History of Opportunism in the Second International “Defense of the Fatherland”

Owing to the history of the development of the labor movement and revolution before both WWI and WWII there is a defining characteristic of parties in revolutionary periods. Contradictions between opportunist trends and Bolshevism are intensified, lines are clarified, and opportunist forces which had grown during peace time now try to smother revolution. The entire movement becomes engulfed in bitter conflict over the path forward for the class. Today we see nothing different. Thus, there is a direct connection between the at-present fractured Communist movement and the victory gained by opportunism in the west. As a consequence this requires revolutionaries to educate the working class on the importance of the conflict, its causes, and finish the split started by opportunists who will try by hook or crook to ally with the bourgeoisie.

But why, one might ask, do these opportunists who speak in Communist ways try to fight against revolution? Do they not speak of revolution themselves? Do they not follow Lenin and organize themselves into Communist parties? So how can there be “opportunist” Communist parties? How can opportunism have captured so many? And how are we sure who the real opportunists are today?

Remember that the parties of the Second International right up to the start of WWI had considered the looming war to be one of imperialist plunder. They understood that there was no progressive or just characteristic to the war at all, and the war was purely to divide markets. In 1912 the Ninth Congress of the Second International passed the Basle Manifesto which in words took a revolutionary stand against the coming imperialist war. Many socialists in Europe at the time could not see through the phrase mongering of the Second International leadership. After its passage Lenin remarked, “They have given us a large promissory note; let us see how they will meet it.”

The Basle Manifesto only passed because of the general anti-war atmosphere among the workers who had put pressure on their opportunist leaderships to adopt an anti-war position. The founder and most influential party of the Second International, the German Social-Democratic party, had shortly after passing the Basle Manifesto held a party congress in 1913 where it upheld Germany’s colonies. This clearly indicates that while the parties of the Second International were forced to adopt an anti-war position on the outside, they had every intention to support the war. The words of the Second International in the Basle Manifesto would not translate into deeds.

On July 28, 1914, Austria attacked Serbia. On August 3^rd the German Social-Democratic party voted 78 to 14 in the Reichstag in support of joining the war saying that Russia was soon to invade Germany and then declaring “in the hour of danger we shall not desert the fatherland.” The other European parties adopted the same justification and carried out the same line in their respective countries. The opportunists in the Second International had carried out the greatest betrayal to the working class in history at that time. They disguised their betrayal in a thin veil of “Marxism” saying that the German nation-state was threatened, that they must defend their workers against the invaders, and that Germany was the country with the most advanced Social-Democracy in Europe and necessitated defense. Of course, the parties in the Entente countries had their own social-chauvinism and raised the defense of their own countries to be paramount. Thus, these parties all fell into collaboration with the imperialists to wage an unjust war.

The German Social-Democratic party as the most influential party in the Second International played a large role in influencing other parties to follow suit in this greatest betrayal. It signified the ideological and political collapse of the Second International. The war had nothing in common with the interests of the working class. It was an unjust and reactionary war to loot and plunder.

The opportunists in the Second International cited the writings of Marx and Engels who had supported the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-1871 where Germany was liberated from the oppression of Napoleon III who had kept Germany in a state of feudal decentralization. This act made the war a progressive one on Prussia’s part by allowing the growth of the bourgeoisie, and therefore the proletariat, in Germany. Yet nothing about the conditions of WWI would lend itself to being compared to a struggle for national liberation. The leaders of the German Social-Democratic party grasped at straws trying to justify the involvement of the German proletariat in a war of plunder.

Karl Kautsky, who was the most prominent Marxist of the time and member of the German Social-Democratic party, said: “The Situation is different with the great solidly-based national countries. Their independence is certainly not threatened but apparently their integrity is not threatened either.” This may appear to be an argument against supporting the war, but he then follows this with, “But from this follows also the further duty of the Social-Democracy of every country to regard the war exclusively as a defensive war, to set up as its goal only protection from the enemy, not his ‘punishment’ or diminishment”. Thus in order to consider the war “just” Kautsky considered it “defensive” and the duty of German socialists to “defend the fatherland”.

The Basis of Opportunism

In Lenin’s work “The Collapse of the Second International” he says in chapter I,

“If we would formulate the question in a scientific fashion, i.e., from the standpoint of class relations in modern society, we will have to state that most of the Social Democratic parties, and at their head the German Party first and foremost—the biggest and most influential party in the Second International—have taken sides with their General Staffs, their governments, and their bourgeoisie, against the proletariat. This is an event of historic importance, one that calls for a most comprehensive analysis.”[1]

This comprehensive analysis Lenin mentions is that the betrayal of the socialist parties in the Second International stems from the economic basis, and significance, of the ideologically and materially influenced labor movement within Europe by the bourgeoisie. This is possible through super-profit derived bribes given to parts of the working class who are outside of industrial production and primarily engaged in what the English economist J. A. Hobson—in 1902 reflecting on the emergence of imperialism—saw as the inevitable predominance of “personal or minor industrial services” and the “final stages of production” within imperialist countries.

But the roots of opportunism in the labor movement were first expressed in the colonial and industrial monopoly maintained by Great Britain from 1848 to 1892. The analysis of this period comes best from Frederick Engels who remarked that the skilled tradesmen of his time had become “an aristocracy among the working-class.” Conditions in Great Britain as a result of its industrial monopoly had produced a stratum of the working class who had become “comfortable” and in good relations with the capitalist class. So much so that Engels considered this section of the working class to have become “bourgeois” in its outlook. In other words, this bought off section of the working class had become perverted and itself perverted the labor movement and turned it social-chauvinist.

This perversion of the labor movement is substantiated economically by the conditions of imperialism. Here we do not speak of chance mistakes in tactics. Opportunism is adapting the labor movement to the interests of the bourgeoisie. There is an economic basis to this corruption of the labor movement which introduces bourgeois ideology. And there are two main forms in which this corruption presents itself. Firstly it manifests as those who enjoy a privileged position among the working class and seek to maintain that position, i.e., the AFL-CIO “Higher Strategy of Labor”. Secondly, those in the privileged stratum who as a result of pressure from monopoly have been cast down into the ranks of the lower stratum of the working class but bring with them the interests of the bourgeoisie in left-disguise regardless of intentions.

This privileged stratum of the working class both ideologically and materially influenced by the bourgeoisie did not remain a solely English phenomenon. The loss of Great Britain’s industrial monopoly and the emergence of imperialism among several European countries meant that this privileged stratum of the working class had become a condition of all countries with monopoly capital. The establishment of this privileged strata of workers in all the advanced capitalist countries is why in nearly all socialist parties within the Second International following the most influential and whose leadership was populated primarily by these “comfortable workers” went to the defense of their respective “Fatherlands” when the division of the world market could no longer proceed under peaceful politics and threatened the “comfortable” conditions of the social-chauvinists.

Certainly, today it is a fact of life that manufacturing in the advanced capitalist countries is no longer what it once was. Services are the predominant industries in all imperialist countries. Hobson was quite correct in that regard. A large portion of workers in the imperialist countries only facilitate the realization of commodities. This means that merchant capital has become predominant in the circulation of commodities. The bourgeoisie of the imperialist countries have become parasites on the oppressed countries of the world, which they have forced to surrender a greater share of the surplus-value of commodities produced to create super-profits for the imperialists.

In the rest of the labor movement, the domination of opportunism over the most advanced sections of the working class is a result of the industrial restructuring of the advanced capitalist countries. The party’s loss of a firm footing in the industrial centers is why the Central Committee of the PCUSA stated in its Industrial Concentration Strategy and Plan that, “the restructuring of the basic industries in the United States [as well as Europe] meant the decline and deterioration of the old industrial sector of the working class.” The decline of what we might call “blue collar” factory work today has had a corresponding decline in the proportion of party members who came from the lower strata of the working class and the domination of the privileged upper strata – what we call petty-bourgeois radicals today.

This is not unique to the conditions of the US, but one that affects all Communist parties in the advanced capitalist countries. The incessant, seemingly overwhelming problem of opportunism, left or right, is simply part and parcel of the conditions of building a Communist party in the belly of the beast. Meaning this restructuring, i.e., decimation of the organized industrial sectors of the economy, reflected itself in the party. 

It is an important question to ask why the Communist Party of Germany failed to utilize the revolutionary situation. The Comintern considered the failure due to the lack of connection with workers in the factories, but why was this the case? Lenin’s answer to this question in “Left-Wing” Communism: an Infantile Disorder calls attention to a few factors in the German CP. For one, the German party adopted very childish notions of purity, going as far as to refuse to do any party work in “reactionary unions.” Thus the party had willingly cut itself off from sections of the workers leaving these workers under the influence of traitors and the bourgeoisie.

Secondly, Lenin says,

“In Germany, as in other European countries, people had become too accustomed to legality, to the free and proper election of ‘leaders’ at regular party congresses, to the convenient method of testing the class composition of parties through parliamentary elections, mass meetings, the press, the sentiments of the trade unions and other associations, etc. When, instead of this customary procedure, it became necessary, because of the stormy development of the revolution and the development of the civil war, to pass quickly from legality to illegality, to combine the two, and to adopt the ‘inconvenient’ and ‘undemocratic’ methods of singling out, or forming, or preserving “groups of leaders”—people lost their heads and began to think up some supernatural nonsense. Probably, the Dutch Tribunists who had the misfortune to be born in a small country where traditions and conditions of legality were particularly privileged and particularly stable, and who had never witnessed the changeover from legality to illegality, became confused, lost their heads, and helped to create these absurd inventions.”[2]

Since the German Communist Party had in part separated itself from the labor movement and did not have the experience to navigate the revolutionary situation, it failed to become a leader of the workers. How could it be that a Communist party is separated from the workers? Because the German Communist Party, like most Communist Parties of the west, were organized outside of the labor movement. Being outside of the daily struggle of workers was not the case for the Bolsheviks where out of the labor movement grew the Russian Social Democratic Party and then finally the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks).

Some Reflections On The Issue Of Industrial Structuring

The history of how Communist Parties were developed in the advanced capitalist countries offers potential insight into why the CPUSA had such an issue dealing with the decline of organized industrial sectors. In 1931 the 11^th Plenum of the Executive Committee of the Communist International noted several factors which retarded the growth of Communist parties in the imperialist countries. I will quote the pertinent observations,

“The illegal condition of the Bolshevik Party prompted it to establish Party groups in the factories, where it was easier and more convenient to work. The Party structure of the Bolsheviks thus began with the factories, and this yielded excellent results both during the years of the reaction, after the February revolution, and particularly during the October Revolution of 1917, the civil war and the great construction of Socialism. During the reaction following upon 1908, when in places the local party committees and the party leadership (the C.C.) were broken up, there still remained in the factories and mills a certain base, small party cells which continued the work. After the February Revolution, when the elections to the Soviets of Workers’ Deputies were held, the factories and mills also served as the basis for the elections. It is noteworthy that the elections to the municipal and district councils and the Constituent Assembly, which were based not upon occupational but upon territorial principles, were also carried out by the Bolshevik Party very successfully after the February and October Revolutions, despite the fact that the party had no territorial organizations [emphasis mine – ed.], and its agitation was concentrated in the factories and barracks. The cells and the district and city committees conducted the election campaign without creating special territorial organizations for the purpose. During all periods the lower party organizations of the Bolsheviks existed at the place of work rather than at the place of residence.

Abroad the situation was entirely different. There elections were not held in the factories but in the election districts, in the places where the voters lived. The main task pursued by the Socialist Parties was to gain electoral victories, to fight by means of the ballot, and the Party organization was therefore built along residential lines, which made it easier to organize the Party members for the election campaign in the respective election districts.

[T]he organizations of the Communist Parties in the capitalist countries were built without permanent organizational connections with the factories. […]

That the absence of Party organizations in the factories strongly affects the work of the Communist Parties is shown by such an example, for instance, as that of Germany, in 1923, when the Party failed to utilize the revolutionary situation for the overthrow of the bourgeoisie, this being due not only to the absence of a truly revolutionary leadership, but also to the absence of extensive and firm connections with the workers in the factories.”[3]

Most Communist Parties in the west were born from Socialist Parties who had no connection to the labor movement. Their primary source of membership came from cells that followed the same geographical-political party structure as bourgeois parties, i.e., city, county, state lines. As a result, the proportional share of cells within the party that are based in the factories are numerically outnumbered by geo-political cells which unify workers who are disconnected from large-scale production within the party. In other words, geo-political organization can be a boon to the white-collar city-petty bourgeoisie and corrupted workers within the party. 

As the 11^th Plenum of the Executive Committee of the Communist International noted above, in the illegal period of the Bolshevik Party they were a closed party and only admitted small numbers of candidates. Primarily due to oppression by the Tsar, trustworthiness was one of the main factors used to evaluate candidates. The core cadre of the party became steeled in experience and capable of teaching. When the party became legal after the 1905 Revolution it became a mass party and accepted many new members. Lenin remarked in Party Organization and Party Literature in 1905 that “We have sound stomachs and we are rock-like Marxists. We shall digest those inconsistent elements.”

As well, Lenin in 1916 in his article “Imperialism and the Split in Socialism” very clearly outlines the importance of where the party focuses and draws its strength,

“Neither we nor anyone else can calculate precisely what portion of the proletariat is following and will follow the social-chauvinists and opportunists. This will be revealed only by the struggle, it will be definitely decided only by the socialist revolution. But we know for certain that the ‘defenders of the fatherland’ in the imperialist war represent only a minority. And it is therefore our duty, if we wish to remain socialists to go down lower and deeper, to the real masses; this is the whole meaning and the whole purport of the struggle against opportunism. By exposing the fact that the opportunists and social-chauvinists are in reality betraying and selling the interests of the masses, that they are defending the temporary privileges of a minority of the workers, that they are the vehicles of bourgeois ideas and influences, that they are really allies and agents of the bourgeoisie, we teach the masses to appreciate their true political interests, to fight for socialism and for the revolution through all the long and painful vicissitudes of imperialist wars and imperialist armistices.”[4]

If we have a broader reflection on the experience of the Bolsheviks we find that at very few points in their history did they ever accept a mass of new membership into their ranks and that they had from the beginning been based chiefly on the factories. The issue of petty-bourgeois radicalism had scarcely been a problem within their ranks until periods of the intensification of the revolutionary situation in Russia. Later in 1920 in Left-Wing Communism: an Infantile Disorder, Lenin remarks that the Bolsheviks at this point were now very apprehensive in allowing the party to grow too quickly during the October Revolution because of the fact that “careerists and charlatans, who deserve only to be shot, inevitably strive to attach themselves to the ruling party.”[5] This development signified a greater danger of the penetration of corrupting elements at that point in time.

The dangerous combination of petty bourgeois radicalism with a mass party structure is why the consequence of the policies adopted and implemented by the 7^th Congress of the Comintern in the pursuit of the Popular Front, which sought to bring together the broad masses and all progressive people against fascism, resulted in western parties which were ill-equipped to defend themselves from the sudden and large influence of petty-bourgeois radicalism. Western parties had not chiefly based themselves upon the factories, i.e., upon the lowest paid and unbribed sections of the working class. History has proven that all the western parties were unable to digest the “inconsistent elements” as they transitioned into mass parties. It is historical fact that only in the eastern European countries did the Popular Front result in the formation of Socialist Republics since this is where the parties were chiefly situated in the factories rather than along geo-political lines . Thus these parties could withstand allowing a certain portion of the higher stratum of the working class and petty bourgeois to enter the party.

In the 2021 issue of The Communist the General Secretary Angelo D’Angelo and I wrote that,

“What many call Browderism was in reality then a global right-opportunist phenomena which stemmed from imperialism and its effect on the policies of the international Communist movement during the war. Browderism is only how it manifested under the conditions of the US. This also explains why all the advanced capitalist countries fell victim to their own national variants of Browderism. Nevertheless, in essence, it can be said to have arisen in part out of an upward swing in conditions, a lull in the growth of the movement and from political immaturity. As well as the social composition of the parties in the advanced capitalist countries. Plainly, from opportunism.”[6]

It is evident from the experiences of the Bolsheviks and our own parties in the advanced capitalist countries that the predominance of cells organized along geo-political lines is a carryover from the Socialist Party, and that it can be self-defeating by allowing petty-bourgeois radicals to suffocate Bolshevism within the party. It is inevitable then that issues of daily conflict and splits occur over matters immaterial to the long-term goals of the Communist Party. This also means a greater chance for individuals (careerists and charlatans) who do not come from the lower-strata of the working class to rise to leadership positions within the party since the work of the party (i.e. its cells) is detached from struggle within large enterprises.

Marx was a thousand times correct to say that socialism is birth marked with characteristics of capitalism. It is also true to say that western Communist parties are birth marked with the characteristics of their former socialist parties. However, addressing the predominance of the geo-political method of organizing is only a small part of the struggle against opportunism within our party. It is through the geo-political organization of cells that renegades and opportunists are able to more easily gain leadership positions only to corrupt entire sections of the party. Primarily due to the fact that there are fewer workers connected to shops with thousands of other workers and because the work of the geo-political cells are not focused on the immediate needs of any one workplace. The work of these cells mainly revolves around periodical agitation in public places; in other words, no leading role in the labor movement or direct connection to it.

