{"id":601,"date":"2019-09-05T18:05:45","date_gmt":"2019-09-05T16:05:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/marxistworkersparty.org.za\/?page_id=601"},"modified":"2019-09-05T18:19:07","modified_gmt":"2019-09-05T16:19:07","slug":"chapter-five","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/marxistworkersparty.net\/?page_id=601","title":{"rendered":"Chapter Five"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The \u201cNew\u201d SACP’s Explanation of Stalinism<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The South African Communist Party has now been relaunched on an open\nbasis within the country. It claims it will shed the heritage of Stalinism, and\nadvance the struggle for socialism.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

As part of this\n“renovation”, General Secretary Joe Slovo has published a pamphlet\ntitled “Has\nSocialism Failed?<\/a>“, as “the first reflections of the author\nonly” on explaining the divergence that exists between the Marxist\nconception of socialism and the practice of “socialism” in the Soviet\nUnion and Eastern Europe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He admits that the bureaucracies\nin these countries have been “all-powerful”. He refers to\n“unbridled authoritarianism”, “the steady erosion of people’s\npower both at the level of government and mass social organisations”,\n“the perversion of the concept of the party as a vanguard of the working\nclass”, “anti-Leninist theory”, “a dictatorship of a party\nbureaucracy”. He concedes: “the majority of people had very few\nlevers with which to determine the course of economic or social life”,\n“inner-party democracy was almost completely suffocated by\ncentralism”, “all effective power was concentrated in the hands of a\nPolitical Bureau or, in some cases, a single, all-powerful personality”,\n“the concept of consensus effectively stifled dissent and promoted the\nunnatural appearance of unanimity on everything”, “the alternative to\nactive conformism was either silence or the risk of punishment as ‘an enemy of\nthe people\u2019\u201d\u2014, etc., etc.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All these are extraordinary, and\nonly very recent admissions, by a Party that has defended every crime of Stalinism\nin the past. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Attending the 26th Congress of\nthe Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1981, for example, Yusuf Dadoo\n(national chairman) and Moses Mabhida (general secretary) of the SACP wrote:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Congress hall was filled with delegates who had, by their honest labour and toil for the common good, richly deserved the highest honours and distinctions which the CPSU and Soviet government could bestow on them. These delegates were no arm-chair theoreticians. They were the life and blood of the heroic Soviet people…<\/p>

Here were the heirs of the great Bolsheviks, no less fervent in their commitment to create a better life, not only for their own people, but for all humanity. There is no other Party which has produced such selfless, devoted and disciplined communists, such tenacious fighters for peace, freedom and socialism.<\/p>African Communist<\/em>, 3rd Quarter 1981<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Now it emerges… all this was lies! <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Writing in the African Communist<\/em> (1st Quarter, 1979) on\n“Human Rights and the Fight for Socialism”, Dialego \u2013 yes, the very\nsame one \u2013 in the course of making some correct criticism of capitalist\nhypocrisy on human rights, claimed that in the Soviet Union: “the\ntraditional civil freedoms now serve to strengthen<\/strong>\na socialist democracy by making it possible for the mass of the people to take\npart in decision-making (as<\/strong> in the socialist countries today<\/strong>)\nrather than a small elite of \u2018politicians\u2019”! (Our emphasis)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The SACP denounced the\nrevolutionary attempt of the Hungarian workers in 1956 to establish workers’ democracy\nas a “capitalist counter-revolution”. It applauded the Russian\ninvasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 to crush popular revolt as a “defence\nof socialism”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All this was lies, by leaders of\nthe SACP. Can anyone believe them now? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Slovo on the nature of the bureaucracy<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

But Slovo says that his intention\nin the pamphlet is to defend socialism and Marxism. Let us examine his argument.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Marxist ideology” \u2013 he writes \u2013 “saw the future state as ‘a direct democracy in which the task of governing would not be the preserve of a state bureaucracy’ and as ‘an association in which the free development of each is a condition for the free development of all’. How did it happen that, in the name of this most humane and liberating ideology, the bureaucracy became so all-powerful and the individual was so suffocated?<\/strong> (His emphasis)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Trotsky, as we have seen,\npainstakingly addressed and answered this question. Slovo, however, has a\ndifferent answer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In some cases”, he writes, “the deformations experienced by existing socialist states were the results of bureaucratic distortions which were rationalised at the ideological level by a mechanical and out-of-context invocation of Marxist dogma.<\/p>

“In other cases they were the results of a genuinely-motivated but tragic misapplication of socialist theory in new realities which were not foreseen by the founders of Marxism.<\/p>p. 11<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

But the rejection of the theory\nof permanent revolution, and Stalin’s adoption of the false idea of achieving\n“socialism in one country” were not<\/strong>\n“genuinely motivated but tragic misapplications” of Marxism, nor<\/strong> “a mechanical and out-of-context\ninvocation of outmoded Marxist dogma”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Though justified by scraps torn\nout of context from Lenin’s writings, the turn made by Stalin and the bureaucracy\nrepresented a complete rejection of Marxism, Bolshevism, and proletarian\ninternationalism. As Trotsky explained, the turn flowed from the material interests of the bureaucracy\nin maintaining their privilege over the working class, and hence in opposing\nworkers’ revolution anywhere. They were not mere ideological errors.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where Slovo dips into a\nmaterialist analysis, again he contrives to avoid the nub of the problem,\nproviding instead a half-baked ‘excuse’ for Stalinism. He says that:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The fact that socialist power was first won in the most backward outpost of European capitalism, without a democratic political tradition, played no small part in the way it was shaped. To this must be added the years of isolation, economic siege and armed intervention which, in the immediate post-October period, led to the virtual decimation of the Soviet Union’s relatively small working class.<\/p>p. 11<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Backwardness, isolation,\ndecimation of the working class, yes. But Slovo here hides the fact that Stalin\nand the bureaucracy came to accept and\nreinforce that isolation<\/strong> through abandoning proletarian internationalism\nand the struggle for world socialism, in favour of the false idea of\n“socialism in one country”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the basis of continued\nisolation, initial “bureaucratic distortions” became a thorough political counter-revolution<\/strong>. Quantity\nchanged into quality. As a result, the bureaucracy compelled Communist Parties\nin other countries to adopt policies which led to the defeat<\/strong> of revolutions…in China, Germany, Spain, etc… which in\nturn prolonged<\/strong> the isolation of the\nRussian revolution, and even threatened its survival. As a result, a new political revolution<\/strong> by the working\nclass became required to restore workers’ democracy and re-open a road to\nsocialism. But Slovo totally ignores and hides all this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By attributing Stalinism to\n“mistakes”, Slovo tries to minimise his own and the SACP’s\nco-responsibility for the crimes of the bureaucratic system and deflect the\nissue from the need to overthrow<\/strong> the\nbureaucracy. In fact, he supports the\ncontinuation of the bureaucracy under Gorbachev.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stalinism, for him, is not the\nmaterial force represented by the interests of the bureaucracy. It is a\n“bureaucratic-authoritarian style\nof leadership<\/strong>… which denuded the party and the practice of socialism of\nmost of its democratic content and concentrated power in the hands of a tiny,\nself-perpetuating elite.” (p. 3) (Our emphasis).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is the opposite of the\nscientific method of analysis of social phenomena developed by Marxism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“It is not the consciousness\nof men that determines their being, but their social being that determines\ntheir consciousness”, explained Marx. It was this method of understanding\nsociety \u2013 dialectical and historical materialism \u2013 that Trotsky applied in\nexplaining the rise of the bureaucracy. Slovo stands this method on its head:\nthe existence of a “tiny, self-perpetuating elite” is explained by\nits “style of leadership”. No\nserious Marxist analysis of the nature of the Soviet Union is possible on this\nbasis. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Slovo echoes Gorbachev<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

