Marx Lenin Stalin
4th October 2006, 19:33
This is an abbreviated version of the article I posted citing the works and achievements of Stalin. I hope the PC police do not delete it again and if they do , at the very least provide me with a reason. Don't member deserve that much??
http://www.usa2017.com/beatles/stalin.jpg
Joseph Stalin: A Great Marxist-Leninist Leader of the International Working Class
Stalin Waged a Lifelong Struggle to Defend Marxism-Leninism and the Dictatorship of the Proletariat
December 21 marks the 107th anniversary of the birth of one of the greatest leaders of the international working class, Joseph Stalin. Stalin's place in history is monumental. He led the Soviet Communist Party and the Soviet working people for nearly three decades. These were the decades in which socialism, the social system which is destined replace capitalism on a world scale, was first created. Karl Marx, Frederick Engels and V.I. Lenin had all pointed the way forward to socialism and had laid out the path to be followed. But it was Joseph Stalin who, after Lenin's death, actually led the Soviet workers and peasants to carry out the collectivization of agriculture and the building of socialist industry, to complete the radical political and social transformations necessary to build a socialist society. The path for carrying out these tasks was uncharted and Stalin shouldered the great historic responsibility of leading the Soviet people to blaze this trail.
Stalin's Struggle Against Opportunism and Revisionism
J.V. Stalin was a faithful pupil and comrade-in-arms of V.I. Lenin Under Stalin's guidance the Soviet Party stayed on the revolutionary path of Leninism, following the principles he set forth for the building of the dictatorship of the proletariat and socialism. Stalin further developed the theoretical understanding of the transition from capitalism to socialism and the nature of the new socialist society- He waged a determined struggle against those who attempted to deviate the Party to the right or the "left", which would have resulted in surrendering the revolution to the bourgeoisie. Of the critical ideological and political struggles waged under Stalin's leadership, three stand out - the struggles against Trotskyism, against Bukharinism and against Yugoslav revisionism. These were all essentially struggles to defend Marxism-Leninism and the dictatorship of the proletariat.
The. Struggle. Against Trotskyism
The first of these struggles was waged against the Trotskyists, who at first represented petty bourgeois radicalism within the Soviet Party. Fundamentally, the Trotskyists did not believe that it was possible to build socialism in one country, especially a country as backward as the Soviet Union was in the years immediately following the Bolshevik Revolution. Trotsky distorted Marx's theory of "permanent revolution" which, while super-revolutionary in words, in deeds meant defeatism and capitulation to the capitalists in the one country where the socialist revolution had been victorious, the Soviet Union.
"The essence of Trotskyism", wrote Stalin, "is, first of all, denial of the possibility of completely building socialism in the USSR by the efforts of the working class and the peasantry of our country. What does this mean? It means that if a victorious world revolution does not come to our aid in the near future, we shall have to surrender to the bourgeoisie and clear the way for a bourgeois-democratic republic. Consequently, we have here the bourgeois denial of the possibility of completely building socialism in our country, disguised by 'revolutionary' phrases about the victory of the world revolution."
The Trotskyists claimed that the peasantry was hopelessly tied to small-scale capitalist production and that there was no basis for an alliance of the working class and the peasantry.
"The essence of Trotskyism," continued Stalin, "is secondly, denial of the possibility of drawing the main mass of the peasantry into the work of socialist construction in the countryside. What does this mean? It means that the working class is incapable of leading the peasantry in the work of transferring the individual peasant farms to collectivist lines, that if victory of the world revolution does not come to the aid of the working class in the near future, the peasantry will restore the old bourgeois order."
Based on these views, the Trotskyists proposed a whole series of reckless and adventurist policies during the period of reconstruction, including a policy of super-industrialization at the expense of the peasantry, which would have led to the ruin of the peasantry and the rupture of the worker-peasant alliance. At the same time, he argued for far-reaching concessions to foreign capital in order to finance and acquire technology for industrialization. Later, he joined Right opportunists in criticizing the rates of collectivization of agriculture and socialist industrialization as "excessive." Stalin explained that these apparent contradictions in Trotskyist policies reflected "the duality of the position of the urban petty bourgeoisie," which "is striving either to jump into socialism 'at one go' in order to avoid being ruined (hence adventurism and hysterics in policy), or, if this is impossible, to make every conceivable concession to capitalism (hence capitulation in policy)."
Trotsky, a life-long factionalist, joined in a series of unprincipled blocs with all opposition forces in the Party to attack the leadership and promote factions, advancing theories to justify the "necessity of factions" in the Party.