Yet, the struggle against opportunism does not end with fixing the method of cell organization. The struggle against opportunism within the CPSU is evidence that even in parties where shop cells are predominant that opportunism finds other ways to sap at the strength of the party. It is evident though that in today’s world all Communist parties have been affected by industrial restructuring. The industrial basis of western Communist parties has become weakened, and the opportunity for petty-bourgeois radicals to steal leadership of the parties has grown. It is not a coincidence then that like never before Communist parties have reached an impasse over very basic questions of socialist construction or the history and legacy of the Comintern.

Industrial Concentration is the foremost task of any Communist Party, but it is obvious that this policy has not been carried out by the parties of the world who refuse to see the truth of what the war in Ukraine represents. There is no central world leadership to teach its importance. In the vacuum left by the CPSU, many parties have become aimless and have decayed into complacency over the years of industrial restructuring.

The CPUSA in 1949 as a matter of its party education instilled upon all party members that:

“The policy of concentration is not a policy for a special group of comrades, nor a special sphere of work which is carried alongside of other tasks. There must be no counterposing of industrial concentration as ‘one specific activity’ to other mass activities. Winning the workers in the big shops and working class communities is a political task (the struggle for the political policies of the party – which embrace both economic and political issues). Industrial concentration must be the heart and core of the work of all party organizations and all party leaders.”[7]

By regaining a foothold in the big shops the party will secure the social composition of the party as decidedly working class and offer an advantage to the party in its struggle against opportunism within the Communist movement.

The Ultra-Left and Ukraine

Grave issues within the international Communist movement have meant a major difference of perspective about support and non-support for the current Russian military offensive. To understand the current situation it is important to understand the class character of war in the modern age. The historical features of war have changed owing to the development of society and capitalism to its highest stage. By contrast during the period starting from around 1776 with the American Revolution and ending with the Paris Commune in 1871, the major wars and civil wars at this time were bourgeois-progressive and often had a national-liberation characteristic.

All honest socialists participated in the overthrow of feudalism. Most notable among them was Karl Marx who constantly gave guidance and clarity to the character of the US Civil War through the First International, the International Workingmen’s Association. Marx saw clearly that it was a progressive war which could overthrow the feudal Bourbon-Landlords of the South and end chattel slavery. By overthrowing the slave masters in the South the conditions for socialism, which was impossible beforehand, now existed.

Such a war to overthrow the backwards aristocracy was instrumental in allowing capitalism to develop, which was a progressive step, but capitalism most of all concentrates capital and industry. Today, US capitalism has reached its highest stage—imperialism. All the major industries are concentrated into the hands of billionaire associations, and all the major capitalist nations have divided the world amongst themselves. When “peaceful” diplomacy fails to satisfy its re-division, war and violence is waged. Making war in the age of imperialism is the result of fierce competition over markets. This means peace between capitalist countries can only be transitory, and peaceful diplomacy among them only stalls the impending outbreak of war which represents the continuation of capitalist diplomacy in a violent form. As well, the war will bring many changes to Russia which will develop further as a capitalist nation should it defeat NATO and Ukraine.

As analyzed in the PCUSA 2021 Ideological Conference, the US is in a fierce competition with Russia and China for markets to export the highly industrialized commodities produced in the US. When Trump tried to sabotage the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, it was explicitly done in order to offer Europe “Freedom” gas and oil, but at a higher cost than the EU was able to secure from Russia.

Immediately upon Russia committing to conflict in Ukraine, Germany indefinitely suspended the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, and the EU and US ceased importing Russian oil and natural gas. As much as 40% of EU energy was imported from Russia. The US had tried to capture this market by attempts to sabotage the Nord Stream 2 pipeline between Germany and Russia under Trump “peacefully”. Such a market is extremely important, which is why the US since 2014 had cultivated fascism and knowingly egged on NATO membership in Ukraine in order to get control over the energy markets of the EU and force Russia into a military response and subsequently isolate them from energy markets.

However, this maneuvering by the US has heavy costs. The PCUSA 2021 Ideological Conference analyzed the situation in Europe and noted that a divide between the EU and US was growing. This still remains largely true, even with Germany forgoing trade with Russia to its detriment. As the crisis of capitalism deepens it strains the ability of the US to maintain its alliances in NATO, meaning there is a weakening unity among members given the heavy handedness of the US forcing the EU into subpar deals. Shortly before the conference last year, China had signed the “largest trade deal in history” with the EU to the exclusion of the US.

Forcing EU NATO members to accept greater costs, and have less of a share of global profits in order to pad the pockets of US imperialists will result in worsening diplomacy between the US and EU. Even as Germany once more does the bidding of the US, Germany has signed a historic military spending bill, as much as 10x its previous military spending after being forced to suspend Nord Stream 2 bringing their total spending to an astounding €100 billion[8]. Germany and the EU have begun to lose confidence in the ability of the US to protect their profits, with the US under Trump even outright trying to strong-arm the EU into paying more for NATO[9]. In order for the EU to finally shake off US control, it will require a historic build-up of military forces.

However, there is also a more serious implication of a growing schism in global capitalism trending toward the build-up of these military forces around the world for an impending global conflict which can bring humanity to the brink of nuclear annihilation. This time is far more dangerous than the Cuban missile crisis since Russia is no longer socialist and therefore is not guided by the same Communist morality.

As in 1914, all the American and European capitalists paint this war as one for the “freedom of nations.” In actuality, the capitalists egg on and cultivate this war for the oppression of nations, to fortify existing colonies, and to prolong capitalist rule. Though at the same time, as during WWII, the scourge of fascism walks the earth (cultivated by the US and NATO) giving an impetus to the growth of the grossest reaction the world over, and renders social revolution under such conditions as existing in Ukraine impossible. There can be no socialist revolution while the working class is kept under the thumb of fascism. Thus the defeat of fascism in the Ukraine is both essential and progressive.

This is why the PCUSA affirms its position that, because Russia has made it clear that its ambitions for the war serve to resolve the mounting crisis in Russia itself, that the ousting of the Bandera fascists and defense of the DPR and LPR can be used as a justification for a war of conquest, i.e. reclaiming the “common motherland” of the Tsarist Empire. Until the point when the actions of Russian capital move toward conquest, the PCUSA stands with all anti-fascist people in support of the Donbass and support the war against the Bandera fascists in Kiev. In our own country, we must remember that the American workers have no interest in waging a war for plunder, that it is forced upon them. The American workers are mentally ruined and physically worn out not only as a result of the growing intensification of their exploitation under US capitalism, but from decades of predatory wars, epidemics, and the acute suppression of their organization by a mass of labor misleaders. It is the  duty of all communists in the US during these times to build resistance against our country’s engagement in the cultivation of punitive fascist wars to re-divide the world market.

[1] Lenin, V.I., “The Collapse of the Second International” in Collected Works, Vol. 21; Progress Publishers: Moscow, 1974, pp. 207-208.

[2] Lenin, V.I., “Left-Wing” Communism: An Infantile Disorder; New Outlook Publishers: Seattle, 2022, pp. 32-33.

[3] Piatnitsky, O., The Bolshevization of the Communist Parties By Eradicating The Social-Democratic Traditions; Workers Library Publishers: New York, 1932,  p. 15-17.

[4] Lenin, V.I., “Imperialism and the Split in Socialism” in Collected Works, Vol. 23; Progress Publishers: Moscow, 1974a, p. 120.

[5] Lenin, Op. Cit., 2022, p. 42.

[6] Dirte, Timothy, “Opportunism and the Collapse of the Third International” in The Communist, Vol. 1, 2021, p. 52.

[7] Study Course on The Communist Party, The Working Class, and Industrial Concentration: Outline and Guide for Schools, Classes, Study Groups; The National Education Depart of the Communist Party USA: New York, 1949, p. 18.

[8] https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/germany-hike-defense-spending-scholz-says-further-policy-shift-2022-02-27/

[9] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-nato-trump/trump-says-nato-countries-burden-sharing-improving-wants-more-idUSKCN1RE23P

The post Imperialism and the Split Among “Communists” appeared first on The Communist.

The term “Cultural Marxism” is frequently used in political discussions, but its meaning is obscure. Those on the Right claim that it signifies the infiltration of Western academia by Jewish Marxists from the Frankfurt School. They argue that their goal is to undermine the United States and Europe by utilizing Critical Theory to advocate for feminism, multiculturalism, LGBTQ+ identities, anti-white racism, and other perceived societal problems. Conversely, the mainstream Left regards this as a baseless far-right conspiracy theory and draws a parallel to the term “Cultural Bolshevism” employed in fascist propaganda. While both sides offer some valid points about Cultural Marxism, neither provides a complete picture.

Critical Theory vs Marxism

“Critical Theory” refers to a social theory practiced by intellectuals from the Frankfurt School, associated with the Institute for Social Research in Weimar Germany.[1] These theorists expressed dissatisfaction with both capitalism and communism, leading them to develop a new ideology aimed at societal development. Max Horkheimer, in his 1937 essay “Traditional and Critical Theory,” first defined Critical Theory as a social theory that goes beyond explaining society as it is and instead seeks to critique and transform it. Horkheimer outlined the fundamental principles of Critical Theory, which include the criticism of societal flaws, identification of agents capable of effecting change, and the provision of goals for social transformation.

According to Critical Theory, ideology serves as the primary driver of oppression,[2] and the objective is to analyze and overcome these ideas that hinder human freedom. In contrast, Marxism utilizes dialectical materialism to understand that these ideas merely reflect reality rather than determine it. In pursuit of the goal to liberate humanity from all forms of oppression, additional critical theories have emerged alongside various social movements, including the civil rights movement, feminism, and the gay and lesbian movement. However, a question arises: Do these critical theories genuinely aim to emancipate the oppressed masses, or do they in fact work to fragment the working class and divert revolutionary momentum?

Every successful socialist revolution has resulted in better material conditions for the entire working class, including women and ethnic minorities. However, a contrasting situation has unfolded in the United States, where critical theories have thrived within academia while capitalism remains the prevailing mode of production. Instead of progress, the majority of Americans have experienced a decline in their living standards, coupled with an increasing concentration of wealth in the hands of a privileged few. Despite its pseudo-revolutionary rhetoric, Critical Theory has consistently served the interests of those who perpetuate human enslavement, while suppressing the achievements of Communist movements that have genuinely established societies oriented towards meeting the needs of the working class.

First, they came for the Communists …

Initially, when the Nazis rose to power in Germany, the Institute for Social Research chose to refrain from openly criticizing the government. Theodor Adorno believed that the regime would primarily target “the orthodox pro-Soviet Bolshevists and communists who had drawn attention to themselves politically”.[3] This observation was indeed accurate at that time, as the Communists were the first group to be sent to concentration camps. However, it didn’t take long for the Nazis to extend their persecution to the Jewish population. In the late 1930s, several Frankfurt intellectuals, including Horkheimer, Adorno, and Herbert Marcuse, relocated to the United States to escape persecution due to their Jewish heritage. Walter Benjamin, on the other hand, did not join them. Benjamin relied solely on the Institute for his income, and one might expect that his colleagues would have taken his financial situation into consideration and made efforts to help him escape Nazi terror. However, evidence suggests that his fellow scholars had ideological motivations behind their decision to relocate to the US without him.[4]

Benjamin maintained a close friendship with Bertolt Brecht, a Marxist playwright who openly criticized the Frankfurt theorists. Adorno harbored resentment towards Brecht due to his ideological influence on Benjamin. In a letter to Horkheimer on January 26, 1936, Adorno referred to Brecht as a “savage” and expressed his belief that Benjamin needed to be freed from his influence.[5] Two years later, Horkheimer informed Benjamin that he should anticipate a loss of funding from the Institute. Furthermore, Horkheimer claimed, shortly after transferring $50,000 to one of his own accounts, that he regretfully couldn’t provide financial assistance for Benjamin’s steamship ticket to escape to the United States and seek safety from encroaching fascist forces. In 1940, Benjamin tragically took his own life at the border between France and Spain, facing almost certain capture by Nazi forces. The leading Frankfurt intellectuals depicted his suicide as a tragic and incomprehensible personal decision, and claimed that they had tried to help him escape.

If Horkheimer were to rewrite Martin Niemoller’s famous poem, it would read something like this:

First they came for the Communists,
and I didn’t speak up,
because I hated Communists.

Then they came for the Jews,
and I fled to the United States,
leaving my more Marxist-aligned Jewish colleague to die.

It is possible that the Frankfurt intellectuals harbored animosity towards Brecht because he recognized their compromising stance, as summarized by Stuart Jeffries, as “prostitutes in their quest for foundation support during their American exile, selling their skills and opinions as commodities in order to support the dominant ideology of oppressive U.S. society”.[6] When Horkheimer became director of the Institute in 1930, the Frankfurt School shifted its research focus away from comprehensive analyses of class struggle towards abstract investigations of culture and authority.[7] This approach aimed to appease future donors by refraining from suggesting alternatives to capitalism or an end to imperialism. Upon Adorno’s initial emigration to the US, he worked for the Princeton Radio Project, which received funding from the Rockefeller Foundation to investigate the impact of mass media on society.[8] Marcuse, meanwhile, served in the Office of Strategic Services, a precursor to the CIA, during which he authored critical works on the Soviet Union,[9] which were later published in his 1958 book Soviet Marxism: A Critical Analysis.

Supported by generous funding from the US government and the Rockefeller Foundation, the Frankfurt scholars were able to sustain their work throughout the early Cold War, eventually relocating the Institute back to West Germany in the late 1940s. The funds for this move were administered by John McCloy, who served as the US High Commissioner of Germany. In his earlier career as a Wall Street lawyer, McCloy had worked with various corporations operating in Nazi Germany, including IG Farben, the manufacturer of Zyklon B gas. Following the conclusion of World War II, McCloy granted clemency to several Nazi war criminals,[10] enabling them to retain a significant portion of their former wealth and influence. With the transition from a fascist regime to a US-supported anti-Communist government, West Germany provided a favorable environment for the Frankfurt School to continue its work and engage in new anti-Communist endeavors, as will be explored next in this series on Cultural Pseudo-Marxism.

*    *    *

After the Institute for Social Research relocated to Germany, its significance persisted just as it had in the United States. Fortunately for the Frankfurt intellectuals, they chose not to settle in East Germany. This decision stemmed not only from the government’s intolerance towards their counter-revolutionary activities but also from their desire to avoid encountering Bertolt Brecht, a close friend of the late Walter Benjamin, who had moved to the German Democratic Republic to contribute to socialist endeavors. Brecht continued his pointed critiques of the Frankfurt School in his play “Turandot” (The Whitewashers’ Congress), a satirical take on academics who compromise their intellectual integrity to manipulate reality in favor of the ruling class—referred to as “Tuis” by Brecht.[12]

Many assert that the Frankfurt Tuis were Marxists, driven by either ignorance or anti-Communist sentiment. If this were true, why were they embraced in West Germany while shunned in the GDR?

This misconception may have arisen from the fallacy that liberal democracies are in fact free and inclusive societies where individuals of all ideological stripes can freely express their convictions. In reality, the case of West Germany reveals that these principles of liberal democracy were, at best, selectively-employed. One could for example openly advocate for pedophilia,[13] but any praise for Stalin was met with contempt. The anti-Communist puppet government in the U.S.-occupied western region of Germany outlawed the Communist Party of Germany (KPD), the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) distanced itself from Marxism, and U.S. intelligence decided to use the Institute for their next big operation.

The “Compatible Left”: A CIA Creation

In June 1950, the Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF) was established in West Berlin.[14] Its members were mainly anti-Soviet leftists[15], but there were conservative participants too, like Irving Kristol[16], later known as the “godfather of neoconservatism”. With CIA backing, the CCF employed varied methods to spread anti-Communist propaganda: hosting conferences globally (primarily in Western Europe), publishing political and artistic journals, and awarding artists and musicians aligned with their goals. The CCF, guided by CIA agent Thomas Braden, cultivated what he called the “compatible”[17] Left—a faction rejecting Marxist analysis and criticizing actually-existing socialist countries.

As evidenced in Theodor Adorno’s correspondence, he worked closely with Melvin Lasky, the founder and chief editor of the CIA-backed publication Der Monat, and an original member of the CCF steering committee. Lasky offered to work with the Institute in any way possible, telling Adorno that he would quickly publish any works or statements from the Institute. Adorno took him up on this offer, going on to publish in Der Monat as well as Encounter and Tempo Presente. Given the backdrop of their prior collaboration, Lasky and the CIA were fully aware that the Frankfurt scholars were eminently suited for this role. Setting aside Herbert Marcuse’s career in US intelligence, the very ideology of the Frankfurt School was effective in neutralizing leftist sentiments while preserving somewhat of a revolutionary veneer.

Starting in 1930, when Max Horkheimer assumed the directorship of the Institute, the Frankfurt School shifted away from class analysis and instead delved into discussions on authority and culture.[18] Neglecting the crucial inquiry into which class holds authority, the CCF employed liberalism to narrow the focus exclusively onto individual freedom. Socialist realism in the Soviet Union was presented as “totalitarian” because it mandated artists to propagate constructive conduct within the working class. Conversely, in the US, an artist possessed the liberty to fling paint onto a canvas and deem it “art.” This contrast disregarded the reality that an artist’s success within capitalism rests entirely on the unpredictability of the market.

