoisie and takes those means of fighting away from
them.
Lenin: "According to Marx, the state is an organ of class rule, an organ for the
oppression of one class by another; it is the creation of 'order', which legalises and
perpetuates this oppression by moderating the conflict between the classes. In the opinion
of the petty-bourgeois politicians, however, order means the reconciliation of classes,
and not the oppression of one class by another; to alleviate the conflict means
reconciling classes and not depriving the oppressed classes of definite means and methods
of struggle to overthrow the oppressors."
The perfection of the military and bureaucratic machine
State means army and bureaucracy
Marx and Lenin explain that the two key institutions of the bourgeois state are on the one
hand the forces of repression and on the other the bureaucracy, and principally its upper
echelons which are closely linked to the bourgeoisie and maintain the same way of life.
Lenin: "Two institutions most characteristic of this state machine are the
bureaucracy and the standing army. Very often in their works Marx and Engels show that the
bourgeoisie are connected with these institutions by thousands of threads." And Lenin
quotes Marx in Eighteenth Brumaire: "This executive power with its enormous
bureaucratic and military organisation,... with a host of officials numbering half a
million besides an army of another half million, this appalling parasitic body, ... sprang
up... with the decay of the feudal system, which it helped to hasten . All revolutions
perfected this machine instead of smashing it."
According to the Marxist conception, the nucleus of the state machine is made up of the
armed forces and the forces of repression.
"The army is the most ossified instrument for supporting the old regime, the most
hardened bulwark of bourgeois discipline, buttressing up the rule of capital, and
preserving and fostering among the working people the servile spirit of submission and
subjection to capital."
"In all bourgeois republics, even the most democratic, the police (like the standing
army) is the chief instrument of oppression of the masses. The police beats up the 'common
people'. It favours the capitalists, because it is bribed to do so. Separated as it is
from people, forming a professional caste of men trained in the practice of violence upon
the poor, men who receive somewhat higher pay and the privileges that go with authority
(to say nothing of 'gratuities'), the police everywhere, in every republic, however
democratic, where the bourgeoisie is in power, always remains the unfailing weapon, the
chief support and protection of the bourgeoisie."
A repressive machine constantly reinforced and perfected
The bourgeois state machine was created by the exploiting classes for the purpose of their
domination and it was reinforced and perfected during the various crises and revolutions
the capitalist countries have known.
Lenin: "The development, perfection and strengthening of the bureaucratic and
military apparatus proceeded during all the numerous bourgeois revolutions. It is the
petty bourgeoisie who are attracted to the side of the big bourgeoisie and are largely
subordinated to them through this apparatus, which provides the upper sections of
peasants, small artisans, tradesmen and the like with comparatively comfortable, quiet and
respectable jobs raising their holders above the people." "But the more the
bureaucratic apparatus is "redistributed" among the various bourgeois and
petty-bourgeois parties, the more keenly aware the oppressed classes, and the proletariat
at their head, become of their irreconcilable hostility to the whole of bourgeois society.
Hence the need for all bourgeois parties, even for the most democratic and
"revolutionary-democratic" among then, to intensify repressive measures against
the revolutionary proletariat, to strengthen the apparatus of coercion, i.e. the state
machine. This course of events compels the revolution "to concentrate all its forces
of destruction" against the state power, and to set itself the aim, not of improving
the state machine, but of smashing and destroying it."
Since the First World War and the admittance of the social-democrat parties to bourgeois
governments, the bureaucratic leaders of the socialist parties have been admitted in large
measure into the bureaucratic machinery. In turn, those parties have effectively supported
successive reinforcement of the machinery of anti-popular repression.
So-called 'revolutionary democrats' of the Belgian Socialist Party (PS) often became
defenders of bourgeois repression. The former advocate of the 'dictatorship of the
proletariat', Paul Henri Spaak, turned into one of the spiritual fathers of Nato, of which
he became secretary-general. André Cools, who had been one of the leaders of the
revolutionary strike of 1960-61, not very long afterwards supported all the repressive
measures the bourgeoisie took as a result of this strike. When Frank Vandenbroucke, a
former Trotskyist leader, became a social-democratic minister, he backed Belgian
involvement in the war of aggression against Iraq. He also supported increasing Nato's
sphere of activity and stood by his friend Tobback in the latter's policy of strengthening
the gendarmerie.
Marx: "It is necessary to break the bourgeois state"
Lenin formulated what is the fundamental thesis of the Marxist doctrine on the state: the
old state machinery must be destroyed.
Lenin: "All revolutions perfected this machine instead of smashing it . This
conclusion is the chief and fundamental point in the Marxist theory." The point is
whether the old state machine (bound by thousands of threads to the bourgeoisie and
permeated through and through with routine and inertia) shall remain, or be destroyed and
replaced by a new one. Revolution consists not in the new class commanding, governing with
the aid of the old state machine, but in this class smashing this machine and commanding,
governing, with the aid of a new machine. Kautsky slurs this basic idea of Marxism."
From this, Lenin draws a categorical political conclusion with regard to the revisionists.
He asserts: "Kautsky continues: 'Never under no circumstance, can it (the proletarian
victory over a hostile government) lead to the destruction of the state power; it can lead
to a certain shifting of the balance of forces within the state power (.) The aim of our
political struggle remains, as in the past, the conquest of state power by winning a
majority in parliament and by raising parliament to the rank of master of the government.'
(pp. 726, 727, 732). This is nothing but the purest and most vulgar opportunism:
repudiating revolution in deeds while accepting it in words . We, however, shall break
with this traitor to socialism, and we shall fight for the complete destruction of the old
state machine, in order that the armed proletariat itself may become the government . The
entire class-conscious proletariat will be with us in the fight - not to shift the balance
of forces but to overthrow the bourgeoisie, to destroy bourgeois parliamentarism, for a
democratic republic, a republic of Soviets of Worker's and Soldiers' Deputies, for the
revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat."
It leaps to the eye that Lenin's conclusions are entirely, word for word, applicable to
all those who have followed Khrushchev's line and who continue following it.
Revisionism about the bourgeois state
Since Khrushchev, the revisionists have rejected the Marxist position on state and
revolution.
Their definition of the state is identical to that of Kautsky,and of Vandervelde who
alleged that the state was a neutral instrument, above classes, which the working class
would be able to lay its hands on thanks to a parliamentary majority.
Khrushchev declares: "Conquering a solid parliamentary majority would create the
conditions necessary to ensure radical social transformations. Certainly, a serious
resistance . of the enormous military and police apparatus is inevitable. The transition
to socialism will be effected through a bitter and revolutionary class struggle." Not
a word about breaking the bourgeois state machinery and about replacing it by a
revolutionary machinery stemming from the struggle of the proletariat. The essence of
Marx's doctrine on the state has been conjured away by means of the nebulous phrase:
"Radical social transformations through class struggle."
The handbook The International Revolutionary Movement of the Working Class, published by
Boris Ponomarev in 1964, and republished in 1967, perfectly expresses the continuation of
revisionist ideas under Khrushchev and Brezhnev. It deals with the construction of
socialism, class struggle under capitalism, the struggle against imperialism in the
oppressed countries and the struggle for peace. In these four specific fields, under an
apparently 'Leninist' verbiage, it sets out a consistently, and completely revisionist,
counter-revolutionary programme.
The chapter on the "Workers' movement in the developed capitalist countries"
does not breathe one single word about the state as the instrument of bourgeois
dictatorship. Writing five hundred and two pages about the 'socialist revolution' without
discussing the nature of the present day state at all, that takes some beating!
Nothing is said about the function of the bourgeois army as a nucleus of the bourgeois
dictatorship, set up militarily to fight the forces threatening the bourgeois economic and
political order. The only thing we learn is that "a large front, a large
anti-monopolist front (is) capable of restraining the bourgeoisie, of preventing it from
implementing its policy of crude violence against the workers".
The rare allusions to the state make it always seem to be a neutral instrument, which can
be 'wrested' from the control of the monopolies. "During the antifascist resistance
the working class struggled for genuinely democratic constitutions anticipating the
participation of the working the management of the state, the restriction of the power of
the monopolies, and progressive transformation of the economy and of the political
system." Not a word about smashing the fascist state and replacing it by a new state
built during the process of reversing fascism by means of the armed people's struggle.
A little further, we can read: " The revolutionaries see in the peaceful transition
to socialism the expression of the relentless struggle waged by the broad popular masses
for the conquest of more and more economic and political rights, for the progressive
eviction of the monopolies from the leadership of society and finally for the power of the
working classes."
Here we find the image of the state as a "leadership of society", from which one
can "progressively evict the monopolies" in order to replace them by "the
power of the working classes".
II. Bourgeois Democracy
How the problem of democracy should be stated
In the name of democracy, the most abominable crimes
When the Soviet Union collapsed, the true class meaning of the speeches about 'above-class
democracy' emerged for all to see.
The counter-revolution in Eastern Europe and in the Soviet Union was implemented under the
slogan of 'freedom and democracy'. A fifty percent drop in industrial production: 'in the
name of democracy'. The reign of 4,000 Mafia organisations: 'in the name of democracy'.
The theft of all the savings of old age pensioners, as a result of 3000 per cent
inflation: 'in the name of democracy'. Reactionary civil wars in Azerbaijan, in Armenia,
in Georgia, in Chechnya, in Tadjikistan: 'in the name of democracy'. A surplus of deaths -
1,700,000 people in three years: 'in the name of democracy'. After the collapse of the
Soviet Union, the World Anti-Communist League, which unites all major fascist and extreme
right organisations in the world, changed its name into "World League for Freedom and
Democracy"! That says it all.
In Russia, Yeltsin, the restorer of unbridled capitalism, was allowed to destroy the
Russian Parliament with the fire of his tanks; he was allowed to install a regime reliant
on the Mafia and on the imperialist powers; he was allowed thoroughly to rig the
elections. Yet the entire bourgeois press does not cease to repeat that "democracy
marches ahead in Russia".
In Africa, in 1990, the 'winds of democracy' started to blow on Mitterrand's initiative
during the La Baule summit. Since then the situation of the peoples has deteriorated
seriously and imperialist interventions have followed one after the other. During the
Challot summit, in November 1991, Habyarimana declared that 'the consolidation of a
pluralist democracy has accelerated in Rwanda since the La Baule summit'. Two years later,
under the same flag, Habyarimana completed the preparations for the genocide.
Democracy for which class?
When they deal with democracy, all reformists 'forget' the most elementary principle of
Marxism, the principle of class analysis. In a society based on the private property of
the means of production, the bourgeoisie and the working class constitute two classes with
interests that are diametrically opposed. What type of democracy can exist in such a
context?
Lenin: "It is natural for a liberal to speak of 'democracy' in general; but a Marxist
will never forget to ask: 'for what class?'" "We cannot speak of "pure
democracy" as long as different classes exist; we can only speak of class
democracy." "Democracy for an insignificant minority, democracy for the rich -
that is the democracy of capitalist society."
Where is 'abstract' democracy, when, in the name of the right to the ownership of the
means of production, a handful of exploiters decides to close down 'their' factory and to
throw thousands of workers out into the street?
Where is 'abstract' democracy, when, in order to protect the interests of the bourgeoisie,
the gendarmerie violently intervenes to smash the struggle of sacked workers for the
preservation of their jobs?
In order to protect bourgeois interests our 'democracy' is prepared to launch its
repressive forces against workers, youngsters, immigrants at any given moment. At any
given moment, 'democracy' may arrest trade unionists and anti-capitalists, ban parties and
newspapers, declare a state of national emergency, in order to protect the bourgeois
establishment.
The press and parliament, instruments of democracy?
The 'freedom' of the press
The 'freedom of the press' is one of the clearest examples of what bourgeois democracy
actually means.
Anyone is 'free' to publish a daily. But, of course, you need at least one hundred million
Belgian Francs.
The 'freedom of the press' under capitalism is essentially the freedom to glorify, to
justify, to embellish and to defend capitalism and the freedom to denigrate, to slander,
to blacken, to soil anti-capitalist struggles.
On 2 February 1997 one of the most memorable workers' demonstrations of the latter half of
this century took place in Clabecq, Belgium. It proudly proclaimed itself a demonstration
of the working class against the proprietors, a demonstration for radical demands. The
bourgeois press, impressed by its immense success, at first attacked the demonstration
with 'sugar-coated' bullets. The demonstration was "perfectly calm and dignified,
unmarred by any incident whatsoever, ...the awakening of the citizens."(Le Soir)
"The colours of the citizens' upsurge" said the headline of Vers l'Avenir and
"The growing upsurge of the citizens" declared La Libre Belgique. La Dernière
Heure announced "The awakening of citizenship". To put it plainly: the bourgeois
media denied the fact that the exploited classes mobilised against their exploiters. The
counter-revolutionary concept of 'citizenship' is utilised to imply a solidarity of all
citizens, bosses, bankers, top-level cadres worrying as much about employment as the
threatened workers do.
A week later, some workers deservedly punched the face of a trustee because of the
increasingly crude manipulations taking place to organise a piecemeal liquidation of the
Clabecq steelworks (les Forges de Clabecq). Right away the 'free' press flew into a rage.
For this press violence does not mean capitalism getting ready to throw 2000 workers out
into the street, to plunge 2000 families into despair, to drive people to suicide, to make
others sink into drug addiction and petty crime. Violence means a desperate worker raising
his fist to his exploiter. L'Echo, the newspaper of the Stock Exchange, writes:
"there has always been terror directed at the management, the engineers",
"It is the opposite of democracy: totalitarianism", "These are practices
which, behind an extreme leftist rhetoric, actually strengthen the extreme right." Le
Soir accuses D'Orazio, the main working class-leader of Clabecq, of having
"confiscated and diverted" the will of the 50000 people who were present at the
demonstration! "Roberto D'Orazio, the 'red pope' of Les Forges, is getting out of
hand. He's confiscated the enormous élan of civic solidarity to the account of his
hard-line policy".
Let us listen to Lenin's comments regarding this kind of phenomenon: "Freedom of the
press" is another of the principal slogans of "pure democracy". (...) The
workers know... that this freedom is a deception while the best printing-press and the
biggest stocks of paper are appropriated by the capitalists, and while capitalist rule
over the press remains... The capitalists have always used the term "freedom" to
mean freedom for the rich to get richer and for the workers to starve to death. In
capitalist usage, freedom of the press means freedom of the rich to bribe the press,
freedom to use their wealth to shape and fabricate so-called public opinion..."
"Universal suffrage is the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie"
What is link between democracy and elections? The bourgeoisie asserts that free elections
are the essence of the democratic process. What is the Leninist position regarding this
matter?
Even in a democratic republic, the state is essentially a machine for the oppression of
the working classes, d its main function is to maintain the dictatorship of capital. The
bourgeoisie organises certain forms of democracy explicitly aiming at the reconciliation
of the masses with the dictatorship of capital, at securing their acceptance of the
inevitability or the well-foundedness of the rule of capital.
Under the rule of the bourgeoisie, elections are a huge exercise in manipulating public
opinion. They are aimed at creating the illusion that government policy, which is dictated
directly by the big capitalists, issues from the will of the people. Each year we see
ample proof of this. Felipe Gonzalez won his first elections in Spain thanks to the
promise that Spain would stay out of Nato. Once he had gathered enough votes, thanks to
his demagogy, he joined Nato! The Belgian social-democrats waged their election campaign
with the promise to "save" the public sector. Once in the government, they
secured the passing of a privatisation programme, which surpassed the ambitions of even
the most adventurist of liberals! By means of manipulation and propaganda the bourgeoisie
succeeds in presenting each new government as the product of the will of the people, as
expressed in the elections! After that this government carries out the policy judged to be
the most opportune by the bourgeoisie.
Quite rightly Lenin says on this point: "universal suffrage is the dictatorship of
the bourgeoisie." Indeed, under the rule of the bourgeoisie, when practically all
media are in the hands of big capitalists, when the entire state machinery is controlled
by the bourgeoisie and by the bourgeois parties, when the state and the monopolies finance
the election campaigns of the bourgeois parties with hundreds of millions of francs, the
elections are really an exercise in consolidating bourgeois dictatorship.
The social-democrats and the revisionists, in order to embellish bourgeois democracy,
maintain that universal suffrage "is a great conquest of the labour movement".
The advent of universal suffrage in Belgium enables us to refute this myth. First of all,
the leadership of the Parti Ouvrier Belge (Belgian Workers' Party, POB) put forward this
demand to dodge stating the necessity for socialist revolution and the dictatorship of the
proletariat. It fought for universal suffrage explicitly with the aim of pushing the
workers towards the path of reformism and class collaboration. Moreover, universal
suffrage was only granted after the POB had given evens guarantee that it would defend the
establishment and that it would be a loyal administrator of bourgeois society. Yes, just
like Lenin has it, in capitalist societies, universal suffrage is bourgeois dictatorship.
