From Workers' Herald
No. 1, 1992
By Al Johnson. Reprinted from the Dec. '91/Jan. '92 issue of Labor's Champion.
Our paper has consistently stated that the creation and collapse of the revisionist regimes in Eastern Europe and their replacement with open bourgeois regimes (both democratic and fascist) was a culmination of processes begun by the revisionists who took power in the USSR after Stalin. The creation and demise of these regimes was not a spontaneous process inherent to socialism, as is claimed by the capitalist theoreticians. Rather, their creation and demise can be traced directly to the successful implementation of Khrushchev's program of restoring capitalism once Stalin was out of the way. In short, after the death of Stalin, the outcome of the class struggle between the proletariat and the remnants of the capitalist class in the USSR, found in favor of the capitalist elements. Why the proletariat was defeated and the shortcomings that facilitated its defeat, we will not go into here, but we will take it up at another time.
The revisionist program for the restoration of capitalism was concealed from the masses while Stalin was alive because the revisionists knew that Stalin was capable of mobilizing the party and people to defeat them. So they hid their real stand. Only after Stalin's death was it put on the table and openly adopted by the Krushchevite gang after they usurped power. This revisionist program was formally adopted at the 20th and 22nd Soviet party conferences.
Some of our readers have asked that we spell out in more detail the main points of that line and that is the purpose of this article. But we can only give a sketch because of the limitations of space imposed by the newspaper.
On March 3, 1953, Joseph Stalin, the faithful leader of the international proletarian movement, died in Moscow. This momentous occasion came at a time when he was launching another of the many counter-attacks against new revisionists in the Bolshevik party who had popped up during and after World War II. Stalin characterized these elements as essentially Bogdanovites and Bukharinites who had re-bottled the "old wine" of N. Bukharin. Bukharin asserted that the peasant capitalist class could peacefully evolve into socialism in the USSR, thus eliminating a need for the proletarian dictatorship and the expropriation of the exploiters. After World War II, some remnants of these forces claimed to seek a most rapid transition to communism, which they saw as occurring automatically, and again without the need for the dictatorship of the proletariat. In short, their real objective was to weaken and eliminate the dictatorship of the proletariat. The economic doctrine of these neo-Bukharinites were subjected to a scathing criticism in Stalin's Economic Problems of Socialism in the U.S.S.R. published in 1952. Their political doctrines on the state were further combated by the leaders of the party through the re-issue (during the war and after) of Stalin's basic works on the proletarian state, namely, the special volume entitled Problems of Leninism (Foreign Languages Publishing House [FLPH] 1947, Russian Edition) and J.V. Stalin Works (FLPH 1946-1951 Russian Edition).
In addition, Stalin's pamphlet entitled "Mastering Bolshevism," first published in 1937, got wider circulation. In this polemic, Stalin exposed the counter-revolutionary nature of Trotskyism and other revisionists who claimed that the class struggle dies down with the advance of socialism. Here is what he said:
"We must destroy and cast aside the rotten theory that with every advance we make, the class struggle here of necessity would die down more and more, and that in proportion as we achieve success the class enemy would become more and more tractable." (pp. 21-22).
He warned the party rank and file that their successes in economic construction should not give way to dizziness and lack of political vigilance against the revisionists and wreckers. He reminded them that remnants of the class enemy were still present.
"This," said Stalin, "is not only a rotten theory but a dangerous one, for it lulls our people, leads them into a trap, and makes it possible for the class enemy to rally for the struggle against the Soviet government.
"On the contrary, the further forward we advance, the greater the success we achieve, the greater will be the fury of the remnants of the broken exploiting classes, the sooner will they resort to sharper forms of struggle, the more will they seek to harm the Soviet state and the more will they clutch at the most desperate means of struggle, as the last resort of the doomed people.
"It should be borne in mind that the remnants of the broken classes in the U.S.S.R. are not alone. They have the direct support of our enemies beyond the bounds of the U.S.S.R. It would be a mistake to think that the sphere of class struggle is limited to the bounds of the U.S.S.R. While one end of the class struggle has its operation within the bounds of the U.S.S.R., its other stretches to the bounds of the bourgeois states surrounding us. The remnants of the broken class cannot but be aware of this. And precisely because they are, they will continue their desperate assaults in the future." (p. 22)
Stalin's untimely death provided the opportunity for these "remnants" to launch a decisive offensive to restore capitalism. Given the enormous stature he occupied in the party and the state, by enormous political knowledge and his unshakable devotion and service to the proletariat, his loss naturally brought with it a certain amount of disorder in the party; just as with the loss of Lenin in 1924. But then, there was a leader who came forward of the same caliber -- Stalin -- to keep the ship on course. This was not the case when Stalin died. Khrushchev and his gang had concealed their true nature from the party while Stalin was alive, and later took power into their hands by all means, including force. (In our last issue we reported on pro-Stalin, anti-revisionist demonstrators shot down by the army in Tbilisi in 1956.)