"The essence of Trotskyism," continued Stalin, "is, lastly, denial of the necessity for iron discipline in the Party, recognition of freedom for factional groupings in the Party, recognition of the need to form a Trotskyist party. According to Trotskyism, the [Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks)] must not be a single, united militant party, but a collection of factions, each with its own center, its own discipline, its own, press and so forth. What does this mean? It means proclaiming freedom for political factions in the Party. It means that freedom for political groupings in the Party must be followed by freedom for political parties in the country, i.e. bourgeois democracy."
"That freedom for factional squabbling of groups of intellectuals is not inner-party democracy, that the widely developed self-criticism conducted by the Party and the colossal activity of the mass of the party membership is real and genuine inner-party democracy - Trotskyism cannot understand."
The defeat of Trotskyism was decisive to the construction of socialism. "There is no doubt that the triumph of the 'Left' deviation in our Party," wrote Stalin, "would lead to the working class being separated from its peasant base, to the vanguard of the working class being separated from the rest of the working class masses and, consequently, to the defeat of the proletariat and to facilitating conditions for the restoration of capitalism." After their defeat in the Soviet Party, the Trotskyists joined with international capital to slander and sabotage socialism in the Soviet Union.
The Struggle Against Bukharinism
The second major struggle was against Bukharin and the Right opportunists. Bukharin claimed that socialism could be built automatically, and peacefully without class struggle. They protested against the elimination of the kulak (rich peasant) economy and its replacement by collectivized agriculture. They argued that the kulaks and the other capitalist elements remaining in Soviet society would "grow peacefully into socialism." They also demanded that the state's monopoly on foreign trade be relaxed to allow for the growth of capitalist merchants, that the rate of industrialization be cut back and that the struggle against bureaucracy be curtailed, claiming that it undermined the Soviet state apparatus. Stalin warned that "A victory for the right deviation would mean a development of the conditions necessary for the restoration of capitalism." He reaffirmed Lenin's thesis that the defense of the dictatorship of the proletariat required a fierce class struggle against the remnants of the overthrown exploiting classes, the agents of international capital and new capitalist elements which arose within Soviet society. "Either we vanquish and crush them, the exploiters," warned Stalin, "or they will vanquish and crush us, the workers and peasants of the USSR."
Stalin pointed out that bureaucracy, the tendency of party and state officials to place themselves above the control of the masses, was "one of the most savage enemies" of the socialist order and could only be success-fully combated by "raising the fury of the masses of working people against bureaucratic distortions in our organizations." "The abolition of classes," taught Stalin, "is not achieved by the extinction of class struggle, but by its intensification."
In addition to the struggles against "Left" and Right opportunism within the Soviet Party, Stalin led the struggle against similar tendencies in the international communist movement. Of particular importance for the communist movement in the United States, was the intervention of Stalin and the Communist International in 1929 to correct the problems of factionalism, "American exceptionalism" and right opportunism which plagued the Communist Party, USA (CPUSA). Stalin told the U.S. communists, who were then divided into two unprincipled factions:
"The error of both groups is that they exaggerate the significance of the specific features of American capitalism which are characteristic of world capitalism as a whole... It cannot be denied that American conditions form a medium in which it is easy for the American Communist Party to be led astray and to exaggerate the strength and stability of American capitalism. These conditions lead our comrades from America, both the majority and minority, into errors of the type of the Right deviation."
The intervention of the Communist International resulted in the purge of the right opportunist Lovestone faction from the CPUSA and set the Party on a clear path of revolutionary struggle. The finest period of the revolutionary activity of the CPUSA followed, during the early 1930's. Marxist-Leninists today have much to learn from the leadership Stalin provided for the CPUSA and for the communist movement as a whole.
The Struggle Against Yugoslav Revisionism
The third major ideological struggle waged by Stalin took place after World War II and was directed against Tito and the revisionist leaders of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia (CPY). The Yugoslav revisionists were the first revisionists to hold state power. After they came to power in 1944, the Yugoslav revisionists pursued a liberal and opportunist policy of alliance with the capitalist elements of the city and the countryside, and they maintained close ties with the U.S. and British imperialists. In 1948, the Soviet Communist Party, at Stalin's initiative, openly criticized the Yugoslav policies before the international communist movement in a series of letters. The main ideological criticism concerned the question of class struggle in the construction of socialism.
"[The] spirit of the policy of class struggle is not felt in the CPY... the capitalist elements are increasing in the cities and the villages and… the leaders of the Party are not undertaking any measures to check the capitalist elements....