This is what Lenin says on this question: "Even in the most democratic of all
republics... the state is nothing but a machine used by one class to oppress another. The
bourgeoisie is obliged to act the hypocrite and to call the bourgeois democratic republic
the 'entire people's state' or democracy in general, or pure democracy, whereas it
actually is the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, the dictatorship of the exploiters over
the workers' masses."
"The democratic republic, the Constituent Assembly, general elections etc., are in
practice, the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, and for the emancipation of labour from the
yoke of capital there is no other way but to replace this dictatorship with the
dictatorship of the proletariat. The dictatorship of the proletariat alone can emancipate
humanity from the oppression of capital, from the lies, falsehood and hypocrisy of
bourgeois democracy - democracy for the rich - and establish democracy for the poor."
Does democracy defend minorities?
The bourgeoisie claims that its "democratic" system enables it to ensure the
defense of the rights of the minorities. In fact the bourgeoisie strives to place the
'minorities' under the control of some bourgeois party with a view to undermining their
militancy and integrating them into the establishment.
Lenin writes: "A bourgeois democracy extends the protection of the minority only to
another bourgeois party, while the proletariat, on all serious, profound and fundamental
issues, gets martial law or pogroms, instead of "protection of the minority".
In the United States, certain bourgeois politicians specialise in the "protection of
the black minority", but the police specialise in murderous raids on the poorest
districts where black people live. The Los Angeles police have a long-standing history of
racist violence and so, one night, it was beating up a man who was on his own, Rodney
King. A witness recorded the scene on video. Nevertheless, the policemen were acquitted. A
violent revolt of the majority of poor people in Los Angeles followed, a revolt which was
brought to heel by the American army and the police.
Bourgeois democracy against the workers
Democracy excludes the poor
In a capitalist society democracy accommodates the rich, whereas a thousand obstacles,
restrictions and difficulties prevent the poor from making use of the few rights that have
nominally been granted them.
Lenin made a perfect description of the kind of "democracy" the workers may
enjoy under the reign of capitalism. "Bourgeois democracy... always remains...
restricted, truncated, false and hypocritical, a paradise for the rich and a snare and
deception for the exploited, for the poor." "Under capitalism, democracy is
restricted, cramped, curtailed, mutilated by all conditions of wage slavery, and the
poverty and misery of the people." "If we look more closely into the machinery
of capitalist democracy, we see everywhere, in the "petty" - supposedly petty -
details of the suffrage... restriction after restriction upon democracy. These
restrictions, exceptions, exclusions, obstacles for the poor seem slight,... but in their
sum total these restrictions exclude and squeeze out the poor from politics, from active
participation in democracy..."
Laws and lawyers in the service of capital
Under "democracy", the bourgeoisie adopts hundreds of laws and decrees that
protect the exploitation and the arbitrariness of capitalism; hundreds of laws and
regulations that bully, burden, discriminate against and steal from the workers.
But it is not enough for the bourgeoisie that the laws are made by it and for it.
Under "democracy", those who have money can take on lawyers and specialist
advisers to help duck the laws and regulations that, however very slightly limit the
arbitrariness of the capitalists.
Moreover, under bourgeois "democracy", the police machinery and the legal
machinery are bound in a thousand ways to the bourgeoisie, which "help" the rich
to "settle" their problems, whereas they mercilessly apply the laws against the
poor.
Lenin writes: "When thoroughly bourgeois and for the most part reactionary lawyers in
the capitalist countries have for centuries or decades been drawing up most detailed rules
and regulations and writing...hundreds of volumes of laws and interpretations of laws to
oppress the workers, to bind the poor man hand and foot and to place thousands of
hindrances and obstacles in the way of any of the common labouring people - there the
bourgeois liberals and Mr. Kautsky see no "arbitrariness"! That is
"law" and "order"! The ways in which the poor are to be "kept
down" have all been thought out and written down. There are thousands of bourgeois
lawyers and bureaucrats...who know how to interpret the laws in such a way that the worker
and the average peasant can never break through the barbed-wire entanglements of these
laws. This is not "arbitrariness" on the part of the bourgeoisie, it is not the
dictatorship of the sordid and self-seeking exploiters who are sucking the blood of the
people. Nothing of the kind! It is "pure democracy", which is becoming purer and
purer every day."
Bourgeois democracy and terror against the people
In Turkey, as in Colombia and Peru, elections take place, parliaments are elected,
democracy reigns. But the army and the gangs for "self-defence" organised by
those in power terrorise the population, massacre tens of thousands of trade union
members, peasants, revolutionaries.
Lenin already observed: "There is not a single state, however democratic, which has
no loopholes or reservations in its constitution guaranteeing the bourgeoisie the
possibility of dispatching troops against the workers, of proclaiming martial law, and so
forth, 'in case of violation of public order' and actually in case the exploited class
'violates' its position of slavery and tries to behave in a non-slavish manner."
Aspiring after a people's democracy and revolution
The workers want a democracy that will serve them
In this day and age, when the workers have acquired a certain level of education, the
bourgeoisie is obliged to call upon democracy for the justification of its rule. It
manufactures a 'democratic majority' by making use of propaganda, indoctrination,
brainwashing but also intimidation and pressure.
Still, a sincere desire for a genuine democracy is alive among the masses of workers. But:
"Even in the most democratic bourgeois state the oppressed people at every step
encounter the crying contradictions between the formal equality proclaimed by the
"democracy" of the capitalists and the thousands of real limitations and
subterfuges which turn the proletarian into wage-slaves."
How can we make use of this contradiction between "nominal", formal and false
democracy on the one hand and the profound aspiration of the workers to a democracy
"for them"?
We must recognize the democratic aspirations of the proletariat and the workers are
exactly opposed to the "democratic" myth organised by the tyrants that big
entrepreneurs and their politicians are. In this way the struggle for the achievement of
the democratic aspirations of the workers is a fundamental aspect of the struggle for the
socialist revolution.
Lenin: "This is exactly a case of quantity being transformed into quality: democracy
introduced as fully and consistently as is at all conceivable is transformed from
bourgeois into proletarian democracy." "To develop democracy to the utmost, is
one of the component tasks of the struggle for the social revolution."
There is a breaking point here, quantity converting into quality, democratic rights
conquered within the framework of the bourgeois system converted into proletarian
democracy through the socialist revolution.
The social-democrats and the revisionists, however, have been pretending the opposite of
this for eighty years. The systematic widening of "abstract" democracy within
the bourgeois framework will bring us closer and closer to socialism and will eventually
convert itself into socialism in a peaceful way. For them, the difference between
bourgeois democracy and proletarian democracy is a difference of quantity, the former able
to convert into the latter peacefully, without having to go through the qualitative
breaking point which is the socialist revolution.
Lenin denounced those people as follows: "The Kautskyites of all nations ... cringing
before the bourgeoisie, adapting themselves to the bourgeois parliamentary system, keeping
silent about the bourgeois character of modern democracy and demanding only its extension,
only that it be carried to its logical conclusion."
In the age when monopolies and imperialism rule however, bourgeois democracy is
degenerating more and more: reaction is triumphant from start to finish, the workers'
democratic rights are more and more reduced... And today this is often achieved by the
same social-democracy which used to claim that the "continued widening" of
bourgeois democracy would lead to socialism!
Lenin's words on this matter merit ample thought. "The political superstructure of
this new economy, of monopoly capitalism...is the change from democracy to political
reaction." "Politically, imperialism is, in general, a striving toward violence
and reaction."
Do not the main events of recent history manifestly confirm these theses? The barbaric war
against Iraq, the subsequent embargo that has "peacefully" killed a million of
babies, children and elderly Iraqis (with the active participation of the social-democrats
and the political support of the revisionist Gorbachev!); the Rwanda genocide that killed
one million Tutsi and democratic Hutu (with the active participation of the
social-democrat Mitterrand's French army!); the laws against the trade unions in England,
the corruption scandals that broke in Italy and Belgium, and in which Christian-democrats
and social-democrats were involved...
Well of course, Lenin had already denounced opportunists of the kind of Khrushchev,
Marchais, Carillo, Berlinguer! "But from this capitalist democracy - that is
inevitably narrow and stealthily pushes aside the poor, and is therefore hypocritical and
false through and through - forward development does not proceed simply, directly and
smoothly toward "greater and greater democracy as the petty-bourgeois opportunists
would have us believe. No, forward development... proceeds through the dictatorship of the
proletariat."
Democracy under socialism
How, then, is the question of democracy under socialism to be considered? Socialism is not
at all "real democracy for all", as Kautskyites and followers of Khrushchev
allege.
For the capitalists who fully enjoyed bourgeois democracy, socialism essentially signifies
the end of democracy, the end of their freedom to exploit, the end of the freedom to
accumulate fortunes in legal and illegal ways, the end of their freedom to buy the media
and to "manufacture" public opinion, the end of their freedom to organise
education according to their interests, etc.
For the workers, socialism does not signify the widening of the old bourgeois democracy,
but the creation of new forms of democracy that will permit them really to participate in
political and economic decision-making.
Lenin declares: "And the dictatorship of the proletariat... cannot result merely in
an expansion of democracy. Simultaneously with an immense expansion of democracy, which
for the first time becomes democracy for the poor, democracy for the people and not
democracy for the moneybags, the dictatorship of the proletariat imposes a series of
restrictions on the freedom of the oppressors, the exploiters, the capitalists. We must
suppress them in order to free humanity from wage slavery, their resistance must be
crushed by force; it is clear that there is no freedom and no democracy where there is
suppression and where there is violence."
The revisionists and bourgeois democracy
Khrushchev and the revisionists who negate the class character of the state, also refuse
to recognise that all forms of democracy have a class character. They repeat Kautsky's
phrases about "pure democracy" and "genuine democracy" or
"veritable democracy".
Ponomarev's book asserts: "The concept of a genuine democracy, being people's power
in the interests of the people, has been put forward in the programmes of the communist
parties of Italy, France, England, Belgium, Finland, the USA."
The revisionists negate the class character of democracy and they use pompous phrases:
"coming out of the narrow framework of bourgeois democracy", "gradually
transform" and "enrich" democracy. In this way they want to promote the
reformist thesis to the effect that a widening of "abstract" democracy (under
the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie!) directly leads to socialism.
Ponomarev: "Coming out of the narrow framework of bourgeois democratic forms,
enriching democracy with new content, gradually transforming it into a means for the
people to exercise more and more real power and to limit and later eliminate the power of
the monopolies, the workers will lay the foundations of a veritable democracy evolving
towards socialism."
This grand-sounding and hollow verbiage is directly copied from the social-democrats
Kautsky and Vandervelde. Its purpose is to mask the essential questions. First of all that
of the state: is it an instrument of the dictatorship of capital or is it a neutral
institution where the "people" can exercise a "real and growing power"
and "limit", and later "eliminate" the power of capital?
Then there is the question of the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie and the
"democratic" forms this dictatorship may assume. It also masks the question of
the socialist revolution and finally that of the dictatorship of the proletariat, which is
the only guarantee for a genuine workers' democracy.
The same verbiage was used by Thorez in order to dodge the problems of the socialist
revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat. Ponomarev quotes him: "Maurice
Thorez said: 'In our time there no longer is a long historical interval between democratic
transformations and socialist transformations... Democracy, a steady creation, will be
completed in socialism." Thanks to this thesis of "steady creation", Thorez
makes the break disappear - the break that is the socialist revolution, the break between
two worlds, that of the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie and that of the dictatorship of
the proletariat.
III. The "transition through parliament"
The notions we have just discussed, ie, that of the neutral state, "above
classes" and that of "pure democracy", are at the basis of the reformist
strategy of the transition to socialism by acquiring a parliamentary majority.
Lenin bitterly mocked the social-democratic nonsense talked by Kautsky and Vandervelde on
this matter.
The true nature of parliament
Parliament, a screen for the forces of repression
Lenin clearly revealed the class nature of bourgeois parliamentary government: it is an
organ of the hostile class, a machine to oppress the workers, a decorative organ where no
real decisions are taken, a screen for the police forces which give themselves over to
espionage, to repression and, if need be, to massacres.
Lenin writes: "And the workers know and feel,... that the bourgeois parliaments are
institutions alien to them, instruments of oppression of the workers by the bourgeoisie,
institutions of a hostile class, of the exploiting minority."
The bourgeois parliament is an integral part of the bourgeois state machinery; if its
forces of repression and its anti-popular bureaucracy are its nuclei, parliament is mainly
a screen that covers the real centres of bourgeois power, a machine that makes a lot of
hot air and spreads 'democratic' illusions. When the real centres of capitalist power
decide to subjugate movements of the people, it is the task of parliament to justify the
subjugation 'democratically'.
Lenin: "The bourgeois parliament, even the most democratic in the most democratic
republic, in which the property and rule of the capitalists are preserved, is the machine
for the repression of the working millions by small groups of exploiters... Now that world
history has brought up the question of destroying the whole of that system, of
overthrowing and suppressing the exploiters, of passing from capitalism to socialism, it
would be a shameful betrayal of the proletariat to be satisfied with bourgeois
parlementarianism... and to call this latter 'democracy' in general, to cover up its
bourgeois character, to forget that universal suffrage, for as long as capitalist property
exists, is one of the tools used by the bourgeois state."
Those words of Lenin's fully apply to Khrushchev's followers who "are satisfied with
bourgeois parliamentary government, soften its bourgeois character and shamefully betray
the proletariat".
Capital controls and monitors parliament
The idea of a parliamentary transition to socialism is all the more ridiculous if we
consider the fact that parliament is not at all the centre of power in a capitalist
society.
Everybody knows that the main political, economic and military decisions are being taken
in the narrow circles of the upper class, in the leading circles of the World bank, the
IMF, the Oecd, think-tanks, the headquarters of the gendarmerie and the army, Nato,
federations of companies...Then their decisions are rubber-stamped by the government and
by parliament.
In Belgium, in recent years, the budget allocated to secondary education has been heavily
reduced and access to university limited. Who formulated and took these decisions? The
masses of students, teachers, professors and of the workers whose concern it was? Of
course not, they had no say whatsoever. The parliamentarians then? Not at all. The
employers' think-tanks and experts in the highest echelons of the state bureaucracy made
these anti-popular plans. Afterwards, the bourgeois party headquarters put the plans
forward in parliament and commanded "their" parliamentarians to acquiesce!
Lenin said in this regard: "... (bourgeois parliaments)... never decide the most
important questions under bourgeois democracy, which are decided by the stock exchange and
the banks." "The real business of 'state' is performed behind the scenes and is
carried on by the departments, chancelleries and General Staffs. Parliament is given up to
talk for the special purpose of fooling the 'common people'." "In capitalist
society... the major questions... are decided by a small handful of capitalists, who
deceive not only the masses, but very often parliament itself. No parliament in the world
has ever said anything of weight on war and peace! In a capitalist society, the questions
affecting the economic life of the working people... are decided by the capitalist - who
is the lord, a god."
The significance of elections under a bourgeois regime
The choice of "your" bourgeois party
Most certainly bourgeois parliamentary government is an instrument in the service of the
dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. But what is the actual significance of elections under a
bourgeois regime then?
Bourgeois and petty-bourgeois parties have enormous means at their disposal. They enjoy
the support and the sympathy of the big capitalists who own the media. In these conditions
elections essentially permit the masses to choose which bourgeois or petty-bourgeois
elements will go to parliament in order there to defend, 'in the name of the people', the
bourgeois establishment. Whether the parliamentary majority consists of liberals,
social-democrats, nationalists, Christian-democrats, ecologists or fascists, they all
defend the basis of the capitalist system and the interests of the bourgeoisie. Lenin put
it bluntly: "To decide once every few years which member of the ruling class is to
repress and crush the people through parliament - this is the real essence of bourgeois
parliamentarism."
An indirect reflection of the workers' maturity
On the other hand elections may also indicate to what extent the workers are starting to
turn away from the capitalist system.
Lenin, quoting Engels: "...Universal suffrage is "the gauge of the maturity of
the working class. It cannot and never will be anything more in the present-day
state..."
Even if the majority of the population votes for revolutionaries, this vote will only
prove the revolutionary feelings of the masses. It will indicate that the people are ripe
for revolution. But even then the revolution has to be effected and the enemy has to be
defeated by revolutionary means. Lenin: "Universal suffrage is an index of the level
reached by the various classes in their understanding of their problems. It shows how the
various classes are inclined to solve their problems. The actual solution of those
problems is not provided by voting, but by the class struggle in all its forms, including
civil war."
