Oh, that inconvenient VII Congress

Recently, the Department of International Relations of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Greece (KKP) published an article criticizing the International Anti-Fascist Forum in Moscow. With this material, the KKE theorists broke through the next ideological bottom, accusing the VII Congress of the Comintern (1935) of mistakes and the problematic (must be understood as unscientific) definition of fascism. It should be assumed that for most parties the theoretical developments of the Comintern of that time are authoritative and relevant so far. Their consideration and analysis are aimed primarily at how we in practice today can use the experience of struggle accumulated by the Communists for many decades. And finally, comrades from the KKE openly told all the anti-fascists that they did not agree! First of all, the corporalists of the KKE turned against the definition of the Comintern (George Dimitrov), given just at the VII Congress fascism, which is in power:

Fascism is the open terrorist dictatorship of the most reactionary, the most chauvinistic, most imperialist elements of financial capital.

Fascism is not a supraclass power or the power of the petty bourgeoisie or the lumpen-proletariat over financial capital.

Fascism is the power of financial capital itself. It is an organization of terrorist violence with the working class and the revolutionary part of the peasantry and the intelligentsia.

Fascism in foreign policy is chauvinism in the most crude form, cultivating zoological hatred against other peoples.

Theorists of the KKE do not agree with the fact that Dimitrov allocated financial capital as the main customer of fascism. In addition, the KKE for greater persuasiveness declares that the definition of Dimitrov is not only erroneous, but also outdated to date. It should be understood that this argument is intended for those who consider the position of the Comintern still true. The definition, they say, was largely opportunistic, because it was given in conditions when “the imperialist forces planned the destruction of the only socialist state in the world, and the USSR sought to split the imperialist forces and use their contradictions.”

The most interesting thing is that, with all this criticism of the achievements of the VII Congress, the ideologues of the KKE for a long time do not give any own definition of fascism, hiding only for reference to the Congress of the Comintern held in 1928, which gave supposedly fundamentally different interpretations: “under certain specific historical conditions, the onset of the bourgeoisie, imperialist and reactionary, takes the form of fascism”, and “the signs of fascism” were given in detail.

But if we look at where the ideologues of the KKE send us, that is, in the materials of the VI Congress, we will see that just there is a clear definition that has not yet been formed, and there was an analysis of the phenomenon in the process of its formation. In particular, a number of external signs of fascism were identified and listed: direct violence, the struggle against the proletarian movement, the achievement of the political unity of all the ruling classes (banks, large industry, farmers), the reliance on the discontent of the broad strata of the petty bourgeoisie and even the workers, social demagogyny, etc.

We know that in 1928 fascism had not yet unfolded in full force, did not develop to its highest form, which was later manifested in fascist Germany. Even aggressive foreign policy, this important feature of fascism, by 1928 had not yet become apparent. And we also know that Marx advised to study phenomena in their mature form: “Man’s anatomy is the key to the anatomy of the monkey.” That is why it is absolutely clear that the Seventh Congress of the Comintern knew about fascism as much more than the VI Congress. The effect of accumulating knowledge also worked. Moreover, in both cases, the analysis of fascism was carried out by almost the same people.

In the 1920’s, when the Communists had not yet fully studied fascism, the label of fascism was often tried on any rigid bourgeois regimes. For example, it is known that the German Communists of the late 20-ies believed that Weimar Germany by that time was a fascist state. However, the same communists (German and not only) after 1933 saw Hitlerism, that is, fascism in its developed form. And this already made it possible to theoretically separate fascism from other forms of bourgeois dictatorship (according to Lenin, any bourgeois-democratic state is at the same time the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie), which always (i.e., and not developed into fascism) behaves in relation to the working class as a machine of class suppression. Having singled out fascism as a special phenomenon, it was possible to select the most effective methods of dealing with this form of bourgeois dictatorship (for example, the tactics of the popular fronts).

Fascism is a product of the epoch of imperialism, its specific instrument, and it is obvious that the main customer of fascism will be the part of the capital that developed in the epoch of imperialism as a new dominant force, that is, financial capital. Even if there are various strata of the bourgeoisie in the country, there is always financial capital over all of them in the era of imperialism, the most powerful part formed by the fusion of bank capital with the industrial and taking upon more and more functions of direct control of the economy, including through the state machine. The same VI Congress of the Comintern has repeatedly emphasized this danger.