But Slovo goes further than this.\nThere was, he claims:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

not enough in classical Marxist theory about the nature of the transition period to provide a detailed guide to the future. This under-developed state of classical Marxist theory in relation to the form and structure of future socialist society lent itself easily to the elaboration of dogma which could claim general ‘legitimacy’ from a selection of quotes from the masters.<\/p>p. 12<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

This explanation, Slovo admits,\nhe owes to Gorbachev, who bewails the fact that the founders of Marxism:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

never invented specific forms and mechanisms for the development of the new society. They elaborated its socialist ideal…they provided the historically transient character of capitalism and the historical need for transition to a new stage of social development. As for the structure of the future society to replace capitalism, they discussed it in the most general terms<\/strong> and mostly from the point of view of fundamental principles. (Slovo’s emphasis)<\/p>From Pravda<\/em>, 26\/11\/1989<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

If Slovo meant that Marx and\nEngels never anticipated that the working class would first take power in a\nbackward country, and the complexities that this would bring for the world\ntransition to socialism, he would be correct. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But if he or Gorbachev imagine that\nMarx, Engels, or Lenin, could have provided a finished idea of the “structure\nof the future society to replace capitalism” this merely confirms their\nmisunderstanding of communism, and of Marxism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“On the basis of what facts,\nthen, can the question of the future development of communism be dealt\nwith?” asked Lenin in State and\nRevolution<\/em>, when he was re-examining Marx and Engels’ theory of the state.\n“On the basis of the fact that it has its origins in capitalism, that it\ndevelops historically from capitalism, that it is the result of the action of a\nsocial force to which capitalism gave\nbirth<\/strong>. There is no trace of an attempt on Marx’s part to make up a utopia,\nto indulge in idle guesswork about what cannot be known.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The abolition (or rather\n‘withering away’) of classes and the state, the achievement of communism, means\nthe replacement of the “realm of necessity” by the realm of freedom\nand unlimited human creativity. Marxism did not conceive (like the bureaucrat\nGorbachev) in terms of a (static) “structure of the future society to\nreplace capitalism”, but in terms of forms of social, economic and political\norganisation which would facilitate the process of transition to a society\nwithout classes or the state. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Among those, as we have seen,\nwere the principles first practised by the Paris Commune \u2013 and spelled out in\nthe classic writings of Marxism on the “future state”: replacing a standing army by the armed\npeople, the election and right of recall of all officials, no official\nreceiving higher than the average worker’s wage, and increasing participation\nof all in turn, in the affairs of government.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

These principles have all been\nsystematically flouted by the bureaucracy in the Soviet Union since it usurped\npower from the working class.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet nowhere in Slovo’s whole treatment of Stalinism or of the state is\nthere any mention whatsoever of any of these principles \u2013 all of which are\nindispensable to secure democracy in a workers’ state.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In State and Revolution<\/em> Lenin pointed out how Marx and Engels regarded\nall these features as “particularly noteworthy”, and continued:\n“it is on this particularly striking point, perhaps the most important as\nfar as the problem of the state is concerned, that the ideas of Marx have been\nmost completely ignored! In popular commentaries, the number of which is\nlegion, this is not mentioned. The thing done is to keep silent about it as if\nit were a piece of old-fashioned \u2018naivete\u2019.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Slovo “keeps silent” in\nexactly the same way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The abandonment of these principles of the Commune by the bureaucracy\nwas not a “genuinely motivated but tragic misapplication” of Marxism,\nnor a “mechanical and out-of-context invocation of outmoded Marxist\ndogma.”<\/strong> It was a deliberate ignoring of the lessons of Marxism, and of\nthe experience of the working class.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Slovo suppresses<\/strong> these lessons because they are irreconcilable with the\npractice of the bureaucracy in the Stalinist states. This suppression is a\nlitmus test of his continued defence of bureaucratic rule. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trotsky, we have seen, commented\nthat:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With the utmost stretch of fancy it would be difficult to imagine a contrast more striking than that which exists between the schema of the workers’ state according to Marx, Engels and Lenin, and the actual state now headed by Stalin…[Yet] the present leaders of the Soviet Union and their ideological representatives do not even raise the question of the causes of such a crying divergence between program and reality.<\/p>The Revolution Betrayed<\/em><\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Now Gorbachev and, echoing him,\nSlovo, go further. There is no “crying divergence” \u2013 because the\nfounders of Marxism did not really address “specific forms and mechanisms\nfor the development of the new society”!! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Slovo on the Marxist theory of the state<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