From 1944 to 1945, the Institute conducted a study titled “Anti-Semitism in American Labor”, concluding that the most anti-Semitic groups were Communist-led trade unions in the United States.[19] While Nazis received backing from capitalists for their genocidal acts, the Frankfurt scholars deemed certain American workers’ anti-Semitic views as a more urgent concern. The study served as an egregious example how identity politics can be employed to target Communists, a strategy still utilized by the Compatible Left. Furthermore, the Frankfurt School’s criticism of the notion of “authority” effectively discredited Communist parties and organized labor movements. The absence of authority renders revolutionary forces chaotic and vulnerable to counter-revolutionary assaults, aligning with capitalists’ desires to undermine the Left and uphold the bourgeois dictatorship of capital.

Critical Theory perhaps has some merit in scrutinizing ideology as a tool of domination. But the Frankfurt School deliberately obfuscates the role of class in analysis and portrays Critical Theory as immune to ideology. The capitalist class crafted Compatible Leftism as an ideological weapon to safeguard their control over the working class, neutralizing the Communist threat and upholding capitalism. It’s our duty as Communists to uphold the revolutionary ideology of Marxism-Leninism and consign the regressive ideology of the Compatible Left to its proper place in the dustbin of history.

*    *    *

Some may be quick to believe that the New Left is entirely to blame on the Frankfurt School, with its identitarianism and “Anything But Class” analysis. There is a point to be made here, but the Frankfurt theoreticians had differing views on the New Left which emerged in the 1960s. Theodor Adorno believed that the progressive student movements at the time could lead to “left fascism,” going as far as to call the cops on students who protested at the Institute for Social Research, including one of his own students.[20] Herbert Marcuse, however, was much more openly sympathetic to the social movements of the ‘60s and had influenced various noteworthy left-wing activists of that time period.

Many supporters of Marcuse willfully overlook his involvement in United States intelligence, focusing instead on his supposedly revolutionary advocacy. An article published in CounterPunch titled “What’s Behind the Recent Attacks on Herbert Marcuse?” described Marcuse as “a staunch advocate of movements for revolutionary change, a Marxist critic of capitalism, and firm supporter of African American liberation and feminism,” going on to praise him for being “[h]ated by both Soviet Communists and the Vatican, [and] adored by revolutionaries around the world”.[21]

Following the logic of Marcuse and his fans leads to some particularly reactionary conclusions. It’s ironic that For Marcuse to work for the precursor to the CIA—the US Office of Strategic Services—and trash the greatest threat to US imperialism at the time – the Soviet Union – is “revolutionary.” But for the USSR to ensure the full participation of women in society, to call on the international community to condemn the horrendous acts of racism against Black Americans, and to participate in the African decolonization struggles are all acts of “totalitarianism.” It is no surprise that capital and its faithful servants continue to push such propaganda.

Marcuse and Petty Bourgeois Radicalism

After the Black Panther Party split into factions, one headed by Huey P. Newton and the other by Eldridge Cleaver, Henry Winston (CPUSA national chair and an African-American) wrote “The Crisis of the Black Panther Party” as a criticism of the ultra-left ideological trends within the Party and their destructive effects.[22] Winston pointed out that the capitalist media had “popularized the caricature of Marxism-Leninism, appearing in the writings of Mao, Trotsky, Marcuse … and others,” and that many New Left radicals had adopted characteristics of this exaggerated image of what a “revolutionary” should be.

Published in 1971, Winston’s description of the ultra-leftists in the Black Panther Party is still quite relevant to the western Left in 2023:

“These Black and white radicals, including Cleaver and Newton, dismissed what they called “orthodox” Marxism. Taking a different direction from [Dr. Martin Luther] King [Jr.] (who promoted working class solidarity, as well as a popular front with the Church and with progressive elements of the middle class), they disdained the working class and glorified the super-”revolutionary” tactics of confrontation by an anarchistic elite. In this way, ultra-”revolutionaries” helped create an atmosphere in which the racist monopolists could falsely portray violence as coming from the Left—and cover up the fact that they themselves are the source of it.”[23] (Our emphasis—Ed.)

CPUSA General Secretary Gus Hall wrote “The Crisis of Petty-Bourgeois Radicalism” in 1970, highlighting many of the same issues which Winston describes.[24]

This article explained how as class conflicts intensify and the masses become more revolutionary, petty-bourgeois radicalism redirects this energy into futile, short-term endeavors, leading to frustration and demoralization. While not explicitly naming Marcuse, Hall implies that many prominent activists who were influenced by Marcuse introduced his “radical” ideas into revolutionary groups.

Angela Davis: We Remember When You Were A Marxist

Angela Davis, renowned for her feminist and anti-racist activism, studied under Marcuse before joining the Communist Party USA. Both right-wing critics and left-wing Marcuse supporters emphasize this fact to assert Marcuse’s radical Marxism. However, both sides often overlook crucial nuances in Davis’s activist career.

In contrast to many petty-bourgeois radicals, Davis did not overtly reject Communism, but her anti-communism had a subtler, more insidious character. During the era of Glasnost and Perestroika in the Soviet Union, Davis, following Marcuse’s lead, championed the pro-Gorbachev faction within the CPUSA. However, her motivations may have leaned more toward personal gain than Marcuse’s specific grievances against Soviet “totalitarianism”. Gorbachev’s policies were simply more financially appealing than those of Stalin which Marcuse vehemently criticized, and the activism of Davis in following decades has mainly centered around her career in academia. From selling her books and speaking at liberal college campuses, Davis has amassed a net worth of approximately $800,000 as of 2023.[25]

The Committees of Correspondence, formed during the 1991 CPUSA Convention, represented this faction but ultimately failed to steer the CPUSA away from Marxism-Leninism, eventually splitting from the party.[26] They emerged in opposition to Gus Hall and Henry Winston’s “conservative” stance of supporting efforts to preserve the Soviet Union against Gorbachev’s counter-revolution. This group attracted various liberal and “democratic socialist” elements within the CPUSA,[27] prioritizing surface-level identity politics over meaningful class analysis. Supporters of the Committees of Correspondence often point out their leadership’s greater diversity,[28] as if meeting arbitrary diversity quotas automatically translated into tangible benefits for their “represented” demographics.

Angela Davis’s alignment with the left wing of capital is evident in her history, ranging from supporting market liberalization during the Soviet Union’s final days to urging leftists to vote for Joe Biden in 2020.[29] She further demonstrates this alignment through her ongoing advocacy for ultra-left ideas, which may be less appealing to the working class but find favor with those who have trust funds and see the hammer and sickle as nothing but a trendy accessory. An example of this is advocating for prison abolition[30] without giving genuine thought to the victims of violent crimes.

Conclusion

Despite the Right’s belief in a radical Marxist takeover of academia, the concept of “Cultural Marxism” fundamentally contradicts Marxism itself. Critical Theory seeks to shift the discourse from class analysis to discussions of authority and culture. Key figures in the Frankfurt School played roles in producing and spreading anticommunist propaganda. And Marcuse’s influence on the Western Left has perpetuated the misconception that communists are elitist and disconnected from the working class. Today, we face a critical juncture in history. Western living standards are declining, multipolarity challenges US hegemony, and capitalists hope to confine communism to academic and niche social media circles. It is imperative for Communists to avoid repeating the New Left and modern CPUSA’s mistake of embracing a carefully crafted “revolutionary” ideal propagated by the ruling class and academia.

[1] Critical Theory (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy). ( March 8, 2005).

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/critical-theory/

[2] Geuss, Raymond, The Idea of a Critical Theory: Habermas and the Frankfurt School; Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 1981.

[3] Müller-Doohm, Stefan, Adorno: A Biography; Polity: Cambridge, 2005, p. 181.

[4] Fries, U. (2021). “Ende der Legende Hintergründe zu Walter Benjamins Tod” in Germanic Review, 96(4), 409–441. https://doi.org/10.1080/00168890.2021.1986802

[5] Adorno’s letter to Horkheimer on January 26, 1936, in Adorno and Horkheimer, Correspondence, Vol. I, p. 110.

[6] Jeffries, Stuart, Grand Hotel Abyss: The Lives of the Frankfurt School; Verso: London. 2016, p. 136.

[7] Solty, I. (February 15, 2020). “Max Horkheimer, a teacher without a class.” Jacobin.

https://jacobin.com/2020/02/max-horkheimer-frankfurt-school-adorno-working-class-marxism

[8] Cavin, S. Adorno. Lazarsfeld & The Princeton Radio Project, 1938-1941.

https://www.scribd.com/doc/151660755/Adorno-Lazarsfeld-The-Princeton-Radio-Project-1938-1941#

[9] Herbert Marcuse official website. https://www.marcuse.org/herbert/

[10] John J. McCloy. (August 25, 2023). In Wikipedia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_J._McCloy#US_High_Commissioner_for_Germany

[11]Saunders, F. (October 22, 1995). “How the CIA used modern art during the cultural Cold War”, Sott.net.

https://www.sott.net/article/413324-How-the-CIA-used-modern-art-during-the-cultural-Cold-War

[12] Script for Turandot by Bertolt Brecht. https://www.scribd.com/document/389599206/Turandot-Bertolt-Brecht-pdf#

[13] Gebhardt, W. (June 17, 2020). “The dark legacy of sexual liberation in Germany”, dw.com.

https://www.dw.com/en/germany-allowed-pedophiles-to-foster-children/a-53839291

[14]Origins of the Congress for Cultural Freedom, 1949-1950 – CIA.

https://www.cia.gov/resources/csi/studies-in-intelligence/archives/vol-38-no-5/origins-of-the-congress-for-cultural-freedom-1949-1950/

[15] Saunders, Francis Stoner, The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters; The New Press: New York, 2013, Chapter 3.

[16]Ibid., p. 148.

[17] Braden, Thomas W. “I’m Glad the CIA is ‘Immoral’.” The Saturday Evening Post, May 20, 1967, pp. 10, 12, 14.

[18] Rose, Gillian, The Melancholy Science: An Introduction to the Thought of Theodor W. Adorno; Columbia University Press: New York, 1979, p. 2.

[19]Collomp, Catherine, “Anti-Semitism among American Labor: a study by the refugee scholars of the Frankfurt School of Sociology at the end of World War II”, Labor History, 52(4), 2011, pp. 417–439.

https://doi.org/10.1080/0023656x.2011.632513

[20] Romano, Carlin,  “The Agitation of Adorno”, The Chronicle., June 20, 2008.

https://www.chronicle.com/article/the-agitation-of-adorno/

[21] Katsiaficas, George, “What’s behind the recent attacks on Herbert Marcuse?” CounterPunch.org, December 15, 2021. https://www.counterpunch.org/2021/12/17/whats-behind-the-recent-attacks-on-herbert-marcuse/

[22] Winston, H. (1971, August). “The Crisis of the Black Panther Party” in The Communist, Vol 2, 2022 pp. 17-37.

[23] Ibid., pp. 21-22.

[24] Hall, Gus, “Crisis of Petty-Bourgeois Radicalism” in The Communist, Vol 2., 2022, pp. 43.-51.

[25] https://pennbookcenter.com/angela-davis-net-worth/

[26] Encyclopedia of Anti-Revisionism On-Line. (February 1, 1992). CPUSA breaks apart (P. Saba, Ed.). Marxists Internet Archive.

https://www.marxists.org/history/erol/ncm-7/mlp-cpusa-split.htm

[27] Struggle for Democratic Socialism. (July 23, 1994). [Video]. C-SPAN.org.

https://www.c-span.org/video/?59374-1/struggle-democratic-socialism

[28] Marquit, E., & Marquit, D. G. (1992, February 19). Party survives, but as a shell.

https://web.archive.org/web/20070311011756/http://www.mndaily.com/daily/gopher-archives/1992/02/19/Party_survives%2C_but_as_a_shell.txt

[29] Telusma, B. (July 14, 2020). Angela Davis backs Biden because he ‘can be most effectively pressured’ by the left. TheGrio.

https://thegrio.com/2020/07/14/angela-davis-backs-biden/

[30]            Kelly, K. (2019, December 26). What the Prison-Abolition movement wants. Teen Vogue.

https://www.teenvogue.com/story/what-is-prison-abolition-movement

The post On The Frankfurt School appeared first on The Communist.

In carrying on a struggle against the Trotskyite agents, our Party comrades did not notice, they overlooked the fact, that present day Trotskyism is no longer what it was, let us say, seven or eight years ago; that Trotskyism and the Trotskyites have passed through a serious evolution in this period which has utterly changed the face of Trotskyism; that in view of this the struggle against Trotskyism and the method of struggle against it must also be utterly changed. Our Party comrades did not notice that Trotskyism has ceased to be a political trend in the working class, that it has changed from the political trend in the working class which it was seven or eight years ago, into a frantic and unprincipled gang of wreckers, diversionists, spies and murderers acting on the instructions of the intelligence services of foreign states.

What is a political trend in the working class? A political trend in the working class is a group or a party which has its own definite political face, platform and program, which does not and cannot hide its views from the working class but, on the contrary, openly and honestly carries on propaganda for its views in full view of the working class, does not fear to show its political face to the working class, does not fear to demonstrate its real aims and tasks to the working class but, on the contrary, goes to the working class with open visor to convince it of the correctness of its views. In the past, seven or eight years ago, Trotskyism was one of such political trends in the working class, an anti-Leninist trend, it is true, and therefore profoundly mistaken, but nevertheless a political trend.

Can it be said that present-day Trotskyism, the 1936 Trotskyism, let us say, is a political trend in the working class? No, this cannot be said. Why? Because the present-day Trotskyites are afraid to show their real face to the working class, are afraid to disclose their real aims and tasks to it, and carefully hide their political face from the working class, fearing that if the working class should learn of their real intentions it will curse them as an alien people and drive them from it. This in reality explains how it is that the chief method of Trotskyite work is now not open and honest propaganda of its views among the working class, but the masking of its views, servile and fawning praise for the views of its opponents, a false and pharisaical trampling of its own views in the dirt.

If you remember, Kamenev and Zinoviev at the trial in 1936 strenuously denied that they had any political platform. It was fully possible for them to develop their political platform at the trial. But they did not do so, declaring that they had no political platform. There can be no doubt that both of them were lying when they denied that they had a platform. Even the blind can now see that they had their political platform. But why did they deny the existence of any political platform?

Because they were afraid to disclose their real political face, they were afraid to demonstrate their real platform for the restoration of capitalism in the U.S.S.R., fearing that such a platform would arouse revulsion in the working class.

At the trial in 1937, Piatakov, Radek and Sokolnikov took a different line. They did not deny that the Trotskyites and Zinovievites had a political platform. They admitted that they had a definite political platform, recognized and unfolded it in their testimony. But they unfolded it not to call on the working class, not to call on the people to support the Trotskyite platform, but in order to curse it and brand it as an anti-people’s and anti-proletarian platform.

The restoration of capitalism, the liquidation of the collective farms and state farms, the restoration of the system of exploitation, an alliance with the fascist forces of Germany and Japan to bring war against the Soviet Union nearer, a struggle for war and against the policy of peace, the territorial dismemberment of the Soviet Union, giving the Ukraine to the Germans and the maritime provinces to the Japanese, the preparation of the military defeat of the Soviet Union if enemy slates should attack it, and, as a means of achieving these tasks, wrecking, diversion, individual terrorism against the leaders of the Soviet government, espionage for the benefit of the Japanese and German fascist forces — such was the political platform of present day Trotskyism which was set forth by Piatakov, Radek and Sokolnikov.

Naturally the Trotskyites could not but hide such a platform from the people, from the working class. And they hid it not only from the working class but also from the Trotskyite rank and file, and not only front the Trotskyite rank and file but even from the leading group of the Trotskyites, consisting of a small handful of 30 or 40 people. When Radek and Piatakov asked Trotsky’s permission to call a small conference, 30 or 40 people, to inform them of the character of this platform, Trotsky forbade them, saying it was inexpedient to talk of the real nature of the platform even to a small group of Trotskyites as such an “operation” might cause a split.

“Political figures” hiding their views and their platform not only from the working class but also from the Trotskyite rank and file, and not only from the Trotskyite rank and file, but from the leading group or Trotskyites — such is the face of present-day Trotskyism.

But it follows from this that present-day Trotskyism can no longer be called a political trend in the working class. Present-day Trotskyism is not a political trend in the working class but a gang without principle, without ideas, of wreckers, diversionists, intelligence service agents, spies, murderers, a gang of sworn enemies of the working class, working in the pay of the intelligence services or foreign states.

Such is the indisputable result of the evolution of Trotskyism in the past seven or eight years.

Such is the difference between Trotskyism in the past and Trotskyism at the present time.

The mistake of our Party comrades is that they did not notice this profound difference between Trotskyism in the past and Trotskyism at the present time. They did not notice that the Trotskyites have long since ceased to be people devoted to an idea, that the Trotskyites have long since turned into highway robbers, capable of any foulness, capable of all that is disgusting, to the point of espionage and the outright betrayal of their country, if only they can harm the Soviet government and Soviet power. They did not notice this and were therefore unable to reconstruct themselves in time to wage battle against the Trotskyites in a new and more regular manner. This is why the abominable work of the Trotskyites of late years was a complete surprise for some of our Party comrades.

To proceed. Finally, our Party comrades did not notice that there is an important difference between the present-day wreckers and diversionists, on the one hand, among whom the Trotskyite agents of fascism play “an active part”, and the wreckers and diversionists of the time of the Shakhty trial, on the other hand.

In the first place, the Shakhty and Industrial Party wreckers were people openly alien to us. They were in greater part former owners of factories, former managers for the old employers, former shareholders of old joint-stock companies, or simple bourgeois specialists who were openly hostile to us politically. None of our people had any doubt about the authenticity of the political face of these gentlemen. And the Shakhty wreckers themselves did not conceal their distaste for the Soviet system.