The references of the ideologues of the KKE to the fact that the 1935 formulations depended on the confrontation between the USSR the capitalist world look somewhat ridiculous, since in 1928 the imperialists desperately wanted to destroy the Soviet Union – but the decisions of the VI Congress, adopted that year, the authors of the document from the KKE, for some reason, consider it possible to refer. Maybe in 1928 the imperialists hated the USSR and the October Revolution less than in 1935? It doesn’t seem to be like that.

In addition, it is worth saying that the opposition to the decisions of the last two congresses of the Comintern is methodologically incorrect. Instead of observing the scientific principle of historicism, to show how some decisions arise on the basis of others, the ideologists of the KKE decided to apply the method of liberals who love, for example, to oppose the works of the young and mature Marx. It works to immature minds, but we are dialectical, we understand the phenomenon in development.

We see that the statements of the KKE about the erroneousness of the assessments and definitions of the 7th Congress of the Comintern do not withstand the verification of elementary facts and contradict logic.

Dogmatism and Hegemony of the KKE?

So why did the KKG deepen today in the Comintern disputes, began to refute the definition of the Comintern, to prove the erroneous tactics of the people’s fronts in the fight against fascism? Recently released a video of the same orientation Solidnet | Communist Party of Greece, a timely video of the KKE “Historical conclusions about the anti-fascist fronts. Modern Struggle Against Fascism (English, Russian)

In our opinion, there are a few motives here. The first is that the KKE leadership withstands its long-standing but erroneous ideological line.

The modern communists of the world are well aware of the theoretical innovation emanating from the KKE, which asserts that practically all capitalist states of the epoch of imperialism are imperialist countries, since everywhere there is a dominant position of monopolies (“the theory of the imperialist pyramid”). The KKE is not embarrassed even by the fact that Lenin spoke directly about a handful of the imperialist states that plunder the rest of the world. So now, in the development of their old unproven dogma, the ideologues of the KKE are trying to present all capitalist (i.e., imperialist, in their opinion) countries as potentially equally ready to become fascist. How else to explain the desire of the leaders of the KKE to abandon the division of capitalist countries into bourgeois-democratic and fascist? Comrades, from our point of view, do not distinguish between fascism in power and manifestation of elements of fascism in ideology and politics. The first phenomenon is described by the definition of the Comintern. The second, in one form or another, inherent in almost all bourgeois states, and more recently more and more.

As noted at the Seventh Congress of the Comintern, “the masses bourgeois , fascismNaturally, the conditions for the struggle of the working class are more favorable under any democracy. But the Greek comrades are now easily brushing away this conclusion. According to the logic of the leaders of the Greek Communist Party, not only those states where the terrorist dictatorship of financial capital has already been established are fascist, but in general all the imperialist countries where elements of fascization are observed in ideology and politics.

It turns out that the concept of fascism is blurred, becomes almost synonymous with capitalism and applicable, if possible, to any bourgeois regime, no matter how he behaves openly or not. Such a ridiculous method, of course, is very dangerous to use – it is possible to frank fascists, as in Ukraine, to be expelled as the formation of a young nation, and you can blame any bourgeois country for fascism. For example, from the point of view of the Marxist-Leninist party of Germany, regime B. Assad in Syria was supposedly a fascist dictatorship, and his armed overthrow by Islamists was a progressive democratic revolution. Or there are reproaches from some of the left-winged president of Belarus A. Lukashenko with accusations of dictatorship and a roll to fascism by analogy with Zelensky.

