REFORMIST IDEOLOGY AND POLITICAL OPPORTUNISM

EUROCOMMUNISM IS ANTI - COMMUNISM

III REFORMIST IDEOLOGY AND POLITICAL OPPORTUNISM - FUNDAMENTAL CHARACTERISTICS OF THE EUROCOMMUNIST PARTIES

As we saw, modern revisionism is expressed in various currents and assumes different appearances according to the concrete political and socio-economic conditions of each country or group of countries. This is the case also with the parties which are now known under the name of Eurocommunist parties. Although they represent. a separate current of modern revisionism, a current which conforms more to the interests of the bourgeosie of the developed capitalist countries, such as the countries of Western Europe, the Italian, French and Spanish revisionist parties also have certain specific features.

The Constitution of the Bourgeois State -the Basis of Togliatti's "Socialism"

Speaking about the third road., which consists of the new strategy of Eurocommunist revisionism, in his report entitled "For Socialism in Peace and Democracy...", delivered at the 15th Congress of the ICP, Berlinguer . gives a rather more complete explanation of what he and his associates mean by this third road. "I'in referring," he says, "to a fortunate expression. .. which we have accepted... We have had the experience of the Second International: the first phase of the struggle of the workers' movement to emerge from, capitalism. . . But this experience... capitulated in the face of the First World War and various kinds of nationalism. "The second phase," continues Berlinguer, "opens with the Russian Revolution of October ... " (E. Berlinguer, For the Socialism in the Peace and the Democracy Throughtout Italy and Europe).

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The Eurocommunists' "Independence" Is Dependence on Capital and the Bourgeoisie

EUROCOMMUNISM IS ANTI - COMMUNISM

The Eurocommunists' "Independence" Is Dependence on Capital and the Bourgeoisie

The struggle against imperialism in general, and its tools in every country is one of the fundamental. questions of the strategy of every communist party, and one of the decisive conditions for the triumph of any revolution, whether people's democratic, anti-imperialist or socialist. At the same time, its attitude to imperialism serves as a touchstone to evaluate the political and ideological position of every political force which operates either within the national framework of each country, or on an international scale. In other words, the stand towards imperialism has always been a line of demarcation which divides the genuine patriotic and democratic revolutionary forces, on the one hand, from the forces of reaction, counter-revolution and national betrayal, on the other hand. What is the stand of the Eurocommunists on this vital question of such major importance of principle?

Commencing from the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, when Khrushchev came out with the line of conciliation and rapprochement with American imperialism, and put this forward as a general line for the whole communist movement, the revisionist parties of the Western countries abandoned any anti-imperialist position, on both the theoretical and practical planes. It seemed as if they were liberated from their shackles to rush into conciliation with the big imperialist, colonialist and neocolonialist bourgeoisie. The new strategy which Khrushchev presented to the communist movement was that which the leaders of the Western communist parties had long desired, which they had begun to apply in practice, but which, you might say, had not yet received the seal of official approval.

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The Eurocommunists' "Socialism" Is the Present Capitalist System

EUROCOMMUNISM IS ANTI - COMMUNISMThe Eurocommunists' "Socialism" Is the Present Capitalist System

How do the Eurocommunists envisage socialism? Although they are obliged to speak about socialism for demagogy, the "socialism" which they want to build is simply a fraud and deception.

It is known that not only now, but for years, many bourgeois and petty-bourgeois philosophers and ideological trends have speculated greatly with the idea of socialism. Many utopian schemes and endless misrepresentations have been concocted about socialism. Marx rejected all the old forms of socialism and taught the world proletariat that it should organize and fight to establish the new social order based on genuine scientific socialism.

As early as in the first programmatic document of Marxism, the "Communist Manifesto," Marx and Engels made an all-round criticism of various pseudo-socialist theories, such as "feudal socialism", "petty-bourgeois socialism", German "genuine socialism", "conservative or bourgeois socialism". They revealed their class essence as anti-scientific theories which served the interests of the bourgeoisie. In struggle against bourgeois and petty-bourgeois opportunist and anarchist theories which hindered the emancipation of the proletariat and its struggle, the "Manifesto" taught the working class that it could escape bourgeois oppression and exploitation only by means of the revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat and that it could not liberate itself without, at the same time, liberating the whole of society.

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From Revisionist Opportunism to Bourgeois Anti-Communism

EUROCOMMUNISM IS ANTI - COMMUNISM

From Revisionist Opportunism to Bourgeois Anti-Communism

Eurocommunism is a variant of modern revisionism, a hotch-potch of pseudo-theories opposed to Marxism-Leninism. Its aim is to hinder the scientific theory of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin from remaining a strong and unerring weapon in the hands of the working class and the genuine Marxist-Leninist parties for the destruction of capitalism, its structure and superstructure, to its foundations, for the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat and the construction of the new socialist society.

The Italian revisionists have defined Eurocommunism as "a third road, different from the experience of the parties of social-democracy and different from those which have been promoted since the October Revolution in the Soviet Union and other socialist countries". As the theses of the 15th Congress of the Italian Communist Party have it, this "third road" is presented as "a solution which is adapted to the national characteristics and the conditions of the present epoch, to the essential features and demands which are common to developed industrial societies, which are based on parliamentary democratic institutions, as the countries of Western Europe are today." (The politics and the organization of the italian communists, Rome 1979). Hence, as the Eurocommunists themselves admit, this "third road", this so-called Eurocommunism, has nothing at all to do with the genuine scientific communism elaborated by Marx and Lenin, embodied in the October Revolution and in the other socialist revolutions that followed it, and confirmed by the class struggle of the international proletariat. Eurocommunism can be described accurately and correctly as European revisionism number three.

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EUROCOMMUNISM - AN IDEOLOGY OF SUBMISSION TO THE BOURGEOISIE AND IMPERIALISM

EUROCOMMUNISM IS ANTI - COMMUNISM

EUROCOMMUNISM - AN IDEOLOGY OF SUBMISSION TO THE BOURGEOISIE AND IMPERIALISM

As we mentioned above, modern revisionism emerged in the period of the sharpening of the general crisis of capitalism. It became an ally of the bourgeoisie and imperialism and joined in their efforts to contain and divert the great tide of proletarian revolutions, national liberation struggles and the peoples' anti-imperialist democratic movement. As such, the new revisionism could not fail to assume different forms and appearances, to use methods and tactics adapted to the needs of capital in each country. It assumed its greatest development, its extension in the communist and workers' movement after Khrushchevite revisionism emerged on the scene.

The betrayal which took place in the Soviet Union was of incalculable assistance to the bourgeoisie and imperialism at the moments most difficult for them. It gave big capital possibilities to attack the Marxist-Leninist theory and the practice of socialist construction, to create doubts about the revolutionary strategy of the proletariat, and to cause the ideological and political degeneration of the communist parties. Above all, the communist and workers' parties of Western Europe which followed the treacherous line of Tito and Khrushchev, were severely shaken ideologically. In these parties, the terrain had long been prepared for them to embrace the Khrushchevite revisionist ideas and practice and carry them further. Their organizational and ideological degeneration to different degrees and in various ways had begun earlier. Pseudo-revolutionary theories and practices had long been applied in their ranks.