The same cannot be said of the present-day wreckers and diversionists, the Trotskyites. The present-day wreckers and diversionists, the Trotskyites, are mostly Party people with a Party card in their pocket, and consequently people who formally are not alien to us.

Whereas the old wreckers went against our people, the new wreckers on the contrary cringe to our people, laud them, lick their boots, in order to worm their way into their confidence. As you see, the difference is essential.

In the second place, the strength of the Shakhty and Industrial Party wreckers was that to a greater or lesser degree they possessed the necessary technical knowledge, while our people, not possessing such knowledge, were forced to learn from them. This circumstance gave a great advantage to the wreckers of the Shakhty period, made it possible for them to do their wrecking work free and unhindered, made it possible for them to deceive our people technically.

This is not so with the present-day wreckers, with the Trotskyites. The present-day wreckers have no technical superiority over our people. On the contrary, our people are better trained technically than the present-day wreckers, than the Trotskyites. During the time from the Shakhty period to our own days, tens of thousands of genuine, technically strong Bolshevik cadres have grown up among us. One could mention thousands and tens of thousands of Bolshevik leading figures technically developed in comparison with whom all such people as Piatakov and Livshitz, Shestov and Boguslavsky, Muralov and Drobnis are empty windbags and mere tyros from the point of view of technical training. In this case, what does the strength of the present-day wreckers, the Trotskyites, consist of? Their strength lies in the Party card, in the possession of a Party card. This strength lies in the fact that the Party card gives them political trust and opens the doors of all our institutions and organizations to them.

Their advantage lies in the fact that holding a Party card and pretending to be friends of the Soviet power they tricked our people politically, misused their confidence, did their wrecking work furtively, and disclosed our secrets of state to the enemies of the Soviet Union. This “advantage” is a doubtful one in its political and moral values, but still, it is an “advantage”. This “advantage”, in reality, explains the fact that the Trotskyite [ultraleft – ed.] wreckers, as people with a Party card having access to all places in our institutions and organizations, were a real windfall for the intelligence services of foreign states. The mistake of some of our Party comrades is that they did not notice, did not understand all this difference between the old and the new wreckers between the Shakhty wreckers and the Trotskyites, and not noticing this, they were unable to reconstruct themselves in time so as to wage battle against the new wreckers in a new way.

The post Present-Day Trotskyism appeared first on The Communist.

Social and political movements in a sense develop in similar ways. When the social molecules become agitated it results in mass upheavals, the waves of radicalization. Class contradictions and relations sharpen up. This propels the revolutionary process. It results in new levels of mass class and socialists consciousness. There is a speedy growth of movements and organizations. They also become tempered and purified in the struggle. Such is the path of revolutionary development.

A Product Of Frustration

But such moments also give birth to momentary political “bubbles.” As in steel, many of them also come and go. Some are serious movements that reflect momentary issues. They disappear when the issues are resolved. But others turn into petty-bourgeois radical expressions — petty-bourgeois reflections of the issues and the problems of the moment.

Such movements are especially a phenomenon in periods when great numbers–new waves–of people move into action. Like all sectors, the petty-bourgeois strata tend to reflect their class position when they react to the issues of the class struggle. They develop moments of great militancy. At such moments they are a source of inspiration and militancy to other sectors, including the working class. But they tend to go for short-term tactics. When this does not result in victories, for some the militancy, the enthusiasm, turns into petty-bourgeois radicalism. It is necessary to make a sharp distinction between the healthy militancy and determination expressed by non-working class sectors and the concepts of petty-bourgeois radicalism. Petty-bourgeois radicalism is a by-product of a sense of frustration.

When concepts based on unreality are bounced back by reality it results in frustration.

A secondary cause for the frustration is the occurrence of opportunist, passive tendencies and problems in the ranks of other sectors, including the working class.

The concepts, the ideas, motivating petty-bourgeois radicalism are not necessarily wrong in the abstract. Those who follow wrong concepts, in most cases, are dedicated and sincere individuals. The concepts are wrong when they do not reflect the specific reality of the moment. Therefore, the more determined such individuals are, the more damaging they can be. Good intentions and even good ideas are not enough. One of the key ingredients in a revolutionary struggle is people in mass. People do not respond to commands or to exhortations. They do not respond to ideas–even good ideas–if they do not see their self-interests involved in these ideas.

The inner laws of capitalism, the laws of exploitation, the inherent drive for profit, the contradiction between the social nature of production and the private appropriation of its products are all factors that force the victims in mass more and more to see their self-interests related to the more basic and revolutionary ideas. Policies and tactics, to be successful, must be related to this objective process. A revolutionary force must take full advantage of each new situation presented by this process. Only then can it become a revolutionary force propelling events. Tactics must be synchronized to each stage of this development.

The very essence of capitalism is class exploitation. It is exploitation of people, again in mass. The essence of any struggle is the class struggle. The central moving force is the exploited class–the working class.

Concepts of struggle not based on the above reality will sooner or later come into conflict with it. The advocates of petty-bourgeois radicalism try to bypass this reality. They believe they can avoid the necessary and unavoidable consistent and sustained work, the work of organizing, educating, mobilizing and leading people in mass, of leading people on the level of their understanding, of their own self-interest, and in this sense reflecting the objective processes leading to a revolutionary struggle against capitalism. For this they seek to substitute radical rhetoric with general slogans, or advanced actions that have no relationship to struggles to which the masses do respond. Thus, when the concepts based on unreality meet the reality of class struggle they bounce back. If such tactics are further pursued they become an obstacle to struggle. They become a destructive and divisive force. Organized groups which pursue such policies not only tend to move away from the working class, but they reject mass concepts of struggle altogether.

The relationships between the objective processes and the tactics of struggle are not simple. It is an intricate process. The lines are not clean-cut and even that which is negative, in the long run, can have momentary positive influences. It is not always easy to draw the line between passivity that is motivated by opportunistic considerations and a judgment that is based on a correct, necessary tactical consideration. And it is not easy always to see the line between a militancy that is necessary to propel the struggle to new heights, or a necessary advanced position or action by a more limited force, and ill-advised actions that alienate and separate the advanced force form its mass base.

Petty-bourgeois radicalism as a concept is now in a serious crisis. Masses have moved to new levels of political consciousness and to higher forms of struggle [sic]. Generally, petty-bourgeois radical concepts go into a crisis when working-class concepts of struggle are on the ascendancy.

An Old Problem

Petty-bourgeois radicalism is not a new phenomenon. It has emerged as a problem throughout the history of the world revolutionary movement. Petty-bourgeois radicalism has had a historic run in the recent period. The wave has touched most of the non-socialist world.

A special brand of petty-bourgeois radicalism made deep inroads and influenced the policies of the leading cadre of the Communist Party of China. Throughout its history the Maoist influence has been a petty-bourgeois radical influence. In its basic essence the Cultural Revolution was propelled by a mass petty-bourgeois radical sweep. This is a special brand of petty-bourgeois radicalism because it takes place in a country that is building socialism. It is a special brand because the leading core of the leadership used it as an instrument in the struggle to stay in power. It is a special brand because in China it was woven into a pattern with bourgeois nationalism. Mao’s policies have always been and are today based on mobilizing the non-working class sections. It was the destruction of the organizations and politics based on the working class that were the main objectives of the Cultural Revolution.

The Debray theories of revolution were an extension of these petty-bourgeois radical concepts. All variations of petty-bourgeois radicalism come into conflict with the class approach to struggle. They reject the class struggle as the vehicle for social progress. They reflect the individualism, the lack of class identification of petty-bourgeois elements generally. They reject policies and tactics that are based on mobilizing the working class–the one class history has designated as a basic contingent in the struggle for social progress. In fact, petty-bourgeois radicalism rejects the role of the one revolutionary class in society.

Thus, the very premise of petty-bourgeois radicalism is that it is impossible to win the working class in the struggle against capitalism. From this it follows that mass concepts of struggle are not possible, necessary, or realistic. This leads to actions based on small elite groups—or to individual action. Because this concept is not concerned with winning over masses, it promotes and condones actions that alienate masses. There is an inner logic to this path. Specific actions are taken because there is a lack of confidence in mass–in class–actions. These ill-considered actions result in widening the gap between the petty-bourgeois radical movements and the masses. This widening gap then becomes “proof” that you cannot win masses and therefore the line of conduct of these movements is justified. Each step leads to a further isolation. This is the inner logic of petty-bourgeois radicalism.

This has been the path of world Trotskyism, the classical movement of petty-bourgeois radicalism. It had its genesis with Trotsky’s rejection of the working class as a basic revolutionary force. He also substituted radical-sounding rhetoric for the class struggle. Trotskyism has remained a worldwide petty-bourgeois radical current. It remains a negative, a divisive, and a disruptive current. Because of its basically incorrect position it is not surprising that in the very center of its work has been the attack, the slander, against a country where the working class is in power–the Soviet Union.

When the working class either takes other paths of struggle or when it does not move because of the influences of opportunism, petty-bourgeois radicalism becomes a more serious problem. This also has its inner logic which results in such radicalism becoming an obstacle to mobilizing and moving the working class.

Crisis And Decline

As in the US, the world wave of petty-bourgeois radicalism is now also in a crisis and in the declining phase of the present cycle. It is a world crisis of petty-bourgeois radicalism. Its policies have come up against the realities of the class struggle. Masses have gained new experiences in the fires of the class struggle. They are now rejecting petty-bourgeois concepts as divisive and impractical.

The problems in the struggle against these concepts arise because they seem radical and revolutionary. For many who are influenced by such ideas honestly believe they are the most revolutionary. But when such policies fail–when they do not result in revolutionary victories, those who honestly believe in them face a dilemma. They can go one of three ways. Some give up the struggle. They use many excuses, but in essence they accept the status quo. They move into positions of opportunism. Others, in frustration, move into isolation by accepting the path of anarchism. This path destroys cadre as a meaningful revolutionary force. But most, however, draw the correct conclusions. They move into struggles and movements based on mass concepts. They draw the necessary conclusions that one’s revolutionariness can be measured only in the framework of moving masses into struggle.

It is impossible to struggle against the incorrect concepts of petty-bourgeois radicalism without a consistent and sharp struggle against the forever present influences of Right opportunism. The pressures towards Right opportunism are the most consistent in any capitalist country. They remain the chief danger to the revolutionary movement in the broad mass organizations of the people and the working class. It is impossible to conduct a successful fight against petty-bourgeois radicalism unless there is a consistent, successful fight against the influences of Right opportunism.

Like all political currents, petty-bourgeois radicalism finds expression in the form of specific groups. But like all political currents, it also has influences in most people’s and working-class organizations.

In this past period in the United States, we have witnessed the appearances of numerous petty-bourgeois radical sects. They are all now, to one degree or another, feeling the effects of the crisis of petty-bourgeois radicalism. These groups include the carious varieties of Trotskyism. They include the groups that emerged as a result of the continuous splits of the original forces in the Students for a Democratic Society. They include those that emerged because of the disintegration and the splitting of the Progressive Labor group.

In rejecting petty-bourgeois radicalism we do not need to reject or ignore the positive contributions many of these groups have made. We need not condemn individuals when we reject the concepts of petty-bourgeois radicalism.

Even in their best moments they view their work with the working class as that of missionaries. They all tend to be anti-Communist and even more specifically, anti-Soviet. On these basic class matters they join hands with the Right opportunists. This factor exposes the more basic opportunistic side of petty-bourgeois radicalism. Everyone knows it is easier to be a radical and even a “revolutionary” as long as you are anti-Communist. The enemy is never too disturbed by the most radical speeches of anyone who remains ideologically tied to capitalism by means of anti-Communism. In this sense petty-bourgeois radicalism does a very special favor to capitalism because it covers its anti-Communism and anti-Sovietism with “Left” radical phrases.

For a number of years Mao Tse-Tung gave the world’s petty-bourgeois radical groups a lift. These groups turned to Mao because his thought is the most rounded form of petty-bourgeois radicalism. That it also has its anti-working class and rabidly anti-Soviet features, of course, is no surprise.

But the most important factor of petty-bourgeois radicalism today, including its Maoist features, is that it is in crisis and in the declining phase of its cycle the world over as well as in the United States. The easy catch-all slogans have turned into empty rhetoric. Much of the motion has turned into “bubbles” that are now disappearing.

When the hothouse schemes of instant revolution meet reality they burst like balloons. When this happens petty-bourgeois radicalism blames its failures on the working class. In their frustration many of these sects turn to anarchism, which is only another form of petty-bourgeois radicalism. This is, in fact, one of the features of the present crisis of petty-bourgeois radicalism.

Petty-bourgeois radicalism as a concept rejects the basic class nature of society and the class struggle as a pivotal element in the fight for progress. It rejects the role of mass movements because it does not see its basic ingredient–the working class. A class approach to struggle is of necessity a mass approach. The petty-bourgeois radical rhetoric is a sanctuary for those who have given up the possibilities of leading masses, and in the first place the working-class masses, in struggle. It is a way of keeping a radical image when in fact one has retreated and given up the struggle.

The Story of SDS

The SDS had its birth in the ideological chambers of the Socialist Party. Its present crisis can be clearly traced to the petty-bourgeois radical views that it inherited from the parent body. This is not to negate in any way or detract from the positive contributions of the tens of thousands of young people who have come into the struggle and into the Communist Party through the activities of the SDS. This organization went through many stages of development. It moved from its open anti-working class position to accepting the role of the workers. But even then it saw that role only in relation to the SDS being the “missionary” enlightening the people called “workers”. The SDS never did understand the role of masses as the key factor in struggle.

Because they did not understand the class struggle they tended to reject all concepts of unity, including a unified front of the forces opposing capitalism. This comes from the very nature of petty-bourgeois existence. These sectors do not see themselves as being exploited or oppressed as a class. They do not react to oppression as a class. Unity, a unified front are class-mass concepts. The SDS, even in its best days, rejected these concepts and tended to organize their own actions, asking others to “join them” or “support them.” When they could not have their way they very often boycotted many important mass actions against the U.S. aggression in Vietnam.

Under pressure they constantly slipped into anti-Communist positions. Petty-bourgeois radicalism by its very nature–its class essence being, as it is, that of a group between two basic classes–cannot for long sustain a united organization. Its concept of “participatory democracy” was, in a way, a recognition of this fact. As the working-class upsurge has developed and the class concepts of the struggle have moved into the forefront, petty-bourgeois radicalism has also been evident in the policies of accepting racism. This has been justified by statements like, “We will fight for black-white unity when we have socialism.” For white Americans not to fight racism at all times is racism.

Most who took part in the SDS and the actions that it organized have drawn the correct conclusions. These forces have tended to reject the petty-bourgeois radical concepts. But some, as we know, have moved into channels of anarchism and individual actions. When one is convinced that mass struggles will not achieve results, anarchistic actions seem a realistic way out. Fictitious “communiqués from the underground” threatening violence are infantile. Acts of individual terror at a moment when mass actions and movements are possible and necessary, are actions in the service of reaction. They are damaging to the revolutionary movement. These “communiqués from the underground” and other threats of violence become the most convenient cover for acts of violence by police provocateurs, by enemy agents. Police agents blow up buildings–but the blame is placed on the “Left radical movement.” The fictitious “communiqués from the underground” threatening violence become the canopies under which the enemy conspires to create new Reichstag fire situations.

Another of the petty-bourgeois radical groups now in crisis is the group called Progressive Labor. It got a start as a splinter from the New York City Communist Party. When the Supreme Court upheld the McCarran Act and said the Communist Party was ordered to register its members, finances and officers, a small group in the Party panicked. The Party overwhelmingly decided to stand up and fight. This splinter group was a part of those who fought for a policy of liquidating the Communist Party. They called for its dissolution.

When the Party rejected this they set up their own little group. But right from the beginning it was stamped with their opportunism. Their liquidationist, opportunistic tendency continued in their own organization. They tried to hide and bypass the anti-Communist barrage from the enemy behind a name that said nothing about socialism or communism. Opportunism has been their hallmark. Now life has caught up with their brand of petty-bourgeois radicalism. It has remained a sect becoming ever more isolated–and now the sect has split asunder.

The basically opportunistic approach of Progressive Labor led it along the path of rabid anti-Sovietism. This is opportunism because it is a concession to the central ideological pillar of U.S. imperialism. This same opportunism has led Progressive Labor to compromise with the same struggle against racism under radical phrases and even in the name of the working class. It has followed a policy of accommodation and conciliation with racism. Because of its racist and white chauvinist practices the Black and Puerto Rican members have either been expelled or left the group.

The various Trotskyite sects continue as of old. They continue their splitting tactics in our mass movements, as is clearly shown in their latest efforts to set up a peace movement under their control. Momentarily some of these groups have made some gains. They are carefully covering up their real Trotskyite policies. But the Trotskyite sects are also in a crisis. They are also isolated. Their splitting tactics in all movements flow from their basic petty-bourgeois radical essence. Working-class consciousness leads to concepts of class unity. It leads to rejecting tactics that lead to disunity. Petty-bourgeois radicalism does not see the concept of class or mass struggles. From this it follows that it does not see the need for class unity. It reflects the individualism of its class nature. Petty-bourgeois radicalism is a political trend. It is this political trend that is in a crisis. Militant currents, radical trends, and the revolutionary process–these are not in a crisis. They are features of the mass upheavals. Marxism-Leninism is not in a crisis. It is the growing, the most consistent revolutionary current. It is not in a crisis because it reflects and is changing reality. It is the revolutionary current.