Communist participation in elections
Why then do the communists participate in parliament?
They never do this to spread illusions about a so-called parliamentary transition to
socialism. They participate to prove to the workers that it will be necessary, one day, to
dissolve this parliament, which is but an instrument of bourgeois dictatorship and that it
will be necessary to replace it by the revolutionary organs of the masses of workers.
Lenin: "Participation in parliamentary elections and in the struggle on the
parliamentary rostrum is obligatory on the party of the revolutionary proletariat
specifically for the purpose of educating the backward strata of its own class, and for
the purpose of awakening and enlightening the undeveloped, downtrodden and ignorant rural
masses. Whilst you lack the strength to do away with bourgeois parliament and every other
type of reactionary institution, you must work within them because it is there that you
will still find workers who are duped by the priests and stultified by the conditions of
rural life."
How can the majority really decide?
What is the will of the majority of the people? How can this will express itself?
Is it possible to settle the vital questions, the ones that decide on life or death for
the capitalist system, by a minority versus majority vote in parliament? Is it possible to
settle the question of either the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie or the dictatorship of
the proletariat by means of a majority vote in parliament?
Lenin says: "The intellectual dreamers, the petty-bourgeois socialists, thought, and
perhaps still think, or dream, that it is possible to introduce socialism by persuasion.
They think that the majority of the people will be convinced, and when they become
convinced the minority will obey; that the majority will vote and socialism will be
introduced. No, the world is not built so happily; the exploiters, the brutal landowners,
the capitalist class are not amenable to persuasion. The socialist revolution confirms
what everybody has seen - the furious resistance of the exploiters. The stronger the
pressure of the oppressed classes becomes, the nearer they come to overthrowing all
oppression, all exploitation... and the more furious does the resistance of the exploiters
become."
"The petty-bourgeois democrats, those sham socialists who replaced the class struggle
by dreams of class harmony, even pictured the socialist transformation in a dreamy fashion
- not as the overthrow of the rule of the exploiting class, but as the peaceful submission
of the minority to the majority which has become aware of its aims. This petty-bourgeois
utopia, which is inseparable from the idea of the state being above classes, led in
practice to betrayal."
Thus, in order to establish socialism, it is necessary to overthrow the domination of the
bourgeoisie and to break the inevitable resistance, the ferocious and bitter resistance,
of the exploiters. Those questions are settled by means of the grimmest class struggle,
and not by means of a simple vote in parliament.
Even on the rare occasions that a parliamentary majority pronounces itself in favour of
the transition to socialism or of important anti-capitalist measures, the vote in itself
does not at all solve the problem of effectively implementing those measures. The victory
of the anti-capitalist forces will never be assured other than by the class struggle, by
the conquest of the majority through revolutionary action and the overthrow of the
dominating class by the use of force.
Lenin: "The proletariat cannot achieve victory if it does not win the majority of the
population to its side. But to limit that winning to polling a majority of votes in an
election under the rule of the bourgeoisie, or to make it the condition for it, is crass
stupidity, or else sheer deception of the workers. In order to win the majority of the
population to its side the proletariat must, in the first place, overthrow the bourgeoisie
and seize state power; secondly, it must introduce Soviet power and completely smash the
old state apparatus, whereby it immediately undermines the rule, prestige and influence of
the bourgeoisie and petty-bourgeois compromisers over the non-proletarian working people.
Thirdly, it must entirely destroy the influence of the bourgeoisie and petty-bourgeois
compromisers over the majority of the non-proletarian masses by satisfying their economic
needs in a revolutionary way at the expense of the exploiters."
The revisionists and bourgeois parliamentary government
All Lenin's positions on bourgeois parliamentary government were thrown overboard by
Khrushchev.
The eulogy of bourgeois parliamentary government
In Boris Ponomarev's book we read: "The communist parties of the capitalist countries
have always pointed out that it was possible to make use of the parliamentary system...
after the accession to power of the working classes. Thus, the French Communist party, in
its thesis of XIV Congress (1956) pointed out: 'Our people feel attached to the
parliamentary institutions gained thanks to the struggles of the past, re-established
together with national independence during the struggles of 1944. It is therefore probable
that it will endeavour to take advantage of these institutions for the overhaul of the
social system.'" "The communists study... the possibilities of utilising the
bourgeois... institutions... also, one proceeds... to shedding light on the limited and
inconsequent character of bourgeois democracy. The communists do this without hurting the
feelings of the masses who are attached to traditional democratic institutions which,
actually, are the result of generations-long struggles of the working class."
Let us comment on two of Ponomarev's assertions.
It is false to present parliamentary institutions as "the result of the struggles of
the working class", to make believe that they could thus embody the will of the
workers. Parliament was created by the bourgeoisie to serve its domination over society.
Later the struggles of the working class at the end of the 19th century were distorted and
diverted by reformist leaders. Those struggles were oriented towards the support of the
bourgeois political system and the reformist leaders have been completely integrated into
this system, especially as a result of their participation in bourgeois parliament.
Universal suffrage (excluding women of course) was granted with the explicit aim of
breaking the revolutionary movement of the workers, and the reformist leaders have used it
to fight against the revolution.
When the followers of Khrushchev assert that one should not "hurt the feelings of the
masses who are attached to parliament" they clearly demonstrate their total rupture
with Leninism.
In 1917-1918, Lenin underlined that the petty- bourgeoisie often followed the bourgeoisie
because of its attachment to parliamentary government and to bourgeois nationalism. He
called the belief in parliamentary government "the most profound prejudice of the
petty- bourgeoisie."
The petty-bourgeoisie was 'attached' to the constituent assembly, elected a few weeks
after the October revolution in November 1917, by universal suffrage... This assembly had
brought about a counter-revolutionary majority. In the weeks that followed the elections,
the revolutionary movement deepened in the country. The assembly refused to ratify the
socialist programme of the October Revolution and the Bolsheviks were obliged to dissolve
this counter-revolutionary assembly. Then, part of the petty- bourgeoisie supported the
bourgeoisie in its civil war against the Bolsheviks because of its stupid parliamentary
prejudices. It is impossible to carry out socialist revolution, to go on to a
qualitatively higher stage of democracy, to Soviet power, without "hurting" the
prejudices of a part of the petty- bourgeoisie that believes in the eternal value of
bourgeois democracy. They need to experience the advantages of socialist power before they
can join it.
A 'return' to Lenin in order to kill Lenin
Let us take a look now at how Khrushchev "smashed the outdated ideas", as he
called them, on parliamentary government.
At the XXth Congress in 1956 he asserted the following: "The question arises on the
possibility of also utilising the parliamentary road to socialism... Lenin showed us
another way, that of the creation of the Soviet republic, the only correct way under the
historical circumstances at that time... But since then, essential changes have taken
place in the historical situation... The forces of socialism and of democracy have grown
considerably in the whole world, whereas capitalism has become much weaker... The ideas of
socialism really gained a hold over the mind of the whole of working class humanity.
Moreover, under the present circumstances, the working class has the possibility to unite
under its leadership the immense majority of the people and to ensure the transfer of the
principal means of production into the hands of the people, in many capitalist countries.
The political parties of the right are breaking down more and more often. From now on the
working class... is capable of inflicting defeat on reactionary forces, of conquering a
solid majority in parliament and of transforming it from a bourgeois democratic organ into
an actual instrument of the will of the people. In this case, this traditional
institution... can become an organ of real democracy, democracy for the workers."
Glorifying the strength of socialism in order to undermine it
In order to justify his joining of Kautskyism and his belief in bourgeois parliamentary
government, Khrushchev put forward "essential changes in the historical
situation". This renegade pretended that the creation of a Soviet republic was
"the only correct way under the historical circumstances of 1917", but that this
was no longer the case in 1956! And why would that be? Because the socialist countries
would have become very strong, because global capitalism would have been seriously
weakened, because "the whole of working class humanity" would be longing for
socialism. These three arguments are false.
The socialist camp had actually become strong under Stalin. This was a reason for
capitalism to attack its historical adversary unrelentingly and with every ounce of its
remaining strength. Lenin pointed out correctly that the reinforcement of the Soviet Union
redoubled the hatred of all reactionary forces.
But, although the Soviet Union had been strengthened continually under Stalin,
opportunism, from 1953 onwards, undermined the Party and the state from within. When in
1956 Khrushchev announced "the definitive victory of socialism in the USSR" and
the end of the dictatorship of the proletariat, he opened the door to all bourgeois
currents who, before long, started to weaken and politically undermine the socialist
state.
The argument: "Capitalism has become weak" does not at all conform to reality.
Has capitalism become so weak that it can no longer launch its armed forces and its
fascist organisations in a civil war to subdue the workers? The renegades present the
situation in a false light, they completely wander away from any materialist or objective
analysis of reality. They present the bourgeoisie as a class which has lost nearly all its
means of defence, a class forced to resign in the face of the 'irresistible' march forward
of socialism! These lies and illusions are meant to 'justify' a reformist line.
The argument that "the ideas of socialism have gained a hold on all workers"
equally express Khrushchev's defection to bourgeois reformism. We should remember that
bourgeois and petty-bourgeois 'socialisms' had already been denounced by Marx and Engels
in their Manifesto in 1848. Khrushchev's allegations that all workers are becoming
socialists are based on the acceptance of bourgeois and petit-bourgeois socialism as
genuine socialist doctrines! This is what Ponomarev frankly admits: "It is not to be
excluded that in many countries, certainly there where old parliamentary traditions exist
and bourgeois democracy, and strong social-democrat parties, and parties relying mainly on
the middle classes, that in those countries the transition to socialism would happen
through the participation of a coalition government of many parties with ideological
divergences but united by one common objective, the construction of socialism." Thus,
Khrushchev's followers explicitly say that one can realise socialism, in other words the
dictatorship of the proletariat, to use Marx's terminology, with the help of bourgeois
parties like the Social-democratic party and together with middle class parties!
The revisionists utilised the great strength socialism had acquired under Stalin to make
people believe that from now on the cause of communism would advance without having to
fight bitterly and violently against capitalism and imperialism.
This quietness of mind and this passivity in the face of the class enemy has been
increasing as bureaucracy wandered further and further away from the masses of the
workers, as it acquired privileges and was growing richer by illegal means. New capitalist
forces were able to develop freely well before Gorbachev's overt counter-revolution in
1990. By fooling the proletariat in the Soviet Union and in the world with their 'theory'
of weakening capitalism and their allegation that 'all people would become socialists',
Khrushchev and Brezhnev had prepared the ground for the return in strength of unbridled
capitalism and the total loss of all socialist achievements.
"A stupidity and a deception"
Khrushchev alleges that "conquering a solid majority in parliament" will enable
us to "transform this organ of bourgeois democracy into a real instrument of the will
of the people".
Well, no parliament whatsoever will ever stop the bourgeoisie from massacring the workers
if the latter want to put an end to private property in the means of production. Only the
military forces of the oppressed classes are able to prevent the bourgeoisie from doing
that.
Lenin says: "The very idea of the capitalists peacefully submitting to the will of
the majority of the exploited...of a peaceful, reformist transition to socialism, is not
merely sheer philistine stupidity but also downright deception of the workers,
embellishment of capitalist wage-slavery, and concealment of the truth. That truth
consists in the bourgeoisie, even the most enlightened and democratic, no longer
hesitating at any fraud or crime, even the massacre of millions of workers and peasants,
so as to preserve private ownership of the means of production."
Chapter II
Imperialism is the eve of the socialist revolution
I. The nature of imperialism
Capitalism and monopolistic capitalism
In 1916, Lenin analysed the development of capitalism after the death of Marx and Engels.
"Liberal" capitalism had transformed itself into monopoly capitalism, through
the laws of competition and the resulting concentration of capital and the export of
capital, in order to realise maximum profit. The major imperialist powers divided the
world amongst themselves.
From the start of the century, thanks to technological innovation, the concentration of
capital as well as the development of the productive forces have continually progressed.
Nevertheless, monopoly capitalism also tends to slow down technological development,
notably as a result of (temporary) monopoly control in some branches. The limitation of
the intellectual and scientific development of the masses and their exclusion from
economic decision-making also check the development of the productive forces.
Monopolistic state capitalism and maximum exploitation
Lenin stresses the fact that the domination of the major monopolies, which
"fuse" with the bourgeois state apparatus, sharpens all the economic, political
and social contradictions of capitalism.
This tendency had already been evident before 1914, but it was strongly accentuated during
the first imperialist war.
Lenin showed that during the era of imperialism, the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie
necessarily takes on a more ferocious aspect: "Monopoly capitalism is developing into
state monopoly capitalism... Under private ownership of the means of production, all these
steps toward greater monopolisation and control of production by the state are accompanied
by intensified exploitation of the working people, by an increase in oppression; it is
more difficult to resist the exploiters, and reaction and military despotism grow. At the
same time, its steps inevitably lead to a tremendous growth in the profits of the big
capitalists at the expense of all of the population." "The imperialist war has
immensely accelerated and intensified the process of transformation of monopoly capitalism
into state-monopoly capitalism. The monstrous oppression of the working people by the
state, which is merging more and more with the all-powerful capitalist associations, is
becoming increasingly monstrous."
Lenin had noticed these tendencies in the course of the first World War. They have become
more accentuated during the period between the two World Wars and have led, amongst other
things, to the development of fascism and to fascism itself. Today, these trends are
expressed even more forcefully all over the world.
Reactionary positions in foreign and home policy
Growing oppression and military despotism are neither accidents nor temporary phenomena.
The transformation of the economic basis of capitalism has effects on the political and
ideological superstructure. To the economic monopoly corresponds a political one, which
the bourgeoisie imposes through methods that are increasingly reactionary.
Lenin: "The political superstructure of this new economy, of monopoly capitalism...
is the change from democracy to political reaction... Both in foreign and home policy
imperialism strives towards violations of democracy, towards reaction."
In home policy: "Political reaction all along the line is a characteristic feature of
imperialism. Corruption, bribery, on a huge scale and all kinds of fraud."
"Capitalism in its imperialist stage leads directly to the most comprehensive
socialisation of production. Production becomes social, but appropriation remains private.
The social means of production remain the private property of a few...The yoke of a few
monopolists on the rest of the population becomes a hundred times heavier, more burdensome
and intolerable."
When it is time to divide up the whole world, violence and war dominate the foreign policy
of imperialism. "'Peaceful'" capitalism has given way to non-peaceful,
aggressive, cataclysmic imperialism."
Monopoly capitalism and fascistisation
That is the way in which Lenin described fascistisation as a fundamental tendency of
monopolistic capitalism and imperialism.
Creeping fascism and its outcome, overt fascism, are not phenomena in contradiction with
bourgeois democracy; on the contrary, they are expressions of the inevitable degeneration
of bourgeois "democracy" in the era of imperialism.
Under monopoly capitalism and imperialism, the general tendency is towards the restriction
and the elimination of the democratic rights of the popular masses, of their exclusion
from the solving of essential political and economic problems.
Monopoly capitalism imposes its dictatorship through the methods of fascistisation and
fascism as well as through those of demagogy and manipulation of the masses. The bourgeois
parties use these two methods with varying intensity. Even though the right-wing and
fascist parties give their preference to fascistisation, they nevertheless also resort to
social demagogy. While the social-democrat and reformist parties impose capitalist
policies through social demagogy, they sometimes have a decisive role in the
fascistisation of the bourgeois regime.
Lenin stresses that monopoly capitalism is totally reactionary, as regards both foreign
and home policy; he draws the conclusion that imperialism is the eve of the socialist
revolution. Kautskyism and revisionism pretend to fight reaction and fascism by lining up
behind the leadership of the "democratic" bourgeoisie and accepting its
leadership. This position is a reactionary one because it creates the illusion that it
would be possible to go back to the "democratic" past of pre-monopoly
capitalism.
To defeat the proletariat and the working masses, the bourgeoisie alternatively uses
fascism and "democratic" demagogy. In Chile, Pinochet's fascist dictatorship was
replaced by the "democratic" bourgeoisie... under the vigilant scrutiny of the
ex-dictator Pinochet, still at the head of the army!
In 1945, German fascism was replaced, in the western part of Germany, by the
"democratic" bourgeoisie, which kept former Nazis in place at the head of the
army, the police services, the intelligence service, industry and the state
administration. At the same time, the "greatest democracy in the world", the
United States, opened its doors to 10,000 German, Ukrainian, Croat and Hungarian Nazis...
The socialist revolution must eliminate the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, not only in
its fascist form but also in its "democratic" one.