Once in power, Khrushchev and his gang set about implementing their revisionist program. There were a number of planks to this platform but the fundamental and most basic was the outright liquidation of the dictatorship of the proletariat in the USSR and its rejection as the fundamental ideological principle of Marxism-Leninism applied anywhere in the world.
Khrushchev laid out his line departing from and betraying Marxism in the discussion of the new draft party program at the 22nd Party Congress. Listen to what this charlatan says:
"The Draft Programme of the Party raises, and resolves a new important question of communist theory and practice -- the development of the dictatorship of the working class into a state of the whole people, the character and the tasks of this state, and its future under communism. The state of the whole people is a new stage in the development of the socialist state, an all important milestone on the road from socialist statehood to communist public self-government." [emphasis in the original -- ed.] (p. 248-49)
He went on:
"It stands to reason that when socialism had triumphed completely and finally in our country and we entered upon the period of full-scale communist construction, the conditions which necessitated the dictatorship of the proletariat disappeared, its domestic purposes were fulfilled."
This is ludicrous. It is an exaggeration of what had actually been accomplished in socialist construction which Stalin warned about earlier. After World War II, the USSR had made impressive gains in restoring the economy, revamping the industrial base and improving in the socialist relations of production, but no one in their right mind could say that they had entered the "period of full scale communist construction." In fact, in 1952, Stalin warned that the low level of culture, productive forces, etc., necessitated that the socialist principle of distribution (payment according to amount of work done) be retained for a considerable period of time into the future before there could be an advance to the higher stage of communism. Moreover, the capitalist encirclement and the remnants of the overthrown exploiting classes made it impossible to even think of the elimination of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Stalin was faithful to Lenin's stand that the dictatorship of the proletariat could not be done away with until the exploiters had been overthrown in a number of the most advanced states in the world.
Khrushchev plunged deeper into the opportunist swamp with this erudite sophistry at the 22nd Congress:
"The working class is the only class in history which does not entertain the purpose of perpetuating its domination. When the conditions which gave rise to its dictatorship disappear, when the tasks which society could accomplish solely with its help are consummated, the state gradually develops, under the leadership of the working class, into a nation-wide organization of all the working people of socialist society. With the victory of socialism and the country's entry into the period of full-scale communist construction, the working class of the Soviet Union has on its own initiative, consistent with the tasks of communist construction, transformed the state of proletarian dictatorship into a state of the whole people. That, comrades, is a fact unparalleled in history. Until now the state has always been an instrument of dictatorship by this or that class. In our country, for the first time in history, a state had taken shape which is not a dictatorship of any one class, but an instrument of society as a whole, of the entire people. (Stormy applause)
"Communist construction no longer requires the dictatorship of the proletariat. All working people in our society have equal rights. To be sure, the working class continues to play the leading role in society also during the transition to communism. It retains this role because it is the most advanced and most organized class, a class associated with machine industry, one that is the most consistent bearer of communist ideals." (pp. 250-51)
"The might of our society and state, far from diminishing, increases many times over in the course of its development from the dictatorship of the proletariat into a state of the whole people, because new sources of strength appear alongside the old. Coupled with the continuous growth of its economic potential, the social basis of our state has gained added strength and has expanded, and society has become more united and monolithic than ever before. Therein lies the chief source of strength of the state. Every worker, every peasant, every intellectual can say: We are the state: its policy is our policy, and the task of development and consolidating it, as our common task. (Prolonged applause)." (pp. 251-52)
Thus, we have a summary of the revisionist line of Khrushchev on the dictatorship of the proletariat.