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Therefore, such inner-Party struggle is absolutely necessary and cannot be avoided. Any idea of trying to avoid inner-Party struggle, or of refraining from criticizing others’ mistakes so that they will not criticize one’s own errors, is totally wrong.

Inner-Party struggles consist principally of ideological struggles. Their content is made up of the divergencies and antagonisms arising in matters of ideology and principle. The divergencies and antagonisms among our comrades on matters of ideology and principle can develop into political splits within the Party, and, under certain circumstances, even to inevitable organizational splits; but, in character and content, such divergencies and antagonisms are basically ideological struggles.

Consequently, any inner-Party struggle not involving divergencies in matters of ideology and principle and any conflict among Party members not based on divergencies in matters of principle is a type of unprincipled struggle, a struggle without content. This kind of struggle without principle or content is utterly unnecessary within the Party. It is detrimental and not beneficial to the Party. Every Party member should strictly avoid such struggles.

Inner-Party struggle is absolutely indispensable to protecting the purity and independence of the Party, to guaranteeing that the Party’s activities constantly proceed along lines which represent the highest interests of the proletariat, and to preserving the Party’s basic proletarian character. With this object in view, inner-Party struggles must be conducted from two sides, or on two fronts. This is because the enemy’s ideology influences the Party from two directions, attacking the Party from both the Right and the “Left.” This is expressed in the Party by Right or “Left” opportunism.

Therefore, our inner-Party struggle must be directed simultaneously against both Right opportunism and “Left” opportunism, against these two aspects so that our Party can preserve its definite proletarian character. If we fail to do this, if we merely carryon a one-sided struggle, or if we slacken our vigilance and our struggle against either side, then the enemy not only can but assuredly will attack our Party from that very side which we have neglected. In that case, it will be impossible to preserve the Party’s purity and independence or to consolidate the Party. It is, therefore, in the course of ceaseless inner-Party struggle on two fronts that our Party consolidates and develops itself.

Comrade Stalin said: “The question here is that contradictions can be overcome only by means of struggle for this or that principle, for defining the goal of this or that struggle, for choosing this or that method of struggle that may lead to the goal. We can and we must come to agreement with those within the Party who differ with us on questions of current policy, on questions of a purely practical character. But if these questions involve differences over principle, then no agreement, no ‘middle’ line can save the cause. There is and there can be no ‘middle’ line on questions of principle. The work of the Party must be based either on these or those principles. The ‘middle’ line on questions of principle is a ‘line’ that muddles one’s head, a ‘line’ that covers up differences, a ‘line’ of ideological degeneration of the Party, a ‘line’ of ideological death of the Party. It is not our policy to pursue such a ‘middle’ line. It is the policy of a party that is declining and degenerating from day to day. Such a policy cannot but transform the party into an empty bureaucratic organ, standing isolated from the working people and becoming a puppet unable to do anything. Such a road cannot be our road.”

He added: “Our Party has been strengthened on the basis of overcoming the contradictions within the Party.” This explains the essential nature of inner-Party struggle.

[…] The special conditions and circumstances prevailing at the time when our Chinese Party was founded gave rise to two kinds of influences. One was favorable, enabling us from the very start to build a Communist Party of the Leninist type. Subjectively, we strictly adhered to the principles laid down by Lenin. From the very outset, our Party has carried out strict self-criticism and inner-Party struggle. This accounted for the rapid progress of our Party and served as a motive force to spur our Party forward.

But the other influence frequently led our comrades to another extreme, to another kind of mistake—the mistake of carrying inner-Party struggles too far, of struggling too intensely without any restraints whatsoever. This resulted in another deviation, a “Left” deviation.

Many comrades had a mechanical and erroneous understanding of Lenin’s principles and turned them into absolute dogmas. They believed that the Party’s highly centralized organization negates inner-Party democracy, that the need for inner-Party struggle negates peace within the Party; that the political leadership of the Party—the highest form of class organization of the proletariat—in other mass organizations of the proletariat negates the independence of trade unions and other organizations of the workers and toiling masses; and that unified, iron discipline means the obliteration of the individual personality, initiative and creativeness of Party members.

Many comrades memorized the principles of Lenin as if they were dead things. While they considered inner-Party struggle to be necessary and regarded liberalism and conciliationism as useless, still they applied these principles mechanically and dogmatically. They thought that inner-Party struggles should and must be uncompromisingly carried on regardless of the time, circumstances and issues involved, and that the more bitterly such struggles were conducted, the better. These comrades thought that the more vehement and sharp the form of inner-party struggle and criticism, the better. They felt that the sharper the controversies between Party comrades, the better. If this was not the case, then they thought that errors of liberalism and conciliationism were being committed.

In order to prove that they themselves were free from liberal or conciliatory tendencies, that they were “100 percent Bolsheviks,” they carried on unprincipled struggles within the Par0ty, irrespective of the actual conditions of time and place. Thus, these people became “rowdies” without any standpoint in inner-Party struggles, “struggle specialists” with no regard for principle, or “brawl experts” given to fighting. They conducted struggle for the sake of struggle. This is disgraceful within the ranks of the proletariat. And of course, it does not prove that they were “100 percent Bolsheviks.” On the contrary, it only serves to prove that they had insulted Bolshevism and utilized the name and appearance of Bolsheviks to practice opportunism inside the Party.

Many comrades did not understand that our inner-Party struggle is a struggle over principle, a struggle for this or that principle, for defining the goal of this or that struggle, for choosing this or that method of struggle that may lead to the goal.

These comrades did not understand that on questions of current policy, on questions of a purely practical character we can and must come to agreement with those within the Party who differ with us. They did not know or understand that on issues involving principle, on questions of defining the goal of our struggles and of choosing the methods of struggle needed to reach such goal they should wage an uncompromising struggle against those in the Party who hold divergent opinions; but on questions of current policy, on questions of a purely practical character, they should come to agreement with those within the Party who hold divergent opinions instead of carrying on an irreconcilable struggle against them, so long as such questions do not involve any difference over principle.

This is precisely the traditional style of work in the Party of Lenin and Stalin, which, however, many of our comrades have not yet acquired. They conducted uncompromising struggles over issues on which they should have come to agreement. As a result, there was not a single issue they would not fight over, there was never a time when they would not fight and there was not a single person against whom they would not fight. They struggled against all who differed with them, enforcing absolute conformity. They made no concessions on anything and would not compromise under any circumstances. They regarded anything contrary as antagonistic and believed that opposition is everything. This constituted their absolutism. These comrades do not preserve or achieve unity within the Party by overcoming differences over principle and ideology within the Party and by correcting certain incorrect tendencies and phenomena. On the contrary, they attempt to preserve or achieve unity within the Party by simple organizational means or by high-handed measures, by a policy of attack, by a system of punishment in dealing with Party members. As a result, they bring about various erroneous and excessive inner-Party struggles. Therefore, instead of carefully and considerately persuading comrades on the basis of principle and ideology, they suppress and bully comrades by resorting to simple organizational means, hostile methods, and even administrative measures. They draw at random organizational conclusions about comrades and mete out organizational measures to discipline comrades. Moreover, they ruthlessly discipline comrades inside the Party from the bourgeois viewpoint of equality before the law—that is, they mete out the heaviest discipline as provided in the Party Constitution without taking into consideration what kind of Party members the offenders are and whether or not the offenders have admitted or corrected their mistakes. In this way the system of disciplinary measures inside the Party is introduced. They often employ the means of conducting struggles in order to start and push forward work. They purposely look for “targets of struggle” (comrades inside the Party) and conduct the struggle against them as representatives of opportunism.  They  sacrifice  and attack this one comrade or these few comrades, “killing the rooster to frighten the dog” as the Chinese saying goes, in order to make other Party cadres work hard and fulfill the task. They deliberately collect information about the shortcomings and mistakes of the target of struggle and jot down mechanically and piecemeal his not too appropriate words and deeds. Then they view in isolation such shortcomings and mistakes and his not too appropriate words and deeds and regard all these as representing the whole make-up of the comrade. They magnify the individual shortcomings and mistakes of this comrade and develop these into a system of opportunism, create an extremely unfavorable impression about this comrade among comrades in the Party and incite their hatred for opportunism in struggling against this comrade. Then, “everybody can inflict blows on a dead tiger.” The psychology of revenge on the part of some persons begins to gain ground and they expose all the shortcomings and mistakes of this comrade and arbitrarily raise these shortcomings and mistakes to the level of principle. They even fabricate some story and on the basis of subjective suspicion and completely groundless rumors, accuse the comrade of various crimes. They will not stop until they drive him into mental confusion. With this done, they are still reluctant to allow the comrade who has been attacked to make any defense. If he makes any defense they would accuse him of deliberately defending his mistakes or of admitting mistakes with reservations. Then they would deal him further blows. They do not allow the comrade being attacked to reserve his opinions on condition of submission to the Party organization and do not allow him to appeal to the superiors but insist upon his admitting his mistakes on the spot. In case the comrade being attacked has admitted all his mistakes, then they do not bother whether the problem pertaining to principle or ideology has been solved or not. So, it occurred inside the Party that in the course of the struggle certain comrades admitted more mistakes than they had committed. In order to avoid attacks, they thought that they had better accept all the accusations. Although they admitted all the mistakes, as a matter of fact they still did not know what it was all about. This proves that such methods of struggle cannot cultivate the firmness of a communist in sticking to the truth.

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Huey P. Newton, writing in the Black Panther of April 17, 1971, attempts to provide an explanation for this crisis, which led to the party’s split into factions, one headed by himself, the other by Eldridge Cleaver.

In his April 17 article, Newton states: “Under the influence of Eldridge Cleaver the party gave the community no alternative for dealing with us, except by picking up the gun . . . Therefore, the Black Panther Party defected from the community long before Eldridge Cleaver defected from the party.”

In saying this, Newton appears at first glance to have taken a step toward understanding and correcting past mistakes—to have begun the process of disentangling the Black Panther Party from Cleaver’s catastrophic influence. However, in this article as a whole, Newton, instead of providing answers, creates still more questions and doubts as to the past, present and future course of the Black Panther Party.

That the uneasiness created by this article is well-founded is confirmed by Newton’s subsequent writings and speeches, and particularly by his May 29 article in the Black Panther. Here he announces that the party is ready to open, in San Francisco, a shoe factory and one to make clothing and golf bags—the first of many factories to be operated by the Black Panthers in ghettos across the nation.

That these are enterprises of “Black capitalism,” Newton does not deny. In fact, he states: “I am doing an article now called ‘To Reanalyze Black Capitalism’. . . . I think this is the kind of thing we’re involved in and we’ll judge how successful we are by whether we can take the community with us.”

It will undoubtedly appear to some that there is a head-on contradiction between Newton’s “new” direction and his previous “revolutionary” period. The opposite is true. There is no contradiction between his previous ultra-Leftist role and his present position. In essence, both positions represent accommodations to the status quo—even though the earlier one was more effectively camouflaged with the rhetoric of revolution. The link between both positions is the fact that neither “Black capitalism” nor ultra-revolutionary rhetoric offers the people the path of struggle. That is why the new form of opportunism (like the old form, still pursued by Eldridge Cleaver) presents no perspective for the Black liberation movement.

Hard Reality

According to Newton, the Black Panther Party had its origin as a response to what he interprets as the people’s rejection of non-violent action. When the Black Panthers first picked up the gun, he states in the April 17 article, “we are acting (in 1966) at a time when the people had given up on the philosophy of non-violent direct action and were to deal with sterner stuff. We wanted them to see the virtues of disciplined and organized armed self-defense, rather than spontaneous and disorganized outbreaks and riots.”

In this estimate of what was needed as the next step in the Black liberation struggle can be found the source of the Panthers’ subsequent difficulties. By offering the alternative of armed self-defense, the Panthers presented the upsurging Black urban youth with a false choice diverting them from mass unity and struggle.

As Congressman Ronald Dellums recently stated, “The average Black person, if you go back to that experience in the ghetto, doesn’t wake up in the morning oriented to the bullet or the bomb. He’s oriented to hope, and that’s when you can move him. It is time now to translate Black is Beautiful into hard political reality.”

In 1966 that “hard reality” called, as it does today, for more militant forms of organized and disciplined mass struggle. The people, including the youth, in their fight to create a movement to end poverty and racism, will respond to such an alternative to the blind alley of spontaneity or the equally hopeless concept of “picking up the gun.”

It is clear that the people want to challenge the oppressor on the grounds they choose, not on those chosen by their enemy. They want to engage the class enemy where he is most vulnerable—and this ruling class, the most massively armed oppressor in history, is the most vulnerable of all oppressors when the oppressed and exploited move in solidarity into the arena of mass struggle. The guns of the racist monopolists will be of no avail when the Blacks together with all the oppressed and exploited exercise their strength through self-organization and unity. That is why the people do not relate to the idea, whether advanced by Mao Tse-tung or Eldridge Cleaver or Huey Newton, that the power to change things comes out of the barrel of a gun.

Strategy—Defensive or Offensive?

When Newton advocated guns and a defensive Strategy as the solution for Black people, he was wrong on both counts. Not only did the people refuse to relate to the gun, but they also rejected the concept of a defensive strategy. Black people have been warding off attacks for 400 years. They want and need an offensive strategy to build a great popular movement to end racist oppression.

In his concept of self-defense, Newton endeavored to respond to the oppression of his people. However, this concept excluded the masses of the people from their own liberation struggle. It involved the idea of an elite few acting for the masses—in fact, supplanting them.

Thus, even before Cleaver joined the Black Panther Party, Newton had substituted elitism for mass struggle. Cleaver’s influence brought the elitist concept to new levels of anarchistic, adventurist confusion and provocation—but his ideology was nevertheless inherent in the original concepts on which the Black Panther Party was founded.

At one point, however, it did appear, even if briefly, that the Black Panthers might be turning away from these original concepts, that they might supplant Mao’s Little Red Book and Cleaver’s anarchism with Marx and Lenin. This was in the summer of 1969 when the Black Panther Party called for studying the historic report on the united front by Dimitrov, the Bulgarian Communist leader who transformed himself from the accused into the accuser while standing trial in a Nazi court. But instead of linking theory with practice, the actions taken by the Black Panther Party turned the concept of the united front into a sectarian caricature of the Marxist-Leninist principles on which it is based. Its policies and actions continued to be inconsistent with the interests of the class struggle and the Black liberation movement. It becomes increasingly clear that the Black Panther Party had only adopted some of the phraseology of Marxism-Leninism, but not the ideology.

Against this background, internal strife in the Black Panther Party deteriorated into factionalism, and—with neither faction guided by scientific theory—into an inevitable split. Newton expelled Cleaver and a group of [his] supporters. Although there are now two groups, both unfortunately hold similar anti-Marxist views on the most basic principles of class and national liberation.

 “There Go My People”

It is worth recalling that in the same period when the Black Panthers came on the scene, others were also seeking new directions, notably Martin Luther King.

During the Montgomery bus strike in 1955, King had said, “There go my people. I must catch up with them.” More than a decade later and at a new turning point, King was still motivated by these sentiments. Unlike the Panthers, he did not misread the mood of the people in this new phase, often called the “post-civil rights period.”

It had become apparent to King that an offensive strategy of new dimensions had to be built. The new situation required the continued and even expanded participation of Church and middle-strata forces, including students and professionals, Black and white, that had predominated in 1954-66. But King saw that the basis for regaining the offensive was class strength moving in coalition with the middle class forces. He now directed all his efforts toward involving the working class in a higher level of struggle with the Black Liberation movement—and with the poor and oppressed.

The Communist party welcomed this historic revolution in Dr. King’s leadership, and wholeheartedly supported his efforts to bring about a new strategy and a new alignment of forces. The Communist party saw this as a profoundly important development, even though Dr. King had not yet demonstrated a full understanding that an offensive strategy to end class exploitation, racist oppression and war demands not only the strength of the working class, but also the leadership of the working class—Black, Brown, Yellow, Red and white—guided by the science of socialism. It was clearly evident, however, that long before he was assassinated, King had already begun to move toward an anti-imperialist position.

King was also keenly aware of the dangers that faced the movement. For instance, in his historic address—just two months before his death—at the Freedomways memorial meeting for Dr. W. E. B. DuBois, King warned that racism and imperialism could not be fought with anti-Communism. In addition, his words about DuBois carried an all-important message for today’s radical youth:

“Above all he did not content himself with hurling invectives for emotional relief and then to retire into smug passive satisfaction. History had taught him it is not enough for people to be angry. The supreme task is to organize and unite people so that their anger becomes a transforming force.”[1]

The ruling class did everything in its power to divert and defeat the new direction taken by King. The capitalist mass media went all out to promote the activity and the ideology of those Black and white radicals for whom King was “too non-violent” and the Communist Party “too conservative.”

While Newton, Cleaver and Hilliard waved the Little Red Book and talked of picking up the gun, they were joined in these activities by middle-class white radicals who also came forward with interpretations of Marxism. All of this created diversions and confusion on the campuses, in the ghettos and in the peace movement.

The Image-Makers and “Revolution”

As part of the ruling class efforts to divert the radicalization process, the mass media have popularized the caricature of Marxism-Leninism, appearing in the writings of Mao, Trotsky, Marcuse, Debray, Cleaver, Newton, Tom Hayden, Stokely Carmichael, Rennie Davis and others. At the same time, they have promoted a “revolutionary” image for many of the new radicals.