II. Imperialism, war and revolution
Imperialism stands for war
The monopolies and the imperialist powers divide the world among themselves, not because
they are "mean" or because they have chosen an "erroneous" policy, but
out of necessity.
So as to survive the pitiless competitive struggles, monopolies must realise maximum
profits and to do so they must be present in the most promising markets. Lenin: "The
capitalists divide the world... because the degree of concentration which has been reached
forces them to adopt this method in order to obtain profits. And they divide it 'in
proportion to capital', 'in proportion to strength'... But strength varies with the degree
of economic and political development." "... the only conceivable basis under
capitalism for the division of spheres of influence, interests, colonies, etc., is a
calculation of the 'strength' of those participating, their general economic, financial,
military strength etc. And the strength of these participants in the division does not
change to an equal degree, for the 'even' development of different undertakings, trusts,
branches of industry, or countries is impossible under capitalism."
Consequently, as long as imperialism dominates the major part of the world, wars between
imperialist powers and world wars are inevitable. "Capitalism has become reactionary.
It has developed the productive forces to the extent that humanity has only to go on
towards socialism, or else endure during years and even decades the armed struggle of the
"big" powers for the artificial maintaining of capitalism thanks to the
colonies, monopolies, privileges and national oppression of all sorts."
Imperialism and World War
The First World War was the result of the need for a redistribution, which had become
inevitable, between different imperialist powers.
As early as the end of the 19th century, the world had been divided among the colonial
powers, England being the hegemonic world power and France, Belgium, Holland and Portugal
having taken up a "fair share" of the colonies.
German imperialism, which had developed at a very fast pace only after 1900, had almost no
colonies and was demanding a redistribution.
Two imperialist blocs, the first consisting of England, France, Russia and Belgium and the
second of Germany, the Austro-Hungarian empire and Turkey, started the First World War. On
both sides, this was a criminal war, as it aimed at destroying the socialist workers'
movement in each country and at conquering new colonies.
From the first days of the war, Lenin explained that other world wars would follow, if the
European working class was not able to put an end to capitalism and imperialism through
revolution. "Imperialism sets at hazard the fate of European culture: this war will
soon be followed by others, unless there are a series of successful revolutions. The story
about this being the 'last war' is a hollow and dangerous fabrication, a piece of
philistine 'mythology'."
The Second World War was also the result of the necessity for a redistribution of the
world among imperialist powers.
German imperialism, which had lost all its colonies after 1918, and Japanese imperialism
demanded a redistribution of the world in accordance with their economic and military
power.
England and France at first tried to direct German expansionism towards the only socialist
country, the Soviet Union. But finally, the world war started out as a war between
imperialist powers for the control of Europe, the Balkans and the Middle East; then it
took its true dimension when the Nazis attacked the Soviet Union in order to destroy
socialism and subject the country to the status of a German colony. After the Second World
War, the United States became the only imperialist superpower and one-third of humanity
was on the way towards socialism.
In 1952, Stalin stressed that the United Kingdom and France would sooner or later try to
escape from American control and that Germany and Japan would rise again and seek to smash
American domination... "The threat of a war between the imperialist powers remains
intact", Stalin maintained. When reading his theses, one understands that revisionist
ideas had already been developing within the CPSU and that Stalin found himself obliged to
react against them. "The war against the USSR, land of socialism, is more dangerous
for capitalism than the war between capitalist countries... The war against the USSR must
necessarily put forward the question of the very existence of capitalism." "Some
say that one must consider as outdated Lenin's thesis proclaiming that imperialism
inevitably fosters wars, since popular forces have now emerged that defend peace against a
new world war. This is false. The actual peace movement... does not seek to overthrow
capitalism and establish socialism, it limits itself to the democratic aims of a struggle
for maintaining peace. This is not enough to eradicate the wars that are generally
inevitable between imperialist countries... In spite of all the peace movement's
victories, imperialism is still there. Thus, the inevitability of wars equally remains. In
order to suppress the inevitable wars, imperialism must be destroyed."
Today, the economic war for the conquest of world markets and the control of raw
materials is raging between American imperialism, European imperialism under German
domination and Japanese imperialism. Russia, a country totally devastated by the
restoration of capitalism and fallen under the control of American and German imperialism,
has become a factor creating great instability on the international level.
All the imperialist powers are feverishly preparing to carry out foreign interventions and
military aggressions. The flammable substance for a third world war is piling up.
Only revolution will save humanity
Imperialism is the eve of the socialist revolution. The productive forces are ripe for
socialism, the gigantic productive forces remain shackled by private property only by dint
of oppression, terror and war.
Only the socialist revolution will allow humanity to escape from the barbarity of
imperialism and to survive with dignity.
"Wars cannot be abolished unless classes are abolished and socialism is created;...
We... regard civil wars, i.e. wars waged by an oppressed class against the oppressor
class,... by wage-workers against the bourgeoisie as fully legitimate, progressive and
necessary."
As long as imperialism exists the working class will be forced to participate in
reactionary, criminal wars. Either the working class prepares to wage the civil war for
socialism and peace, or she will have to suffer other wars, even more barbarous then the
previous World Wars. Lenin: "If not during the war, then after it, if not in this war
then in the next... The proletarian banner of civil war will rally together, not only
hundreds of thousands of class-conscious workers but millions of semi-proletarians and
petty-bourgeois, now deceived by chauvinism, but whom the horrors of war will not only
intimidate and depress, but also enlighten, teach, arouse, organise, steel and prepare for
the war against the bourgeoisie of their 'own' country and 'foreign' countries."
III. Reformism and revisionism versus Leninism
Reformism, war and imperialist "peace"
During the first imperialist war, the social-democrats definitively defected to the side
of the monopolist bourgeoisie and imperialism.
They justified the criminal war of their own bourgeoisie. Their 'left' wing promised a
"durable" peace... after the ongoing war and without the overthrow of the
bourgeoisie.
Bourgeois pacifism
Basically, social-democratic pacifism defends the imperialist order. It spreads among the
masses the illusion of a durable peace without having to go through socialist revolution.
Lenin denounces the "Marxist" Kautsky as follows: "All oppressing classes
stand in need of two social functions to safeguard their rule: the function of the hangman
and the function of the priest. The hangman is required to quell the protests and the
indignation of the oppressed; the priest is required to console the oppressed, to depict
to them the prospect of their sufferings and sacrifices being mitigated... while
preserving class rule and thereby reconciling them to class rule, win them away from firm
revolutionary action, undermine their revolutionary energy and destroy their revolutionary
spirit. Kautsky has turned Marxism into a most hideous and stupid counter-revolutionary
theory."
Imperialist war reveals the sharp antagonisms of monopoly capitalism and these antagonisms
prove, precisely, that capitalism is a barbaric, inhuman and criminal system which must
absolutely be disposed of through socialist revolution. The reformists seek to veil these
antagonisms, showing imperialism to its advantage, maintaining the illusions that
imperialism is compatible with democracy and peace and that, therefore, socialist
revolution is not necessary to free the workers. Lenin: "Kautsky detaches the
politics of imperialism from its economics... It follows, then, that monopolies in the
economy are compatible with non-monopolistic, non-violent, non-annexationist methods in
politics...The result is a slurring-over and a blunting of the most profound
contradictions of the latest stage of capitalism, instead of an exposure of their
depth."
"The objective social significance... of Kautsky's 'theory'... is a most reactionary
method of consoling the masses with a hope of permanent peace being possible under
capitalism, by distracting their attention from the sharp antagonisms."
"Peace" as a preparation for further wars
The reformists have become the most effective agents of the bourgeoisie because they try
to keep the workers from finding, in the bloody horror of imperialist war, the courage and
determination to overthrow this criminal system and build a socialist future.
If the reformists are able to paralyse the working class, the workers will inevitably have
to endure other, even more barbaric and genocidal world wars.
Immediately after the First World War Lenin foresaw the start of a second world war,
should the workers not succeed in overthrowing the bourgeoisie in the main imperialist
centres. "The reformist attitude to capitalism yesterday engendered the imperialist
bloodbath (and will certainly do the same tomorrow) involving millions of people and
endless crises." Analysing the opposition between England, which had come out of the
war strengthened, and all the other imperialist powers, then the antagonism between the
United States and Japan, Lenin concluded as early as 1919: "All the powers are
preparing a fresh imperialist war...Any day now America and Japan will hurl themselves at
each other; Britain grabbed so many colonies after her victory over Germany that the other
imperialist powers will never resign themselves to this. A new fanatical war is being
prepared."
The social-democrat's bleatings about "peace" are intended to paralyse the
revolutionary struggle and to lead the workers towards new imperialist wars. "If the
revolution of the proletariat does not overthrow the present ruling classes, there will
never be any peace other than a more or less short-lived armistice between imperialist
powers, a peace accompanied by an intensification of reaction at home, by the enslavement
of the weaker nations, by the accumulation of explosive materials, paving the way for new
wars. Because, from the policies engendered by the entire imperialist era... inevitably
follows a peace based on a new and an even more violent oppression of nations."
After the First World War, the reactionary forces in the imperialist countries as well
as oppression and wars took on an even more violent aspect.
Today, everyone can see that the Second World War was followed by an extraordinary
strengthening of the repressive institutions and their control over the populations of the
imperialist countries. Interventions and wars are even more barbaric than those
experienced between 1918 and 1939.
Imperialism and revolution: revisionism versus Leninism
Lenin demonstrated that at the end of the 19th century a new era had commenced, the era
of monopoly capital, the era of imperialism. The level of development of the productive
forces demands the passage to socialism. The deepening of all the contradictions of the
capitalist world oblige the working class to carry out the socialist revolution so as to
ensure its own survival. Imperialism is the eve of the socialist revolution.
The entire analysis Lenin had made of the period of imperialism and the political
conclusions he drew from it were rejected by the revisionists: Khrushchev, Brezhnev and
Gorbachev.
"The era of the automatic collapse of imperialism..."
The revisionists openly declare that our era is no longer that of imperialism and
proletarian revolution.
According to Ponomarev: "Applying to our era the dated definition of imperialism and
proletarian revolution that reflects the particularities of a bygone era, when the forces
of imperialism played a dominant role... shows that one misunderstands reality, the
radical modification of the balance of power."
So then, how do the revisionists define the present era?
They define it as the era of the automatic collapse of capitalism without the necessity
for proletarian revolution. Ponomarev writes: "Let us now examine the new objective
factors... They are first of all the radical changes that have come about in the balance
of power between the classes in the world... The achievements of the Soviet Union have an
ever increasing influence on the world revolutionary process, making easier the workers'
struggle in the capitalist countries." "One after the other, the peoples are
resolutely breaking with capitalism and imperialism... Capitalism can no longer recover
from the blow it received in 1917. We are in the historical era of the... breaking up, the
decline, the collapse of capitalism, of the consolidation and complete triumph of
socialism all over the world. Capitalism is unable to surmount the deep crisis of
bourgeois society."
First of all one must stress that the "radical changes in the balance of power
between the classes in the world" was exclusively the result of the revolutionary
policies carried out by Stalin until his death in 1953. Khrushchev and Brezhnev boasted
about the strength of the Soviet Union that Stalin had passed on to them. But these
revisionists, by attacking all Stalin's policies, began to erode and destroy this
strength! Furthermore, they boasted about the strength of the USSR in an incorrect way.
Stalin had never said that the great strength of the USSR built up under his leadership
rendered superfluous either the proletarian revolution in the imperialist countries or the
anti-imperialist, democratic revolution in the oppressed countries! But Khrushchev and
Brezhnev used the strength of the USSR as a pretext for advocating the peaceful transition
to socialism both in the imperialist and the oppressed countries, capitalism and
imperialism being supposed to crumble when confronted with peaceful mass movements...
"The objective laws of capitalism have changed..."
The revisionists furthermore reject the whole of Lenin's analysis of the objective laws of
monopoly capital, laws that force the working class to follow the road of socialist
revolution.
Ponomarev writes: "The existence of powerful antagonistic tendencies weakens or
modifies the action of certain social and economic laws inherent to capitalism... The
competition between the two world systems exerts an ever-increasing influence on the
social and economic processes of capitalist society. The policies of the bourgeoisie are
no longer the 'pure' reflection of the objective laws of capitalism." "The
socialist system contributes to the modification of certain laws of capitalism and their
appearances."
Actually, all the laws of monopoly capitalism that Lenin analysed and that make the
proletarian revolution necessary are negated: the deepening of exploitation, the monstrous
oppression, the political reaction and fascistisation, militarism, the oppression of the
colonial and neo-colonial countries. And, of course, Lenin's central thesis: imperialism
stands for war.
"Imperialism obliged to accept peace"
The revisionists have fallen even lower than Kautsky. They assure us that imperialism
wants peace and that it will submit to the people's will!
After the Second World War, Stalin clearly pointed out for the benefit of all the peoples
of the world that American imperialism was on the same path as Hitlerian imperialism and
that it was actively preparing wars all over the world. Khrushchev asserted the exact
opposite of this Leninist thesis. He declared during the XXth Congress: "The
establishment of durable relations of friendship between the two biggest world powers -
The United States of America and the Soviet Union - would be of major importance for the
consolidation of world peace." Ponomarev declares: "Marxist-Leninists... are
convinced that the forces of progress and socialism are able to stop the imperialist
aggressors, to oblige imperialism to submit to the peoples' will."
In the eyes of the revisionists, imperialism is neither able any more to start a world war
any longer, nor to go to war against the Soviet Union or any other socialist country, nor
even to launch an armed intervention against the revolutionary movement of a third-world
country! "It becomes possible to ban a world war even before the disappearance of the
capitalist regime which gives birth to it. The strength of the socialist system not only
renders impossible all efforts to "push back" socialism through military means,
to restore capitalism in countries where it has been liquidated for a long time, but it
also stands in the way of armed interventions against the peoples who have only just
embarked on the revolutionary course. Before, a victorious revolution was almost always
confronted with a counter-revolutionary intervention. Today, the situation has radically
changed. The imperialists no longer have a chance of exporting counter-revolution without
being exposed to serious risks."
This whole theory was used exclusively for the purpose of disarming the working class of
the socialist countries, the capitalist countries and the neo-colonial countries facing
imperialism, the mortal enemy of the international working class!
Khrushchev used the vilest blackmail against the Marxist-Leninists who refused to disarm
and give up the proletarian revolution and the overthrow of imperialism. He accused the
revolutionaries who carried on practising a Leninist policy of wanting to provoke a
nuclear world war that would put an end to the existence of mankind!
Lenin said that imperialism could make use of the most extreme forms of barbarity, that
the proletariat had to be ready for all eventualities and had to prepare for the overthrow
of imperialism. Khrushchev, on the contrary, advocated capitulation, passivity and
despair. "A thermo-nuclear war would cause such destruction that the progression
towards socialism... would slow down rather than accelerate."
According to Lenin and Stalin, the struggle for peace prepares the struggle for the
triumph of revolution, should imperialism dare to spark off a new war. Revisionists, on
the contrary, are bourgeois pacifists: their so-called 'struggle for peace' is supposed to
make imperialism soft and reasonable: "Each victory in the struggle for peace...
ameliorates the climate all over the world, contributes to the attenuation of the cold war
and the anti-Communist hysteria." History has demonstrated exactly the contrary: the
revisionists' capitulation debased the international political climate, brought the cold
war and the anti-Communist hysteria to their peak and led to the overthrow of socialism...
"The path of October is out of date..."
Then the revisionists arrived at the logical conclusion demanded by their previous
assertions: the path of the October Revolution is no longer relevant. "The social
revolutions to come will be different in many ways from the October Revolution... by their
forms, their rhythms and partially by their participants." The revisionists discarded
violent revolution and stood for reformism: the "peaceful transition" becomes
the general political line, not only for the imperialist countries, but also for the
neo-colonies.
We know today that these anti-Leninist propositions have led directly to the dramatic
weakening of the world revolutionary forces and to the restoration of capitalism in its
most barbaric forms in the Soviet Union. The bitter reality that we see before our eyes
proves the absolute bankruptcy of all this revisionist demagogy as well as the validity of
all the theses put forward by Lenin and defended by Stalin.
Chapter III
Socialist revolution and revolutionary violence
During the First World War, Lenin continually denounced the treason of the reformists.
When the Third International was founded, the central point of his defence of
revolutionary Marxism against reformism was: "To gain victory over the bourgeoisie,
the proletariat has to resort to armed insurrection." "The civil war is put on
the agenda all over the world. The slogan is: "All power to the Soviets'."
"The Communist International is the party of the uprising of the revolutionary world
proletariat."
I. Revolution is a relentless war
The word "revolution" has a purely demagogic meaning for the reformists and
revisionists, but Lenin stressed the fact that this notion necessarily encompasses
revolutionary violence and aims at establishing the dictatorship of the proletariat.