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THE NEW IMPERIALIST STRATEGY AND THE BIRTH OF MODERN REVISIONISM

EUROCOMMUNISM IS ANTI - COMMUNISM

I

THE NEW IMPERIALIST STRATEGY AND THE BIRTH OF MODERN REVISIONISM

Opportunism - a Permanent Ally of the Bourgeoisie

The birth of modern revisionism, like the birth of the old revisionism, is a social phenomenon conditioned by many different historical, economic, political and other causes. Taken as a whole, it is a product of the pressure of the bourgeoisie on the working class and its struggle. Opportunism and revisionism, from the start to this day, have been closely linked with the struggle of the bourgeoisie and imperialism against Marxism-Leninism, have been a constituent part of the capitalist grand strategy to undermine the revolution and perpetuate the bourgeois order. The more the cause of the revolution has advanced, and the more Marxism-Leninism has been spread among the broad masses of the working people, so much the greater has been the attention which imperialism has devoted to the use of revisionism as its favourite weapon to oppose and undermine the triumphant ideology of the proletariat.

This is what happened at the beginning of the second half of the 19th century, after the publication of the "Communist Manifesto" and other works of Marx and Engels, and the growth of the influence of Marxism among the working masses of Europe. Precisely at this time reformist trade-unionist currents were spread in Britain, the petty-bourgeois views of Proudhon in France, the petty-bourgeois concepts of Lassalle in Germany, the anarchist ideas of Bakunin in Russia and elsewhere, and so on. This phenomenon appeared again after the heroic events of the Commune of Paris, when the bourgeoisie, mortally afraid of the spread of the great example it set, encouraged the new opportunist trend of Bernstein, who tried to strip Marxism of its revolutionary content and make it harmless to the political domination of the imperialist bourgeoisie.

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From Trotsky to Tito : Role and Tactics of the Titoites Today

FROM TROTSKY TO TITO . James Klugmann 1951 ,
Chapter Four: Role and Tactics of the Titoites Today – I

Mr K Zilliacus, one of Tito’s leading trumpeters in Britain, has discovered in Tito’s policy and in the practice of Tito’s Yugoslavia what he calls ‘a new kind of Communism’ – a ‘kind of Communism’ of which he approves in no uncertain terms. The whole right wing in America, the Hearst press, the New York Herald Tribune, the Wall Street Journal, the right-wing press of Britain from The Times to the Daily Telegraph, allots space, and increasing space, to sound its support for this ‘new kind of Communism’, which it finds so unlike that of the Soviet Union and which it so very much prefers.

Now this ‘new kind of Communism’, or ‘national Communism’ as it is sometimes called, which Zilliacus has discovered, is of the same order as the ‘new kind of Socialism’ or ‘National Socialism’ that Western reaction discovered in an earlier period in Hitlerite Germany. It is precisely as a weapon against genuine Socialism and genuine Communism, and against the working people, that Western imperialism needs, praises and utilises Tito. Nor were Hitler and Tito the only ones to discover ‘new sorts of Socialism’ and ‘new kinds of Communism’. Tito and the Titoites are following in the footsteps of Trotsky and the Trotskyites, of whom they are the direct descendants and disciples.

The Trotskyites, too, pretended that they were the true Communists, the real Marxists, whilst the ‘Stalinites’ had ‘betrayed Marxism-Leninism’. The Trotskyite doctrine, this ‘real Communism’ as the forerunners of Zilliacus called it, also found favour with the great trusts and monopolies.

In Mussolini’s Italy of the 1930s, when it meant long terms of imprisonment, and perhaps torture or even death, to be in any way connected with the Communist Party, and when not only all the works of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin, but the works of all Italian and foreign democrats and progressives were strictly banned from Italian libraries and bookshops, the works of Trotsky, on the ‘new kind of Communism’, were ‘freely’ and widely translated and distributed. I remember vividly how in 1938, passing through Italy on the way to meet the anti-fascist and Communist students of Belgrade University, and spending a few hours in Mussolini’s Milan, the word ‘Communism’ caught my eye on a number of books prominently displayed in a bookshop window. They were newly-translated works of Trotsky.

In Hitler’s Germany, when to be a Communist or Socialist or militant trade unionist or liberal or democrat meant arrest, the concentration camp, and often death and torture, when there was instituted one of the most thoroughgoing ‘purges’ of literature and burning of books that the world has ever known, when Schiller’s Don Carlos, the poems of Heine and the novels of Thomas Mann were banned or burned as ‘subversive’, the writings of Trotsky were widely translated and distributed.

Trotsky’s writings and those of his followers were freely published in the middle and late 1930s by the Hearst press in America. His works on his ‘new kind of Communism’ were published by the Franco press at Salamanca and Burgos. The secret police of the Polish dictatorship were specially educated in Trotskyism in order to facilitate their work of espionage and disruption inside the Polish working-class movement.

Despite their ultra-revolutionary phrases the Trotskyites always found a welcome in the papers of the capitalist press lords. Indeed, it was precisely their ‘revolutionary’ phraseology, their façade of ‘revolution’, that made them such valuable weapons of reaction. The Trotskyites carried out a sort of division of labour with the capitalist propagandists and agents of espionage; disguised as revolutionaries, they could hope to find an echo where the open spokesmen of Toryism and reaction, and even the right-wing Social-Democrats, would have met with immediate rebuff.

By the mid-1930s the Trotskyites in all countries were serving three principal purposes for world reaction:

1) They acted as the main instrument by which Western reaction hoped to gain a foothold inside the land of Socialism, the USSR, as a fifth column behind the lines of Socialism which was to aid, and complement by espionage and sabotage inside the Soviet Union, the open war preparations made outside.

2) They acted as an arsenal of right-wing reactionary propaganda and slander against the Soviet Union, the Communist parties, the militant Socialists and trade unions, and the anti-fascist and peace forces, an arsenal of reactionary right-wing propaganda dressed up in left-wing words.

3) They acted as an instrument to aid the capitalists by trying to penetrate the working class, the popular and national liberation movements, above all the Communist parties – spying on them, confusing them and disrupting them from inside.

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Tito's revisionism and the United States

Ludo Martens
The Central and Eastern European countries, which led bitter struggles during the years 1945--1948 to build socialism, had much less experience than did the Soviet Party. Ideologically, they were not solid: the fact that hundreds of thousands of new members joined, often coming from social-democratic circles, made them easily subject to opportunism and bourgeois nationalism.

As early as 1948, the anti-Soviet social-democratic model was adopted by the leadership of the Yugoslav Communist Party.

By provoking the struggle against Tito's revisionism in 1948, Stalin showed himself to be clear-sighted and firm in his principles. Forty-five years later, history has completely confirmed his predictions.

At the time of the German invasion in 1941, the clandestine Yugoslav Party had 12,000 members; 8,000 of these were killed during the war. But it gained 140,000 members during the resistance and 360,000 more before mid-1948. Tens of thousands of kulaks, bourgeois and petit-bourgeois had joined the Party.

James Klugmann, From Trotsky to Tito (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1951), p. 13.

Tito relied more and more on these elements in his struggle against real Communists. The Party had no normal internal life, there was no political discussion, so no Marxist-Leninist criticism and self-criticism; the leaders were not elected but chosen.

Ibid. , p. 22.