But even at this conference, apparently some people did not fully accept this stench, this sell-out to the bourgeoisie. Thus, in the same document, Khrushchev delivers the following tirade against his opponents:
"There is yet another type of proposal, submitted by people whose approach to the processes taking place in life I would say, scholastic, and not creative. Some comrades, for example, are of the opinion that the dictatorship of the proletariat should be retained until final victory of communism has been achieved. These comrades do not take into consideration the objective conditions that have grown up in our country, and base themselves exclusively on random quotations, losing sight of the essence of the theory of Marx, Engels, and Lenin on the state of the dictatorship of the proletariat as the form of the state in the period of transition from capitalism to socialism, the first phase of communism. They do not take into consideration the fact that there are now only laboring classes in our socialist society, classes engaged in socialist production, and socially, politically, and ideologically united. After the complete and final victory of socialism in our country there is no basis for the dictatorship of one class. And, indeed, in respect of which class can there possibly be a dictatorship in our country? We have no such classes.
"Such comrades, moreover, are of the opinion that since the alliance of the working class and the peasantry had remained, the dictatorship of the proletariat should remain. But they do not understand that the workers and peasants alliance needed the dictatorship of the proletariat to combat the exploiting classes, to transform peasant farming along socialist lines and to re-educate the peasantry, and to build socialism. Now that those tasks have been accomplished the alliance of the working class and the peasantry is successfully developing and growing stronger without the dictatorship of the proletariat under the conditions of a socialist state of the whole people." (pp. 291-92)
This demagogy used to liquidate the worker's state in the USSR and replace the dictatorship of the proletariat with the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, under the title of the "state of the whole people" is full of holes. Not only was Khrushchev's line in contradiction with itself, it was in complete opposition to the line of Leninism and contrary to the living facts of the day. His claim that the proletarian dictatorship was no longer needed, allegedly, due to the elimination of hostile classes in the U.S.S.R betrayed his own earlier statements that the party had to suppress an "anti-party" group that wanted to restore capitalism. He pretends not to understand that the admission of the need to suppress an adversary, in and of itself, proves the existence of hostile classes or their remnants. His claim that the USSR in the early 1950s was so socially "united and monolithic" that it could now practically go onto the higher phase of communism was a lie. The social groups he enumerated (workers, peasants, and intellectuals) were striking evidence speaking against his thesis. The workers and collective farm peasants represented two different classes and the intelligentsia a strata drawn from both classes. The means of subsistence of the workers, even at that stage of socialism, came from wages (nominally -- social consumptive funds) but for collective farmers their income came from the sale of goods on the market. Even though they were not hostile, antagonistic classes, both classes had different social roots which gave rise to conflicts between them. In reality, one could not talk about proceeding to the higher stage of communism until the cooperative farms were transformed completely into state farms and the cooperativist peasant became an agricultural worker. And, of course, to guide and bring about this transition, the proletarian dictatorship was needed.
In the meantime, the state had to be a state of the proletariat, for another reason. It had to fight the capitalist encirclement which would last for a considerable period of time given that the USSR and its allies in the new states liberated from fascism in Eastern Europe were still not as strong as the international capitalists.
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Then this clownish talk about a "state of the whole people," with the implication that it is above and not connected to a definite class, does not make any sense. History knows of no state which is not the organ of a definite class. In the concrete conditions of the USSR at that time, the state headed by Khrushchev had to represent either the proletariat or the capitalist class. Khrushchev knew he was setting up a capitalist state when he claimed he was creating a "state of the whole people." Of course, the capitalist state always tries to present itself as an organ of "all the people" but this is simple window dressing to deceive the exploited masses. Underneath this dressing are the savage organs of repression and violence directed by the capitalists against the wage slaves. As Engels pointed out on numerous occasions in his battle with the revisionists and liberals, "The state is nothing more than a machine for the oppression of one class by another, and indeed in the democratic republic no less than in a monarchy..." (Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State)
Khrushchev's line about going forward to communism was only a "left" cover for his actual program of going back to capitalism and the capitalist state. History has shown that those who followed in the footsteps of Khrushchev (Brezhnev, Andropov, Gorbachev, Yeltsin etc.), while differing only on the speed of the transition, have carried into effect the very program outlined by their ideological and political mentor, Khrushchev. No wonder, the leading capitalists in the West have endorsed and supported these persons while attacking the real proletarian revolutionaries such as Stalin.
So long as the USSR was headed by Stalin, the workers' dictatorship was defended and socialism advanced. Indeed, there were weaknesses and shortcomings, many of which Stalin himself exposed, but the proletariat held power. So the restoration of capitalism and the subsequent collapse of the revisionist regimes in the USSR and the East are not the product of the basic line of Marx, Lenin or Stalin. It is the outcome of the work of the revisionists who departed from this line, and openly deserted to the camp of the capitalists.
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