Contrary to the future revisionists, Lenin declared: "Great revolutions, even when
they commence peacefully, as was the case with the great French Revolution, end in furious
wars which are instigated by the counter-revolutionary bourgeoisie. Nor can it be
otherwise, if we look at it from the point of view of the class struggle and not from the
point of view of philistine phrase-mongering about liberty, equality, labour democracy and
the will of the majority... There can be no peaceful evolution toward socialism."
In this chapter, we will systematise four fundamental propositions of Lenin concerning
revolutionary violence.
So as the better the stress their importance, let us first examine how the revisionists
treated the question of violence.
Khrushchev's revisionism rehabilitated all Kautsky's and Vandervelde's conceptions
concerning revolutionary violence. This was presented as a struggle against
"dogmatism" and a return to "reviving Marxism"! The XXth Congress
declared: "Historical experience... teaches us the necessity of an uncompromising
struggle to overcome dogmatism that dries up the living source of Marxism. Dogmatism is an
obstacle to the progress of the communist movement."
From the XXth Congress on, the defence of armed insurrection by Lenin, who made of this
question the main point of departure from the reformists, was described as a dogmatic
attitude! Ponomarev writes: "The founders of Marxism were far from making armed
insurrection an absolute, a dogma, or from considering it the only way to socialist
revolution."
The Soviet revisionists approvingly quote their Chilean disciples, responsible a few years
later for the bloody defeat of the revolution in Chile: "The Latin-American
communists take position that revolution is not synonymous with armed struggle... "
The thesis of the peaceful road, one may read in the Programme of the Communist Party of
Chile, is not a tactical formula. It is a fundamental demand of the communist
movement..."
Systematically teaching the idea of violent revolution
In his most famous and most widely read book State and Revolution, Lenin stresses
precisely this point and calls the Kautskys, the Tseretellis, the Dans, those predecessors
of Khrushchev and Corvallan, "traitors to the doctrine of Marx and Engels"!
With regard to Friedrich Engels' Anti-Dühring, Lenin writes: "The same work of
Engels also contains an argument of the significance of violent revolution. Engels'
historical analysis of its role becomes a veritable panegyric on violent revolution. This
'no one remembers'; in modern socialist parties it is not the custom to talk or even think
about the significance of this idea, and it plays no part whatever in their daily
propaganda and agitation among the people... Here is Engels' argument: 'That force is the
midwife of every old society which is pregnant with a new one, that it is the instrument
with which social movement forces its way through and shatters the dead, fossilised
political forms - of this there is not a word in Herr Dühring... This panegyric is by no
means a mere 'impulse', a mere declamation or a polemical sally. The necessity of
systematically imbuing the masses with this and precisely this view of violent revolution
lies at the root of the entire theory of Marx and Engels. The betrayal of their
theory...... expresses itself strikingly in... trends ignoring such propaganda and
agitation. Without violent revolution it is impossible to substitute a proletarian for a
bourgeois state"
Uprising is an art
During the immediate preparation of the proletarian revolution, between the first days of
September 1917 and the October 25 revolution, Lenin continually insisted on the idea of
armed uprising.
Lenin directly attacked opportunists at the head of the Bolshevik Party, men such as
Kamenev, Zinoviev and Rykov. He repeated: "It is impossible to remain loyal to
Marxism, to remain loyal to the revolution unless insurrection is treated as an art."
Lenin developed this essential idea as follows: "Now, insurrection is an art quite as
much as war or any other art, and is subject to certain rules... (...) Firstly never play
with insurrection unless you are fully prepared to go the whole way... Unless you bring
strong odds against (your enemies), you are defeated and ruined. Secondly, once you have
entered upon the insurrectionary career, act with the greatest determination, and on the
offensive. The defensive is the death of any armed uprising; it is lost before it measures
itself with its enemies. Surprise your antagonists while their forces are scattered,
prepare the way for moral superiority which the first successful rising has given to you;
rally in this way those vacillating elements to your side who always follow the strongest
force, and who always look out for the safer side; force your enemies to retreat before
they can collect their strength against you; in the words of Danton, the greatest master
of revolution yet known: 'De l'audace, de l'audace, encore de l'audace!'"
Unheard of difficulties and great sacrifices
The reformists and revisionists also use the word "revolution", but they want a
"low-cost revolution", without destruction, without civil war, a revolution
outside of the concrete circumstances that produce revolutions... Lenin uncompromisingly
denounced the reformists who have a bookish, idyllic conception of revolution. The popular
masses engage in revolution when they see no other way to ensure their survival.
Revolution stems from the extreme barbarity of capitalism and the masses must be ready to
make great sacrifices to obtain the revolution's victory.
"A revolutionary would not 'agree' to a proletarian revolution only 'on the
condition' that it proceeds easily and smoothly, that there is, from the outset, combined
action on the part of the proletarians of different countries, that there are guarantees
against defeats, that the road of the revolution is broad, free and straight, that it will
not be necessary... to sustain the heaviest casualties... Such a person will be found
constantly slipping into the camp of the counter-revolutionary bourgeoisie, like our Right
Socialist-Revolutionaries, Mensheviks. (...) These gentlemen like to blame us for the
'chaos' of the revolution, for the 'destruction' of industry. (...) It is this imperialist
war that is the cause of all these misfortunes. (...) In revolutionary epochs the class
struggle has always, inevitably, and in every country, assumed the form of civil war, and
civil war is inconceivable without the severest destruction, terror and the restriction of
formal democracy in the interests of this war."
But the revisionists Khrushchev and Ponomarev literally defended the Menshevik position, a
position which effectively carried them "into the camp of the counter-revolutionary
bourgeoisie". Ponomarev writes: "The working class... seeks to obtain radical
social transformations for the popular masses at the lowest cost possible, without useless
bloodshed, without destruction of the productive forces." He then quotes the Chilean
Communist Party: "We are in favour of a path that implies a minimum of sacrifices so
as to avoid whenever possible bloodshed and the destruction of material and cultural
values."
One thing is the wish of the working masses to free themselves of capitalist domination
whilst limiting as far as possible sacrifices and destruction. Another thing is
courageously to face the violence and terror used by the capitalist class to perpetuate
their domination. And another thing again is the determination of the workers to use all
necessary means and make all necessary sacrifices to smash the violence and terror of the
bourgeoisie.
Red terror as an answer to white terror
On the 3rd of March 1918, Russia signed the peace treaty of Brest-Litovsk, an unfair peace
imposed on them by German imperialism that tore away large areas of territory from
socialist Russia.
As the Russian army, completely demoralised, was unable to carry on the war, this peace
was necessary to save the Bolshevik regime, consolidate the socialist order and rebuild a
new Red Army.
The Russian bourgeoisie applied a policy of provocation, carrying out agitation in favour
of war against Germany because they knew that such a war would entail the downfall of
Bolshevik power. The Menshevik and Socialist-Revolutionary petty-bourgeoisie, because of
their narrow nationalist mentality, also wanted war and violently attacked the Bolsheviks.
There followed an extremely violent civil war.
Lenin explained that this war of counter-revolutionary violence was imposed on the
Bolsheviks: "At the time of the Brest-Litvosk Peace, we had to go against patriotism.
We said that if you are a socialist you must sacrifice all you patriotic feelings to the
International revolution, which is inevitable... The overwhelming majority of both the
Mensheviks and the Socialist Revolutionaries sided with the Czechs, the Dutov and Krasnov
gangs. This state of affairs forced us to wage a ruthless struggle and use terrorist
methods of warfare... we knew perfectly well (they were) necessitated by the acute Civil
war.. It was necessary because the petty-bourgeois democrats had turned against us. They
used all kinds of methods against us - civil war, bribery and sabotage. It was these
conditions that necessitated the terror. Therefore we should not repent or go back on
it... The petty bourgeois democrats, opposed us with a bitterness amounting almost to
fury, because we had to break down all their patriotic sentiments."
After Germany's defeat, it was the victorious imperialist powers, England and France, that
attacked the newly-created Soviet Union and that armed the Russian, Ukranian and Georgian
counter-revolutionary forces. In this defensive war, the Bolsheviks were forced to answer
white terror by red terror.
"We have always been accused of terrorism. This is a favourite accusation that is
never absent from the columns of the press. We are accused of making terrorism a
principle. To this we reply. 'You yourselves do not believe this slander.'(...) We say
that terror was thrust upon us. They forget that terror was provoked by the attack of the
all-powerful Entente. Is it not terror for the world's fleet to blockade a starving
country? Is it not terror for foreign representatives, relying on their so-called
diplomatic immunity, to organise whiteguard insurrections? (... ) If we attempted to
influence these troops, brought into being by international banditry and brutalised by
war, - if we had attempted to influence them by words and persuasion or by any means other
than terror, we would not have held out for even two months and we would have been fools.
The terror was forced on us by the terror of the Entente, the terror of mighty world
capitalism which has been throttling the workers and peasants, and is condemning them to
death by starvation because they are fighting for their country's freedom."
II. The peaceful development of the revolution
After the February 1917 revolution and the overthrow of the tsarist feudal power, a unique
situation appeared in Russia, characterised by the existence of dual power: the bourgeois
power represented by the provisional government, and the democratic revolutionary power,
represented by the Soviets.
The Soviets were the power of the workers, peasants and soldiers. But under the leadership
of the Mensheviks and the Socialist-Revolutionaries, this power 'trusted' the bourgeois
power and upheld, of its own free will, the policies of the provisional government.
The people were armed. The bourgeoisie had no forces of repression able to repress the
armed people. The Soviets could declare peace, give the earth to the peasants and take
stringent measures against the capitalists. But they voluntarily gave up taking these
necessary and feasible measures because they trusted the 'revolutionary' phraseology of
the new provisional government.
Under these circumstances, the pivot of Bolshevik tactics was to convince the Soviets that
the bourgeois government did not at all deserve to be trusted, that the Soviets had to
take power and imposing measures necessary for the peasants' and workers' survival. During
these three months, from April to the beginning of July, Lenin repeated: "...in a
peasant country, at a time when a union of the proletariat with the peasantry can give
peace to people worn-out by a most injust and criminal war, when that union can give the
peasantry all the land, in that country, at that exceptional moment in history, a peaceful
development of the revolution is possible and probable if all power is transferred to the
Soviets."
Revisionism and hatred for violent revolution
It is in reference to this tactical line, developed by Lenin between April and July 1917,
that Khrushchev developed his thesis stating: "The working class and its vanguard...
try to accomplish socialist revolution peacefully."
Gorbachev also argued that the Bolshevik political line after February 1917 had
"shown the possibility of a peaceful transfer of power into the hands of the workers,
a possibility that could not, unfortunately, be realised, due to certain historical
circumstances."
This "peaceful revolution" which the revisionists advocate in fact conceals
their hatred for revolution, popular uprising and revolutionary civil war - in other
words, Leninism.
This hatred was overtly expressed by Gorbachev's underlings and notably by Pavel
Volobuïed, doctor in history and President of the Scientific Council of the Academy of
Sciences of the USSR.
He said: "Lenin and the communists of Russia never made an idol of revolutionary
violence... Before the October 17th revolution, the communists of Russia proclaimed their
intention of defeating without bloodshed the capitalist's opposition to the revolutionary
measures taken in the field of economy... but Providence decided otherwise. The revolution
led to a violent civil war. The secular hatred of the oppressors, the ferocity of men that
had been ensavaged during the war years, anarchist excesses - all this had a strong
influence on the fratricidal war. The victory of the October revolution was obtained
through unprecedented efforts and diffculties, it was accompanied by enormous failures,
errors on our part. Military specialists that had been only suspected of treason were
ordered shot by Stalin... The armed struggle of the workers and peasants also contributed
to unleashing the anarchic element. The declassed masses set it off. (...) The declassed
'scum' effectively existed and their ferocious aggression also existed. Add to that an
enormous mass of people that had lost everything, for whom war had become a job, and you
have the explanation of the banditry that prevailed, unleashed all over the country."
Let us stress that the revisionists' struggle against revolutionary violence has its
logical extension in their hatred for Stalin, the continuator of Lenin's work. The doctor
of history Volobuyev continues his ranting against "the violence of the declassed
scum of society" by violent attacks against Stalin: "Stalin is a classical
thermidorian. He practised, under pseudo-socialist forms, a most cruel medieval-type
oriental despotism."
Between two civil wars
Let us now come back to the tactics applied by Lenin during the months that preceded the
October Revolution.
Concerning these tactics he wrote: "The peaceful development of any revolution is,
generally speaking, extremely rare and difficult, because revolution is the maximum
exacerbation of the sharpest class contradictions."
As early as the 24th of April 1917, Lenin had explained his tactics for the months to come
insofar as concerned the present and future renegades.
The peaceful development of a revolution is entirely different from a so-called
"peaceful revolution". The peaceful development is a particular phase of the
revolutionary process. In April 1917, the worker and peasant masses had just victoriously
completed the first civil war (democratic revolution) and the country was in a phase of
transition towards the second civil war (socialist revolution). As the masses trusted the
"revolutionary" language of the bourgeois government, it was necessary to
concentrate on political education so that they could understand the necessity of the
second civil war. To start armed struggle when the objective and subjective conditions had
not been assembled would have been tantamount to adventurism and Blanquism.
Lenin said: "Some may ask: have we not gone back on our own principles? We are
advocating the conversion of the imperialist war into a civil war, and now we are
contradicting ourselves. But the first civil war in Russia has come to an end. We are now
advancing towards the second war - the war between imperialism and the armed people. In
this transitional period, as long as the armed force is in the hands of the soldiers,
...this civil war, so far as we are concerned, turns into peaceful, prolonged, and patient
class propaganda. To speak of civil war before people have come to realise the need for it
is undoubtedly to lapse into Blanquism." "At the present moment, as long as the
capitalists and their government cannot and dare not use force against the masses, as long
the mass of soldiers and workers are freely expressing their will and freely electing and
displacing all authorities - at such a moment any thought of civil war would be naïve,
senseless, preposterous." "The crisis cannot be overcome... by the local action
of small groups of armed people, by Blanquist attempts to 'seize power', to 'arrest' the
Provisional Government, etc." "We are for civil war, but only for civil war
waged by a politically conscious class... For the time being we withdraw that slogan, but
only for the time being. It is the soldiers and the workers who possess the arms now, not
the capitalists. So long as the government has not started war, our propaganda remains
peaceful. (...) We must not compromise on the smallest syllable of our principles with the
middle class, which is waiting at present. There is no more dangerous error for a
proletarian party than to found its tactics on subjective wishes where it wants
organisation instead." "At the moment we are in the minority, the masses do not
trust us yet. We will know how to wait: they will go over to our side when the government
will show itself as it really is. Then we will say, taking into account the balance of
power: our moment has come."
"Firmly prepare insurrection"
During early July 1917, many workers and soldiers were in favour of an insurrectional
demonstration to overthrow the government.
The Bolsheviks opposed this because the majority of the workers, soldiers and peasants
were not yet ready for it. Any victory would therefore have necessarily been short-lived.
But in view of the popular impetus, the Bolsheviks were forced to give a lead to the
demonstration and give it a peaceful character using the slogan: "All power to the
Soviets". Half a million workers and soldiers demonstrated on the 4th of July in
Petrograd.
Seized by panic, the reformists concentrated on Petrograd troops loyal to the government
with a view to "re-establishing". On the 5th of July, the editorial offices of
Pravda were destroyed and Bolsheviks were arrested. Kerensky declared that the disorders
were provoked by agents of Germany and he insisted that Lenin be brought before the court
accused of spying for Germany. The Menshevik Central Committee denounced: "The
criminal adventure carried out by the Leninist commandment", upholding the full
powers that the government had given to itself to "fight against all acts of
counter-revolution and anarchy."
Lenin drew the following conclusions from these events: "All hopes for a peaceful
development of the Russian revolution have vanished for good. This is the objective
situation: either complete victory for the military dictatorship, or victory for the
workers' armed uprising. The slogan 'All Power to the Soviets' was a slogan for peaceful
development of the revolution which was possible in April, May, June, and up to July 5-9,
i. e. up to the time when actual power passed into the hands of the military
dictatorship... Let us have no constitutional or republican illusions of any kind, no more
illusions about a peaceful path. Let us muster our forces, reorganise them, and resolutely
prepare for the armed uprising, if the course of the crisis permits it on a really mass,
country-wide scale."
What kind of struggle against the military coup d'Etat?
It is in this context that the reactionary bourgeoisie organised, on the 25th of August,
Kornilov's coup d'Etat. Kornilov was the army's chief commander.