In June 1948, the Information Bureau of the Communist Parties, including eight parties, published a resolution criticizing the Yugoslav Party. It underscored that Tito payed no attention to the increase in class differences in the countryside nor to the rise of capitalist elements in the country.

Ibid. , p. 9.

The resolution affirmed that, starting from a bourgeois nationalist position, the Yugoslav Party had broken the socialist united front against imperialism. It concluded:

`(S)uch a nationalist line can only lead to Yugoslavia's degeneration into an ordinary bourgeois republic'.

Ibid. , p. 11.

Once this criticism was published, Tito set off a massive purge. All the Marxist-Leninist elements of the Party were wiped out. Two members of the Central Committee, Zhujovic and Hebrang, had already been arrested in April 1948. General Arso Jovanovic, Chief of Staff of the Partisan Army, was arrested and assassinated, as was General Slavko Rodic. 

Ibid. , p. 43.

The London newspaper, The Times, referred to numerous arrests of Communists upholding the Kominterm resolution; it estimated the number of imprisoned persons at between 100,000 and 200,000.

Ibid. , p. 143.

In his report to the Party's Eighth Congress, held in 1948, Karelj quoted Stalin on numerous occasions to insist that Yugoslavia was `pushing back kulak elements' and would never take `anti-Soviet positions'.

Rapport: Le PCY dans la lutte pour la Yougoslavie nouvelle (Belgrade, 1948), pp. 94, 25.

But, a few months later, the Titoists publicly took up the old social-democratic theory of passing from capitalism to socialism without class struggle! Bebler, Vice-Minister of External Affairs, declared in May 1949:

`We have no kulaks such as there were in the U.S.S.R. Our rich peasants took part en masse in the people's liberation war .... Would it be a mistake if we succeeded in getting the kulaks to pass over to socialism without class struggle?'

Klugmann, op. cit. , p. 129.

In 1951, Tito's team declared that the Soviet `kolkhozy reflected state capitalism which, mixed together with feudal remnants, forms the social basis of the USSR'. Developing Bukharin's ideas, the Titoists replaced planning by the free market:

`No one outside the co-operative sets production goals or categories'. The Titoists organized `the passage to a system with more freedom for objective economic laws to come into play. The socialist sector of our economy will triumph over capitalist tendencies through purely economic means.'

`Directives du CC', in Questions actuelles du socialisme (Paris: Agence Yougoslave d'Information, Jan.-Feb. 1952), 10:160, 161, 145.

In 1953, Tito reintroduced the freedom to buy and sell land and to hire agricultural workers.

In 1951, Tito compared the Yugoslav Communists who remained loyal Marxist-Leninists to the Hitlerian Fifth Column, thereby justifying the arrest of more than 200,000 Communists, according to Colonel Vladimir Dapcevic's testimony. Tito wrote:

`The attacks of the fascist aggressors have proved that much importance can be attributed to a new element: the Fifth Column. It is a political and military element that gets into gear in preparation for aggression. Today, something similar is being attempted in our country, under different forms, particularly by the Cominterm countries.'

Ibid. , p. 85.

In the beginning of the 1950s, Yugoslavia was still essentially a feudal country. But the Titoists attacked the principle according to which a Socialist State must maintain the dictatorship of the proletariat. In 1950, the Yugoslav revisionists began a forum on `the problem of the withering away of the State, in particular of the rôle of the State in the economy'. To justify the return to a bourgeois state, Djilas called the Soviet state a `monstrous edifice of state capitalism' that `oppressed and exploited the proletariat'. Still according to Djilas, Stalin fought `to increase his state capitalist empire and, internally, to reinforce the bureaucracy'. `The Iron Curtain, hegemony over the countries of Eastern Europe and an aggressive political line have become indispensable to him.' Djilas spoke of `the misery of the working class that works for the ``superior'' imperialist interests and the bureaucracy's privileges.' `Today, the USSR is objectively the most reactionary power.' Stalin `practices state capitalism and is the head and spiritual and political leader of the bureaucratic dictatorship.' Acting as agent for U.S. imperialism, Djilas continued:

`Some of the Hitlerian theories are identical to Stalin's theories, both from the standpoint of their contents and of the resulting social practice.'

Ibid. , Oct.-Nov. 1952, 14:2, 5, 18, 35--36, 30, 37, 44, 47.

Let us add that Djilas, who later moved to the U.S., referred in this text to Trotsky's `critique of the Stalinist system'!

Ibid. , p. 44.

In 1948, Kardelj was still claiming to be faithful to the anti-imperialist struggle. Two years later, Yugoslavia upheld the U.S. war against Korea! The London Times reported:

`Mr. Dedijer sees events in Korea as a manifestation of the Soviet will to dominate the world ... if this is to be resisted successfully ... the workers of the world must `realise that yet another pretender to world domination has appeared, and get rid of illusions about the Soviet Union representing some alleged force of democracy and peace'.'

The Times, 27 December 1950. In Klugmann, op. cit. , p. 111.

So Tito had become a simple pawn in U.S. anti-Communist strategy. Tito declared to the New York Herald Tribune that `in the event of a Soviet attack anywhere in Europe, even if the thrust should be miles away from Yugoslavia's own borders', he would `instantly do battle on the side of the West ... Yugoslavia considers itself part of the collective security wall being built against Soviet imperialism.'

New York Herald Tribune, 26 June 1951. In Klugmann, op. cit. , p. 98.

In the economic field, the socialist measures that Yugoslavia had taken before 1948 were liquidated. Alexander Clifford, the Daily Mail correspondent, wrote about the economic reforms adopted in 1951:

`If it comes off, Yugoslavia looks like ending up a good deal less socialised than Britain': `price of goods ... determined by the market --- that is, by supply and demand'; `wages and salaries ...\ fixed on the basis of the income or profits of the enterprise'; economic enterprises that `decide independently what to produce and in what quantities'; `there isn't much classical Marxism in all of that'.

Daily Mail, 31 August 1951. In Klugmann, op. cit. , p. 150.

The Anglo-American bourgeoisie soon recognized that Tito was to be a very effective weapon in its anti-Communist struggles. The April 12, 1950 issue of Business Weekreads:

`For the United States in particular and the West in general this encouragement of Tito has proved to be one of the cheapest ways yet of containing Russian Communism.

`To date the West's aid to Tito has come to $51.7 million. This is far less than the billion dollars or so that the United States has spent in Greece for the same purpose.'

Business Week, 12 April 1950. In Klugmann, op. cit. , p. 175.

This bourgeoisie intended to use Tito to encourage revisionism and to organize subversion in the socialist countries of Central and Eastern Europe. On December 12, 1949, Eden spoke to the Daily Telegraph:

`Tito's example and influence can decisively change the course of events in Central and Eastern Europe.'

Daily Telegraph, 12 December 1949. In Klugmann, op. cit. , p. 191.

Understanding the Communist demagogy of Tito for what it really was, the London Times wrote:

`Titoism remains a force, however, only so long as Marshal Tito can claim to be a Communist.'

The Times, 13 September 1949. In Klugmann, op. cit. , p. 194.

Titoism took power in 1948 as a bourgeois nationalist current. It is with nationalism that Yugoslavia abandoned all principles of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Nationalism was the soil in which Trotskyist and Bukharinist theories flourished.