"The denial on the part of these comrades of the strengthening of the capitalist elements, and in connection with this, the sharpening of the class struggle in the village under the conditions of contemporary Yugoslavia, arises from the opportunist contention that, in the transition period between capitalism and socialism, the class struggle does not become sharper, as taught by Marxism-Leninism, but dies out, as averred by opportunists of the type of Bukharin, who postulated the decadent theory of the peaceful absorption of the capitalist elements into the socialist structure.
"Where, as in Yugoslavia, there is no nationalization of the land, where private ownership of the land exists and land is bought and sold, where considerable portions of land are concentrated in the hands of the kulaks, where hired labor is used, etc., the Party cannot be educated in the spirit of camouflaging the class struggle and smoothing over class controversies without disarming itself for the struggle with the main difficulties in the development of socialism."
The letters further exposed the policy of submerging the proletarian party within the multi-class popular front, which was a reflection of the same right opportunist policy of class conciliation:
"[In] Yugoslavia the CPY is not considered the main leading force, but rather the People's Front... Yugoslav leaders diminish the role of the Party and are in fact dissolving the Party into a non-party People's Front, allowing in this way the same cardinal error committed by the Mensheviks in Russia forty years ago."
"It must be borne in mind that in the People's Front a variety of classes are admitted: kulaks, merchants, small manufacturers, bourgeois intelligentsia, various political groups, including some bourgeois parties. The fact that, in Yugoslavia, only the People's Front enters the political arena and that the Party and its organizations do not take part in political life openly under its own name, not only diminishes the role of the Party in the political life of the country, but also undermines the Party as an independent political force, called upon to gain the confidence of the people and to spread its influence over even broader masses of workers through open political work, through open propaganda of its opinions and its programme."
The letter further criticized the sectarian-bureaucratic nature of the CPY:
"[The] CPY retains a semi-legal status, in spite of the fact that it came into power more that three and a half years ago;… there is no democracy in the Party; there is no system of elections; there is no criticism or self-criticism... the CPY Central Committee is not composed of elected persons, but of co-opted persons."
"[The] Politbureau of the CC of the CPY does not consider the Party as an independent entity, with the right to its own opinion, but as a partisan detachment, whose members have no right to discuss any questions but are obliged to fulfill all the desires of the 'chief' without comment. We call this cultivating militarism in the Party, which is incompatible with the principles of democracy within a Marxist-Leninist Party."
The Yugoslav leaders rejected these criticisms of Stalin and the Soviet Party and continued on their capitalist course, and, after being denounced by the international communist movement, openly allied themselves with U.S. and British imperialism. They claimed to be building a new "model of socialism," in which there was no need to expropriate the capitalists or build a proletarian dictatorship. They returned factories to the old exploiters and threw open the doors to foreign capitalist investment. In 1951, the Soviet government declared that Tito and his clique had already reestablished the capitalist system in Yugoslavia, thereby depriving the people of their revolutionary victory, and transforming the nation into a weapon of the aggressive imperialist powers.
The struggle against Yugoslav revisionism was part of a broader struggle initiated by Stalin against Right opportunist deviations which had been generated during World War II when an alliance was made with the U.S., Britain and other bourgeois democratic states to defeat fascism. This struggle included the exposure of Browderism in the U.S. Communist Party and similar opportunist lines which claimed that the War would be followed by a long period of alliance between the Soviet Union and the Anglo-American imperialists, and that here was no longer any need for revolution in the imperialist countries. The struggle was also carried out in all of the People's Democracies that had been born out of the anti-fascist war, directed against similar deviations to those that were occurring in Yugoslavia. Stalin also initiated a new campaign against Right opportunism in the Soviet Union, targeting deviations in the fields of culture and economic theory.
Stalin's Death and the Victory of Modern Revisionism
This struggle against Right opportunism was cut short by Stalin's death in 1953. Following Stalin's death the Khrushchev revisionist clique, representing a stratum of privileged and bureaucratic Soviet party and state officials, seized power, destroyed socialism and restored capitalism in the Soviet Union. They promoted the treacherous ideology of modern revisionism throughout the world, causing the degeneration of most of the communist parties. This momentous tragedy for the international communist movement was only possible after the death of Joseph Stalin, who, as the central leader of the communist movement, had defended Marxism-Leninism with determination throughout his life.
The genuine Marxist-Leninists, led by the Party of Labor of Albania (PLA) took up the struggle against the onslaught of modern revisionism. In waging this struggle they were guided by the teachings of Joseph Stalin. They had been trained by the struggle Stalin had led against Yugoslav revisionism, which had been the first battle in the struggle against modern revisionism. The Albanian Marxist-Leninists had been particularly schooled in this struggle, in which they had taken a direct part.