“The concept of the\n‘Dictatorship of the Proletariat’ ” \u2013 writes Slovo \u2013 \u201cwas dealt with\nrather thinly by Marx as ‘a transition to a classless society’ without much\nfurther definition”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Paris Commune, Slovo writes,\n“was an exceptional social experience which brought into being a kind of\nworkers’ city-state (by no means socialist-led) in which, for a brief moment,\nmost functions of the state (both legislative and executive) were directly\nexercised by a popular democratic assembly.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Marx, Engels and Lenin did not\nregard the Commune as an exceptional social experience. They regarded it as a\ndefinite advance of the world proletarian revolution, as a practical step that\nwas more important than hundreds of programmes and arguments. Marx\n“‘learned’ from the Commune”, wrote Lenin, “just as all the\ngreat revolutionary thinkers learned unhesitatingly from the experience of\ngreat movements of the oppressed classes.” (State and Revolution<\/em>)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Slovo suppresses the\n“noteworthy” lessons drawn from it by Marx, Engels and Lenin \u2013 and\nthen tells us that the concept of the dictatorship of the proletariat was\n“dealt with rather thinly” by Marx “without much further definition<\/strong>” and that this is at the root\nof explaining the existence of the “all-powerful” bureaucracy in the\nSoviet Union! What kind of honesty is this?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lenin, Slovo admits,\n“envisaged that working class power would be based on the kind of\ndemocracy of the Commune”. But what “kind of democracy” this\nwas, Slovo fails to spell out. Lenin, he continues,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

clearly assumed… the state and its traditional instruments of force would begin to ‘wither away’ almost as soon as socialist power had been won and the process of widening and deepening democracy would begin”. Lenin believed, he writes, “that there would be an extension of ‘democracy to such an overwhelming majority of the population that the need for a special machinery of suppression will begin to disappear”; that there would be “no longer a state in the proper sense of the word (because) the suppression of the minority of exploiters…is easy, simple’, entailing relatively little bloodshed, and hardly needing a machine or a special apparatus other than ‘the simple organisation of the armed people (such as the Soviets).<\/p>pp. 14-15<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

We have explained Lenin’s\nposition on all this at length earlier in this pamphlet (see Chapter 3), and in\nparticular how he linked his perspective for the Soviet workers’ state to the\nspread of socialist revolution through the advanced countries. But instead of\ncentring his argument on this, Slovo looks for the cause of Stalinism in\nLenin’s conception of the dictatorship of the proletariat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Slovo has told us that classic\nMarxist theory is “under-developed” on the political machinery for\nthe transition to socialism. Now he outlines Lenin’s ideas on the “withering\naway of the state”, while\nsuppressing the international tasks and other concrete measures needed to ensure\nthat the state could wither away.<\/strong> Slovo thus creates the impression that\nLenin was a mere utopian, a wishful thinker, hoping for the best.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Slovo continues, “We know\nthat all this is a far cry from what happened in the decades which followed.\nThe whole process was put into reverse. The complete ‘suppression of the\nexploiters’ was followed by the strengthening of the instruments of state\nsuppression and the narrowing of\ndemocracy for the majority of the population, including the working class.<\/strong>”\n(His emphasis)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“We know that all this is a\nfar cry from what happened” \u2013 writes the leader of a “Communist”\nParty that for generations has covered up the crimes of the bureaucracy, and\ndenounced as counter-revolutionary propaganda any suggestion of a lack of\ndemocracy in the Soviet Union!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Slovo is trying to leave the impression\nthat the “under-developed” state of Marxist theory excuses the bureaucracy,\nand that Lenin’s wishful thinking is to blame for the fact that the state did\nnot wither away and that “the whole process was put into reverse”. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Slovo on Rosa Luxemburg<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lenin wrote State and Revolution<\/em>, says Slovo, correctly: “in the very heat\nof the revolutionary transformation”. But, in the context of ‘summarising’\nits standpoint, Slovo adds: “Understandably, the dominant preoccupation at\nthe time was with the seizure of power, its protection in the face of the\nexpected counter-revolutionary assault”, etc. (p.14).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The impression is created that State and Revolution<\/em> was a “rush\njob”, written with immediate tactical considerations in mind, rather than\nwhat it was, a profound theoretical text, concerned with the state from its\norigins to its disappearance under communism. In fact, Lenin gathered material\nfor it over several years. As he began work on it, in hiding from the onslaught\nof the Kerensky government against the Bolsheviks, he wrote confidentially to a\ncomrade asking that \u201cif they bump me off\u201d, to arrange for the publication of\nthe quotations from Marx and Engels he had collected. “I think it is\nimportant, for it is not only Plekhanov and Kautsky who got off the\ntrack.” (Quoted in Trotsky, History\nof the Russian Revolution<\/em>)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Slovo reinforces the impression\nof a “rush job” concerned only with the immediate situation by\nquoting, in the middle of his ‘summary’ of State\nand Revolution<\/em>, from Rosa Luxemburg who: “in a polemic with\nLenin” said: “Freedom only for the supporters of the government, only\nfor the members of one party \u2013 however numerous they may be \u2013 is not freedom at\nall.” (p. 14) Despite all the ways in which Slovo subsequently frees Lenin\nfrom blame, the impression is created that the arguments of State and Revolution<\/em> could in some way\nlend credence to the idea of “freedom only for the supporters of the government,\nonly for the members of one party.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That is a complete slander\nagainst Lenin. It is, as a matter of fact, the kind of slander constantly made\nagainst him by the bourgeoisie and their petty-bourgeois hangers-on in their war\nagainst workers’ revolution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Moreover, that Slovo should now\ncriticise the “one-party state” is something new! The SACP has\ndefended every crime of the criminal one-party regimes in the Stalinist states\nin the past.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is only now that these regimes\nthemselves have been compelled to abandon one-party rule, that Slovo dares to\naddress this question. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even now, Slovo does not\nunequivocally reject the idea that one-party states may have some positive role\nto play in African countries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rosa Luxemburg, a founder of the\nGerman Communist Party, wrote a short pamphlet on the Russian Revolution from\nprison in 1918. She was a supporter of international workers’ revolution and of\nBolshevism. For her part in the German revolution, she was murdered, on the\norders of the Social Democrats who came to power, in 1919.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even in prison, restricted from\ninformation, she immediately identified the Russian revolution with permanent<\/strong> revolution: “The\nproblems of the Russian revolution \u2013 moreover \u2013 since it is a product of\ninternational developments plus the agrarian question \u2013 cannot possibly be\nsolved within the limits of bourgeois society.” (The Russian Revolution<\/em>, 1918)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She supported the establishment\nof the dictatorship of the proletariat. Yet she had criticisms of the policies\nof the Bolsheviks after 1917. Among them was the fact that, under conditions of\nthe civil war, they had introduced a ban on political parties.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In fact, later, in 1921, the\nRussian Communist Party, for the first time in its history, also imposed a\ntemporary ban on factions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These measures \u2013 the one-party\nregime, and the ban on party factions \u2013 were later to be criminally transformed\nby Stalinism into inherent principles of “Marxist-Leninist”\norganisation. The Soviet constitution of 1936 ratified the Communist Party as\nthe sole party in the state.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The ban on parties, Trotsky\nexplained, “obviously in conflict with the spirit of Soviet democracy, the\nleaders of Bolshevism regarded not as a principle, but as an episodic act of self-defense.<\/strong>” The ban on factions\n“was again regarded as an exceptional\nmeasure to be abandoned at the first serious improvement in the situation.<\/strong>”\n(The Revolution Betrayed<\/em>)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the light of experience,\nTrotsky insisted that the working class in power could never<\/strong> again permit the suppression of the right to form opposition\nparties. This right (excepting only fascist parties) we would now add to\nLenin’s four conditions \u2013 as a fifth condition for workers’ democracy and the\ntransition to socialism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How far Rosa Luxemburg’s\ncriticism of the desperate measures taken by the Bolsheviks \u2013 under the extreme\nthreat of overthrow by imperialist invasion and armed counter-revolution \u2013 was\njustified is fairly a matter for debate. But it is entirely incorrect for Slovo\nto imply that those measures flowed from the Marxist theory<\/strong> of the state, the concept of the “dictatorship of the\nproletariat”, or from Lenin’s views in State\nand Revolution<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not only were they, as Trotsky\nsays, “obviously in conflict with the spirit of Soviet democracy.”\nAlready in 1922, Lenin, together with Trotsky, initiated a struggle against\nbureaucratic distortions in the state, and against Stalin. Yet Slovo is completely\nsilent on this fact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nor is it only regarding the\n“noteworthy features” of the Paris Commune, or Lenin’s position, that\nSlovo suppresses and distorts key lessons drawn by Marxism on the question of\nthe state. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Slovo’s reformist approach to the state<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Slovo claims, we have seen, that:\n“The concept of the \u2018Dictatorship of the Proletariat\u2019 was dealt with\nrather thinly by Marx as ‘a transition to a classless society’ without much\nfurther definition”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In reality, as Lenin showed in State and Revolution<\/em>, Marx and Engels\npainstakingly elaborated their ideas on the state as they became clarified by\nthe experience of the working-class.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He wrote State and Revolution<\/em> precisely because their theory of the state\nhad become incredibly distorted and falsified in the hands of the\n“theoreticians” of the Second International to suit their reformist\npurposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Today, the bourgeoisie and\nthe opportunists within the labour movement” wrote Lenin, “omit,\nobscure or distort the revolutionary side of this theory, its revolutionary\nsoul. They push to the foreground and extol what is or seems acceptable to the bourgeoisie.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Slovo’s treatment of State and Revolution<\/em>, and of the Marxist\ntheory of the state in general, has precisely the same effect. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