And here we move on to the second motive for the behavior of the ideologues of the KKE. Today’s Communist Party of Greece is an organization that is trying, on the one hand, to organize an international communist movement. And for that, she should be thanked very much. On the other hand, they accepted the well-deserved compliments for the organization of a series of meetings of the communist and workers’ parties of the Solidnet system as recognition of their theoretical genius, began to show elements of intolerance to other opinions, a kind of communist swagger, when comrades, alone, without listening to objections and other opinions, determine who rights and who is wrong. There were attempts to subdue the communist movement of the world. Having felt some time ago “first among equals”, the leaders of the KKE somehow forgot about equality and pick up satellites. From the Communist Parties of different countries, the leaders of the KKE are simply demanding to stop doubting the usefulness of their ideological alchemy. If they claim that the war is imperialist on all sides, and fascism is inherent in all participants, then there can be no special methods to combat real living fascism. The KKE states as a mantra that only the working class and communists are capable of fighting fascism and capitalism (in particular, recall B quote B. Brecht). But if in a certain country the working class is not yet ready for broad independent actions and the Communists have not yet achieved the support of the masses of the working people, then the KKE does not see the need to unite the various anti-fascist forces to fight the main source of danger and the builder of fascism. Thus, theorists of the KKE in fact lead to a wait-and-see inaction, even if there is a clear danger of fascism (by definition of Dimitrov). That is, according to the Greek theorists (whose in both China and the United States has the same imperialism), the anti-fascists need to wait for the moment when the rebel workers will be able to sweep away capitalism in the PRC and the United States, and then fascism is over, and in any other way.

Are you being attacked by fascists? Prohibit communist ideology, poison your native language, massively kill and burn dissenters alive? But, according to the disrepertists of the tactics of the Comintern, to oppose the brown plague with a common front is unpromising. We must wait for the proletariat to be prepared for revolution. And if you begin to resist fascism right now, fight with it and look for anti-fascist allies in other political camps (i.e., not only among the Communists), the KKE will immediately brand you as social-chovinists and even as accomplices of imperialism. But it is known that V.I. Lenin said: “The denial of any possibility of national wars under imperialism is theoretically wrong, historically erroneous, and practically equal to European chauvinism…”¹

KKE as a brake on the fight against fascism

In practice, all this is clearly manifested in the situation around the SVO, Russia’s military clash with Ukraine (in fact, the imperialist West, including a member of NATO, Greece), is clearly manifested in this year. The Communists of the RKRP have always been extremely critical – and continue to treat the bourgeois regime in the Russian Federation. But, we demanded certain actions from him and recognize that, objectively speaking, only this regime was able to give weapons in 2014 into the hands of the anti-fascists of Donbass, and in 2022, by the very force of his army, opposed the Ukrainian Bander fascism, which in fact is a puppet in the hands of Western imperialist financial capital. And if it were not for the help of the bourgeois Russia to the rebel Donbass, the Nazi punishers could well fulfill their promise “we will cut everyone!” The experience of Odessa and the action of the punishers in the Donbass leave no doubt about the seriousness of their intentions.

Ukraine under the rule of Zelensky now, obviously, a fascist country (by scientific definition of the Comintern). And the political leaders of Ukraine themselves openly admit that they are the heirs of Bandera and Shukhevych, that is, Hitler’s associates. The customer of fascism is in this case Western financial capital. In the country, gangs of “assault” are being troved by gangs of “TCC”, or rather detachments of the “TCC” (territorial centers of acquisition), “Azov” and other ardent nationalists, all communists and workers’ organizations are prohibited, Soviet and communist symbols are outlawed, the Russian language is actually prohibited. Even an entire religious denomination, Orthodox Christians, has been extremely discriminated against. The open terrorist nature of the Zelensky regime is not in doubt

In modern capitalist Russia, manifestations of fascism in ideology and politics are also observed. But while they are at the level of individual manifestations, not escalating into state policy. The Communists act legally, the working-class movement is alive (albeit in its infancy), the monuments to Lenin are not massively destroyed. There is no racial, linguistic, confessional discrimination in public policy (although there are not few private excesses). The financial capital of the Russian Federation does not pass to an openly terrorist form of domination, because, apparently, it does not experience at the moment such a need. Moreover, Russia, with all the desire of its ruling class to stand on a par with the leading Western countries, largely leads the SVO precisely in order to prevent the military defeat of Russia, in order to prove that the Russian bourgeois class itself is able to exploit the natural and human resources of the country, and wants to trade without any sanctions and restrictions. Thus, the SVO performs a positive protective function, since the dismemberment of Russia does not correspond to the interests of the working class of Russia and the world. At the same time, Russia is a real bourgeois dictatorship (in the form of limited bourgeois democracy). But to oppose its actions to help Donbass, to suppress fascism in Ukraine, is to help the Nazis.