After the Second World War, this nationalist orientation had great influence in other Communist Parties in Central and Eastern Europe.

After Stalin's death, Great-Russian nationalism developed in Moscow and, in backlash, nationalist chauvinism spread throughout Central and Eastern Europe.

Let us examine the principles that are at the heart of this controversy. In 1923, Stalin had already formulated an essential aspect of proletarian internationalism in these terms:

`It should be borne in mind that besides the right of nations to self-determination there is also the right of the working class to consolidate its power .... There are occasions when the right of self-determination conflicts with the other, the higher right --- the right of a working class that has assumed power to consolidate its power. In such cases --- this must be said bluntly --- the right to self-determination cannot and must not serve as an obstacle to the exercise by the working class of its right to dictatorship. The former must give way to the former.'

.

Stalin, Marxism and the National and Colonial Question (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1936), p. 168.

Starting from the principle of proletarian internationalism, Stalin was a resolute adversary of all nationalism, starting with Great-Russian nationalism. Still in 1923, he declared:

`The principal force hindering the amalgamation of the republics into a single union is ... Great-Russian chauvinism. It is not fortuitous, comrades, that the Smenovekhists have recruited a large number of supporters from among the Soviet officials.'

Ibid. , p. 153.

`Smenovekhism is the ideology of the new bourgeoisie, which is steadily growing and gradually joining forces with the kulaks and the bureaucratic intellectuals. The new bourgeoisie has created its own ideology ... which declares that the Communist Party is bound to degenerate and the new bourgeoisie to consolidate itself. We Bolsheviks, it appears, will imperceptibly to ourselves move towards this threshold of a democratic republic and cross this threshold, and then, with the help of a Caesar, who is to rise either from the military or from the civil ranks, we are to find ourselves in the position of an ordinary bourgeois republic.'

Ibid. , p. 300, n. 43.

But in the world struggle between socialism and imperialism, Stalin also understood that bourgeois nationalism could be used as a powerful anti-socialist weapon:

`When a life-and-death struggle is being waged, and is spreading, between proletarian Russia and the imperialist Entente, only two alternatives confront the border regions:

`Either they join forces with Russia, and then the toiling masses of the border regions will be emancipated from imperialist oppression;

`Or they join forces with the Entente, and then the yoke of imperialism is inevitable.

`There is no third solution. So-called independence of a so-called independent Georgia, Armenia, Poland, Finland, etc., is only an illusion, and conceals the utter dependence of these apologies for states on one group of imperialists or another ....

`And the interests of the masses of the people render the demand for the secession of the border regions at the present stage of the revolution a profoundly counter-revolutionary one.'

Ibid. , pp. 79--80.

In the semi-feudal republics of the Soviet periphery, bourgeois nationalism constituted the main form of bourgeois ideology rotting inside the Bolshevik Party:

`It should be borne in mind that our Communist organisations in the border districts, in the republics and regions, can develop and firmly establish themselves, can become genuine internationalist, Marxist cadres, only if they get rid of their nationalism. Nationalism is the chief ideological obstacle to the training of Marxist cadres, of a Marxist vanguard in the border regions and republics .... In relation to these organisations nationalism is playing the same part as Menshevism played in the past in relation to the Party of the Bolsheviks. Only under cover of nationalism can various kinds of bourgeois, including Menshevik, influences penetrate into our organisations in the border regions. Our organisations in the republics can become Marxist cadres only if they are able to withstand the nationalist ideas which are pushing their way into our Party in the border regions ... because the bourgeoisie is reviving, the New Economic Policy is spreading, nationalism is growing; because there are still survivals of Great-Russian chauvinism, which also tend to develop local nationalism, and because there is the influence of foreign states, which are fostering nationalism in every way.'

Ibid. , p. 178.

The essence of the deviation towards local nationalism consists in the attempt to isolate oneself and shut onself up within one's own national shell, in the attempt to hush up class differences within one's own nation, in the attempt to resist Great-Russian chauvinism by turning aside from the general current of socialist construction, in the attempt to shut one's eyes to that which brings together and unites the toiling masses of the nationalities of the U.S.S.R. and to see only that which tends to estrange them.

`The deviation towards local nationalism reflects the dissatisfaction of the moribund classes of the formerly oppressed nations with the regime of the proletarian dictatorship, their endeavour to separate themselves off into their national state and there to establish their own class supremacy.'

Ibid. , pp. 262--263.

Stalin came back to the question of internationalism in 1930. He formulated a principle that became crystal clear during the Brezhnev era:

`What does a deviation towards nationalism mean --- irrespective of whether it is a deviation towards Great-Russian nationalism or towards local nationalism? The deviation towards nationalism is the adaptation of the internationalist policy of the working class to the nationalist policy of the bourgeoisie. The deviation towards nationalism reflects the attempts of ``one's own'' ``national'' bourgeoisie to undermine the Soviet system and to restore capitalism. The source of these deviations ... is a common one. It is a departure from Leninist internationalism ....

`The major danger is the deviation against which one has ceased to fight and has thus enabled to grow into a danger to the state.'

Ibid. , pp. 267--268.

Back to main Another view of Stalin index Page 

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Resolutions of the Conference of the Extended Editorial Board of Proletary

Lenin

June 8–17 (21–80), 1909

On Otzovism and Ultimatumism

The slogan of boycott of the Bulygin Duma and the First Duma issued by the revolutionary wing of our Party played a great revolutionary role at the time, and was taken up with enthusiasm by all the most active and most revolutionary sections of the working class.

The direct revolutionary struggle of the broad masses was then followed by a severe period of counter-revolution. It became essential for Social-Democrats to adapt their revolutionary tactics to this new political situation, and, in connection with this, one of the exceptionally important tasks became the use of the Duma as an open platform for the purpose of assisting Social-Democratic agitation and organisation.

In this rapid turn of events, however, a section of the workers who had participated in the direct revolutionary struggle was unable to proceed at once to apply revolutionary Social-Democratic tactics in the new conditions of the counter-revolution, and continued simply to repeat slogans which had been revolutionary in the period of open civil war, but which now, if merely repeated, might retard the process of closing the ranks of the proletariat in the new conditions of struggle.

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Once More About the International Socialist Bureau and the Liquidators

V. I. Lenin

Proletarskaya Pravda No. 11, December 19, 1918.  

Lenin Collected Works, Volume 20

The characteristic feature of the publicists of the Novaya Likvidatorskaya Gazeta, namely, hypocrisy goaded on by impotent malice, has never reached such limits as it has in their articles concerning the decision of the International Bureau.[1]

To what lengths they have gone can be seen from the fact that, after their very first articles on this subject, Huysmans, the Secretary of the International Socialist Bureau, felt constrained to authorise Comrade Popov to convey to the Russian workers his protest against the attempts of Novaya Rabochaya Gazeta to “exploit, in its factional interests, the lack of information” of the Russian readers, his protest against the “utter inaccuracy and disloyalty” of the liquidators’ published reports concerning the Bureau’s decisions.