These Black and white radicals, including Cleaver and Newton, dismissed what they called “orthodox” Marxism. Taking a different direction from King, they disdained the working class and glorified the super-”revolutionary” tactics of confrontation by an anarchistic elite. In this way, ultra-”revolutionaries” helped create an atmosphere in which the racist monopolists could falsely portray violence as coming from the Left—and cover up the fact that they themselves are the source of it.

The pseudo-militancy of Newton, Cleaver and Hilliard made their own party and its supporters particularly vulnerable to nation-wide genocidal assaults and frameups. And this, their super-revolutionism made the movements for Black liberation and against war and poverty more vulnerable to mounting repressive attacks.

It is apparent that neither Newton nor Cleaver have ever based their tactics on the working class and its revolutionary Science, Marxism-Leninism. At the present moment, while Cleaver’s opportunism continues along an ultra-Leftist course and Newton’s has taken a Right opportunist form (although he attempts to maintain a Leftist image), both base their policies on the lumpenproletariat.

In order to give some semblance of credibility to the “revolutionary” role they assign the lumpen elements, Newton and Cleaver would have us believe that the Black unemployed, those on welfare, and high school dropouts are all part of the lumpenproletariat. This is an insult to Black men, women and youth. People are not lumpen simply because they are denied jobs, and when Newton and Cleaver make such claims they sound like Black Moynihans.

Today, in the citadel of imperialism in the era of its decline, there is a massive increase in the army of the unemployed. Alongside this, the number of lumpen elements also increases. However, these groups do not merge: each has its distinct characteristics. As Marx wrote in The Class Struggles in France, the lumpenproletariat “forms a mass sharply differentiated from the industrial proletariat.”

Specifically, the lumpen elements are those so demoralized by the system that they are not only jobless, but that to them a job is unthinkable. It is their declassed parasitical status and outlook that sharply distinguish them from the great mass of the unemployed, who are searching for and demanding jobs and the opportunity for a decent life. That is why, in addition to making the distinction that Marx emphasized, it is now even more necessary than in Marx’s time to clearly distinguish between the lumpenproletariat and the great mass of unemployed, which includes so many youth (particularly Black and Brown) who have never been regularly employed. The following statistics from the sixties foreshadow the vastly greater number of youth who will be forced into this position in the seventies:

“It is reported that there are now 50 percent fewer unskilled and semi-skilled jobs than there are high school dropouts. Almost one-third of the 26 million young people entering the labor market in the sixties will be dropouts. But the percentage of the Negro dropouts nationally is 57 percent, and in New York City, among Negroes 25 years of age or over it is 68 percent. They are without a future.”[2]

However, it is quite evident that the ruling class is not counting on the prediction that the unemployed will passively accept the idea that “they are without a future.” Today, the monopolists fear the fact that the struggles of the unemployed, together with the rank-and-file struggles within the unions, will lay the basis for a new upsurge of the working class and the Black liberation movement. The monopolists sense that these struggles will eclipse those of the thirties.

One of the ways in which the ruling class is trying to short-circuit the struggle for jobs and against war and racism is through its barbaric promotion of drugs—in the armed forces (particularly in Vietnam), in the ghettos, among the workers, and among the youth on and off the campuses.

The lumpenproletariat, as Engels noted, includes “elements of all classes.” This is particularly evident today as large numbers of students, demoralized by drugs, turn away from struggle and become part of the lumpen sector for the first time in history.

Together with its mass promotion of drugs, the ruling class is promoting anti-working class ideology on a mass scale in new ways. This is why the media have popularized the writings of such individuals as Regis Debray and Herbert Marcuse, whose views have greatly influenced Cleaver, Newton, Hayden, Hoffman, Rubin and other radicals who foster the idea that workers have “a stake in the system.” From this starting point Cleaver and Newton have developed the concept that the lumpen sectors, who will resort to anything but work, and not the working class, comprise the vanguard of revolution.

Objective Laws of Development

Those who point to the lumpenproletariat as the revolutionary vanguard disregard the objective laws of historical development. In pre-capitalist societies, poverty and oppression were even greater than under capitalism. But oppression in itself, no matter how great, does not create the basis for the struggle to abolish oppression.

Because of the specific nature of exploitation under capitalism, the working class, which collectively operates the mass production process of the privately owned monopolies, is transformed into the gravedigger of the system. That is why Marx and Engels wrote in The Communist Manifesto: “Of all the classes that stand face to face with the bourgeoisie today, the proletariat alone is a really revolutionary class.”

No fundamental change—or even a challenge to the monopolists—can occur without the working class. And today the proportion of Black workers in basic industries such as steel, coal, auto, transport and others is transforming the prospects for the class struggle and Black liberation.

The degree of exploitation of Black workers is clearly much greater than that of white workers. Nevertheless, the collective form of exploitation in the decisive mass production industries is suffered by all workers. This creates the objective basis for solidarity, for their unity and leadership in the struggle against the monopolist ruling class.

At the same time, history has assigned a doubly significant role to Black workers—as the leaders and backbone of the Black liberation movement, and as a decisive component of the working class leadership of the anti-imperialist struggle as a whole.

It is the monopolists’ fear of Black, white, Brown, Yellow, Red and working class unity, which in turn can form the basis for still broader people’s unity, that is behind racism and anti-Communism, the main ideological weapons of the ruling class.

Leninism, the Marxism of the imperialist epoch, is the ideological weapon of the working class. It is the scientific guide that enables the working class to combine its struggle with national liberation movements against imperialism.

No other theory has served to free a single working class, a single people, from imperialism anywhere in the world. Beginning with the October revolution, only those guided by Marxism-Leninism have been able to free themselves from class and national oppression and take the road of socialist construction.

“On the Side of the Oppressor”

Cleaver and Newton have tried to use the writings of Frantz Fanon, whose vantage point was the Algerian and other African liberation movements, to justify their anti-Leninist theory of the role of the lumpenproletariat. They have attempted to apply Fanon’s ideas to the U.S., although these ideas in some respects lack Marxist clarity even within the African context for which they were intended. On top of this, Cleaver and Newton have inflated Fanon’s positive views on the lumpenproletariat, while completely ignoring his serious reservations about this group.

“Colonialism will also find in the lumpenproletariat a considerable space for maneuvering,” Fanon wrote in The Wretched of the Earth. There is a danger, he warned, that “the lumpenproletariat will throw itself into battle and will take part in the conflict—but this time on the side of the oppressor” He then stated:

“In Algeria it is the lumpenproletariat which furnished the Harkis and the Messalists; in Angola it supplied the road openers who now precede the Portuguese armed columns; in the Congo, we find once more the lumpenproletariat in regional manifestations in Katai and Katanga, while at Leopoldville, the Congo enemies made use of it to organize spontaneous mass meetings against Lumumba.[3]

For ways in which the ruling class can manipulate the lumpen elements, we need only refer to the Panthers’ own experience with George Sams, who was used to frame Bobby Seale, Ericka Huggins and others. And we should remember that a white lumpen individual was used to assassinate Martin Luther King, while black ones were recruited to murder Malcolm X. And we should also recall the German monopolists’ manipulation of Van der Lubbe to frame Georgi Dimitrov as part of their drive to launch a genocidal war for world domination.

The Cleaver-Newton theory of the lumpenproletariat as vanguard would mean objective surrender to the ruling class because only the working class can lead the fight against poverty and exploitation. And not only does this theory fail to offer an offensive strategy for liberation; without working-class leadership of the struggle, the lumpen victims themselves will not be provided with even their own barest needs.

It is ironic that, while some Panthers glorify the lumpenproletariat, at least one Panther leader takes pride in his working-class background and skills. In his book Seize the Time, Bobby Seale states that his father was a master carpenter, and that he himself is a carpenter, a draftsman and “a top-flight sheet-metal mechanic.”

We fervently hope that Bobby Seale will vindicate his well-founded pride by using his outstanding ability to help chart a working-class path of struggle for millions of Black youth, in contrast to the course Newton and Cleaver adopted while Seale was in prison.

Incredible Thrust Backward

Between mid-April and the end of May 1971, Huey P. Newton became increasingly frank in describing his new course. What he only hinted at in the April 17 Black Panther, he made astoundingly clear in the May 29 issue, when he described what he calls a “survival program,” i.e., survival through “Black capitalism.”

Announcing that the Panthers will now operate factories in ghettos, he went on to say: “We will have no overhead because our collective—we’ll exploit our collective by making them work free. We’ll do this not just to justify ourselves, like philanthropists, to save someone from going without shoes, even though this is part of the cause of our problems. People make the revolution; we will give the process a forward thrust. If we suffer from genocide, We won’t be around to change things. So, in this way our survival program is very practical.”

Far from being either “practical” or a “forward thrust,” this is an incredibly reactionary thrust backward. By comparison with Newton’s “survival program,” Booker T. Washington’s philosophy sounds positively revolutionary!

Newton, however, tries to justify his retreat into the past with the following explanation: “We can jump too far ahead and say that the system absolutely cannot give us anything, which is not true, the system can correct itself to a certain extent. What we are interested in is for it to correct itself as much as it can do and after that if it doesn’t do everything that the people think is necessary then we’ll think about reorganizing things.”

Well, this is a pretty late date to advise the oppressed and exploited to call off their struggles and wait to see if “the system can correct itself”! Why should the people surrender to still more racism and oppression in order to learn what they already know—that the system “can correct itself” only through wars, increased racism, poverty and exploitation.

While in the past Newton did indeed jump ahead of the people’s needs, he has now leaped far behind them. He misread the mood of the people and mistook their real needs when he talked of “picking up the gun” from 1966 through early 1971. Now he is again misreading their mood and ignoring their real needs, when in effect he tells them to surrender to racist oppression and accept a “survival” concept based on his anti-working class theories and glorification, in the same breath, of the lumpenproletariat and of capitalism.

Newton offers the people mini-enclaves of Black capitalism in the form of ghetto sweatshops across the country. But what Black people want is an end to the ghettos. During slavery, the underground railroad established way stations to meet the basic survival needs of Blacks escaping from the South. In context, a defensive “survival” strategy cannot possibly serve the people, for whom way stations cannot provide an escape. The vast scope of Black Americans’ needs today can be met only by an offensive strategy.

Black Americans have a first and equal claim on the total economy of the country—which they helped build with 400 years of slave and near-slave labor—for billions for jobs, housing, medical care, education, etc. They want the total economy turned around to meet the people’s needs, instead of operating for the wars and the profits of a handful of corporate monopolists.

When in 1968 Martin Luther King warned radicals that super-militancy often ends in accommodation, he seems to have prophesied Huey P. Newton’s latest move. After “hurling” super-revolutionary rhetoric for six years, it appears that Newton will now “retire into small passive satisfaction” while Black people are given the prospect of working in the ghetto under racist sweatshop conditions.

In Seize the Time, Bobby Seale attacked Ron Karenga for operating “little jive businesses” in the Black community. “Ron Karenga,” wrote Seale, “had no intention before and has no intention now of working in opposition to the power structure to change the system for the needs of Black America.” (Random House, New York, 1970, p. 273.)

We truly hope that Seale will recall these words because they aptly describe Newton’s “survival program.” No matter how Newton may later attempt to portray his new enterprises—as collectives, cooperatives, etc.—he cannot disguise the fact that they offer Black people no hope.

Accommodation—or Struggle

Neither Newton’s nor Cleaver’s concept of a “survival program” is in the interests of the people. While Cleaver expresses the ultra-Leftist face of opportunism—”urban guerilla warfare now”—Newton’s opportunism takes a different form.

Describing his “survival program,” Newton says: “We serve [the people’s] needs so they can survive oppression. Then, when they are ready to pick up the gun, serious things will happen.” (Black Panther, April 1971) In other words, Newton would have us believe that accommodation today will lead to revolution tomorrow!

Both the “survival program” Newton-style (“wait until the masses are ready to pick up the gun”) and the “survival program” Cleaver-style (“pick up the gun now!”) objectively amount to the same thing—desertion of the people’s struggles.

The cause of liberation cannot be served by a negative idea—“survival” pending a future day when “serious things will happen.” What is needed is a struggle program for the immediate interests of the people and for their ultimate liberation from capitalist, racist oppression.

Marx and Engels taught that the salvation of the exploited requires an ever-expanding unity in struggle even so much as to retard the downward spiral of exploitation and oppression. This concept is even more acutely relevant today. By contrast the idea of a “survival program” evokes passivity and demoralizes the people. To justify his “survival” concept, which would divert the Black liberation movement from an offensive anti-monopoly strategy, Huey P. Newton has developed a classless approach to capitalist democracy. It is amazing to read his description of democracy in the May 29 issue of the Black Panther. This is the way he puts it: “Democracy in America (bourgeois democracy) means nothing more than the domination of the majority over the minority.”

It is indeed strange to find one who regards himself as a dialectical materialist speaking of bourgeois democracy as “the domination of the majority over the minority.” In the sphere of social science, dialectical materialism relates not to struggle in general but to the struggle of classes.

Because he does not relate dialectics to the class struggle, Newton fails to explain that his is a society in which state monopoly capitalism rules; that there is a class of exploiters exercising state power to defend its class interests; that there is national oppression maintained by this class.

In the same article, Newton also states that the majority has “decreed” that the minority “fight and die in wars.” He dares make this claim at a time when even the polls show that considerably more than 70 percent of the people want immediate withdrawal of troops from Vietnam.

It is certainly not the majority but the ruling-class minority that has “decreed” the imperialist aggression in Indochina and in the Middle East, and which threatens thermonuclear war against peaceful states and peoples, and first of all against the socialist camp, which supports anti-imperialist liberation struggles throughout the world. In the 1930’s the threat of war came from Nazi Germany; today it comes from the U.S. monopolists—and Newton would have us believe that the majority has “decreed” it!

But not only do the polls show that there is an anti-war majority. They also show that within this anti-war majority there is another majority—one with the potential to bring to an end to the war in Indochina and, moreover, to imperialism itself.

This majority within the majority is made up of the overwhelming percentage of white workers and the still greater percentage of Black Americans who oppose the war. For the first time in U.S. history, the people, though not effectively organized, are in motion against the genocidal aggression of U.S. imperialism.

How then can Huey Newton, who apparently considers himself a revolutionary, speak of democracy in the U.S. as the rule of a majority (white masses) over the minority (Black masses)? How can he deny and cover up the rule of a tiny minority of monopolists who fan racial strife between Black and white, Black and Chicano, Black and Puerto Rican, Black and Indian, and of course between whites and all who are Black, Brown, Red or Yellow?

So-called revolutionary rhetoric cannot hide this monstrous error which omits the class nature of society, which denies capitalism as the source of racism, and the monopolists’ use of racism, along with anti-Communism, to exploit and oppress the masses. Such rhetoric is a disservice to all those, irrespective of color, who are fighting for peace, democracy and the well-being of the people.

Huey P. Newton engages in demagogy when he claims that there is a struggle between a majority of whites and a minority of Blacks. He lumps the white monopolists (a minority) with the white working class majority (and sections of the middle strata).

He fails to identify the monopolists (a white minority), and he does this in a way unbecoming to a revolutionary—by lumping the exploited majority of white workers with the oppressing minority of white monopolists. Revolutionaries must understand that this is the traditional method of accommodating to the imperialist enemy of change.

“The Building of the Machine”

In the June 5 Black Panther, Huey P. Newton reveals the full nature of his projected Black capitalist course. “In the past,” writes Newton, “the Black Panther party took a counter-revolutionary position with our blanket condemnation of Black capitalism.” Now, however, Newton sees a revolutionary role for Black capitalism.

He outlines a program in which Black Panther clothing and shoe factories and medical programs will be assisted by “contributions” from Black capitalists. In exchange, the Panthers will call upon the community to patronize the businesses of these Black capitalists.

“Black capitalists,” states Newton, will have “the potential to contribute to the building of the machine which will serve the true interests of the people and end all oppression.” (Emphasis added—H.W.) One can get an idea of the kind of “machine” Newton intends to build from the following admission: In the past, he writes, “we received money for our survival programs from the big, white capitalists.”

Perhaps this admission also casts light on some of the reasons why Newton complained, in his April 17 article, that “our hook-up with white radicals did not give us access to the white community because they did not guide the white community.” It now becomes clear that he prefers instead to have “access” to white capitalists—whom he identifies not as the exploiters of Black and white workers, but as the “guides” of the “white community.”

Newton cannot, however, camouflage the fact that his “access” to white corporate capital means that he is continuing to serve the monopolists at the expense of Black Americans and all working people. One need not hesitate to predict that his new form of accommodation to the white capitalist “guides” will be exposed far more rapidly than his previous super-revolutionary services to the same forces.

Black people are in a unique position of more than 200 years of chattel slavery, operated by the slave-owner partners of emergent capitalism, they have had over 100 years of capitalist exploitation, racism, war and poverty.

And now Newton echoes the monopolists responsible for the oppression and exploitation of Black people who are saying that the problems of the system will be solved if only a few more Black people become capitalists. The capitalists who say this are, of course, the same ones who have set up every type of barrier against those Blacks who have tried to establish small businesses over the years.

And it is particularly ironic that the “invitation” to Black people to become capitalists should come from the very same corporate monopolists who have already destroyed most of the nation’s small businesses. Those that still remain, whether white- or Black-owned, can operate only under the conditions of monopoly domination.

