Die Neue Zeit
1st December 2011, 15:08
http://www.cpgb.org.uk/letters.php?issue_id=892
We know that communism is the ultimate goal of Marxists and it is to be achieved after the transition from capitalism to socialism, when the state and all its artificial regulators wither away, to be replaced by a fully self-governing and self-regulating society, where there will be an abundance of goods and services for all: “From each according to their ability; to each according to their needs.” However, the 20th century experience in the Soviet Union and elsewhere teaches us some practical lessons which we as communists must learn from.
I once was an unashamed Stalinist who believed in a strong one-party socialist state (or a coalition dominated by the Marxist-Leninist party), crushing all opposition to socialism. I felt that this was the way class contradictions could be eliminated and a classless society created, and that through the party, the soviets and the people’s mass organisations (youth, women’s, trade unions, etc), the masses would become used to managing society and eventually all the artificial regulators of the state would indeed prove unnecessary and fade away. This enforced one-party state was seen by me as training the masses for the classless, disciplined, self-governing society of communism.
The reality was rather different. Bureaucratic Soviet-style socialism led to opportunists and careerists masquerading as communists, applying for and gaining party membership and eventually taking control. They dominated and outnumbered many genuine comrades, many of whom also became corrupted by the privileges of absolute power. This led to mass disillusionment and apathy from the masses. I saw this myself on visits to the German Democratic Republic and elsewhere - the privileged elite, in effect a new ruling clique or class, of party members and state bureaucrats with access to luxuries, while the masses were disempowered and living with shortages and often inferior goods. It is inevitable with an imposed one-party system that people with selfish motives will pose as communists, infiltrate the party and soon gain control.
The basis of a distorted form of socialism was indeed laid in these countries, with full employment, good public services, security in sickness and old age, good education and health services; but true socialism, and eventually communism, was never going to come about without massive reforms of the system.
I now believe it will take much longer to achieve such a self-governing, self-regulating society and that it must come about naturally. It cannot be enforced by a one-party dictatorship, for instance. So I now envisage a much more gradual evolution towards communism, with many different political parties and groups given the chance by popular vote, under a socialist constitution, to try out various socialist models. Eventually, class contradictions will start to wither away and these various political organisations will meld into a self-governing, self-regulating society, whereupon the state and all its paraphernalia will start to wither away. Also, by the formation of cooperatives, small communes and collectives, communism can come about gradually in smaller communities and slowly spread throughout society, with Marxists leading the way by example.
What communism requires, of course, is for the masses to take on the onerous responsibilities involved in such a society, and this cannot come about overnight or even in the 74 years that the Soviet Union existed; certainly not under the conditions of a Stalinist bureaucratic state which is not only inefficient, but riddled with corruption and full of opportunists. This became obvious after the fall of socialism, when former so-called ‘communists’ in places like the USSR and Yugoslavia clung on to power and changed their party labels and political opinions overnight - often resulting in terrible nationalistic wars, ethnic cleansing and even genocide.
As for the ‘socialism in one country’ hypothesis, this could never really work, though could the USSR ever really be described as ‘one country’? It was a federation of many countries, and indeed the Russian Federation still is. Comrades in the CPGB (PCC) fully recognise the need for a Communist Party of the EU and of working together in solidarity with comrades in other parts of the world. Without such internationalist solidarity, of course, the capitalist countries will much more easily be able to isolate and crush any attempts to build socialism, much as they ganged up against the fledgling Soviet Union after 1917.
Tony Papard
Battersea
We know that communism is the ultimate goal of Marxists and it is to be achieved after the transition from capitalism to socialism, when the state and all its artificial regulators wither away, to be replaced by a fully self-governing and self-regulating society, where there will be an abundance of goods and services for all: “From each according to their ability; to each according to their needs.” However, the 20th century experience in the Soviet Union and elsewhere teaches us some practical lessons which we as communists must learn from.
I once was an unashamed Stalinist who believed in a strong one-party socialist state (or a coalition dominated by the Marxist-Leninist party), crushing all opposition to socialism. I felt that this was the way class contradictions could be eliminated and a classless society created, and that through the party, the soviets and the people’s mass organisations (youth, women’s, trade unions, etc), the masses would become used to managing society and eventually all the artificial regulators of the state would indeed prove unnecessary and fade away. This enforced one-party state was seen by me as training the masses for the classless, disciplined, self-governing society of communism.
The reality was rather different. Bureaucratic Soviet-style socialism led to opportunists and careerists masquerading as communists, applying for and gaining party membership and eventually taking control. They dominated and outnumbered many genuine comrades, many of whom also became corrupted by the privileges of absolute power. This led to mass disillusionment and apathy from the masses. I saw this myself on visits to the German Democratic Republic and elsewhere - the privileged elite, in effect a new ruling clique or class, of party members and state bureaucrats with access to luxuries, while the masses were disempowered and living with shortages and often inferior goods. It is inevitable with an imposed one-party system that people with selfish motives will pose as communists, infiltrate the party and soon gain control.
The basis of a distorted form of socialism was indeed laid in these countries, with full employment, good public services, security in sickness and old age, good education and health services; but true socialism, and eventually communism, was never going to come about without massive reforms of the system.
I now believe it will take much longer to achieve such a self-governing, self-regulating society and that it must come about naturally. It cannot be enforced by a one-party dictatorship, for instance. So I now envisage a much more gradual evolution towards communism, with many different political parties and groups given the chance by popular vote, under a socialist constitution, to try out various socialist models. Eventually, class contradictions will start to wither away and these various political organisations will meld into a self-governing, self-regulating society, whereupon the state and all its paraphernalia will start to wither away. Also, by the formation of cooperatives, small communes and collectives, communism can come about gradually in smaller communities and slowly spread throughout society, with Marxists leading the way by example.
What communism requires, of course, is for the masses to take on the onerous responsibilities involved in such a society, and this cannot come about overnight or even in the 74 years that the Soviet Union existed; certainly not under the conditions of a Stalinist bureaucratic state which is not only inefficient, but riddled with corruption and full of opportunists. This became obvious after the fall of socialism, when former so-called ‘communists’ in places like the USSR and Yugoslavia clung on to power and changed their party labels and political opinions overnight - often resulting in terrible nationalistic wars, ethnic cleansing and even genocide.
As for the ‘socialism in one country’ hypothesis, this could never really work, though could the USSR ever really be described as ‘one country’? It was a federation of many countries, and indeed the Russian Federation still is. Comrades in the CPGB (PCC) fully recognise the need for a Communist Party of the EU and of working together in solidarity with comrades in other parts of the world. Without such internationalist solidarity, of course, the capitalist countries will much more easily be able to isolate and crush any attempts to build socialism, much as they ganged up against the fledgling Soviet Union after 1917.
Tony Papard
Battersea