The bourgeoisie as a whole agreed, since the events that had taken place between the 3rd
and the 5th of July, that the Bolsheviks were a great danger to the regime and that they
had to be suppressed. Two men were candidates for the violent "restoration of
order"; on one hand Kornilov, who wanted an overt military dictatorship reliant on
the tsarist forces and the reactionary bourgeoisie and, on the other hand, Kerensky, who
wanted to give a popular foundation to the suppression of the Bolsheviks by relying not
only on the reactionary forces but also on the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries.
Kornilov's program was to outlaw Soviets in the army and cities and give over Riga to the
Germans so as to deliver a blow to the revolutionary workers' movement, and to send the
army to attack Petrograd and proclaim martial law.
After much hesitation Kerensky decided to oppose this plan because he feared that the
popular masses would go over in great numbers to the Bolsheviks were the reformists to
support the military coup d'Etat.
Lenin reacted to Kornilov's coup d'Etat by intensifying the revolutionary struggle of the
workers.
Up to then, the Mensheviks had done their utmost to stop the creation of the Red Guard,
armed formations of workers for the defence of the revolution. Lenin now said: "Now
is the time for action; the war against Kornilov must be conducted in a revolutionary way
by drawing in the masses" (...) "arm the Petrograd workers."
Lenin warned against the opportunist tactic of subordination of the revolutionary struggle
to the leadership of the reformists Mensheviks: "Even now we must not support
Kerensky's government. We shall fight, we are fighting against Kornilov, just as
Kerensky's troops do, but we do not support Kerensky. On the contrary, we expose his
weakness. (...) We are changing the form of our struggle against Kerensky. Without in the
least relaxing our hostility towards him, without taking back a single word said against
him..."
This Leninist tactic is exactly the opposite of the revisionists' who, when threatened by
reactionary and fascist violence, loudly call for "anti-fascist unity" on a
political line of capitulation to social-democracy. In their "anti-fascist
unity" the revisionists accept the leadership of the social-democrats, they let
themselves be trapped by the programme and methods of struggle of the social-democrats.
Lenin, on the contrary, developed the revolutionary struggle of the popular masses keeping
in view the ultimate aim of taking power; he agreed to fight side by side with the
reformist organisations that effectively struggled against the common enemy, he modified
the forms of struggle against the reformist leaders, but he in no way modified his total
hostility to the programme and political line of the reformists.
Power to the Soviets through insurrection
After 5 days, on the 30th of August, the Kornilov plot had failed.
During the struggle against Kornilov, the Soviets had once more played a revolutionary
role in the mobilisation and many workers and soldiers had come closer to the Bolshevik
positions.
During the first fifteen days of September, the Soviets of Petrograd, Moscow and Finland
passed under Bolshevik leadership. The Soviets no longer supported the bourgeois
government led by the Social-Democrat Kerensky, and were demanding "All Power to the
Soviets".
Taking these new conditions into consideration, and to prompt the masses forward towards
revolution, Lenin returned, as it were, to the tactics applied before the 3-5th of July.
On the 3rd of September, he wrote: "All power to the Soviets, creation of a
government... responsible before the Soviets. Actually... such a government... could most
probably ensure the peaceful progress of the Russian revolution."
Before the 3-5th of July, this tactical approach was used mainly with a view to unmasking
the class-collaborationist policy of the Social-Democrats and Socialist-Revolutionary
majority in the Soviets and to convince the majority of the workers and peasants of the
correctness of the Bolshevik position. But since early September, this tactic was
developed with a direct view of preparing for the establishment of the dictatorship of the
proletariat through armed insurrection.
In fact, after Kornilov's coup d'Etat there remained two fundamental options: "Either
all power goes to the Soviets and the army is made fully democratic, or another Kornilov
affair occurs..." Had the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries drawn the
conclusions of Kornilov's military coup d'Etat? "If they have learned something, the
establishment of a stable, unwavering power must be begun immediately... Only the power of
the Soviets can be stable, obviously based on a majority of the people..." "A
courageous and resolute government steering a firm course is nothing but the dictatorship
of the proletariat and the poor peasants... What would such a dictatorship mean in
practice? It would mean nothing but the fact that resistance of the Kornilov man would be
broken and the democratisation of the army taken up again and brought to completion.(...)
Only the dictatorship of the proletariat and poor peasants is capable of smashing the
resistance of the capitalists, of displaying truly supreme courage and determination in
the exercise of power, and securing the enthusiastic, selfless and truly heroic support of
the masses both in the army and among the peasants." "Power to the Soviets,
means radically reshaping the entire old state apparatus, that bureaucratic apparatus
which hampers everything democratic. It means removing this apparatus and substituting for
it a new, popular one, i.e., a truly democratic apparatus of Soviets, i.e., the organised
and armed majority of the people - the workers, soldiers and peasants. It means allowing
the majority of the population to show initiative and independence not only in electing
deputies, but also in state administration, in effecting reforms and various other social
changes..." "Power to the Soviets - this is the only way to ensure gradual,
peaceful, unruffled progress, keeping perfect pace with the political awareness and
resolve of the majority of the people."
This awareness and this decisiveness was developing as the masses came to understand the
necessity of the armed uprising to take real power, and to disarm the reactionary troops
the bourgeoisie still had at its disposal. As Lenin wrote one week before the Revolution
of October 25: "Since September the one item on the agenda has been the question of
the uprising, which is now the only way to realise the slogan 'All power to the
Soviets'."
III. The opportunists Kamenev and Zinoviev
against Lenin
Following Kornilov's coup d'Etat, the worker and peasant masses of Russia faced a
fundamental choice: transfer all the power to the revolutionary Soviets by the means of an
insurrection or follow the conciliators and be drawn towards military dictatorship.
Participation in the pre-parliament
To contain the rising revolutionary movement, the Menshevik and Socialist-Revolutionary
leaders had programmed a Democratic Conference for the 12th of September. They were seeing
to it that it would have a strong bourgeois and petty-bourgeois majority.
Although a majority of the Central Committee had decided to participate in the Conference,
Lenin denounced it as early as the 14th of September, the opening day of the Conference.
"The Democratic Conference is deceiving the peasants; it is giving them neither peace
nor land. (..) The point is... the present task must be an armed uprising in Petrograd and
Moscow,... the seizure of power (...) We must remember and weigh Marx's words about
insurrection: 'Insurrection is an art.' (...) History will not forgive us if we do not
assume power now."
Lenin considered that if the Bolsheviks were to take part in the Democratic Conference
that would be a first sign of "parliamentary cretinism" on their part.
Effectively, a new revolution was gaining momentum in the country, the revolution of the
proletariat and a majority of the peasants against the bourgeoisie and its ally,
Anglo-French imperialism. It was not correct to direct the masses attention towards a
parliamentary-type Conference whose only aim was to paralyse the rising revolutionary
forces. The Bolsheviks should not waste time in this Conference, it should be denounced
and the party's militants should be sent to the masses in order to prepare the imminent
insurrection. "We should have boycotted the Democratic Conference; we all erred by
not doing so."
The 127 Bolsheviks who participated in this Conference voted, 77 to 50, also to
participate in the Pre-parliament that came out of it. Kamenev and Rykov were the
spokesmen of those "parliamentarists". Lenin declared: "Participation in
the Pre-Parliament is an incorrect tactic that does not correspond to the objective
relations of classes, to the objective conditions of the moment... There is not the
slightest doubt that at the 'top' of our Party there are noticeable vacillations that may
ruin the cause."
"Wait for the decision of the Congress of Soviets"
After the decision of the Central Committee not to participate in the Pre-Parliament, the
"parliamentary cretinism" among Bolsheviks immediately took on a new guise,
i.e., to wait for the convening of the Congress of the Soviets, which was to "take
power". But the counter-revolution was feverishly preparing itself, regrouping the
forces that were to crush the revolution. Furthermore, the reactionaries were about to
deliver Petrograd into the hands of the Germans so as to beat the revolutionaries.
On September 29, Lenin did his utmost to tip the scales against the
"parliamentarists" and waverers who refused to start the uprising immediately:
Lenin asked to be excluded from the capitulationist Central Committee!
"If the Bolsheviks allowed themselves to be caught in the trap of constitutional
illusions, 'faith' in the Congress of Soviets... 'waiting' for the Congress of Soviets,
and so forth - the Bolsheviks would most certainly be miserable traitors to the
proletarian cause. (...) There is a tendency, or an opinion in our Central Committee and
among the leaders of our Party which favours waiting for the Congress of Soviets, and is
opposed to taking power immediately, is opposed to an immediate insurrection. That
tendency, or opinion must be overcome. Otherwise the Bolsheviks wil cover themselves with
eternal shame and destroy themselves as a party... To wait for the Congress of the Soviets
would be utter idiocy, for it would mean losing weeks at a time when weeks and even days
decide everything... (...)... To 'convene' the Congress of Soviets for October 20 in order
to decide upon 'taking power' - how does that differ from foolishly appointing an
insurrection? It is possible to take power now, whereas on October 20-29 you will not be
given a chance to... The Central Organ is deleting from my articles all references to such
glaring errors on the part of the Bolsheviks... I am compelled to tender my resignation
from the Central Committee, which I hereby do."
"The uprising is impossible and premature... "
Lenin's explanations and threats were to no avail. During the meeting of the Central
Comittee on October 10, Kamenev and Zinoviev once more opposed to the uprising and Trotsky
asked that it be postponed until the convening of the Congress of the Soviets.
During the meeting that was held on the 16th, Kamenev and Zinoviev voted against the
uprising once more; there were 4 abstentions and 19 in favour. On the following day, Lenin
wrote a cutting criticism of the arguments put forth by Kamenev and Zinoviev, accusing
them of "political surrender to the bourgeoisie".
"'We have no majority among the people, and without this condition the uprising is
hopeless.' People who can say this are either distorters of the truth or pedants who want
an advance guarantee that throughout the whole country the Bolshevik Party has received
exactly one-half of the votes plus one... without taking the least account of the real
circumstances of the revolution... For reality shows us clearly that it was after the July
days that the majority of the people began quickly to go over to the side of the
Bolsheviks."
"'In the international situation there is nothing that obliges us to act immediately;
we will rather harm the cause of the socialist revolution in the West if we have ourselves
shot.'"
"...We would reason such as the likes of Scheidemann and Renaudel: the wisest thing
we can do is not to rise up, for if we get shot, what fine and sensible internationalists
the world will lose! (...) The war has imposed the worst sufferings on the workers of all
countries; it has exhausted them. Explosions are multiplying in Italy, in Germany, in
Austria. We are the only ones to have Soviets of workers' and soldiers' deputies and we
would remain in waiting, we would betray the German internationalists like we betray the
Russian peasants who... by means of their actions, by their uprising against the property
owners, make an appeal to us to rise against the Kerensky government..."
"'We are not strong enough to take power and the bourgeoisie is not strong enough to
make the Constituent Assembly fail.'"
"...One voices one's helplessness and one's fear of the bourgeoisie while revealing
one's pessimism regarding the workers... If the Soviets are not strong enough to topple
the bourgeoisie, it obviously means that the latter will be strong enough to make the
Constituent Assembly fail... Renouncing the insurrection is renouncing giving power to the
Soviets, it is 'entrusting' all our hopes to the good bourgeoisie which 'promised' to
convene the Constituent Assembly... Hesitating about the question of the insurrection as
the only means of saving the revolution, is to fall into the trap of that cowardly
confidence in the bourgeoisie."
Kamenev's and Zinoviev's treason
On October 18, Kamenev and Zinoviev published a note in a Menshevik newspaper where they
spoke about the Bolsheviks' decision to organise an uprising, a decision that they
condemned. Lenin wrote on the same day that Kamenev and Zinoviev were "scabs"
and "traitors". " I will struggle with all my might for their exclusion
from the Party." The revolution triumphed on October 25, notwithstanding the
opportunists' sabotage.
After the October Revolution, Kamenev and Zinoviev wanted to have Mensheviks and
Socialist-Revolutionaries enter the government though they were opposed to the
revolutionary Programme that had been adopted on October 25 by the Congress of Soviets. On
November 3, Kamenev and Zinoviev made the Central Executive Committee of the Soviets vote
for a resolution that stated that the Bolsheviks would only have half the governmental
seats. This allowed the reformists to block completely the government's revolutionary
activity.
Lenin declared: "The opposition formed within the Central Committee has departed
completely from all the fundamental propositions of Bolshevism and of the proletarian
class struggle in general by reiterating the un-Marxist talk of the impossibility of a
socialist revolution in Russia and of the necessity of yielding to the ultimatums and
threats of resignation on the part of the obvious minority in the Soviet
organisation."
These two points: the impossibility of building socialism in one country, the USSR, and
the necessity for compromise with the Mensheviks were to be, during the Twenties, the
common platform of the two revisionist tendencies, that of Trotsky and that of Kamenev and
Zinoviev.
Lenin then declared: "Kamenev, Zinoviev, Nogin, Rykov, Milyutin and a few others -
resigned from the Central Committee of our Party, and the three last named from the
Council of People's Commissars. In a large party like ours, ...it was inevitable that
individual comrades should have proved to be insufficiently staunch and firm in the
struggle against the enemies of the people... The comrades who have resigned have acted as
deserters... We strongly condemn this desertion... But we declare that the desertion of a
few individuals belonging to the leading group of our Party cannot for a moment or in the
slightest way shake that unity of the masses who follow our Party and that it therefore
will not shake our Party."
Opposition to armed uprising and reconciliation with the reformist parties are two
essential positions of Khrushchev-type reformism. In this sense, Kamenev, Zinoviev and
Rykov were Khrushchev's forebears. This proves the continuity of an opportunist line
within the leadership of the Bolshevik party, a line opposed to the carrying out of
Leninist policies. Stalin fought against Kamenev's and Zinoviev's opportunism with immense
patience and he applied the Leninist line. When Kamenev and Zinoviev engaged in
clandestine activities and plots against the Party, they were judged and condemned to
death. Trotsky, the most dogged enemy of Bolshevism, then paid homage to Kamenev and
Zinoviev, describing them as "representatives of the Bolshevik old guard..."
Chapter IV
The dictatorship of the proletariat
I. The fundamental question of Marxism
Marx and Engels analysed capitalism as being a system based on the dictatorship of the
bourgeoisie.
Before them, liberal authors had already analysed the class struggle that develops between
the bourgeoisie and the working class in capitalist societies. What is fundamentally new
in the contributions of Marx and Engels is the thesis that socialism can exist only as a
negation of the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, only under the form of proletarian
dictatorship.
Lenin declared: "To confine Marxism to the theory of the class struggle means
curtailing Marxism, distorting it, reducing it to something acceptable to the bourgeoisie.
Only he is a Marxist who extends the recognition of the class struggle to the recognition
of the dictatorship of the proletariat." "The question of the dictatorship of
the proletariat is the fundamental question of the modern working-class movement in all
capitalist countries without exception... On an international scale, the history of the
doctrine... of the dictatorship of the proletariat... coincides with the history of
Marxism... Whoever has failed to understand that dictatorship is essential to the victory
of any revolutionary class has no understanding of the history of revolutions."
The traitor Khrushchev not only denied the necessity of the dictatorship of the
proletariat in the USSR but, during the XXth Congress, also declared that the dictatorship
of the proletariat was not the fundamental question in the transition towards socialism in
the capitalist countries. Khrushchev said: "For all the forms of transition towards
socialism, the political leadership of the working class... is the major condition.
Without this, it is impossible to go on to socialism."
The "political leadership of the working class" is a vague expression that may
cover all "reformist pathways" to socialism and that helps to conceal the
fundamental question: which class exerts its dictatorship?
The power of the working class stems from revolution, insurrection, revolutionary violence
against the bourgeoisie. It does not have its origin in the laws and institutions of the
bourgeoisie. On the contrary, it casts aside these laws and institutions in order to
replace them by laws and institutions created by the revolutionary classes to serve their
interests.
Lenin: "The theory of the class struggle, applied by Marx to the question of the
state and the socialist revolution, leads as a matter of course to the recognition of the
political rule of the proletariat, of its dictatorship, i. e., of undivided power directly
backed by the armed force of the people."
Why is socialism necessarily the dictatorship of the proletariat, and what are the
relations between the different classes, and especially between the proletariat and the
other labouring classes under socialism?
XXth century capitalism is essentially the dictatorship of the monopolistic bourgeoisie,
relying on the bourgeoisie as a whole and on the upper strata of the petty-bourgeoisie.
The monopolistic bourgeoisie is the central nucleus of the capitalist system in the same
way that the proletariat is the central element of the socialist revolution and of the
whole historical period of socialism.