From the experience of revolution\nand counter-revolution in France in 1848-51, for example, Marx drew the\nconclusion that “all previous revolutions perfected the state machine,\nwhereas it must be broken, smashed”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From the Commune (Lenin pointed\nout), “Marx and Engels regarded one principal and fundamental lesson… as\nbeing of such enormous importance that they introduced it as an important\ncorrection into the Communist Manifesto<\/em>“.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This was the idea (contained in\ntheir 1872 preface to the Manifesto<\/em>)\nthat “One thing especially was proved by the Commune, viz. that the\nworking class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery and wield\nit for its own purposes.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To serve its own purposes, the\nworking class would have to overthrow and smash<\/strong>\nthe old capitalist state machine \u2013 its bureaucracy and standing army \u2013 and\nreplace it with its own, fundamentally different, form of state.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Taken together these, for Lenin,\nwere “the chief and fundamental point in the Marxist theory of the state”.\nThese were the lessons, he explained, that had been abandoned<\/strong> by the reformist leaders of the Second International \u2013 who\ndreamed that socialism could be achieved by the “gradual” increase in\nthe power of the proletariat over the existing capitalist state.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stripped of this understanding,\nthe working class is reduced to compromises<\/strong>\nwith capitalism and its state. Stripped of this understanding, as the history\nof this century has only too tragically borne out, its revolutionary movement\ntowards the transformation of society, however heroic, ends up in slaughter by\nthe forces of the capitalist state it has left intact \u2013 as has happened again\nand again under reformist and Stalinist leadership.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But Slovo, complaining about the “under-developed” nature of\nMarxist theory “about the nature of the transition period”,\ncompletely fails to mention Marx’s lessons on the need of the working class to\nsmash the capitalist state and create its own state.<\/strong> He “omits,\nobscures or distorts the revolutionary side of this theory, its revolutionary\nsoul.” His defence of “socialism”, his defence of\n“Marxism”, reduces to undiluted reformism<\/strong>.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Slovo on bourgeois democracy<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Slovo’s further criticism of Lenin is that: “the classical description of bourgeois democracy [referring to Lenin’s State and Revolution] was an over-simplification and tended to underestimate the historic achievements of working class struggle in imposing and defending aspects of a real democratic culture on the capitalist state.” <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is also pure reformism on\nSlovo’s part. Marxism has always maintained (in Lenin’s words in State and Revolution<\/em>) that\n“democracy is of enormous importance to the working class in its struggle\nagainst the capitalist class for its emancipation”; that the\n“democratic republic is the nearest thing to the dictatorship of the\nproletariat”; that “to develop democracy to the utmost<\/strong>, to find the forms<\/strong>\nfor this development, to test them out by\npractice<\/strong>, and so forth \u2013 all this is one of the component tasks of the\nstruggle for the social revolution”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But Marxism also warns that\ndemocracy \u2013 universal franchise, freedom of assembly and speech, the right to\nform trade unions and political parties, the right to strike, etc. \u2013 is not\ninherent to capitalist society, and cannot he taken for granted by the working\nclass. It has been achieved through the struggle of the working class, and can\nbe sustained only under particular conditions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is true Lenin never\nanticipated that capitalism would survive as long as it has \u2013 giving\npossibilities for the working class, in advanced capitalist countries at least,\nto make such substantial democratic gains. But these gains exist only for the minority<\/strong> of those living under\ncapitalism, generally in the most industrialised countries \u2013 and are themselves\nsubject to attack when capitalism is in crisis. For most of those subjected to capitalism \u2013 those in the Third World \u2013 even\nstable bourgeois democracy is ruled out.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