However, the ideologues of the KKE do not agree with this assessment of Russia. They scrupulously list a number of disturbing phenomena (from the advance of the reactionaries of Solzhenitsin and Ilyin by the Russian authorities to the presence of the nationalist DShR “Rusich”). This is an attempt to equate Ukraine and Russia, as, allegedly, regimes similar in nature. That is, the ideologues of the Greek Communist Party do not distinguish fascism as state policy and fascist tendencies in ideology and politics in bourgeois society, which to varying degrees are inherent in almost all bourgeois states.

Such assessments could have been disagreed with the inhabitants of Donbass, shot not by anyone, but by Bandera Ukraine from different types of weapons since 2014 and from the same time, who had risen to an anti-fascist uprising, the core of which was the working class, tractorists and miners. But to ignore the suffering of the peoples of the former USSR today in the fashion of Western politicians, in whose actions are increasingly clearly visible are notes by notes of revanchism for the defeat of the USSR in 1945. And it is very strange that among these politicians were the modern leaders of the KKE.

The ongoing military conflict in the leadership of the KKE is considered only “intra-imperialist” and Russia’s goals are as predatory as the United States and the EU. The fact that capitalist Russia suffers enormous losses from Western sanctions and has already lost (under very mysterious circumstances) Nord Stream pipelines – and this was the main material component of the source of income of Russian oligarchs and the budget of the Russian Federation. Even more strange is the fact that such fundamental anti-imperialist analysts of the KKE do not see the expansion of American imperialism into the EU market, the suppression of the economy and, consequently, the interests of the working classes of European countries. Thus, the US and the EU have been applying pressure and violent methods to Russia for a long time, and the true purpose of this pressure is not a secret. The secret here is different: why do the leaders of the KKE not want to see this?

The RKRP believes that the bourgeoisie of Russia, not forgetting about its unrealized imperialist fantasies, is still primarily in the ongoing conflict to fight for its own survival, not agreeing to the dismemberment of the country, the transformation of Russia into a semi-colony or a dependent country. More than once, the leaders of the opinions of the imperialist countries spoke about the need to divide Russia into several parts – for the convenience of their subordination and exploitation. That is why the bourgeois regime of the Russian Federation is forced to confront the imperialist West, which initiated the creation of a fascist regime in Ukraine in order to pressure and weaken Russia. In parallel with this, the bourgeoisie of the Russian Federation (again, forced) helps the peoples of Donbass and Ukraine to free themselves from the fascist Bandera yoke. The workers of Russia as a whole support the anti-fascist goals of the SVO, realizing that the return of the country to a dependent state (as in the 1990-ies) or its dismemberment will be extremely unprofitable, disastrous, deadly, dangerous for the whole people.

In 2014, in the east of Ukraine, for objective reasons, the proletarian revolution could not have occurred – the working class is not yet at all ripe for an independent speech under socialist slogans. But the workers of Donbass and the Communists were able to join forces in reality with various bourgeois, Orthodox and even monarchical anti-fascist forces and rebuff the advancing Bandera punishers. In fact, the old proven tactics of the popular fronts were spontaneously used – joint action against fascism. And this tactic in the new conditions of the XXI century fully justified itself, the Banderites failed to destroy the people’s republics, which do not agree with the rapid fascization.

But all this lively, fighting and saving peoples is condemned by the ideologists of the KKE, who consider the creation of popular fronts a dead end and actually offer people in order to have the right to fight fascism, to wait for a laboratory pure revolutionary situation and a reference proletarian revolution, sweeping away capitalism with all its fascist pads. Figuratively speaking, the CNG theorists who broke away from life, based on the unsuccessful fulfillment of the tactics of the fronts in individual countries, primarily in Greece, deny the very idea of the common front. In fact, rejecting Lenin’s theory of alliances and the use of cracks in the capitalist camp. Today, the ideologues of the KKE offer almost to wait for revolutions in the United States and China. Are we waiting?