Lenin: "Only a definite class, namely, the urban workers and the factory workers, the
industrial workers in general, is able to lead the whole mass of the working and exploited
people in the struggle to throw off the yoke of capital, in actually carrying it out, in
the struggle to maintain and consolidate the victory, in the work of creating the new,
socialist social system and in the entire struggle for the complete abolition of
classes."
To build socialism, the proletariat, the hard core, has to lean on all social strata of
workers. "The dictatorship of the proletariat is a particular form of class alliance
of the proletariat, the workers' vanguard, with numerous non-proletarian strata of workers
(petty-bourgeoisie, petty proprietors, peasants, intellectuals, etc.) or with the majority
of those strata, an alliance directed against capital, aiming at the complete overthrow of
capital, at completely crushing the resistance of the bourgeoisie and its attempts at
restoration, aiming at the construction and definitive consolidation of socialism... It is
the alliance of the resolute partisans of socialism with its hesitating, sometimes
'neutral' allies..., the alliance of classes that differ in the fields of economy,
politics, society and ideology."
The dictatorship of the proletariat exercises dictatorship against the bourgeoisie and
organises the people's democracy for the working classes. "Proletarian dictatorship
is the forcible suppression of the resistance of the exploiters, i.e., an insignificant
minority of the population... That proletarian dictatorship must inevitably entail... an
unparalleled extension of the actual enjoyment of democracy by those oppressed by
capitalism - the toiling classes."
Socialism has two essential tasks: to repress the bourgeoisie and to organise a
superior economic system. "The overthrow of the bourgeoisie can be achieved only by
the proletariat becoming the ruling class, capable of crushing the inevitable and
desperate resistance of the bourgeoisie, and of organising all the working and exploited
people for the new economic system."
Socialism represses the bourgeoisie and organises popular democracy in order to create an
economic system that is superior to capitalism, a system that develops higher productivity
exclusively in the interest of the workers. "The dictatorship of the proletariat is
not only the violence used against the exploiters, and not even essentially violence. The
proletariat offers and realises a superior type of social organisation of labour in
comparison with capitalism: this is the economic base of this revolutionary violence, the
guarantee of its vitality and success."
II. The socialist state and the Soviets
The socialist state of the working class can emerge only during the struggle for the
destruction of the bourgeois state.
These two types of states are radically opposed by their class nature and methods of
functioning. 'Soviet Power or bourgeois parliament, that is how world history has
formulated the question."
The Soviets, the Party and the labouring classes
The Soviets emerged as instruments of the mobilisation and revolutionary struggle of the
masses exploited by capitalism.
The Soviets had first appeared during the revolution of 1905-1906.
They appeared again during the February 1917 revolution and their revolutionary nature was
clearly exposed during the October Revolution when they entered history as the
insurrectional instruments of the workers, soldiers and peasants, the instruments of the
revolutionary seizure of power.
And it was during the civil war, from 1918 to the end of 1920, that the Soviets
definitively demonstrated their role as ruling organisations.
The Soviets, instruments of the exploited masses
During those four revolutionary years, tens of millions of workers and peasants awoke to
active political life. The Soviets were centres for the development of a tremendous
political creativity. "The substance of Soviet government is that the permanent and
only foundation of state power..., is the mass-scale organisation of the classes formerly
oppressed by capitalism, i.e., the workers and the semi-proletarians... It is the
people... drawn into constant and unfailing, moreover, decisive, participation in the
democratic administration of the state."
As fighting instruments, the Soviets had a class character from the very start. "Only
the working and exploited people could enter the Soviets, all exploiters of every kind
were included." The Soviets meant: "The union and organisation of the working
and exploited masses oppressed by capitalism, and only them... with automatic exclusion of
the exploiting classes and rich representatives of the petty-bourgeoisie..."
The relationship between the Communist Party and the Soviets
The Soviets were not a "spontaneous product" of class struggle. If it is true
that they emerged spontaneously during the struggle against the bourgeoisie, they acquired
their revolutionary character thanks to the work of synthesis and creativity of the
Communist Party.
Effectively, being mass organisations of the workers, the Soviets necessarily reflected
the political and ideological currents present among the people.
Thus, before the October Revolution, the Mensheviks, who had the majority in the Soviets,
used the Soviets to submit the working class to the state apparatus of the bourgeoisie. It
is only thanks to the struggle of the Bolshevik Party that the Soviets struggled out of
the domination of the bourgeois state and became the instruments of an alternative power,
confronting the instruments of the bourgeois state.
As the development of a new proletarian state apparatus is not a spontaneous process, the
role of the Communist Party in its formation and consolidation is essential. "It is
only in the case that the proletariat is guided by an organised and experienced party...
that the conquest of political power can be considered, not as an episode, but as the
starting point of a durable process of communist edification of society by the
proletariat. (...) The Communist Party is the principal, the essential tool of the
emancipation of the proletariat; in all countries now we must have neither groups nor
tendencies but a Communist Party; in each country there must be one and only one Communist
Party."
The new management system of the socialist state is complex. Lenin sums up this complexity
as follows: "What happens is that the Party... absorbs the vanguard of the
proletariat, and this vanguard exercises the dictatorship of the proletariat. The
dictatorship cannot be exercised and the functions of government cannot be performed
without a foundation such as the trade unions. These functions, however, have to be
performed through the medium of special institutions which are also of a new type, namely,
the Soviets."
After the October Revolution, during the Kronstadt insurrection, the anarchists, the
Mensheviks and the bourgeoisie as a whole supported the slogan of "The Soviets
without the Bolsheviks" in order to destroy the dictatorship of the proletariat and
to reintroduce the policy of subordination of the Soviets to the instruments of bourgeois
democracy.
Thus, both during the revolutionary struggle and during the development of socialist
power, the Soviets were instruments where the symbiosis between the communist vanguard and
the working classes was accomplished. "The machinery (of the Soviets)... allows the
organisation of the vanguard, that is to say of the most conscious, the most energetic,
the most advanced part of the oppressed classes, the peasants and the workers; it is
therefore an instrument allowing the vanguard of the oppressed classes to lift up,
educate, instruct and thrust forward the enormous mass of these classes."
The socialist Soviets, army and state apparatus
The Soviets developed the construction of a proletarian, socialist state in three ways.
First, they strengthened themselves as representative organs of the exploited masses and
as instruments of their power. Their class nature expressed itself, notably, through
elections held on working sites, which reinforced the influence of the most revolutionary
workers.
Furthermore, the Soviets played an essential part in the building of the Red Army, as well
as the socialist police and security forces.
Finally, the Soviets created an entirely new law-enforcement apparatus where the judges
came from the working class and were under their control; they also undertook the complete
reconstruction of the administrative apparatus.
The Red Army, army of the workers
The state is first and foremost the armed forces serving the interests of one class.
The Red Army developed after the collapse of the bourgeois army at the end of the world
war and after the armed insurrections organised by the soldiers, sailors and revolutionary
officers. This initial core element was strengthened by the voluntary enlistment of
hundreds of thousands of young communists and workers, as well as young revolutionary
peasants, for the defence of the gains of the October Revolution.
During the October Revolution, the Soviets essentially consisted of workers and soldiers;
their role was critical in disbanding the old reactionary army and creating the
revolutionary army.
Referring to the socialist army and police, Lenin declared: "Counter-revolution has
never tolerated... armed workers side by side with the army. In France, Engels wrote, the
workers emerged armed from every revolution: 'Therefore, the disarming of the workers was
the first commandment for the bourgeoisie, who were at the helm of the state. The armed
workers were the embryo of a new army, the organised nucleus of a new social order. The
first commandment of the bourgeoisie was to crush this nucleus and prevent it from
growing. The first commandment of every victorious revolution...... was to smash the old
army, dissolve it and replace it by a new one. A new social class, when rising to power,
never could, and cannot now, attain power and consolidate it except by completely
disintegrating the old army... by gradually building up, in the midst of hard civil war, a
new army, a new discipline, a new military organisation of the new class." "The
Soviets are a new state apparatus which... provides an armed force of workers and
peasants; and this force is not divorced from the people, as was the old standing army,
but is very closely bound up with the people."
The police of the bourgeoisie was also disbanded. Lenin: "A people's militia instead
of the police force and the standing army is a prerequisite of effective... reforms in the
interests of the working people. At a time of revolution, this prerequisite is
practicable."
The executive and legislative power
Under the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, power is effectively in the hands of the richer
capitalists, the main civil servants of the bourgeois state and the ministers who are
closely related to the capitalists and the main civil servants. Parliament is used to give
a "democratic" appearance to the capitalists' dictatorship.
Under the dictatorship of the proletariat, the main capitalists have been expropriated and
the means of production are the property of the workers' community. The socialist army and
police are essentially revolutionary, armed workers.
In such a system, the elected organs of the workers, the Soviets, can effectively retain
all power.
The Soviets' main task is to create laws and institutions that express exclusively the
interests of the working masses.
But the members of the Soviets also play a role in the application of the laws and the
functioning of the institutions. As Lenin puts it, the system of the Soviets: "makes
it possible to combine the advantages of the parliamentary system with those of immediate
and direct democracy, i.e., to vest in the people's elected representatives both
legislative and executive functions."
Participation of the masses in the management of the state
Under the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, the state apparatus is a monstrous machine that
oppresses, bullies, plagues and exploits the workers. The sole function of bourgeois
parliament is to dissimulate this and see that it is accepted.
One of the essential functions of the socialist state is to create a state apparatus which
is entirely and exclusively at the service of the labouring masses. The historical task of
the Soviets is to put and end to the state that exists as a hostile parasite on the
working class. The essence of the socialist system is that the elected revolutionary
workers themselves participate in the management of the state and organise workers'
control over the state organs. Lenin: "All citizens must take part in the work of the
courts and in the government of the country. It is important for us to draw literally all
working people into the government of the state."
This participation of the workers in the management of the socialist state and their
control over the organs of power is the very essence of the dictatorship of the
proletariat. The resistance of the bourgeoisie expresses itself especially in their
efforts to bureaucratise the organs of socialist power, to detach them from the workers,
to make them escape their control. Stalin well understood that the bureaucratisation of
the Soviets (the breach between the elected representatives and the grass roots, the
refusal to prepare all workers for participation in the management of the socialist state)
posed a serious internal threat to socialism. "One of the most dangerous enemies of
the advancement of our cause is bureaucratism. It exists in each of our organisations. The
communist bureaucrat is the most dangerous type of bureaucrat... There is nothing wrong
with the masses of the party aiming at those demoralised elements and taking the
opportunity of telling them to go to the devil." This position, which he stated in
1928, Stalin repeated in 1952.
When Khrushchev, in 1956, declared that the dictatorship of the proletariat no longer
existed in the Soviet Union, he gave free expression to the trends of bureaucratisation.
He allowed the entry into the Soviets of bourgeois and petty-bourgeois elements. Then
Brezhnev completed the bureaucratisation of the Soviets, removing them more and more from
the control of workers. Under Gorbachev, the Soviets became the places where the new
bourgeoisie organised its own political representation, fighting for the total destruction
of the last traces of socialism.
III. Class struggle during the dictatorship
of the proletariat
A long historical period
The dictatorship of the proletariat is necessary during a whole historical epoch in which
those interior and exterior forces continue to exist, that make the restoration of
capitalism possible.
Lenin said: "This is the touchstone on which real understanding and recognition of
Marxism should be tested... The essence of Marx's theory of the state has been mastered
only by those who realise that the dictatorship of a single class is necessary... for the
entire historical period which separates capitalism from "classless society",
from communism." "Classes still remain and will remain in the era of the
dictatorship of the proletariat. The dictatorship will become unnecessary when classes
disappear."
On this subject, Lenin merely developed the fundamental ideas of Marx and Engels, basing
himself on a much richer and larger revolutionary experience. Marx had already shown that
after the socialist period, characterised by proletarian dictatorship, would come the
period of communism. Society would enter into the communist era only after a long
historical period of radical socialist transformation. According to Marx, communism would
come "when the slavish subordination of the individual to the division of labour will
have disappeared, and, with it, the opposition between manual and intellectual labour;
when work will be not only a means of survival but also the main vital need; when, with
the multiple development of the individual, the productive forces will also have grown and
all the sources of collective wealth will abundantly flow". Before reaching this
superior stage of material and intellectual development, and in order to reach it, the
dictatorship of the proletariat is necessary. Between the capitalist society and the
communist society there is the period of revolutionary transformation from the first to
the second. This is a period of political transformation, where the State can be nothing
else than the dictatorship of the proletariat."
Lenin assimilated and developed Marx's theses. The dictatorship of the proletariat remains
necessary until even the smallest differences between the classes have disappeared and the
international working class has destroyed world imperialism.
"Clearly, in order to abolish classes completely it is not enough to overthrow the
exploiters, the landowners and capitalists, not enough to abolish their ownership rights;
it is necessary also to abolish all private ownership of the means of production, it is
necessary to abolish the distinction between town and country, as well as the distinctions
between manual workers and brain workers. This requires a very long period of time. In
order to achieve this an enormous step forward must be taken in developing the productive
forces."
"Marx and Engels... clearly saw... the necessity of... a long period of dictatorship
of the proletariat... and the co-operation of the workers of all countries, who will have
to combine all their efforts in order to assure victory until the end."
The reformists have always strongly opposed this fundamental Leninist thesis.
As irreconciliable enemies of the dictatorship of the proletariat, they pretend, in
situations where the workers want revolution, "to agree with the dictatorship of the
proletariat" but then "only for a limited period..."
The leader of the international social-democracy, Vandervelde, became a minister in the
bourgeois government of Belgium at the beginning of the First World War. He issued
propaganda in favour of sending the workers to the slaughterhouse of this criminal
imperialist war; he defended the bourgeois institutions, including the monarchy. But after
the war, faced by a revolutionary upsurge, he made believe that he accepted the necessity
of the dictatorship for the proletariat... as a short-lived measure, after which one
should hastily return to "pure democracy"!
This is how this overt enemy of the dictatorship of the proletariat spoke at that moment:
"The dictatorship of the proletariat, yes, through dire force, if necessary, to
destroy the resistance of the bourgeoisie, to open the way to the social revolution. But
dictatorship as a means, a temporary means and not the unlimited prolongation of the state
of siege and terror, outlawing the other parties, eliminating liberty, replacing democracy
by the dictatorship of a handful of people."
Five years before, Lenin had already precisely described the counter-revolutionary tactics
of the Vandervelde type of reformist. He wrote in 1919: "The most dangerous thing,
regarding (Kautsky, Macdonald, Vandervelde), is the verbal recognition of the dictatorship
of the proletariat. Those people are capable of recognising anything, signing anything,
provided that they may remain at the head of the workers' movement... One would be willing
to acknowledge the dictatorship of the proletariat in order to have... 'universal
suffrage', bourgeois parliament, the refusal to entirely destroy the bourgeois state
machinery... get through."
And one may say that the Khrushchev-type revisionists developed, thirty years later,
exactly the same political line regarding the proletarian revolution and the dictatorship
of the proletariat: they advocated the peaceful transition to socialism and
"short-lived" dictatorship of the proletariat "under one form or
another"... Ponomarev, writing about the struggle for socialism in the capitalist
countries, writes: "A peaceful revolution without civil war has nothing in common
with social peace. It is not a 'social partnership' but a form of class struggle exactly
the same as the non-peaceful revolution; its victory is also confirmed through the
dictatorship of the proletariat under one form or another, whose length of duration
depends on the concrete conditions." Formally, the concept of "the dictatorship
of the proletariat" is mentioned here and many honest communists were blinded by
these words. They said then: "But no, your criticisms against Khrushchev are
incorrect, look, he does defend the dictatorship of the proletariat too!" There is
not a word which may not be 'filled' with different or even contradictory contents.
Khrushchev opposed all the theses developed by Lenin on the basis of the notion of the
dictatorship of the proletariat. The dictatorship of the proletariat, "in one form or
another", "during a limited period of time", those are exactly the formulas
Vandervelde used to fight against the Leninist content of the concept and to fill it with
his social-democratic ideas.
More generally, speaking about the building of socialism in the USSR, the traitor
Khrushchev rejected the fundamental thesis that the dictatorship of the proletariat is
necessary throughout the historical period leading up to communism.
For Khrushchev, the dictatorship of the proletariat had ceased to be necessary in 1956.
Yet it was obvious that the productivity of labour in the USSR was still far inferior to
that of the capitalist world and that imperialism was still the dominant force.