And such democratic gains as\nexist under capitalism have been won at\nthe price of the delay of the world socialist revolution.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Slovo ignores the need for the\nworking class to smash the capitalist state and establish its own democratic\nstate power. He wishes to limit<\/strong> the\nworking class to what democracy it can achieve under capitalism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even bourgeois<\/strong> democracy, as Lenin explained, has its limits. “We\nare in favour of a democratic republic as the best form of state for the\nproletariat under capitalism. But we have no right to forget that wage slavery\nis the lot of the people even in the most democratic bourgeois republic.”\n(State and Revolution<\/em>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even with the most democratic\nrepublic under capitalism, even with universal franchise for parliament, and\nwith the use of all those opportunities to the maximum, the working class\ncannot secure the realisation of its full will. The bourgeois control the\nmedia; they insist on secrecy in numbers of areas of government; they deploy\nsecurity services against the workers’ movement; they try to corrupt the\nleaders of the workers’ organisations. Above all, in the final analysis, the “laws” of parliament are\nexecuted through the unaccountable bureaucracy and armed forces who defend the\ninterests of the capitalist class.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Capitalist democracy” \u2013\nwrote Lenin \u2013 “is inevitably narrow and stealthily pushes aside the poor,\nand is therefore hypocritical and false through and through.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“To decide once every few\nyears which member of the ruling class is to repress and crush the people\nthrough parliament \u2013 this is the real essence of bourgeois parliamentarism, not\nonly in parliamentary-constitutional monarchies, but also in the most\ndemocratic republics.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Democracy for an\ninsignificant minority, democracy for the rich \u2013 that is the democracy of\ncapitalist society.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lenin makes this critique in conjunction with showing the\ndemocratic superiority of the Paris Commune<\/strong>: “The way out of\nparliamentarism is not, of course, the abolition of representative institutions\nand the elective principle, but the conversion of the representative institutions\nfrom talking shops into ‘working’ bodies. The Commune was to be a working, not a\nparliamentary, body, executive and legislative at the same time.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In smashing<\/strong> the old state and establishing<\/strong>\nits own, by replacing the standing army by the armed people and the bureaucracy\nby elected, non-privileged, officials on an increasingly rotating basis, the\nworking class does not abolish, or reject, democracy, but extends democracy for\nthe first time far beyond what is possible under the most democratic bourgeois\nstate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Marxism defends democracy under\ncapitalism at the same time as it fights for the higher<\/strong> democracy of proletarian rule. As Trotsky put the matter in\nregard to the Russian revolution:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even in 1905 the workers of Petersburg called their Soviet [a form of organisation of the type of the Paris Commune] a proletarian government. The name became current and was entirely consistent with the seizure of power by the working class. At the same time we opposed to Tsarism a developed programme of political democracy (universal suffrage, republic, militia, etc.). And indeed we could not have done otherwise. Political democracy is an essential phase in the development of the working masses \u2013 with the important proviso that in some cases the working masses may remain within this phase for several decades, whereas in another case the revolutionary situation may enable the masses to liberate themselves from the prejudices of political [i.e. bourgeois] democracy even before its institutions have come into being. <\/p>Preface to 1905<\/em><\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Yet the “democracy”\nestablished by the working class, Marxism explains, is itself a form of state<\/strong>. It means that the will\nof the majority prevails over that of minorities and individuals. With the\nadvance to a society of abundance, even this form of suppression\n(“democracy”) becomes increasingly unnecessary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As the control and direction of\nthe affairs of society passes into the hands of all working people in the workers’\nstate, formal democracy becomes superseded. The withering away of the state,\nwith the disappearance of classes, ‘paradoxically’, means the withering away of\n“democracy” also: “communism alone is capable of providing\nreally complete democracy, and the more complete it is, the sooner it will\nbecome unnecessary and wither away of its own accord.” (State and Revolution<\/em>)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For distorting the Marxist theory\nof the state on all these issues, Lenin in State\nand Revolution<\/em> criticised the German workers’ leader Karl Kautsky.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kautsky was a supposed opponent\nof reformism. Yet, by 1912, he was maintaining that “The aim of our political\nstruggle remains, as in the past, the conquest of state power by winning a majority in parliament <\/strong>and\nby raising parliament to the rank of master of the government.” (Quoted in\nState and Revolution<\/em>)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This false idea, that the working\nclass could become “master of the government” through parliament<\/strong> alone, was identical with\nthe position of the open reformists. Kautsky, Lenin pointed out, had reduced\nthe idea of the “withering away” of a workers’<\/strong> state to the idea that the bourgeois<\/strong> state could wither away by these means.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kautsky”, commented Lenin, “has not understood at all the difference between bourgeois parliamentarism, which combines democracy (not for the people) with bureaucracy (against the people) and proletarian democracy, which will take immediate steps to cut bureaucracy down to the roots, and which will be able to carry these measures through to the end, to the complete abolition of bureaucracy, to the introduction of complete democracy for the people.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Slovo ignores the lessons of the\nParis Commune. He ignores Marx’s injunctions on the need for the working class\nto smash the old state and replace it with its own. He believes Lenin had an\n“over-simplified” criticism of bourgeois democracy. What Lenin had to\nsay about Kautsky applies equally to Slovo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Slovo claims: “The abandonment\nof the term [i.e. ‘dictatorship of the proletariat\u2019] by most communist parties,\nincluding ours, does not, in all cases, imply a rejection of the historical\nvalidity of its essential content.” (p. 16)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Marxists today prefer to talk of workers’ democratic rule<\/strong>, rather than\nthe “dictatorship of the proletariat”, because the latter term has\nbeen so criminally abused by the monstrous dictatorships of Stalinism. But, by\nthat, they do not abandon the essential content and lessons developed on the\nbasis of this term in the classic works of Marxism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But every<\/strong> “Communist” Party that has abandoned the idea of\nthe “dictatorship of the proletariat” has, together with that,\nplunged deeper and deeper into the mud of collaboration with capitalism and its\nstate machine. Slovo’s view of the state points wholly in the same direction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What purports to be an explanation for the existence of Stalinism, and\na defence of socialism and Marxism, turns out to be a barely disguised\nrestatement of “social-ism by reform” within capitalism.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Slovo on “socialist alienation”<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Slovo’s further explanation of\nthe problems in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe are an uncritical justification\nof Gorbachev’s futile attempts to “renew” the bureaucracy \u2013 and are in\nno way inconsistent with Gorbachev’s new turn towards restoring capitalism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Slovo says “unavoidable\ninheritance from the past and the most serious distortion of socialist norms in\nmost of the socialist countries” has resulted in “economic alienation”,\na “form of ‘socialist’ alienation.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The transfer of legal ownership of productive property from private capital to the state does not” \u2013 he writes \u2013 “on its own create fully socialist relations of production, nor does it always significantly change the work-life of the producers….<\/strong> State property itself has to be transformed into social property. This involves reorganising social life as a whole so that the producers, at least as a collective, have a real say not only in the production of social wealth but also in its disposal. In the words of Gorbachev, what is required is ‘not only formal but also real socialisation and the real turning of the working people into the masters of all socialised production.’<\/strong> (Our emphasis)<\/p> pp. 20-21<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