Since the Novaya Rabochaya Gazeta publicists have received such a resounding ... testimonial from the Bureau’s Secretary, we can calmly ignore their attempts to accuse us of distorting the true character of the decisions passed in London. People who have been publicly accused by the Secretary of the Bureau of “exploiting” the Bureau’s decisions “in their factional interests” and of being “disloyal” to them, may shout as much as they please about their respect for the International, etc., but scarcely anyone will believe them. Every worker knows now what name to give the manipulations by which Mr. D.[2] tries so hard to read into the resolution of the Bureau such things as “the methods of building” the Party, “condemnation” of the Six,[3] “rejection” of our “claims” and “recognition” of the Social-Democratic character of the Left wing.[4] Literary juggling with the resolutions of the Bureau is hardly a sign of respect for those resolutions, Mr. D.!

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All things international?

What about the International Revolution?

Stefan Engel’s book ends with the appeal:

“Forward with the international socialist revolution!

Forward to the united socialist states of the world!” (p. 570)

He concludes: “With the strategy and tactics of the international evolution they are in the position to unite the struggles for social and national liberation aking place worldwide into a mighty flood which tears down all the barriers of the old society.” (p. 569)

Apart from his above-mentioned “advice,” however, he does not tell us what he means by this. Once more let us remember Lenin’s comment that we already quoted above:

“As a separate slogan, however, the slogan of a United States of the World would hardly be a correct one, first, because it merges with socialism; second, because it may be wrongly interpreted to mean that the victory of socialism in a single country is impossible, and it may also create misconceptions as to the relations of such a country to the others.” (“On the Slogan for a United States of Europe, Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 21, p. 342) 

Stefan Engel already invoked the internationalization of production, of the ruling class but also of the proletariat. He writes:

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Advice to Parties All Over the world

What about the International Revolution?

Nothing of a serious character, but an enormous selfconfidence seems to be the motivation for Stefan Engel and his collective of authors. He provides advice, free of charges and unrequested, to governments, parties, peoples etc. all over the world.

Thus he explains to the peoples of Vietnam, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and Cuba that “only the masses can create the preconditions for another proletarian revolution in a democratic struggle” (pp. 305-306). They will thank him for this. He teaches the governments of Venezuela and Bolivia that “they are striving for economic independence, but have yet to take the decisive step of overthrowing the state apparatus, with its manifold dependencies on the old exploiting classes and inter- national finance capital, by a revolution and of establishing a new, people’s democratic power which takes the road to socialism.” (p. 304)

But, in order to prevent being nailed down, he stresses that “all countries have their geographic, historical, cultural and oth- er peculiarities which the strategy for the power struggle must take into consideration.” (p. 306)

Concerning North Africa and the Arab countries, Stefan En- gel states: “Since Arab states have at best limited bourgeois de- mocracies, but are often ruled by despotic or fascist regimes, the establishment of an anti-imperialist, new-democratic system is necessary there also.” (p. 311) 

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Stefan Engel on the international revolution

What about the International Revolution?

In a very long-winded manner, Stefan Engel refers to Marx,Engels, Lenin and Stalin, quoting them extensively. Thus, in his first chapter, “Proletarian Strategy and the International Character of the Socialist Revolution,” he quotes what Marx and Engels stated in the Communist Manifesto:

“Though not in substance, yet in form, the struggle of the proletariat with the bourgeoisie is at first a national struggle. The proletariat of each country must, of course, first of all settle matters with its own bourgeoisie.” (https://www.marxists.org/ archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch01.htm#007, quoted by Stefan Engel on page 27)

Then he tells us that Marx and Engels in the beginning (of the 1848 bourgeois revolution) took as a starting point an early proletarian revolution in several countries, but they corrected their opinion because of the real historical development. It takes Stefan Engel five pages to say that. 

Three more pages are filled with the statement that Lenin, based on his analysis of imperialism, concluded that it is possible that the revolution will first be victorious in only one country but in spite of that its character will be international.

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Trotsky and the International Revolution

What about the International Revolution?

Let us now look at Trotsky, since Stefan Engel vehemently rejects being placed on the same level with him.

In 1923 Trotsky also sees that “capitalist forces of produc- tion had outgrown the framework of European national states” (quoted from “Is the Slogan ‘The United States of Europe’ a Timely One?,” at https://www.marxists.org/ archive/trotsky/1924/ffyci-2/25b.htm). He promotes the United States of Europe, which was vehemently unmasked by Lenin as being impossible or reactionary. Stefan Engel, like Trotsky, sees the “predominantly international character” of the “capitalist mode of production,” but worldwide instead of related to Europe.

In his work The Third International After Lenin, Trotsky writes in 1928:

“On August 4, 1914, the death knell sounded for national programs for all time. The revolutionary party of the proletariat can base itself only upon an international program corresponding to the character of the present epoch, the epoch of the highest development and collapse of capitalism.” 

Quoted from “The Program of the International Revolution or a Program of Social- ism in One Country?”in The Third International After Lenin, at https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1928/3rd/ti01.htm#p1-01

For Trotsky, too, the “international revolution” is an abstract phrase that does not exist in the context of the concrete dialectical relation between the international character and national form of the revolution.

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What about the International Revolution?

NOVEMBER 2016
Organization for the Construction of a Communist Workers’ Party of Germany
Criticism of Stefan Engel’s “Dawn of the International Socialist Revolution” and the MLPD’s Positions

Introduction

Five years ago, Stefan Engel’s book “Dawn of the Inter- national Socialist Revolution” was published for which he was responsible as leader of a collective of authors. In this book, the new positions of the arxist-Leninist Party of Ger- many (MLPD) concerning the international class struggle were 

explained and were sup- posed to be an updating and expansion of Lenin’s theory of imperialism and 

his messages views on the construction of the Communist Party. According to Engel, “a new phase in the development of imperialism was ushered in.” In his opinion, the special characteristics of this “new phase” are the “mainly inter- national character” of the “capitalist mode of production” and this “is subject to the diktat of the solely ruling international fi- nance capital, which is made up approximately of the 500 biggest international supermonopolies and rests on the power of the strongest imperialist countries..” (Stefan Engel, Dawn of the International Socialist Revolution, p. 9.) [All quotes are from the English version of Engel’s book – translator’s note]

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Collectivization

The collectivization that began in 1929 was an extraordinary period of bitter and complex class struggles. It decided what force would run the countryside: the rural bourgeoisie or the proletariat. Collectivization destroyed the economic basis for the last bourgeois class in the Soviet Union, the class that was constantly re-emerging out of small-scale production and the rural free markets. Collectivization meant an extraordinary political, economic and cultural upheaval, putting the peasant masses on the road to socialism.
Collectivization

• From rebuilding production to social confrontation
  • Weakness of the party in the countryside
  • The character of the Russian peasant
  • New class differentiation
  • Who controlled the market wheat?
  • Towards confrontation
  • Bukharin's position
  • Betting on the kolkhoz ...
  • ... or betting on the individual peasant?
• The first wave of collectivization
  • The kulak
  • The kolkhozy surpass the kulaks
  • A fiery mass movement
  • The war against the kulak
  • The essential rôle of the most oppressed masses
• The organizational line on collectivization
  • The Party apparatus in the countryside
  • Extraordinary organizational measures
  • The 25,000
  • The 25,000 against the bureaucracy
  • The 25,000 against the kulaks
  • The 25,000 and the organization of agricultural production
• The political direction of collectivization
  • The November 1929 resolution
  • Reject Bukharin's opportunism
  • New difficulties, new tasks
  • The January 5, 1930 resolution
• `Dekulakization'
  • Kulak rumors and indoctrination
  • What should be done with the kulaks?
  • Struggle to the end
  • The resolution on dekulakization
  • The kulak offensive picks up strength
  • Kautsky and the `kulak revolution'
• `Dizzy with success'
  • Stalin corrects
  • Rectify and consolidate
  • Right opportunism rears its head
  • The anti-Communists attack
  • Retreats and advances
  • Remarkable results
• The rise of socialist agriculture
  • The second wave of collectivization
  • Economic and social creativity
  • Investments in the countryside
  • The breakthrough of socialist agriculture
  • `Colossal support'
• The collectivization `genocide'