Based on the assessment of historical events, then by and large, the Comintern won the war (1939-1945) from the fascist Atiomintern Pact. But the Comintern acted, according to KKE experts, wrong. Here, the assessments of our Greek opponents are somewhat similar to the estimates of our Russian anti-Soviets. They claim that the Soviet Union won the war, but socialism has nothing to do with it, since the people fought simply for the Motherland. And the Greek comrades turn out that the Comintern won, but did it contrary to the “wrong” tactics of creating a people’s anti-fascist fronts. Such an understanding of Marxism, we, the Communists of the RKP, can be called a particularly clinical form of parody of Marxism, a tactic of throwing revolutionary phrases and a strategy of justifying retreat without a struggle before the most brutal imperialist reaction.

Questions that have been brewing for years

We do not consider the ideologues of the Communist Party of Greece foolish people who do not understand the consequences of their ideological justifications. The proletariat, which needs organizational assistance here and now, is carefully treated in the direction of abandoning self-defense. So why does the Communist Party of Greece call on the peoples to withdraw from the struggle against concrete living fascism, which is proceeding in real time and with the involvement of various anti-fascist forces? Does the KKE leadership not understand that it is more profitable for the Communists and the workers’ movement to work a hundred times better in the conditions of both the curtailed and constantly reduced, but still bourgeois democracy and in the legal field than under fascist regimes to hide in the forests and underground, without having a wide access to the workers? Why is the party itself legally existing in the NATO country, of this imperialist bloc, which has a “green light” from its ruling class of its country to political and economic activity, to pass not only to the parliament of Greece, but also to the European Parliament, is trying to control the international communist movement, and at the same time chicly rejects any criticism, appoints its allies as the only right Communist Parties, carries out measures that lead undesirable parties to split? Why does he leave a theoretical dispute, but just throws away dissenting parties from the editorial office of the International Journal of the MKO? What gives the right of KKE to consider itself the leader of the world movement? Did this party in the latest history (in the last quarter of a century) have some objective prerequisites for the imminent achievement of the revolution? No one seems to have heard of it, moreover, the theoretical question “Is a revolution in a single Greece possible?” remains open for now.

The RKRP has repeatedly faced with the fact that the KKE slowed down the publication of our party materials on the international resource Solidnet. The RKRP is aware of the political and material support provided by the KKE to those unscrupulous former members of our party who a few years ago tried to steal our party Internet resources. We see that the parties of other CNG countries are doing the same.

Isn’t the ideologues of the KKE taking much, considering their party an infallible arbiter who labels and dismisses unwanted international bodies from the work? Or maybe the leaders of the KKE turned opposition activity into the form of their existence in bourgeois society? They nourish the dissenting electorate, provide communication and public protests of the dissatisfied, but at the same time do not wave at the keshchey of imperialism itself, since it is possible to suffer for this.

Yeah, there’s a lot of questions here.

I want to believe that the KKE will find healthy forces and curtail all this growth-intellar political alchemy, causing considerable harm to the world movement.

Returning to the beginning of the article, we recall that the Greek comrades at the Anti-Fascist Forum were not present themselves. First, because it took place in Moscow – “the capital of a capitalist country whose leadership openly participates in the war and is covered with anti-fascism.” And secondly, because they do not agree with the main assessments of the forum.

The RKRP also has serious discrepancies with the CPRF, and with the Platform in assessing the events and roles of Russia and China in the anti-imperialist struggle, but we considered it our duty to participate in the forum and express our Marxist point of view for his fellow wrestling. And the Greeks’ comrades evaded the struggle. There were no anti-fascists where there were no anti-fascists. As well as the ongoing war in the Donbass. There are living fascists here, our comrades are at war with them, but Greek comrades are not here. Because, as they say, they fight wrong.

Maybe the wrong thing is enough, but the worst thing is to evade the fight against fascism. This is shameful for the Communists.

Ideological Commission of the Central Committee of the RKRP

1. V.I. Lenin PSS vol.30 page. 133 ↩︎