On the face of it, this seems\nadmirable. That state property is in and of itself not social property is a\npoint, as we have seen, emphasised by Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Trotsky.\nHowever, as Trotsky put it: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

it is exactly for the Marxist that this question is not exhausted by a consideration of forms of property regardless of the achieved productivity of labour<\/strong>… State property becomes the property of ‘the whole people’ only to the extent that social privilege and differentiation disappear, and therewith the necessity of the state. In other words: state property is converted into socialist property in proportion as it ceases to be state property. (Our emphasis)<\/p>The Revolution Betrayed<\/em><\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The preconditions for the real socialisation of property<\/strong> are\nworkers’ democracy, and a productivity of labour far above that of the most\nadvanced capitalism. The pre-condition\nfor the real socialisation of property is world socialist revolution.<\/strong> These\nare the preconditions which the bureaucracy in the Soviet Union and throughout\nthe Stalinist world prevents, by the continuation of its own rule. To begin to\nre-establish these preconditions, it must be overthrown by the working class.\nBut Slovo’s argument develops in precisely the opposite way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Under socialism<\/strong>“, he continues (meaning, in the Stalinist countries), “guaranteed employment and the amount of remuneration did not always depend upon quality, productivity or efficiency, opening the way to parasitism at the point of production. Reward based on the socialist maxim ‘to each according to his contribution’ can obviously play a part in increasing productivity. But for socialist society as a whole to really come into its own requires an incentive based on the producers real participation in the mechanisms of social control over the products of his\/her labour; a feeling that the means of production are his or hers as part of society.<\/strong> (His emphasis)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Slovo here defends as a\n“socialist maxim” the idea “to each according to his\ncontribution [i.e. work]”. This is a complete falsification of Marxism. Marx\npointed out that in the first stage of transition from capitalism to communism\nthose who refused to work could not expect to eat, and that the principle\n“to each according to his needs” could be fully realised only as an\nabundance of everything necessary was produced (see Chapter 3).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Slovo, following Gorbachev,\nbrazenly misquotes this qualification, thereby turning Marx’s idea on its head.\nReward according to “contribution” \u2013 how is contribution determined? \u2013\nis really nothing but a formula for perpetuating inequality and domination by\nan elite. And yet it is presented as a “socialist maxim<\/strong>“! Here we see plainly the ideology of an\nexploiting bureaucracy<\/strong> masquerading\nas socialism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Adding insult to injury, the lack\nof quality, productivity or efficiency in the Stalinist economies is blamed by\nSlovo on “guaranteed employment…opening the way to parasitism at the point of production<\/strong>. It is\nblamed, in other words, not on bureaucratic mismanagement but the laziness of\nthe working class!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

No guaranteed employment for\nworkers, says Slovo. Reward each person according to work, not needs. Instead\nof the removal of the bureaucracy, and the development of the forces of\nproduction under the democratic control and management of the working class,\nSlovo offers to the working class only “real participation<\/strong>” (along with the bureaucracy!) in “the\nmechanisms of social control over the products of his\/her labour”\n(whatever this means?!) and a “feeling<\/strong>\n[!!!] that the means of production are his or hers as part of society”!!!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite his words quoted by\nSlovo, Gorbachev has never had any more intention than Stalin, Kruschev or\nBrezhnev of “turning… the working people into the masters of all\nsocialised production.” In fact, with his initial program of\n“socialist renewal” having failed, Gorbachev is now turning the\nSoviet Union back towards capitalism<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the past the SACP, including\ncomrade Slovo as he now admits to his shame, uncritically defended Stalin’s massacres\nand then each successive leader of the bureaucratic dictatorship through all\ntheir twists and turns. Today Slovo’s position, that of the “new”\nSACP, is nothing more than defence of the “new” Gorbachev\nbureaucracy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Slovo rightly criticises the\n“direct compulsion against producers” exercised under Stalinism. But,\nhe continues:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There were, of course, other negative factors [in the practice of so-called “socialism”, i.e.] which require more extensive examination than is possible here. These include policies based on what has been called the ‘big bang theory of socialism’ which ignored the historical fact that many of the ingredients of social systems which succeed one another \u2013 and this includes the change from capitalism to socialism \u2013 cannot be separated by a Chinese wall.<\/p>