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The Economics of Revisionism - ICO

[formerly entitled: Revisionism & Imperialism]

Irish Communist Organisation

Preface to 2nd Edition

The "Economics of Revisionism" is an account of a talk given in February 1967 by a member of the I.C.O. to an alliance of anti-revisionist groups in London called the Anti-Revisionist Front. The subjectivist approach which has characterised the British anti-revisionist movement since its inception in 1963 disrupted this alliance late in 1967.

The first edition was published under the title "Revisionism and Imperialism". It was found that this was misleading since it suggested that the subject of the pamphlet was the policies of revisionism with relation to western imperialism, whereas in fact it dealt with the economic nature of revisionism, by which its policies are determined.

Irish Communist Organization, Dec. 1969 Ten years ago the state and prospects of the historical class struggle between the workers and the bourgeoisie appeared like this: a strong united socialist camp existed from central Europe eastwards to the Pacific. A growing socialist world market confronting a weakening capitalist world market; growing national liberation struggles against imperialism; as well as the prospect of a rapid sharpening of the contradiction between the workers and capitalists of the imperialist countries under the pressure of the growth of the socialist world market and of the national liberation struggles - all of this pointed to a very short life expectancy for world imperialism.

Today it would be a deception to present such a picture of the world. While imperialism is still in crisis, and must remain in crisis for as long as it exists, it has survived since the mid-fifties by surmounting the particular situation which faced it with immediate catastrophe then. And it has done this by temporarily liquidating a substantial part of the socialist camp with the weapon of modern revisionism.

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Collapse of Socialism - Moni Guha

By Moni Guha

This paper was presented on behalf of Moni Guha at a ‘study week’ organised in 1993 by the Indian Institute of Advanced Study at Shimla.

Introduction

The subject matter of our study is “Collapse of Socialism”. But socialism did never collapse it was usurped. This is a historical fact which is being denied. What collapsed in 1990 in Eastern Europe and in 1991 in the Soviet Union was market socialism of the revisionist regimes, not the Marxian socialism of the dictatorship of the proletariat. And everybody knows that market socialism and revisionism are bourgeois ideology and practice in Marxist garb. Of course, some self-styled Marxists, here and elsewhere, continued to consider the U.S.S.R. as a socialist state notwithstanding its revisionist leadership. They have, with aplomb declared against Khruschovite revisionism, but had kept a studied silence on the question of relation between the dictatorship of the proletariat and revisionist leadership, identifying the revisionist ruled Soviet state and market socialism with Marxian socialism is nothing but prettifying both market socialism and revisionism or worse, playing into the hands of the bourgeoisie. When one speaks of problems of revisionist ruled Soviet Union and its market socialism as problems of Marxian socialism, he seeks to tar Marxian socialism with the same black brush by which Khruschov tarred Marxian socialism. Revisionist takeover of the party and the state can mean nothing but the destruction of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Consequently, Marxian socialism is the logical casualty. The revisionist take over can only mean that bourgeois ideology and practice have gained the upper hand, proletarian leadership has been toppled. It means restructuring of the property relationships in favour of private property ownership and exploitation of man by man.

As such, the subject matter of our study should have been named “Collapse of market socialism”. It would have been scientific and in conformity with historical fact.

However, I shall discuss here the economic policy of the Soviet Union of the two periods viz. the period of Marxian socialism and the period of market socialism keeping myself confined to the Soviet Union’s relation with the world market and imperialism.

I hope the question of collapse will be clarified in the course of our study.

1. Socialism in One Country and the World Market

The October Socialist Revolution put an end to the undivided rule of the world system of capitalist economy. A new economic system, the socialist economic system came into existence. When the construction of the socialist economy in the very young Soviet state was in its initial stages, Lenin said:

“We are now exercising our influence on the international revolution through our economic policy. Once we solve this problem, we shall have certainly and finally won on an international scale.” (C. W. Vol. 32, P-439)

Did Lenin’s prophetic words come true? Was the economic policy of the Soviet Union “certainly and finally won on an international scale”?

It really did win.

What was the economic policy of Lenin?

With the inception of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in 1922, Lenin formulated three basic guidelines, viz. (I) a comprehensive national economic plan, (ii) Socialist ownership of the means of production, and (iii) Independent growth with emphasis on heavy industries. After the death of Lenin, Stalin meticulously following these guidelines, concretised and implemented them. He pursued the policies of centrally planned economy which made progress depending almost exclusively on the domestic resources and the home market. Foreign trade sector, or, foreign market, it may be noted with special care, played a very subsidiary and therefore, a minor role, in the development activity, as trade was chiefly confined to importing some technology from the world imperialist market. Export was considered a sin for obvious reasons, while import was generally favoured, since it was conducive to improve the material balance and technological base of the Soviet economy. It may also be noted that there had been monopoly control of the socialist state over the foreign trade. In general, foreign trade was not at all a dynamic sector of the Soviet economy, even in the period of socialism in several countries, till the death of Stalin.

Why the foreign trade sector or foreign market was not a dynamic one?

It is well known that capitalism develops international economic relations of a capitalist character, that is of exploitative and coercive character. Such international relations of production, once they emerge, acquire a certain independence and exert enormous influence as an objective law, on the internal development of the countries drawn into their orbit, independent of man’s will. In the capitalist world this intensifies the unevenness of the development of different states, some countries outstrip others, there emerge ruling and sub-ordinate countries, and the latter become, in one way or another, dependent on the former. This essentially coercive and exploitative process has produced international division of labour under which the world is divided into industrially advanced and industrially backward and weak countries, and under which the backwardness of the latter is perpetuated. A socialist state cannot be the partner to this coercive and exploitative process of the international trade relations.

Taking cognisance of this process the Soviet Union co-operated in a very limited way, but did not integrate itself into the imperialist dominated world market in the sphere of competition through imports and exports of goods or capital. That is why the economic policy of Soviet Union was independent but not autarkic. A state which takes part in the coercive and exploitative process of capitalism and world economy and whose leitmotif is earning profit from the competitive capitalist market cannot be a socialist state.

Let me quote a policy statement of the Soviet Union, issued in 1938, on the objects of exports and imports. It said:

“…. Imports into the U.S.S.R. are planned so as to aid in quickly freeing the nation from imports….

“… In the execution of the plan for socialist industrialisation, it is necessary to import most finished equipments and newest machines for the construction of ‘giants’ for the organisation of our own production of these very machines to secure our economic technical independence from capitalist nations..

