Contribution to ICOR’s internet Seminar discussion for the 100 years of the October Revolution. By G. Andreatos, member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Greece (m-l).
The October Revolution constituted the highest winning point of class struggle in Russia, with a huge international meaning for the development of the working, revolutionary and communist movement in all of earth. The victorious socialist revolution and construction of socialism constituted worldly events that had a great impact in the political and social processes in the whole planet and gave new momentum in the working class and the people in their confrontation with their oppressors.On the other hand, the restoration of capitalism in the USSR that was signaled by the 20th conference of the CPSU in 1956 and was completed through the collapses in the period of ’89-91 constituted a big setback and finally a serious defeat for the working, revolutionary and communist movement, the consequences of which, are faced, until today by the working class, the people and all who insist on the revolutionary, communist road.
The search for the causes of the capitalism restoration in the USSR, China and the other ex-socialist countries is an important duty for all the revolutionary and communist forces that insist on the road of the October, on the road of socialism, the road of the liberation of the earth’s damned from the chains of capitalism-imperialism. And it is an important duty for these forces, since, today, they are the ones that lift the weight of the questions, the doubts, the attacks, by friends and enemies, regarding the transformation of the proletariat authority and the socialist construction in their opposite. The answers, first of all are owed to the working class and the people, in order to arm themselves ideologically and politically against the capital and the imperialists, in the formation of their resistances and their fronts of struggle. That’s why the answers which we will give do not solely concern the “yesterday”, but mainly the “today” and “tomorrow” of the working, revolutionary and communist movement.
The October Revolution taught us that there are not any “clear” and “scheduled” revolutions, and definitely not given, ready “advices” from before for the socialist construction. The communist outlook is based on the principles and directions established by Marx, Engels, and Lenin and developed further by Stalin and Mao and search through the concrete analysis of the concrete situation the answers, the plan and the program of the revolutionary process and the building of the new socialist society. The working class and its allies, the poor and lower social strata, together with their political formation, the communist party, begin, after the victorious revolution, a huge fight, in order turn everything upside down in a historically unconventional period, starting “almost from zero”. They have against them, inside and outside the country, sworn enemies that want the defeat and the destruction of the revolution and are using all the means they have, in order to fulfill their purpose, including counter-revolutions, invasions and interventions and local riots and sabotages.
Victory over all kinds of reaction inside and outside the country, victory over the kulaks, the success of the first five-year plans and the utter defeat of the “opposition” created a feeling of security and confidence regarding the course of the Socialist Construction, which was expressed in the 1936 Constitution when the end of class struggle in USSR was stated through the annunciation of the “end of classes”. While on the one hand the successes of the Revolution and of the Socialist Construction tangibly prove, the ability of the working class, the peasants and the poor social strata to come into power, to overthrow the exploitative productive relations and to significantly develop the productive forces. On the other hand, the difficulties, the pressure, the imperialist engulfment and various sorts of dangers gave way to the State mechanism and the “working intelligentsia” rather than the Party, the soviets, the unions and the working class itself. Even though this procedure was rather the result of emergency situations and needs of those periods and not a conscious choice, it fostered a series of issues within the soviet society that would unleash themselves after the WW2. Such a situation led Stalin himself in the ‘50s to deal with the issues at hand in “Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR”. During the following years, after Stalin’s death, the forces allied in favor of the capitalist restoration took power within the Party, the State, the soviet society and the economy to achieve an end that even the imperialists, the Nazi and the old system’s advocates could not accomplish; to overthrow socialism and the Soviet power.
There are even today many people who believe that the restoration was merely a coup made by Khrushchev and his team. This explanation, however, is totally wrong, as it shows working class power and socialism as being independent from the working class and the poor social strata; it shows them to be the field of the struggle of mechanisms and important personalities. On the opposite side of this wrong belief, we have to contrast a political and class-based answer taking into consideration that class struggle and all of its congruent duties are apparent through all the period of Socialist Construction. This has been a very important aspect brought out by Chairman Mao and the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, even though they did not manage to stop the restoration forces In China. Such a view that promotes class struggle through all stages of socialism and “a thousand cultural revolutions”, if necessary, until total victory, also points out the communists massive duties from today to… communism. It is a major aspect of our thinking that it is the working class with its Communist Party and its mass organizations that play the leading role in taking the power and Constructing Socialism; it is not the state’s mechanisms” role, not any other strata’s, even if the latter emerge from the very roots of the working class, as was the “working intelligentsia” in the USSR. The basic fact that the socialist productive relationships and their development is the basic aspect of the Socialist Reconstruction and as a result, they develop the productive forces further, and not the opposite, is in total accordance with all of the above. As such, the theory of developing these forces, no matter who does so -given metaphorically in the phrase ”it doesn’t matter if a cat is black or white, as long as it catches mice”- is nothing more than the practice of the capitalist restoration; it is the theory and practice of the enslavement of the working class to the new bourgeoisie; it is the theory and practice of destroying the working classes “headquarters”, the Communist Party and changing it into a state formation.
Today by honoring the 100 years of the Socialist Revolution, communists, revolutionaries and militants around the world need to arm themselves ideologically and politically regarding the causes of capitalist restoration in the USSR so as to strengthen their bonds with the working class and the other poor people’s strata in order to build again the necessary conditions for the reconstruction of the workers” revolutionary and communist movement that our times need.
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Βουλευτικές Εκλογές 2023
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