The economy of a country the day after the workers take over is exactly the same as it was the day before, and it cannot be transformed merely by proclamation. The neglect of this truism resulted, now and then, in a primitive egalitarianism which reached lunatic proportions under the Pol Pot regime [in Cambodia], the absence of cost-accounting, a dismissive attitude to commodity production and the law of value during the transition period, the premature abandonment of any role for market forces, a doctrinaire approach to the question of collectivisation, etc.<\/p>p. 22<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

If there is anything correct to\ndisentangle from this, it is the attempt to make the point, explained by Marx,\nand re-emphasised by Lenin and Trotsky, that “Law can never be higher than\nthe economic structure and the cultural development of society conditioned by\nthat structure.” But Slovo uses this idea for purposes entirely opposite\nto those of Marxism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cambodia was an extremely\nbackward country, though with a relatively educated population. During the\nVietnam war US imperialism tried to bomb Cambodia, like Vietnam itself, back\ninto the Stone Age \u2013 because its puppet capitalist regime was being threatened\nby a guerilla struggle, supporting the liberation of Vietnam.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Pol Pot regime was a\nproletarian Bonapartist regime, resulting from the victory of the guerilla\nmovement. It had nothing to do with “socialism”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Against the threat of capitalist\nrestoration in the Soviet Union in 1929, Stalin’s bureaucracy had turned to a\nbrutal policy of forced industrialisation and collectivisation of agriculture.\nPerhaps Slovo regards this as the “big bang theory of socialism”. But\nthe Pol Pot regime was different.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It received no aid from the\nMoscow bureaucracy. The Chinese bureaucracy was in that period making overtures\nto US imperialism. In a desperate frenzy, for the sake of \u2018national\nindependence\u2019, the Pol Pot regime turned to the idea of a primitive rural\ncommunism, trying to bypass the “foreign capitalism” of the cities.\nOn the basis of this mad program it barbarously exterminated more than a\nmillion people, including the entire educated layer in society.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This, in the last analysis, was\none of the disastrous consequences of the counter-revolutionary, nationalist,\npolicies of Stalinism in the “Third World”, and of the delay of the\nworld socialist revolution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Other proletarian Bonapartist\nregimes in the “Third World” have been compelled into policies\n“dismissive” of “commodity production”, “premature\nabandonment of any role for market forces”, etc. \u2013 and later been forced\nto reverse course. In Mozambique, for example, FRELIMO had little option at\nfirst but to nationalise even small businesses when all the Portuguese fled\nafter 1974.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the underlying problem is the\nfalse idea which has been cultivated by Stalinism that it is possible for under-developed\ncountries to separate<\/strong> their fate\nfrom that of the more advanced capitalist countries which dominate them, and\n“go it alone” in trying to “build socialism.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But, let us remember, originally,\nSlovo was talking not of Cambodia or the “Third World”, but of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe<\/strong> \u2013 where\ncapitalism has now been ended for more than seventy and forty years respectively.\nSo far as one can disentangle his argument, the implication is that the\nproblems of these regimes derive from… moving too fast towards\n“egalitarianism”!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the Soviet Union\ndifferentiation has developed to such an extent that the top levels of the\nbureaucracy live like millionaires in the West while ordinary people cannot\nfind basic goods in the shops! The regimes of Ceacescu, Honecker, etc., toppled\nlast year, were guilty of grotesque accumulation of wealth and privilege for\nthe top bureaucrats at the expense of the masses. Yet, for Slovo, the\n“problems” of these countries include moving too fast towards\negalitarianism!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is true that, as Marx \u2013 and\nLenin, and Trotsky \u2013 explained, that in the “lower stage of\ncommunism” the realities of cost-accounting, commodity production, the law\nof value etc. cannot be ignored. But it is ridiculous to deal with these\nquestions, as Slovo does, without reference either to the need to overcome\nbureaucracy or to spread workers’ revolution internationally.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is true that, even in the\nfirst years of the Soviet workers’ state, the Bolsheviks were forced to retreat\nfrom the too drastic policies of “war communism” between 1917 and\n1920 to the New Economic Policy of 1921. But their confidence in doing so was\nbecause, even if imperfectly, power in the state was in the hands of the\nworking class \u2013 until it was usurped by the Stalinist bureaucracy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Slovo refers to the\n“truism” that: “The economy of a country the day after the\nworkers take over is exactly the same as it was the day before.” But, if the workers have really taken state\npower<\/strong>, there is just this “one” little difference \u2013 that they\nhave the power for the first time to make themselves<\/strong>\nrather than the capitalists masters of society, to deploy all their ingenuity\nand creativity, and to reorganise<\/strong>\neven the existing<\/strong> economic resources\nfreed from the constraints of private ownership<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 If it were true that the economy of the\ncountry remained “exactly the same”, then what would be the point of\nthe workers taking power? Slovo’s\npurpose, in making these arguments, is to deny the need for the working class\nto overthrow the state or to end capitalism.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

To justify this position, Slovo\ngrossly misuses Pol Pot. “Pol Pot shows you can’t pole-vault to\nsocialism”, he is fond of saying. This is the same method<\/strong> as that of Dialego \u2013 who acknowledged the Comintern’s\nsectarianism in 1929-33 only for the purpose of applauding its subsequent conversion\nto Popular Frontism, i.e. collaboration\nwith capitalism<\/strong>. Likewise Slovo raises the scarecrow of “Pol Pot”\nto try to put over the idea that a compromise with capitalism is the sensible\nalternative.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Applied to the Soviet Union, the\nidea that the main problem is “the absence of cost-accounting, a\ndismissive attitude to commodity production… premature abandonment of any\nrole for market forces, a doctrinaire approach to… collectivisation,\netc.”, is a justification for the return to capitalism Gorbachev is now\nadvocating.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Taken to their logical\nconclusion, Slovo’s arguments are no different from those of the Mensheviks\nbefore 1917 who argued that the working class could not and should not take\npower in Russia because “conditions were not ripe for socialism”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yes, as Marx, Engels, Lenin and\nTrotsky explained, the working class cannot leap<\/strong> into classless society. But nor can the working class wait for capitalism to develop the forces of\nproduction to what is necessary for achieving classless society before taking\npower.<\/strong> Unevenness of capitalism is a law. The disparities between the\nadvanced and under-developed countries are widening, not narrowing, as\ncapitalism continues. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first pre-condition for\nopening the way to socialism is smashing the old capitalist state machine,\nestablishing democratic workers’ rule, taking the monopolies, banks, big\nfactories and farms into the democratic control and management of the working\nclass \u2013 and struggling to spread the\nrevolution internationally.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nowhere does Slovo \u2013 or any other\nleader of the SACP \u2013 explain these tasks. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Slovo on the perspectives for capitalism<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Slovo makes the ‘discovery’ that\nMarx, Engels and Lenin were, after all, “not infallible”. But what\ndoes he use to illustrate this correct remark? He says:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lenin, for example, believed that capitalism was about to collapse worldwide in the post-October period.<\/p>