Not only have the mass production industries come under the control of corporate monopoly. Through their control of the banks, chains, franchising operations, insurance and real estate companies, etc., these same monopolists dominate all sectors of the economy, including that in the Black community.

Now, in an effort to recruit a sector of Blacks to support the ruling class against their own people, the monopolists have offered a tiny minority the illusion of Black capitalism. This is another variation of the tokenism rejected by the Black masses.

Yet we must keep in mind that the Black bourgeoisie is oppressed by the same monopolists who exploit and oppress the Black people as a whole. It is within this context that Communists—who are opposed to capitalist exploitation, whether by white- or Black-owned business—support the anti-monopolist demands of Black capitalists.

Access to the handful of giant corporations and banks which control the nation’s economy promotes the myth of “Black capitalism” as a crude attempt to convince Black people that anyone can still “make it” in the U.S. The monopolists do this in order to divert the Black liberation movement from its true course. At a time when one-third of the workers in the great mass production industries are Black, the future of the liberation movement lies in united struggle with all the oppressed and exploited against the common enemy, the monopolists.

In outlining the Panthers’ Black capitalist course, Newton states that the party’s new programs “satisfy the deep needs of the community but they are not solutions to our problems. That is why we call them survival programs, meaning survival revolution.” He then goes on to develop his concept of the revolutionary role of Black capitalists:

“We now see the Black capitalist as having a similar relationship to the Black community as the national bourgeoisie have to the people in national wars of decolonization. In wars of decolonization the national bourgeoisie supports the freedom struggles of the people because they recognize that it is in their own selfish interest. Then when the foreign exploiter has been kicked out, the national bourgeoisie takes his place and continues the exploitation. However, the national bourgeoisie is a weaker group, even though they are exploiters. Therefore, the people are in a better position to wipe the national bourgeoisie away after they have assisted the people in wiping out the foreign exploiters.”[4]

With this brazen misappropriation and misuse of Marxist terminology, Newton tries to put a revolutionary stamp on his scheme to build a machine that will serve the “foreign” U.S. monopolists at the expense of the marginal Black capitalists and all Black people—including the most victimized of capitalism’s victims, the lumpenproletariat.

In accordance with Newton’s theory of the revolutionary role of the lumpen elements, the lumpen victims will be rewarded with free handouts from the party. In return, they will form a machine that, to understate the matter, can serve no good purpose in the Black liberation movement.

At the same time, Newton proposes that all strata of Black Americans remain within the ghetto enclaves “pending” revolution. He is asking that they give up the only struggle that can benefit all Black Americans, including the middle classes: a united struggle with all exploited and oppressed people to win the only “territory” upon which Black people can gain their liberation in the United States—that is, the entire country and its economy.

In the former colonies of Africa and other countries, it was the foreign settler who lived in enclaves within the oppressed peoples’ lands. In the U.S„ the white corporate oppressors have forced Black people into the enclaves where Newton suggests they remain until the revolution in which the Black minority frees itself by fighting the white majority. This is the blind alley into which Newton urges Black people. But Black Americans can be liberated only through a joint struggle with all the oppressed and exploited against the white corporate minority.

In Asia, Africa and Latin America, the anti-imperialist phase of the revolutionary process opens the way to the transition to socialism. In the United States, the revolutionary process demands the building of a great anti-monopoly movement led by contingents of Black, white, Brown, Red and Yellow workers to break monopolist control of the government. It is the only path offering a perspective for the Black liberation movement, though some “revolutionaries” refuse to recognize this.

Some look for short cuts (“instant” revolution), while others devise “survival” programs pending the day when revolution comes magically into being. In actuality, both concepts are anti-revolutionary diversions from the centrality of the anti-monopoly strategy at this stage of the revolutionary process.

The Future Determines Its Own Tactics

To help preserve his “revolutionary” image while introducing his Black capitalist “survival program,” Newton makes use of the “when they are ready to pick up the gun” concept. But, shorn of its rhetoric, this is the equivalent of saying, “Since the masses are not yet ready to pick up the gun, we will table the question of picking up the gun until the masses are ready to put it on the agenda.” This is simply another way of creating passivity and compounding frustration.

The “when they are ready to pick up the gun” idea has also been expressed by others on the Left. Even some avowed Marxists have reflected views that represent an accommodation to, rather than a struggle against, this concept. But such views are in contradiction to the program of the Communist Party, to the Marxist-Leninist principles on which the party is based.

In his April 17 article, Newton stated that Cleaver’s concept of “instant” revolution was a “fantasy.” But the idea of “picking up the gun when the masses are ready” is no less a fantasy. Tomorrow’s tactics cannot be determined today. Future struggles, although they will be influenced by the outcome of today’s, will, depending on the concrete conditions that exist then, determine the tactics that go on tomorrow’s agenda.

Focusing on the gun in the future leads to frustration in the present. It carries the implication that any method short of the gun is inadequate or futile, amounting to no more than a holding operation until the real thing happens—merely a question of firing blanks until at long last reaching the point of “picking up the gun.”

This same idea is also expressed in a slightly different form by other individuals on the Left. According to one such view, “the possibilities of peaceful Struggle have not yet been exhausted.” This formulation implies that while armed struggle is not “yet” on the agenda, a revolutionary strategy must be based on the assumption that it will inevitably be placed there.

This view operates on the fatalistic notion that no matter what changes occur in the relationship of forces on a national and world scale, the working class and its allies will inevitably exhaust their capacity to prevent the ruling class from imposing armed struggle on the revolutionary process. This view, like its variants, differs from Cleaver’s concepts of armed struggle only in emphasis and timing, since it presupposes the inevitability of armed struggle as the only form of revolution, of transition to liberation and socialism.

Against such erroneous views, Lenin wrote:

“Marxism demands an attentive attitude to the mass struggle in progress, which, as the movement develops, as the class consciousness of the masses grows, as economic and political crises become more acute, continually gives rise to new and more varied forms of defense and attack . . .

“In the second place, Marxism demands an absolutely historical examination of the question of the forms of struggle. To treat this question apart from the concrete historical situation betrays a failure to understand the rudiments of dialectical materialism. At different stages of economic evolution, depending on differences in political, national, cultural, living and other conditions, different forms of struggle come to the fore and become the principal forms of struggle; and in connection with this, the secondary, auxiliary forms of struggle undergo change in turn.”[5]

Marx, Engels and Lenin fought against ideas that foreclosed the possibility of varying forms of revolutionary struggle in the transition to socialism. They rejected both the Right opportunist illusion that the transition would inevitably be peaceful, and the “Left” opportunism that proclaimed armed struggle as the only path to socialism for every country.

Today’s Right opportunists also predict that armed struggle will not be necessary, while the “Left” opportunists predict that it will be inevitable. Marxism-Leninism opposes both the will and the won’t of these two faces of opportunism, both of which tend to disarm the mass struggle.

While opposing “Left” concepts of the inevitability of armed struggle, Communist strategy simultaneously opposes Right opportunist illusions that transition to socialism is possible without the sharpest class struggles combined with the struggles of all the oppressed to curb and defeat the power of racist monopoly.

As Lenin wrote, “To attempt to answer yes or no to the question whether any particular means of struggle should be used, without making a detailed examination of the concrete situation of the given movement at the given stage of its development, means completely to abandon the Marxist position.”[6]

The “Most Extraordinary Privilege”

“Super-revolutionaries” are quick to shout “revisionist” at those who are guided by Lenin’s views regarding different paths to socialism.

By contrast, Le Duan, Ho Chi Minh’s close comrade and successor, who has been at the center of more than 30 years of armed struggle against imperialism, emphasizes that “Lenin, like Marx, was much concerned about the possibility of peacefully seizing power by the working class.”

Even before the October revolution, states Le Duan, Lenin believed that “Communists should do everything to strive for [peaceful transition] as long as a real possibility existed, even though the chances are one in a hundred.”

Specifically, after state power had been transferred to the bourgeoisie by the February 1917 revolution, Lenin saw the possibility of a peaceful transfer of power to the working class. “Lenin,” says Le Duan, “proposed the tactics of the peaceful development of the revolution. When conditions changed, after July, and there was no longer the peaceful possibility, Lenin changed tactics and prepared for armed revolution.”

Now that the October Revolution has led to a world system of socialist countries headed by the Soviet Union, forming the primary contradiction to imperialism, the possibilities for differing forms of revolutionary transition to socialism are increasing. This also means that forms of revolutionary transition that were rare in Lenin’s time may become more frequent in the present epoch.

At the heart of the ultra-Leftists’ errors is a lack of understanding of how the socialist countries have altered the prospects for class and national liberation within the prison of imperialism. They maintain, for example, that the Cuban experience represents the only valid type of transition to socialism. As Fidel Castro points out, these ultra-Leftists are a part of a “whole series of negators of Lenin [who] have emerged since the October Revolution.” Amplifying this view, Castro states:

Today, there are, as we know, theoretical super-revolutionaries, super-Leftists, veritable “supermen” if you will, who can destroy imperialism in a jiffy with their tongues. There are many super-revolutionaries lacking all notions of reality about the problems and difficulties of a revolution. They are prompted by sentiments carefully fostered by imperialism and are full of fierce hatred. It is as if they refused to forgive the Soviet Union its existence, and this from “Left-wing” positions. They would like a Soviet Union according to their strange model, according to their ridiculous ideals. Yet a country is primarily a reality, one made up of numerous other realities.

The exponents of these trends forget the incredible initial difficulties of the revolutionary process in the Soviet Union, the incredible problems arising from the blockade, isolation and fascist aggression. They pretend not to know anything about all this and regard the existence of the Soviet Union as almost a crime, and this from “Left-wing” which is an act of absolute dishonesty.

They forget the problems of Cuba, of Vietnam, of the Arab world. They forget that wherever imperialism is striking its blows it comes up against a country which sends the people the arms they need to defend themselves. We recall Playa Giron these days. We well remember the anti-aircraft artillery, the tanks and guns and mortars and other weapons that enabled us to smash the mercenaries.

This means that the existence of the Soviet state is objectively one of the most extraordinary privileges of the revolutionary movement. (Granma, May 3, 1970.)

Shortly after the October revolution, Lincoln Steffens, the U.S. journalist, visited the Soviet Union and said, “I have seen the future and it works.” And now, as Castro has shown, this revolution not only “works” for the Soviet people, it works for all oppressed humanity. It is the single most important force in the world working in support of liberation everywhere—a “most extraordinary privilege” constantly creating “extraordinary” changes in the revolutionary process on a world scale. It creates new opportunities for class and national liberation struggles that cannot be contained within the preconceived molds of pseudo-theorists, or by the desperate repressions of neo-colonialist imperialism.

While the pseudo-theorists cling to the single idea of “picking up the gun,” the Chilean Popular Unity coalition, with a solid working-class base led by the Communist Party, pursues an opposite tactic—aimed not at “picking up the gun,” but at preventing the internal oligarchy and its imperialist patrons from doing so. This tactic combines maximum internal strength with anti-imperialist unity on a world scale.

If, however, the oligarchy together with U.S. imperialism should at some point resort to “picking up the gun,” the advantage would nevertheless remain with those who have adapted Leninist tactics which apply to each stage of the struggle.

The imperialists have always been the first to pick up the gun—including in Vietnam. If they repeat this pattern in Chile, victory—as in Vietnam—will nevertheless belong to those who recognize that power comes not out of the barrel of a gun but out of the unity of the masses in struggle against the imperialism which picks up the gun. Those who fail to see through this strategy of the ruling class, and instead indulge in “super-revolutionary” rhetoric, obstruct rather than build the movement to free Angela Davis and all political prisoners.

[1] King, Martin Luther, Jr.,  “Honoring Dr. Du Bois”, Freedomways Memorial Meeting, February 23, 1968.

[2] Ferman, Louis A., Kornbluh, Joyce L., Poverty in America; University of Michigan Press: Ann Arbor, 1968, p.622.

[3] Fanon, Frantz, The Wretched of the Earth, First Evergreen Black Cat Edition; Grove Press: New York, 1966, p. 109.

[4] Newton, Huey P., Article in The Black Panther, June 5, 1971.

[5] Lenin, V.I., Collected Works, Vol. 11; Progress Publishers: Moscow, 1972, pp. 213-214.

[6] Ibid., p. 214.

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The world counterrevolution of the end of the 20th century gave impulse on the ideological field to the thesis of the end of the history, a campaign directed to affirm capitalism for all eternity, centered on questioning the validity of Marxism-Leninism and to disarm to the working class and the oppressed people in their struggle for emancipation. Also known as deideologization this pretension designed by thinkers in service to imperialism had as premise to discredit the theory of communism and the praxis of socialist construction using the effect of the crisis that carried to the temporary retrogression of the working class in the USSR and other countries of the socialist field in Europe, Asia and Africa. At the same time, taking advantage of the confusion of the moment in the workers’ movement and in the communist parties – several of which renounced to their identity and objectives in order to transform themselves into social democrat parties-, it cultivated the surge of new forms of dominant ideology, such as postmodernism and other variants to influence not only in universities and centers of formation, culture and art, but to permeate unions, popular movements and organizations, left political forces, progressive intellectuals and also to impact negatively in communist and workers parties.

The general objective of imperialist strategy was not achieved, since reality cannot be held in a strait jacket, and class struggle did not stop for a single second, regardless of the fact that counterrevolution, triumphant at that moment, presented with propaganda historical events distorted to its favor. Today –two decades after the Berlin Wall and all that volley of irrationality- capitalism at crisis has the working class and the communist and anti-imperialist movements confronting it in all continents. Nevertheless in a secondary way this served as breeding ground for a series of approaches that today can become constraints to carrying the struggle to new favorable levels for the international working class and the peoples of the world. Many of these approaches converge in the so called “Socialism of the 21st century”.

The so called “Socialism of the 21st century” cannot be identified with the theoretical elaboration of a single political and ideological current, since it’s the confluence of diverse currents identified by their hostility to Marxism-Leninism and to the international communist movement: for example various trotskyist groups; heirs of the new left; latinoamericanist marxists; supporters of movementism and neo anarchist; intellectuals that consider their contribution produced in the frameworks of the academy as indispensable and essential for social processes. The paternity of such concept cannot be attributed to a single current, to a single author, although they all have sought as platform the actual processes in Latin America, particularly in Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador, but without renouncing to be considered as universal and disqualifying like unfeasible all that cannot be grouped under its approaches. Another element of their positioning is that they insist on the “new”, “innovative”, “novel” character of their proposal in front of which they consider the workers’ movement of the 20th century and the ideas of Marxism-Leninism as old and out dated.

In class struggle, since the conditions of social development made possible the creation of the materialistic conception of history, it’s not the first time that communists confront themselves with currents that in the name of socialism present the positions of the petite bourgeoisie, it’s not the first time that reform or revolution are placed face to face.

In The German ideology and in The Manifesto of the Communist Party, just for citing two works of Karl Marx and Friederick Engels, adjustments are done with “true socialism”, “reactionary socialism” (“feudal”, “petite bourgeois”), with “reactionary or bourgeois socialism” and with “critic-utopian communism and socialism”. In another work, result of the polemic of Marx and Engels with Düring (although the work as was custom in the division of tasks of the teachers of the proletariat carried only the sign of one of them) the following is affirmed: “Since the capitalist mode of production has appeared in the arena of history there has been individuals and entire sects who projected more or less vaguely, as a future ideal, the appropriation of all means of production by society. However, so that this was practical, so that it became a historical necessity, the objective conditions for its execution were needed to be given first.[1]”

A synthesis of the criticisms of Marx and Engels shows us that not everything that is presented in the name of socialism has to do with the historical role of the proletariat and of the communists:

The Negation Of Socialism Built In The 20th Century

Among the promoters of the so called “Socialism of the 21st century” there is a fundamental coincidence: the demarcation and rejection to the socialist construction experience in the USSR and in other countries of Europe and Asia. Some of them go further by blaming the October Revolution, assuming the old ideas of Kautsky and the opportunists of the II International. They claim that the conditions were immature for the conquest of political power by the working class and the impossibility of socialism because what corresponded was to develop capitalism. From here, they derive the bases for the alleged separation between democracy and communism; to explain that it was all damned to fail from the beginning. –          However, although they vindicate the 1917 October Revolution, the developers…assume the Trotskyist critiques towards socialist construction and to the role of the Bolshevik Party particularly, and to Marxism-Leninism in general, in fundamental matters that we are going to examine further ahead. In this they cannot be differentiated from, for example, the theses assumed by the opportunistic group of Bertinotti for the V Congress of the Refoundation Communist Party of Italy in the year 2002. That planted a “radical interruption with regard to the experience of socialism as it was carried out“, something to which they also refer as to a “radical break with Stalinism”.

Some of those –really reactionary- ideas preached as characteristics of the so called “socialism of the 21st century”, is argued, are not criticized in the name of tactics. In order not to torpedo the process in Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador that are in the center of the anti-imperialist struggle of Latin America. There are even communist parties that integrate such concept to its routine vocabulary, to propaganda and to the programmatic question.

We do not believe –upon setting our divergent and critical point of view- to lack respect for those processes, which we support, of which we are supportive. These processes were not born with the flag of “socialism of the 21st century” and they have advanced a lot with relation to their initial programs but is necessary to add that they are not consolidated processes and that the ideological confusion that is promoted with the “socialism of the 21st century” can carry them to defeat. With Marx we say that a step of the real movement is worth more than a thousand programs, adding that an erroneous program as north of the movement can conduct it off the cliff. It is a duty of the communists to place scientific socialism as the road of the working class and of all the peoples, defending Marxist-Leninist theory and the praxis of socialist construction in the USSR and in other socialist countries.