Stalin, of course, could not have foreseen the entire process by which the dictatorship of the proletariat would degenerate from within, a process which was concluded only after his death. The Marxist-Leninist analysis and summation of these events, and of modern revisionism in its fully developed form, were left up to Stalin's successors, Enver Hoxha and the PLA, as well as the other genuine Marxist-Leninists. After summing up the causes of the tragedy which befell the Soviet people, the PLA took important measures to correct weaknesses and distortions that had developed in the Soviet system of socialism. These measures were a perfection of the socialism pioneered by Stalin, not a rejection of it. The Albanians relied on precisely the course championed by Stalin (i.e., the continuation of the class struggle, the mobilization of the masses of people in the struggle against bureaucracy, etc.) as the basis of their measures to continually perfect and revolutionize the socialist system. In contrast, the Chinese revisionists, who also denounced Soviet revisionism, used these denunciations as an excuse to discard the basic teachings of Marxism-Leninism and the model of Soviet socialism during Stalin's time. They have ended up building capitalism, not socialism.
The Capitalist and Revisionist Attacks on Stalin
Joseph Stalin has been viciously slandered by the capitalists and revisionists, who make him out to be the devil incarnate. The reason for these unbridled attacks is clear. Stalin's name is synonymous with socialism and the dictatorship of the proletariat. He was, during the years he led the Soviet people, the most formidable and implacable enemy of the capitalist exploiters. Even now that he has died, his ideas and the system that he represents remain a fatal danger to the capitalists and the revisionists. For this reason they must attack him with all their resources; they must use every lie and deception to defame this great working class leader.
Among those who attack Stalin are a whole array of political forces which call themselves Marxists. First there are the Soviet revisionists, who have destroyed the socialist system created under Stalin's leadership and are determined to vilify anything connected with the years when the dictatorship of the working class existed in the Soviet Union, and to attack the basic principles of genuine Marxism-Leninism. (The Communist Party, USA repeats the Soviet revisionists' attacks on Stalin.) Then there are the Trotskyists, the arch-enemies of Marxism-Leninism and Soviet socialism, who have made a profession out of slandering Stalin in the service of the capitalists for over half a century. These anti-Marxist tendencies are joined by various other opportunists, and have recently found a new ally in their attacks on Stalin in the so-called Marxist-Leninist Party (MLP) in the United States. The MLP, which for many years proclaimed affiliation to the international Marxist-Leninist movement headed by the PLA, has, since 1984, shown its true colors in a series of scurrilous attacks on the Party of Labor of Albania and on Stalin. Their arguments are essentially a rehash of the lies and distortions put forward by the Trotskyists for decades.
Stalin: A Touchstone of Marxism-Leninism
All genuine Marxist-Leninists are proud to uphold Joseph Stalin as one of the great teachers of Marxism-Leninism. The question of Stalin and his work is not simply one of historical importance. It is a question of critical importance to the ongoing development of the Marxist-Leninist movement worldwide. All of the basic ideas of Marxism-Leninism and especially the heart of this theory, the necessity of the dictatorship of the proletariat, are tied up with the defense of Stalin. The capitalists and revisionists attack on Stalin is at the same time an attack on the ideas of Lenin and of Marx. The upholding of Stalin is a touchstone differentiating genuine Marxism-Leninism from all of the theories that defend capitalism (although they may do this under a myriad of "radical" and "revolutionary" signboards). Only those who uphold and defend the work and teachings of Joseph Stalin will be able to build the kind of political party necessary to lead the working class to victory and to establish and maintain the dictatorship of the proletariat.
Enver Hoxha, the great Albanian communist who died last year, spoke for all genuine Marxist-Leninists when he said:
"The historic merits of Stalin are undeniable. Those merits constitute his fundamental characteristic as a great leader and revolutionary. The revisionists' slanders against Stalin cannot in the least obscure his outstanding figure and monumental work, which will remain brilliant through the ages and will always serve as a great and inspiring example and a banner of struggle for all Marxist-Leninists of the world."
http://www.usa2017.com/beatles/stalin.jpg
Joseph Stalin: A Great Marxist-Leninist Leader of the International Working Class
Stalin Waged a Lifelong Struggle to Defend Marxism-Leninism and the Dictatorship of the Proletariat
December 21 marks the 107th anniversary of the birth of one of the greatest leaders of the international working class, Joseph Stalin. Stalin's place in history is monumental. He led the Soviet Communist Party and the Soviet working people for nearly three decades. These were the decades in which socialism, the social system which is destined replace capitalism on a world scale, was first created. Karl Marx, Frederick Engels and V.I. Lenin had all pointed the way forward to socialism and had laid out the path to be followed. But it was Joseph Stalin who, after Lenin's death, actually led the Soviet workers and peasants to carry out the collectivization of agriculture and the building of socialist industry, to complete the radical political and social transformations necessary to build a socialist society. The path for carrying out these tasks was uncharted and Stalin shouldered the great historic responsibility of leading the Soviet people to blaze this trail.