It was a belief based on the incorrect premise that, as a system, capitalism had already reached the stage at which the capitalist relations of production constituted an obstacle to the further all-round development of the forces of production.<\/p>

This was combined with a belief in the imminence of global socialist transformation, which undoubtedly infected much of the earlier thinking about the perspectives of socialist construction in the Soviet Union.<\/p>p. 10<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Here Slovo piles confusion upon\nfalsehood. Lenin repeatedly warned against the idea that capitalism would\n“collapse worldwide”; he insisted that it had to be overthrown<\/strong>. Trotsky emphasied the same,\nwhen he said that the alternation between booms and slumps in the capitalist\neconomy created conditions in which the working class could come to grips with\nthe tasks of the socialist revolution \u2013  provided it possessed a revolutionary party\nable to explain these tasks and lead the struggle. If, as Slovo implies, we\nshould base our hopes for world socialism on the automatic “collapse”\nof capitalism at some future stage, then why bother to build a revolutionary\nparty? Sit back and wait!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yes, since Lenin’s time,\nparticularly since the Second World War, the forces of production have<\/strong> developed enormously under\ncapitalism. But was Lenin wrong<\/strong> to\ninsist that conditions were ripe for\nworld socialist revolution <\/strong>in 1917 and thereafter? He was certainly not\nalone in this! The whole of Europe was convulsed in revolutions and counter-revolutions\nfor two decades!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the working class was set\nback by the treacherous class-capitulation of the Social Democratic leaders,\ncombined with the small size and inexperience of the Communist Parties. Then, with\nthe consolidation of the bureaucratic counter-revolution in Russia, with the\nphysical extermination of the forces of Marxism, the leaders of the Stalinised\nparties of the Comintern came to play a decisive part in leading revolutions to\ndefeat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Conveniently, Slovo ignores all\nthis. Instead, to hide the crimes of the Russian bureaucracy, he accuses Lenin of over-estimating the\nripeness of capitalism for overthrow.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

If Lenin was wrong in thinking\ncapitalism was ripe for overthrow in the advanced countries at the end of the\nFirst World War \u2013 then surely for the\nworking class to take power in Russia in October 1917 was a mad adventure?<\/strong>\nIs this the accusation which Slovo is really seeking to make against Lenin? If\nso, let him say he openly repudiates the October Revolution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lenin explained what he meant by\nthe ripeness of capitalism for overthrow quite precisely. In Imperialism: the Highest Stage of Capitalism<\/em>,\nhe wrote:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Monopolies, oligarchy, the striving for domination instead of the striving for liberty, the exploitation of an increasing number of small or weak nations by an extremely small group of the richest or most powerful nations \u2013 all these have given birth to those distinctive features of imperialism which compel us to define it as parasitic or decaying capitalism. More and more prominently there emerges, as one of the tendencies of imperialism, the creation of the bondholding (rentier) state, the usurer state, in which the bourgeoisie lives on the proceeds of capital exports and by \u2018clipping coupons\u2019. It would be a mistake to believe that this tendency to decay precludes the possibility of the rapid growth of capitalism. It does not. In the epoch of imperialism, certain branches of industry, certain strata of the bourgeoisie and certain countries betray, to a more or less degree, one or other of these tendencies. On the whole, capitalism is growing far more rapidly than before. But this growth is not only becoming more and more uneven in general; its unevenness manifests itself, in particular, in the decay of the countries which are richest in capital.<\/p>

Thus, continued Lenin, “Private property relations constitute a shell which is no longer suitable for its contents, a shell which must inevitably begin to decay if its destruction be delayed by artificial means; a shell which may continue in decay for a long period (particularly if the cure of the opportunist abscess is protracted<\/strong>), but which will inevitably be removed. <\/p>Our emphasis<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The “opportunist\nabscess” was not cured in time; the defeat of the inter-war revolutions\nprepared the political conditions for the Second World War, and for the\npost-War upswing of capitalism. Eventually, the crisis of leadership \u2013 the\ncrisis of the subjective factor<\/strong> \u2013 became\nan objective factor<\/strong> in the world\nsituation. But today, together with the crisis of the Stalinist regimes \u2013 the\nconditions are returning towards those of Lenin’s time, on a far higher level.\nWith the necessary modifications on secondary aspects, Lenin’s description of\ncapitalism in 1916 is again essentially valid today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Slovo accuses Lenin of an\n“ultra-left” perspective, because he rejects the reality that both\ncapitalism and Stalinism are increasingly ripe for overthrow by the working\nclass.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Were it to be accepted by the working class in South Africa, Slovo’s “Marxism” would be a recipe not only for capitulation to capitalism and its white state machine, but for ultimate disaster for our movement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Continue to Chapter Six<\/a><\/h4>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The \u201cNew\u201d SACP’s Explanation of Stalinism The South African Communist Party has now been relaunched on an open basis within the country. It claims it […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":574,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-601","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"acf":[],"_hostinger_reach_plugin_has_subscription_block":false,"_hostinger_reach_plugin_is_elementor":false,"brizy_media":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marxistworkersparty.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/601","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marxistworkersparty.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marxistworkersparty.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marxistworkersparty.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marxistworkersparty.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=601"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/marxistworkersparty.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/601\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":608,"href":"https:\/\/marxistworkersparty.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/601\/revisions\/608"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marxistworkersparty.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/574"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marxistworkersparty.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=601"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}