During the XXIInd Congress, Khrushchev declared: "The exploiting classes having been
eliminated, we have witnessed the disappearance of the function that consists in breaking
their resistance. The main functions of the socialist state - organising the economy,
culture and education - have enjoyed utmost development... After having ensured the total
and definitive victory of socialism and the large-scale transition towards communism, the
dictatorship of the proletariat has fulfilled its historical mission and, from the point
of view of the development of interior objectives, has ceased to be a necessity in the
USSR. The state that emerged as the state of the dictatorship of the proletariat has
become the state of the whole people, the organ expressing the interests and the will of
the people as a whole, at this stage."
Fundamentally, this was the thesis of social-democracy: one is obliged to accept the
dictatorship of the proletariat for a short spell but one returns to the bourgeois regime
and "democracy for all" as soon as possible.
The class struggle against the bourgeoisie and the petty-bourgeoisie
Lenin developed the thesis that class struggle continues throughout the whole duration of
the dictatorship of the proletariat, that the resistance of the bourgeoisie grows and that
there will necessarily be many attempts to restore capitalism.
Lenin: "The dictatorship of the proletariat is not the end of class struggle; it is
its continuation in other forms. The dictatorship of the proletariat is the class struggle
of the victorious proletariat, which has seized political power, against the bourgeoisie,
which has been defeated but not annihilated..., which far from having ceased its
resistance, has intensified it." "After their first serious defeat, the
overthrown exploiters - who had not expected their overthrow, throw themselves with energy
grown tenfold, with furious passion and hatred grown a hundredfold, into the battle for
the recovery of the 'paradise', of which they were deprived." "The transition
from capitalism to communism takes an entire historical epoch. Until this epoch is over,
the exploiters inevitably cherish the hope of restoration, and this hope turns into
attempts at restoration."
The bourgeoisie and the landowners have lost the means of production, but they are
still there and they dispose of plenty means to attempt to retake control of the means of
production. "Classes have remained, but in the era of the dictatorship of the
proletariat, every class has undergone a change, and the relations between the classes
have also changed... The class of exploiters, the landowners and capitalists, has not
disappeared and cannot disappear all at once under the dictatorship of the proletariat.
The exploiters have been smashed, but not destroyed."
What are the arms the bourgeoisie still possesses under socialism? "For a long time
after the revolution the exploiters inevitably continue to retain a number of great
practical advantages." "They still have an international base in the form of
international capital, of which there are a branch. They still retain certain means of
production in part... The 'art' of state, military and economic administration gives them
a superiority, and a very great superiority, so that their importance is incomparably
greater than their numerical proportion of the population." "They still have
money (since it is impossible to abolish money all at once); some movable property - often
fairly considerable; they still have various connections, habits of organisation and
management; knowledge of all the 'secrets' (custom, methods, means and possibilities) of
management; superior education; close connections with the higher technical personnel (who
live and think like the bourgeoisie); incomparably greater experience in the art of war
(this is very important), and so on and so forth."
Under socialism, the bourgeoisie also has the enormous potential reserve army of the
petty- bourgeoisie at its disposal. "In the train of the capitalist exploiters follow
the wide sections of the petty-bourgeoisie... (who) vacillate and hesitate, one day
marching behind the proletariat and the next day taking fright of the difficulties of the
revolution; (and who) become panic-stricken at the first defeat of the workers, grow
nervous, run about aimlessly, snivel, and rush from one camp into the other."
In certain circumstances, the small producer who sells on the free market, may become a
dangerous enemy of the proletariat.
"The peasant who during 1918-19 delivered to the hungry workers of the cities
40,000,000 poods of grain at fixed state prices, who delivered this grain to the state
agencies... that peasant is a working peasant... Whereas that peasant who clandestinely
sold 40,000,000 poods of grain at ten times the state price, ...that peasant is a
profiteer, an ally of the capitalist, a class enemy of the worker, an exploiter... You are
violators of freedom, equality, and democracy - they shout at us on all sides... We shall
never recognise equality with the peasant profiteer, just as we do not recognise
'equality' between the exploiter and the exploited, between the sated and the hungry, nor
the 'freedom' for the former to rob the latter." The customs, the traditions, the
routine of small agricultural production inevitably prepare the ground for the emergence
of bourgeois elements. Retail production creates small capitalists who exert themselves to
become big ones.
"The dictatorship of the proletariat means a persistent struggle, bloody and
bloodless, violent and peaceful, military and economic, educational and administrative -
against the forces and traditions of the old society. The force of habit in millions and
ten of millions is a most formidable force." "It is necessary to overcome the
resistance (frequently passive, which is particularly stubborn and particularly difficult
to overcome) of the numerous survivals of small-scale production; it is necessary to
overcome the enormous force of habit and conservatism which are connected with these
survivals."
"It is a thousand times easier to vanquish the centralised big bourgeoisie than to
'vanquish' the millions upon millions of petty proprietors; however, through their
ordinary, everyday, imperceptible, elusive and demoralising activities, they produce the
very results which the bourgeoisie need and which tend to restore the bourgeoisie."
The bourgeoisie in the Soviet institutions
The class struggle under socialism does not only concern the former landlords and
capitalists or the new bourgeoisie that is linked with small production.
The bourgeoisie also reappears in the Soviet institutions and the Soviet state apparatus.
High salaries allow a minority to assume a bourgeois life-style; adventurers and swindlers
who have infiltrated the state apparatus and "communists" who only seek to fill
their pockets become new bourgeois elements.
Lenin: "The corrupting influence of high salaries... (especially since the revolution
occurred so rapidly that it was impossible to prevent a certain number of adventurers and
rogues from getting into positions of authority, and they, together with a number of inept
or dishonest commissars, would not be averse to becoming 'star'...embezzlers of state
funds.)"
Innumerable civil servants of the old society still defended tsarism and capitalism.
Landlords and expropriated capitalists or their children infiltrated into the Soviet
institutions.
Lenin: "In practice, it often happens that here at the top, where we exercise
political power, the machine functions somehow. (...) Down below, however, there are
hundreds of thousands of old officials whom we got from the tsar and from bourgeois
society, and who, partly deliberately and partly unwittingly, work against us."
"In Russia the big landowners and capitalists have not vanished, but they have been
subjected to total expropriation and crushed politically as a class, whose remnants are
hiding out among Soviet Government employees."
All these elements wage a class struggle to undermine, sabotage and corrupt Soviet
power. "But here we have excellent officials who consider that it is in the interests
of their class to play dirty tricks on us, to hamper our work; they think that they are
saving civilisation by helping to bring about the downfall of the Bolsheviks, and they
know how to run an office a hundred times better than we do. There was nowhere for us to
learn that business. We must fight them according to all the rules of the art."
The Smiéna Viekh was a group of intellectuals of the "white", anti-Soviet
emigrés. Some of them had fought against the socialist regime and taken up arms with
Kolchak. They were fiercely opposed to communism, but they decided that their efforts to
overthrow the Soviets were in vain. They supported the Soviets in order to destroy them
from the inside. In their "support" for the Soviets some of them even made
believe they were "communists". One can easily imagine that these people had no
problems in supporting, a few years later, the Trotskyist opposition and merging with
it...
Lenin stressed how difficult it was to fight against these hidden enemies. "The men
of the Smiéna Viekh stand for a social and political trend led by remarkable bourgeois...
Some of them come up as communists, but there are also some more candid persons, i.e.
Ustryakov. He was minister under Kolchak: 'I am in favour of supporting Soviet power',
says Ustryakov, because it has taken the road that will lead it to the ordinary bourgeois
state. The things of which Ustryakov speaks are possible, let's say it without beating
about the bush. History has known all sorts of transformations. (...) Smiéna Viekh
adherents express the sentiments of thousands and tens of thousands of bourgeois or of
Soviet employees whose function it is to operate our New Economic Policy. This is the real
and main danger. And that is why attention must be concentrated mainly on the question:
'Who will win?' (...) The fight against capitalist society has become a hundred times more
fierce and perilous, because we are not always able to tell enemies from friends... If we
take Moscow and its 4,700 Communists in responsible positions, and if we take that huge
bureaucratic machine, that gigantic heap, we must ask: who is directing whom? The NEP...
is one more form of the struggle between two irreconcilably hostile classes."
Revisionism in Lenin's time
The former bourgeoisie and the bourgeois forces arising from the petty-bourgeoisie, as
well as the anti-socialist elements infiltrated into the Soviet institutions, have always
found their representatives among the opportunist elements of the Party leadership.
In effect, their right or "left" opportunist policies fitted with the objective
interests of these classes.
Two examples.
During the discussion about the peace of Brest-Litovsk, from early January to April 1918,
Bukharin and Piatakov put forward an adventurist political line; they fell into the trap
of demanding a "revolutionary war" against Germany, organised by the Mensheviks
and the Social-Revolutionaries. The army was completely worn out and incapable of
fighting; to force them into waging a "revolutionary war" would have led to
catastrophe. The "left" opportunism of Bukharin expressed the class interests of
the petty-bourgeoisie and the bourgeoisie who wanted to provoke the downfall of Bolshevik
power.
From November 1920 to the end of 1921, the Bolshevik Party was paralysed by an untimely
and useless discussion provoked by Trotsky. In Lenin's words, Trotsky had produced texts
containing "a lot of empty talk, empty highbrow chatter', that scorned practical
experience and the checking of this experience; this is a basic, deep-going and dangerous
political mistake."
Politically, Trotsky proposed to "shake up the trade unions" and he defended
"the useless and harmful excesses of the bureaucracy" against the trade unions.
Lenin commented: "Trotsky's theses are politically bureaucratic harassment of the
trades-unions. He has made a number of mistakes bearing on the very essence of the
dictatorship of the proletariat. (...) We disagree with the ways of approaching the
masses, of winning them, of linking up to them. This is the crux of the matter."
"If we have the wrong attitude towards the trade unions Soviet power and the
dictatorship of the proletariat will be finished."
Trotsky's policies would have allowed the Mensheviks and the Socialist-Revolutionaries to
obtain the majority in the trade-unions and would have provoked the overthrow of Bolshevik
power.
Already in Lenin's time, opportunist policies that had emerged within the leadership of
the party could have led to the destruction of the socialist regime, if the majority of
the leaders had agreed.
Actually, these policies were always supported by the doubtful, opportunist and
counter-revolutionary elements that had massively infiltrated the party.
First, adventurers, suspect elements, scoundrels and other enemies entered the Bolshevik
Party. Lenin: "Everybody knows the Bolsheviks have had many enemies among their
'friends' ever since their triumph. Very often utterly unreliable and dishonest people
worm their way into our midst; elements who are politically unstable, who sell us out,
deceive us and betray us." "It is absolutely inescapable that adventurers and
other extremely harmful elements worm their way into the leading party. No revolution
could avoid it and no one will avoid it! The whole thing is that the party, relying on an
advanced, sound and vigorous class, knows to purge its ranks."
Then, the bureaucratic spirit that prevailed in many Soviet institutions contaminated
Party members working in these institutions.
Lenin: "It is natural that the bureaucratic methods which have reappeared in Soviet
institutions were bound to have a pernicious effect even on Party organisations, since the
upper ranks of the Party are at the same time the upper ranks of the state apparatus; they
are one and the same thing." "Our worst internal enemy is the bureaucrat - the
communist who occupies a responsible Soviet post and enjoys universal respect as a
conscientious man. He never touches a drop, he sings false... he has not learnt to combat
red tape, he is unable to combat it, he condones it."
Furthermore, revolutionaries who had made many sacrifices during the years of struggle
wanted to be "rewarded" and to "enjoy" power.
Lenin: "Yes, by overthrowing the landowners and bourgeoisie we cleared the way but we
did not build the edifice of socialism. On the ground cleared of one bourgeois generation,
new generations continually appear in history, as long as the ground gives rise to them,
and it does give rise to any number of bourgeois. As for those who look at the victory
over the capitalists in the way that the petty proprietors look at it: 'They grabbed, let
me have a go too' - indeed, everyone of them is the source of a new generation of
bourgeois."
Finally, many former members of the Menshevik Party joined the Bolshevik Party without
having fundamentally changed their ideology and political outlook.
Lenin: "As one of the specific objects of the Party purge, I would point to the
combing of ex-Mensheviks... In 1918-1921 the Mensheviks displayed the two qualities that
characterise them: first, the ability skilfully to adapt, to 'attach' themselves to the
prevailing trend among the workers; and second the ability even more skilfully to serve
the white guards heart and soul, to serve them in action, while dissociating themselves
from them in words... The Party must be purged of rascals, of bureaucratic, dishonest or
wavering Communists and of Mensheviks who have 'repainted their façade' but who have
remained Mensheviks at heart."
The revisionists and class struggle under socialism
Stalin always followed Lenin's political line and he correctly led the class struggle both
against the bourgeoisie and against the former bourgeoisie and the bureaucracy, that is to
say the bourgeoisie that was reconstituting itself inside the socialist institutions.
In 1937-1938, the imminence of war encouraged all the bourgeois and opportunist currents
to join forces in an ultimate effort to overthrow Soviet power. The fifth column recruited
by German imperialism, the enemy forces inside and outside the Soviet institutions, the
Trotskyists and the Bukharinites, who had become implacable enemies of Leninism, all
joined forces to overthrow what they called the Stalinist leadership. The Party was able
to crush this plot in time, to purge the Party, the army and the Soviet institutions and
in this way create the conditions for the victory over the Nazi aggression.
In 1956, when he publicly rejected all Leninist principles, the traitor Khrushchev
asserted that in 1936 the exploiting classes had already been eliminated and that the
social basis of counter-revolution no longer existed!
In his Secret Report he asserts: "Even during the fierce ideological struggle against
the Trotskyists, the Zinovievites and the Bukharinites and others, measures of extreme
repression were never taken against them. But a few years later, when the exploiting
classes had already been eliminated, the Soviet social structure had radically changed,
when the social basis of movements and political groups hostile to the Party had become
extremely narrow, when the ideological enemies of the Party had been politically defeated
for a long time, then the repression against them started."
This is a negation of the whole Leninist theory concerning the survival of classes and
class struggle under socialism. Had the many means that, according to Lenin, the former
bourgeoisie possessed to fight socialism, been completely taken away from them in 1937?
Were the bourgeois elements no longer infiltrating into Soviet institutions? Did the
political degeneration of communists in the leadership no longer occur? Did imperialism no
longer make alliances with the former bourgeoisie and the bureaucratised communists?
Certainly, all these negative phenomena occurred on a large scale in 1936, just like they
did again in 1956... and even in 1986. The fact that the counter-revolution could be
carried out after 70 years of socialism is the best proof that there well and truly was a
"social base" for the anti-Leninist groups in 1937, a mere 20 years after the
October Revolution!
Khrushchev attacked Stalin's revolutionary activity so as officially to bury Lenin's
theory of class struggle under socialism. Thus, Ponomarev writes in 1964-67: "The
strength of the socialist system makes all efforts of imperialism to 'push back' socialism
through military means, to restore capitalism there where it has been liquidated for a
long time, useless." "Actually, not only in the USSR but also in the other
socialist countries, the economic and social basis of the "restoration of
capitalism" has been liquidated. Experience has shown that even though during the
period of socialist construction the resistance of the remains of interior
counter-revolution can occasionally reinforce themselves and take on a critical form, as
was, for example, the case of Hungary during the counter-revolutionary upheaval, they are
nevertheless incapable of re-establishing the former bourgeois order."
The stupidity of this thesis is obvious. The counter-revolution in 1956 mobilised all the
Hungarian former fascist and bourgeois forces, supported and encouraged by the party's
revisionist leaders of the Imre Nagy type.
German and American imperialism gave every kind of aid to the anti-Communists. The
revisionist Nagy flirted too overtly with the former fascists and bourgeois; he openly
declared himself in favour of "neutrality" and of defecting to the imperialist
camp. If Khrushchev had accepted this, he would have been overthrown by the left of the
CPSU. But after the crushing of the counter-revolutionary upheaval, the
counter-revolutionary line continued to develop with Kadar and the counter-revolutionary
forces perfected their tactics. The Hungarian capitalist restoration in 1989 was carried
out by the same forces and according to the same programme as the insurrection of 1956.
By declaring that counter-revolution was no longer possible in 1936 and was even less so
in 1956, Khrushchev liquidated the dictatorship of the proletariat, which is the most
essential question of Marxism and Leninism. In doing so, Khrushchev initiated a political
process that reintroduced all the social-democratic and bourgeois concepts into the
Communist Party. In this way, the revisionists prepared the political and ideological
grounds for the effective restoration of capitalism by Gorbachev.
Workers' Party of Belgium (WPB)
171 Boulevard Lemonnier
B-1000 Brussels, Belgium
Tel: + 32 2 513 77 60
Fax: + 32 2 513 98 31
E-mail wpb@wpb.be