Before proceeding to a serious, scientific study of the experience to extract the necessary lessons for overthrowing capitalism the historical experience of the working class is condemned based on premises elaborated by reaction or by opportunism, reformism and revisionism. Communists reaffirm that in the same way in which the little more than 70 days of the Commune of Paris provided extraordinary teachings that enriched the revolutionary theory of the proletariat, the experience of socialist construction that started with the Great Socialist Revolution of October constitutes a valuable patrimony for the heritage of the proletariat in its fight for socialism and communism and that it constitutes a serious error to reject or avoid it. We coincide with what is expressed in the document of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Greece On the 90^th anniversary of the Great Socialist Revolution of October “One of the main tasks of communist ideological front is to restore to the eyes of the working class the truth about socialism in the 20th century, without idealizations, objectively, free of petite bourgeois slanders. The defense of the laws of development of socialism and, at the same time, the defense of the contribution of socialism in the 20th century suppose an answer to the opportunistic theories that speak of “models” of socialism adapted to “national” pecularities, they also respond to the defeatist discussion about errors.[2]”

Emerging Subjects Versus Working Class

The developers of “Socialism of the 21st century” coincide all in that the revolutionary role of the working class today is occupied by other “subjects”, calling inclusive to the construction of new social agents; They resort to arguments of the new left, of Marcusianism, of t 60’s and 70’s, on the gentrification of the working class, on their fragmentation, on the “end of labor”. They call to rethink the concept of “worker” and without performing that exercise they pass to claim social movements, indigenous, the “multitude” as the center of the transformation.

A very important aspect of Marxism-Leninism is the clarification of the role of the proletariat. Lenin express it thus: “The fundamental thing in the doctrine of Marx is that it emphasizes the historical international role of the proletariat as the builder of socialist society” and further on the same work he expresses: “All doctrines of socialism that have not a class character and of the politics that are not of the class, showed to be a simple absurd[3]”. There have been changes that is true, but in no way they destroy the contradiction in capitalism that is the one existing between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat; in no way do they destroy the fact that the proletariat is the only consistently revolutionary class to carry to the very end not only the overthrow of bourgeois order, but the emancipation of the whole human genre. They do not take into account that their role is determined by their place in production, by their objective role in economy. The proletariat, the working class, the workers, in function of acquiring class conscience “for themselves” not only emancipate themselves, but all human kind.

Nobody will deny that in political struggle the working class needs and should forge alliances with the opressed mass of the peoples. But there exists a distance with that and the affirmations of those who search for “new social actors” assigning them a liberating role above class conflict when reality shows how passenger movements are.

Socialism Without Revolution And … Without Party

“Socialism of the 21st century” claims that neither the conquest of power or destruction of the State is necessary, but with the conquest of government it is possible to initiate a new road. Because of it all its developers do not speak of overthrowing, of breaking, of Revolution, but jumping that vital need, they present post capitalism and they devise already programs to transit to a new society. Because of it in the speech of this political-ideological nonsense not the most minimum strategic approach exists that conducts to the destruction of the State. Consequently neither any worry regarding the construction of a revolutionary party of the working class exists, a party of vanguard, a communist party. What for? If it does not claim the working class as the interested in burying the exploiters? If Revolution is not claimed as the moment in which the working class overthrows capitalism? If the possibility of undertaking post capitalist transformations is claimed in the framework of the old bourgeois State?

Let us take into account that besides planting that “in the Socialism of the 21st century” private and social property are able to and should coexist, inclusive the praise of a socialist market is done.

When the programmatic approaches of “Socialism of the 21st century” are observed one cannot stop from noting the similarity with what was the democratic- bourgeois Revolution of 1910 in Mexico and the period of greater radical nature in the developments that happened during the government of Lazaro Cardenas in 1934-1940. During that six-year period it was established that in schools, social organizations and in state administrations along with the national anthem, The Marsellaise and The Internationale were sung; an impressive distribution of lands was carried out, a true agrarian reform; oil up till then in the hands of the American and English monopolies was nationalized and in general a politics of nationalizations was opened that conducted to the result that in the 80’s 70% of the Mexican economy was nationalized; even a great aid to the Spanish Republic was given. From this, under the influence exercised by Browderism illusions on the Mexican Revolution as way to socialism grew. Just like the followers of today’s “Socialism of the 21st century” then they spoke of a State placed above classes and of class struggle, as a lever for development. For Marxists-Leninists the State is not a referee above the classes in combat, it’s the apparatus of domination, of repression, in the case of capitalism, of the class that has the property of the means of production and of change, the bourgeoisie. Nationalizations are not by themselves socialists, therefore in the case of Mexico they showed to be a mechanism for centralization and concentration of capitalism.

Instead Of Contradiction Among Capital And Labor: North Against South, Center Against Periphery.

Another notion sustained by “Socialism of the 21st century” notes as a fundamental problem to resolve the contradiction between the rich North and the poor South, parting from deceitful statistics and above all leaving sideways that both in the north and the south of the Planet class struggle exists; the same thing is the harmful idea of the center versus periphery that intends to ignore that we live in the monopolist phase of capitalism, the higher phase of capitalism which is imperialism and that all the countries are immersed in it, as well as with relations of interdependency.

It is not a matter of minor differences but of different roads.

There are those who sustain that in reality such proposal has come to bring up to date the debate on the alternative against capitalism today in crisis; that that is its value and relevance and that besides its a critical focus that with a similar ideological base than ours helps to surpass the errors of socialist construction bringing fresh air.

We try to show here some questions in which the followers of “Socialism of the 21st century” converge, however it is necessary to affirm that we face a proposal that is not structured, but that results from a mixture of positions, in some cases based on aspects of Marxism, of Christianity, of the ideas of Bolivarianism; eclecticism dominates.

They express that participatory democracy, cooperatives and self-management will come to give answer to the “authoritarianism” of the Dictatorship of the proletariat. And in short they throw incoherent concepts with the purpose of torpedoing communist theory; but without arguments; nowadays a position, tomorrow another; full confusion as the calling to the construction of a “V International” with enemies of the workers like the Institutional Revolutionary Party of Mexico.

Contemporary struggle requires to advance firmly grouped around the red flag of communism, for the transformation of the material conditions of life, for the abolition of bourgeois relations of production by the only possible way, the revolutionary way. Confusion helps In nothing, the maelstrom of incoherent approaches that are raised with the debated concept and that in last instance only are presented to retouch capitalism trying the unrealizable operation of “humanizing it”. For the working class, and not only in Latin America, for the class-conscious forces and revolutionary forces the duty is to fortify the communist parties that inscribe in their principles and program, in their action the historic experience of the workers of the world to overthrow capitalism and to build socialism, from the Paris Comune to the October Revolution.

It is nevertheless necessary to conclude that “Socialism of the 21^st century” is an alien position and even opposed to Marxism-Leninism and to the international communist movement in not only questions of politics but ideological matters. It corresponds to the communist parties to raise the red flag for the development of class conscience, the organization in class of the proletariat and the assembly of exploited and oppressed workers, the construction of the necessary alliances with all interested in overthrowing capitalism with an objective that since 1917 has full force and validity, Socialist Revolution. It’s a task of the epoch that we live at, that of imperialism and proletarian revolutions, and there is no space left for “compromises” neither for confusion.

Pável Blanco Cabrera is Member of the central committee of the Communist Party of México

Bibliography

Marx, K.; Engels, F.; Collected Works in two Tomes; Progress Publishers; Moscow; 1971

Marx, K.; Engels, F.; The German ideology; Ediciones de Cultura Popular; México; 1979 Lenin, V.I.; Collected works in three tomes; Progress Publishers; Moscow; 1977.

[1] Engels, F.; Socialism: Utopian and Scientific; in Collected Works by Marx & Engels in two Tomes; Tome II; Progress Editorial; Moscow; 1971; Pg. 149

[2] Communist Party of Greece; On the 90th anniversary of the Great Socialist Revolution of October; in Propuesta Comunista number 51; Ediciones del Partido Comunista de los Pueblos de España; 2007; Pg. 48.

[3] Lenin, V. I., Historical destiny of K. Marx’s doctrine; in Marx, Engels, Marxism; Foreign Languages Publishing House; Moscow; 1950, pp. 77-78.

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During the last 25 years, after the victory of the counterrevolutionary forces in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, the public political discussion has been dominated by the concept of the “end of history, end of ideologies”. This is certainly a very convenient concept for the dominant class, the bourgeoisie, in her effort to convince the world that: 1) Socialism has irreversibly failed, 2) Capitalism is the final winner in the succession of History’s socio-economic transformations, 3) Every argument for a non-capitalist society, where the means of productions will be socialized in a centrally-planned economy, is “unrealistic” and a “utopian fantasy”.

Anticommunism, of course, consists of a core part of the above bourgeois principle. For more than two decades, the bourgeois forces and their mechanisms (historiography, media, etc.) in all over the world have unleashed an anticommunist crusade, mainly through demonizing and slandering the Soviet Union and the socialist construction of the 20^th century in general.

A spectrum is haunting over the heads of neoliberals, centrists, social democrats, neo-Nazis and other apologists of the capitalist barbarity every time they face the Marxist-Leninist truths. It is the spectrum of the- as they use to call it- “totalitarian”, “Stalinist”, “bloodthirsty”, “repressive” etc. Soviet regime. The anticommunists try to distort history in any possible way but, unfortunately for them, they can’t change the historical facts.

History herself exposes the blatant lies of the bourgeois anticommunist propaganda. Despite it’s existed problems and weaknesses, the socialist system of the 20^th century proved Socialism’s superiority over Capitalism and showed the huge advantages it provides for the peoples’ work and life. The abolition of the capitalist relations in production liberated the man from the shackles of the wage slavery thus opening the way for the production and the development of sciences, not for the profit of the few, but for the satisfaction of peoples’ needs. In the so-called “totalitarian communist regimes” (sic) everyone had a guaranteed job, free public health and education, low-cost services provided by the state, homes, broad access to cultural and sports activities.

In the following paragraphs, as a reply to all the apologists of the capitalist barbarity, we will refer to some fundamental achievements of the socialist construction in the Soviet Union:

WOMENS RIGHTS: The great 1917 October Revolution paved the way for the social emancipation and liberation of the working class women. Before the October Revolution, in Tsarist Russia, woman was subject to various class and sex-based discriminations, with 80% of them being unskilled workers earning half the salary of their male colleagues. In Tsarist Russia, 87% of women did not know to read and write. One of the Revolution’s first decrees was to grant complete political rights to women; in Britain that happened in 1918, in the USA in 1920 and in France in 1944.

In Soviet Russia, from 1917 to 1920, almost 4 million women learned reading and writing, while from 1922 to 1928 the female representatives in the Soviets increased by 9 times (830,700 female workers and farmers). During the 1970s, while in the U.S. only 5% of the members in the federal government and the states governments were women, the 35.6% of the Supreme Soviet’s members were females.

It was in the Soviet Union- not in western Europe or in the United States- where special laws were established to protect working women during their pregnancy period: 4 months maternity leave with full pay for every woman.

Note: In the European Union the rate of unemployment in women was 10.6% in 2012 and 10.1% in 2014 (Eurostat), while the total number of women living within the limits of poverty reaches 65 million!

LABOUR ACHIEVEMENTS: In the Soviet Union there was stable and permanent work for everyone, no more than 41 hours per week. For those working in less healthy job conditions the labour hours were reduced to 36 hours/week. The working week in the Soviet Union was one of the shortest in the world, while every working man and woman had the right to leisure every week, along with stable annual- full pay- allowances.

Workers’ state social insurance was compulsory. The source for the insurance contribution wasn’t the salary of the workers but the state budget and the budgets of the state companies. Every worker had the right to full pension, at 60 years of age for men and 55 years for women. In cases of less healthy jobs, men had the right to retire at the age of 50 and women at the age of 45.

Rest and leisure was not a privilege- as it happens in Capitalism- but a right according to Article 119 of the Soviet constitution. The socialist state provided a large network of free cultural and sports institutes which were at the disposal of the people. The first house of leisure was built in Petersburg (Leningrad) in 1920, being an iniative of V.I.Lenin himself. In the beginning of 1940, there were already 3,600 houses of leisure which could serve almost 470,000 workers, while in the 1980s there were more than 14,000 leisure and vacation centers for 45 million people.

Note: In the capitalist world- especially in western Europe- the labour achievements came as a result of constant and bloody class struggles. The existence of the Soviet Union and the example of the socialist construction forced a significant number of western- bourgeois- governments to grant some social and labour rights to their people. However, after the counterrevolutions in the USSR and eastern Europe, these social and labour rights were ferociously attacked. Today, in 2016, we live the capitalist barbarity of mass unemployment, underemployment, reduced salaries, mass lay-offs, zero-contract labour relations, child employment. In the capitalist world, all social and labour rights have been sacrificed in the altar of capital’s profitability; from the U.S. of the 47 million people who live on the edge of poverty to the European Union of the 25 million unemployed people!

PUBLIC AND FREE HEALTHCARE SYSTEM: The public healthcare system that was established in the Soviet Union is a significant example of socialist construction. In Soviet Russia there was a broad state network of healthcare, based on the centrally-planned socialist economy, which provided free services of medical care for the whole population. Numbers speak by themselves: Before the October Revolution, in Tsarist Russia, the life expectancy was just 32 years. After 1917, within a few years, the life expectancy raised to 44 years (1920). In 1987, the USSR had the same life expectancy rate with the western world (69 years).

During the socialist construction, the number of doctors of all specialties was rapidly increased, while child mortality (which in pre-revolutionary Russia was a huge problem) was decreased by 10 times. In the midst of 1980s, approximately 160 million people were passing annual, preventive health-checks, while more than 35 million were under constant- free of charge- medical monitoring. During the same period, more than 28,000 state infirmaries for women and children were existing in the Soviet Union.

Note: In capitalist Russia of Mr. Putin, life expectancy rate declined- in 2004 it was at 63 years of age. Furthermore, in capitalist Russia of oligarchs and monopoly groups, healthcare isn’t free and public anymore: numerous state hospitals and clinics closed while large private hospitals were created, the work “accidents” were increased (6,000 deaths every year) and the Russian working people have to pay for the services in the existing public hospitals.

PUBLIC AND FREE EDUCATION SYSTEM: A unique achievement of Socialism’s construction in the Soviet Union was the complete elimination of illiteracy and the rapid increase of the educational level. Before the 1917 October Revolution, only 37.9% of the Russian-speaking men and 12.5% of the Russian-speaking women knew reading and writing. From the very beginning, the Soviet government made a colossal effort to eliminate illiteracy. Numbers speak by themselves: Approximately 50 million adults learned reading and writing in the years between 1920-1940; in 1937, the 75% of the total population knew how to read and write. By the decade of 1960, illiteracy had been completely eliminated.

The elimination of illiteracy- which was also achieved by Socialist Cuba in 1960s – consisted part of a general and unified educational program created by the Soviet government which included: The establishment of free education for every child, the creation of a social preschool education program, free accessible university level education for the working class and the farmers, creation of thousands of public kindergartens, elementary and high schools. The number of people who reached university-level education raised from 1.2 million in 1939 to 21 million by the end of the 1980s. From 1918 to 1990, more than 135 million Russians completed university-level education.

While in the capitalist world the right to education was becoming subject to profitability and privatizations, the students in the USSR had free access to all educational levels. There were no fees in Soviet Union’s higher education and, moreover, there was complete accessibility to medical insurance as well as to various sports and cultural events.

Note: In 2000, in Capitalist Russia, 40% of the university-level students paid fees. The restoration of Capitalism in the country led to the disintegration of the public and free character of education. The undisputed achievements of Socialism in education have been internationally recognized by scientific bodies of capitalist states. The phrase “what Ivan knows that Johnny doesn’t”, which became subject of research in the United States, is characteristic. Especially after the Soviet triumph in the sector of sciences, including space science, nobody could dispute the superiority of the socialist system in the field of education.

*    *    * 

There is no sector of science during the 20^th century in which the Soviet Union wasn’t a leading force. Every year, 20%-25% of the annual inventions, in almost every aspect of technology, belonged to the USSR.

We could refer to much more achievements of Socialism in the Soviet Union, as well as in eastern Europe. We could certainly refer to the complete transformation of a poor, semi-feudal Tsarist state to a superpower with extensive industrialization and rapid increase of agricultural production. We could refer to the colossal contribution of the Soviet Union to the antifascist struggle during WW2. We could also refer to the magnificent Soviet achievements in Arts and Culture, including cinema, theatre, classical music, poetry, literature, etc.).

The conclusion is one: In any sector of the social and economic life, Socialism proved it’s superiority over Capitalism. And when we talk about “superiority” we refer on how the Socialist system managed to satisfy peoples’ needs by eliminating the exploitation of man by man. Capitalism, with its anarchist nature in production and the deification of profit, has nothing more to offer to humanity except from poverty, misery, unemployment, inequalities, and wars. 

The Soviet Union and the socialist states of the 20^th century, despite their existed problems, proved that a better world is possible. Despite the temporary historical setback of the 1989-1991 counterrevolutions, nothing has finished. The end of history didn’t come, Mr. Fukuyama and dear apologists of Capitalism.

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