“The basic task of Soviet exports is to earn foreign exchange reserves of the country.. The U.S.S.R. exports its goods only in order to pay for comparatively small quantities of imported goods, which are necessary for the speedy execution of national economic plan, therefore the dynamics of quantity of exports is defined by the plan which is constructed with the planned volume of imports.” (D. D. Mishustin. ed. Vneshniaia Torgovlia Sovietskogo Souza, U.S.S.R., Moscow, 1938, p. 9).

It logically follows from the above policy statement that the U.S.S.R. throughout the whole period of Marxian socialism and Stalin, up to his death, stressed for a balanced trade with much limited quantities of exports and imports. The trade proved to be much less commercial in nature, since it did not exploit foreign trade for “profits”. Thus, little did the question of importing or exporting capital arise in the Soviet economy.

This was the Soviet economic policy during socialism in one country in relation to the world economy. Form this you can very well judge that the superiority of the socialist economy was not the superiority in commercial and trade competition in the world market. It was a political, economic and moral superiority of the socialist economic system over the capitalist economic system on the question of exploitation of man by man.

2. Socialism in Several Countries

The emergence of Peoples’ Democracies in several countries necessitated their mutual co-operation on the economic field so that the socialist camp as a whole would be strengthened. Of course, that did not mean any change in the independent economic policy of the Soviet Union – the policy of non-integration with the coercive and exploitative process of the imperialist dominated world economy.

In order to determine Soviet economic policy towards the countries of Peoples’ Democracies, a conference of delegates from the countries of Peoples’ Democracies of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union was held on January, 1949 and a Council for Mutual Economic Assistance or CMEA was formed.

It was found in that conference that the member countries of CMEA differed greatly as to their levels of industrialisation. In a certain sense, only in a certain sense, the economic relations between the national republics of the U.S.S.R. were a prototype. The border lands and colonies of Tsarist Russia, which before the revolution were backward in comparison with the central regions, had become powerful industrial-agrarian republics under socialism. It was the policy of socialist in content and national in form which was a guarantee to overcome the backwardness, to even out their levels of economic development and to reach the most advanced level, with enormous growth of the productive forces. Only this policy did inspire the trust and confidence for voluntary and conscious co-operation on the basis of equality.

So, the principal tasks of the CMEA countries were directed towards evening out of the crying disproportions of the countries of the socialist camp.

The main achievements of CMEA during the period of 1949-1953 were:

(1) The conclusion of long term bi-lateral trade agreements, which was approved at the second session of CMEA in August, 1949.

(2) The provision of technical documents free of charge and the exchange of technical-scientific personnel between the member countries, so that experience would be exchanged, these countries would benefit from one another and the most backward ones would be helped to industrialise and develop their economics.

(3) The trade and economic exchanges between any two member countries were carried out NOT ON THE BASIS OF WORLD PRICES, but on the basis of an estimated price reached after extensive analysis.

(4) CMEA member countries refused co-operation with ‘Marshal Aid’ and agreed not to integrate into the coercive and exploitative process of the imperialist dominated world market.

As a result of this policy the volume of industrial production in 1954 as against 1938 (pre-war) increased as follows: Poland – 4.6 times; Czechoslovakia – 2.3 times; Rumania – 4.7 times; G. D. R. – nearly 2 times (against 1939); Bulgaria – 4.9 times and Hungary – 3.5 times (against 1939).

Due to the blockade and non co-operation of the world economy a parallel world socialist market was then, a fact. We are not sure what would have happened had Stalin been alive. Stalin died in March, 1953.

You have seen that the superiority of the socialist economy was not the superiority in trade competition in the world market, it was a political, economic and moral superiority of the socialist economic system over the capitalist economic system. Even in the 1930s when the capitalist world was submerged in a deep crisis, the Soviet Union went ahead with its five year plan without any crisis and had already solved the problem of the reserve army of the unemployed. That in the 1930s the Soviet economic policy did demonstrate its superiority over capitalist economy was proved by several examples:

You know why and how Keynes hurried to amend and repair the bourgeois economic theory of automatic equilibrium of demand and supply, which Marx criticised in his Capital long, long ago. Keynes had to admit that state intervention in the management of economy was necessary. You know how and why the theory of ‘Mixed economy’ of the bourgeoisie became the order of the day. You know that the tremendous influence of the success of the five year plans of the Soviet Union, how the solid camp of the bourgeois-economists was disintegrated and disarrayed and various schools, viz. Keynesian, Robinsonian and Sweezy-Baran etc. emerged with some tinge of Marxian economy. Lenin said:

“In the last analysis, productivity of labour is the most important, the principal thing for the victory of the new social system. Communism is the higher productivity of labour – compared with that existing under capitalism – of voluntary, class conscious and united workers employing advanced technique”. (C.W. Vol. 29, p. 427).

Even bourgeois economists could not deny the relatively high rate of growth of labour productivity in the Soviet Union during the period of Stalin and Marxian socialism. Between 1930 and 1940 the average rate of growth of the gross industrial output of the Soviet Union was 16%. Whereas, during the period of industrialisation in the U.S.A. between 1870 and 1880, the average yearly rate of growth of manufacturing industry was 7% only.

The growth rate of labour productivity was also higher in the U.S.S.R. In the U.S.A. labour productivity was 113% higher in 1949 than 1939, while, in the U.S.S.R. it was 137% higher in 1950 than in 1940 and 144% higher in 1953 than in 1950.

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Soviet Revisionism – The Most Complete Theory of Modern Revisionism - Omer Hashorva

From Albania Today, 1979, 3

Omer Hashorva – Chief of the Department of Philosophy at the "V. I. Lenin" High Party School

In the context of the struggle against modern revisionism, the struggle for the exposure of Soviet revisionism occupies a central place, remains an imperative duty for all Marxist-Leninists, because, as Comrade Enver Hoxha emphasizes, Soviet revisionism represents the most complete and elaborate “theory” and practice of the revisionist counterrevolution and the revision of Marxist-Leninist theory in all fields and on all questions. It is the dominant ideology in the big social-imperialist country, the Soviet Union, which uses the enormous material, political, military and propaganda means which it has at its disposal, against Marxism-Leninism, socialism, the revolution and the peoples.

These fundamental teachings of our Party throw light on the great danger of Soviet revisionism as an anti-Marxist-Leninist ideology, raising the necessity of struggle against Soviet revisionism both for its ideological exposure and for the exposure of the Soviet Union as a great imperialist power. These principled stands towards Soviet revisionism also serve as a line of demarcation between the genuine Marxist-Leninists and the pseudo-Marxists, such as the Chinese revisionists. To wage the struggle against Soviet revisionism only by exposing it as a great imperialist power, from narrow nationalist and egoistic positions, and to neglect the ideological struggle against it, or to wage it from unprincipled, pragmatist positions, as the Communist party of China has always done, shows that that party has never stood in a correct Marxist-Leninist position in the struggle against Khrushchevite revisionism. The powerful and resolute exposure of the ideological platform of Soviet revisionism remains an important, current task, because, despite all defeats, the “theories” and views of the Soviet revisionists continue to exert their influence, to confuse the proletariat and the peoples of the world, to cause much harm to the cause of revolution and the liberation struggle of the peoples. The danger of the Soviet revisionists becomes even more threatening because they distort and falsify the basic principles of Marxism-Leninism in a very elaborate and concealed manner in all fields and directions, in philosophy, political economy and scientific socialism, ideology and politics, art and culture, science, ethics, and justice.

The exposure of the anti-Marxist theories and views expounded at the 20th and 22nd Congresses of the CPSU constitutes one of the most important directions of the ideological fight of the Marxist-Leninists against Soviet revisionism, because the ideas of these congresses laid the basis of the ideological platform of Khrushchevite revisionism. The struggle for the denunciation of these “theories” and views is assuming ever greater importance due to the fact that the Soviet revisionists seek to present these anti-Marxist “theories” and views as a great contribution to the development of Marxism-Leninism, as the basis of a “new” Marxism-Leninism, “the Marxism of the period of the construction of communism”! Just as we have done so far. it is always necessary to expose forcefully the fact that at the 20th and 22nd Congresses in fact the Soviet revisionists codified the revisionists “theories” and views, beginning with those of Bernstein, Kautsky, Bukharin and Browder, down to those of the Yugoslav revisionists, the social-democrats and the various bourgeois-ideologists.

The ideological platform of Soviet revisionism constitutes the theoretical basis of its imperialist policy, too. Without making a thorough exposure of this platform, the hegemonism of Soviet social-imperialism and its expansionism cannot be effectively opposed. Therefore in the ideological struggle against Soviet revisionism it is important to keep in view the fact that, alongside the theories of the 20th and 22nd Congresses, this revisionism, in keeping with the evolution it has undergone and its transformation into social-imperialism, has worked out and is preaching a lot of other “new” theories such as “limited sovereignty”, “socialist integration”, “easing of tension”, “preservation of equilibrium”, etc., which it uses as ideological instruments against Marxism-Leninism, as well as in order to justify its aggressive, hegemony-seeking and expansionist policy. As Comrade Enver Hoxha stressed in his book “Imperialism and the Revolution”, the Soviet revisionists “try to present themselves as continuators of the October Revolution, as followers of Leninism, in order to deceive the proletariat and the working masses both in the Soviet Union and in other countries. They talk about “developed socialism” and “transition to communism” in order to put out any discontent, revolt and revolutionary movement of the working masses in their country against the revisionist rule and to suppress them as “counter-revolutionary”, “anti-socialist” acts. Outside their country they use “Leninism” as a mask to conceal their anti-Marxist, anti-Leninist theories and practices, to open the way for the expansionist and hegemonic plans of social-imperialism.

The exposure of the ideological platform of the Soviet revisionists serves at the same time to expose all the other revisionists and opportunists. Immediately after the 20th Congress, inspired and encouraged by the anti-Marxist course of this congress the Togliattist revisionists came out openly and the Yugoslav revisionists were enlivened. At that time there were also other opportunists, such as the Chinese revisionists, who, although in agreement with the anti-Marxist course of the 20th Congress of the CPSU, did not come out openly against Marxism-Leninism, but under the cloak of anti-Khrushchevism, tried to exploit the struggle against Soviet revisionism as a mask for themselves and for achieving their counterrevolutionary aims. The entire activity of the Communist Party of China after the 20th Congress of the CPSU shows that the political and ideological struggle of the Communist Party of China against the Khrushchevite revisionists was not directed at all towards the defence of Marxism-Leninism, but was carried out just for pragmatic aims, for egoistic interests.

The anti-Marxist platform of the Soviet revisionists has always served and continues to serve today as a basis or support for the other trends of modem revisionism. Regardless of the phraseology, the various forms and tactics used by the revisionists and the other opportunists, which vary according to the conditions in which they act and according to their narrow nationalist interests, in essence their ideological views are transformed and adapted variants of the ideological platform of Khrushchevite revisionism.

At the basis of the reformist, “peaceful” and “democratic” platforms for the alleged transition to socialism preached by the various revisionists, is the Khrushchevite idea of “peaceful transition” to socialism, while the Khrushchevite theories of “peaceful coexistence” and others, constitute the theoretical basis of the policy of class conciliation and collaboration, and unprincipled alliances, followed by the Italian, Spanish, French, and other revisionists, with their “own” bourgeoisie and with the international bourgeoisie. The theory of the “three worlds” of the Chinese revisionists, with its preachings about the “defence of the fatherland”, in fact, is also a variant of the Khrushchevite theories of “peaceful coexistence” and others, because this theory also preaches the alliance of the proletariat with the bourgeoisie, and of the peoples with imperialism. If the Soviet revisionists apparently criticize some of the revisionist ideas upheld by other trends, as they do in regard to the French, Spanish, and other revisionists, they do this only for the sake of preserving their masks and only from their hegemonic and imperialist positions. Therefore the exposure of the ideological platform of Soviet revisionism constitutes a task of prime importance for Marxist-Leninists, because without fighting it, it is impossible to fight with success the ideological platforms of the other trends of modern revisionism and their speculations on their so-called differences with the Soviet revisionists.

The great danger of the Soviet revisionists lies also in the fact that it represents not only the “theory”, but also the most complete practice of the revisionist counterrevolution. The practices of the Soviet revisionists, who are in power in a large social-imperialist country, the alliances with the imperialist powers and especially with American imperialism and with all the other reactionary and obscurantist forces, their “great power” practices, etc., have always been and continue to be a model for the Chinese revisionists, who, just like the Soviet revisionists, follow the same hegemony-seeking “great power” policy, fight the revolution, socialism and the peoples, and collaborate with American imperialism and all the other reactionary and fascist forces in order to realize their counterrevolutionary and hegemonic aims.

The question of the correct understanding of the danger posed by Soviet revisionism and of the necessity to fight and expose its anti-Marxist ideological platform, remains still today, just as it was up till now, a question of principled importance, and serves as line of demarcation which divides the genuine Marxist-Leninists from the pseudo-Marxists and the opportunists of every hue. The position from which you see and assess the danger of Soviet revisionism, the motives and aims which prompt you in the struggle against it, determine the position you take, for the revolution or for the counterrevolution, for Marxism-Leninism or for pseudo-Marxism-Leninism. The stressing of this point is of major importance for the exposure of those pseudo-Marxists, such as the Chinese revisionists, who have spoken and continue to speak even today about the “danger of Soviet revisionism”, which they have continually opposed, qualifying it as the only enemy, the number one enemy, and even pretending that they have been and continue to be “most resolute” in the struggle against “Soviet revisionism”. But in fact they have never waged the struggle against it from the positions of Marxism-Leninism, the revolution and socialism, as the Party of Labour of Albania has always done, but from the positions of opportunism and narrow bourgeois nationalism. Despite their gambling on anti-revisionist and anti-imperialist slogans, they in fact, just like Soviet social-imperialism and American imperialism, as their entire activity shows, follow an imperialist and warmongering, expansionist and hegemonic policy.

In the present conditions of the further aggravation of the ideological struggle, when alongside Soviet revisionism and the other trends of modern revisionism, Chinese revisionism too is working actively against Marxism-Leninism and the revolution, and is as dangerous as Soviet revisionism, the ideological struggle of the Marxist-Leninists against revisionism and every sort of opportunism constitutes, more than ever, an imperative task for the achievement of the final triumph of Marxism-Leninism over every revisionism and opportunism.

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