Stalin's Struggle Against Opportunism and Revisionism
J.V. Stalin was a faithful pupil and comrade-in-arms of V.I. Lenin Under Stalin's guidance the Soviet Party stayed on the revolutionary path of Leninism, following the principles he set forth for the building of the dictatorship of the proletariat and socialism. Stalin further developed the theoretical understanding of the transition from capitalism to socialism and the nature of the new socialist society- He waged a determined struggle against those who attempted to deviate the Party to the right or the "left", which would have resulted in surrendering the revolution to the bourgeoisie. Of the critical ideological and political struggles waged under Stalin's leadership, three stand out - the struggles against Trotskyism, against Bukharinism and against Yugoslav revisionism. These were all essentially struggles to defend Marxism-Leninism and the dictatorship of the proletariat.
The. Struggle. Against Trotskyism
The first of these struggles was waged against the Trotskyists, who at first represented petty bourgeois radicalism within the Soviet Party. Fundamentally, the Trotskyists did not believe that it was possible to build socialism in one country, especially a country as backward as the Soviet Union was in the years immediately following the Bolshevik Revolution. Trotsky distorted Marx's theory of "permanent revolution" which, while super-revolutionary in words, in deeds meant defeatism and capitulation to the capitalists in the one country where the socialist revolution had been victorious, the Soviet Union.
"The essence of Trotskyism", wrote Stalin, "is, first of all, denial of the possibility of completely building socialism in the USSR by the efforts of the working class and the peasantry of our country. What does this mean? It means that if a victorious world revolution does not come to our aid in the near future, we shall have to surrender to the bourgeoisie and clear the way for a bourgeois-democratic republic. Consequently, we have here the bourgeois denial of the possibility of completely building socialism in our country, disguised by 'revolutionary' phrases about the victory of the world revolution."
The Trotskyists claimed that the peasantry was hopelessly tied to small-scale capitalist production and that there was no basis for an alliance of the working class and the peasantry.
"The essence of Trotskyism," continued Stalin, "is secondly, denial of the possibility of drawing the main mass of the peasantry into the work of socialist construction in the countryside. What does this mean? It means that the working class is incapable of leading the peasantry in the work of transferring the individual peasant farms to collectivist lines, that if victory of the world revolution does not come to the aid of the working class in the near future, the peasantry will restore the old bourgeois order."
Based on these views, the Trotskyists proposed a whole series of reckless and adventurist policies during the period of reconstruction, including a policy of super-industrialization at the expense of the peasantry, which would have led to the ruin of the peasantry and the rupture of the worker-peasant alliance. At the same time, he argued for far-reaching concessions to foreign capital in order to finance and acquire technology for industrialization. Later, he joined Right opportunists in criticizing the rates of collectivization of agriculture and socialist industrialization as "excessive." Stalin explained that these apparent contradictions in Trotskyist policies reflected "the duality of the position of the urban petty bourgeoisie," which "is striving either to jump into socialism 'at one go' in order to avoid being ruined (hence adventurism and hysterics in policy), or, if this is impossible, to make every conceivable concession to capitalism (hence capitulation in policy)."
Trotsky, a life-long factionalist, joined in a series of unprincipled blocs with all opposition forces in the Party to attack the leadership and promote factions, advancing theories to justify the "necessity of factions" in the Party.
"The essence of Trotskyism," continued Stalin, "is, lastly, denial of the necessity for iron discipline in the Party, recognition of freedom for factional groupings in the Party, recognition of the need to form a Trotskyist party. According to Trotskyism, the [Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks)] must not be a single, united militant party, but a collection of factions, each with its own center, its own discipline, its own, press and so forth. What does this mean? It means proclaiming freedom for political factions in the Party. It means that freedom for political groupings in the Party must be followed by freedom for political parties in the country, i.e. bourgeois democracy."
"That freedom for factional squabbling of groups of intellectuals is not inner-party democracy, that the widely developed self-criticism conducted by the Party and the colossal activity of the mass of the party membership is real and genuine inner-party democracy - Trotskyism cannot understand."
The defeat of Trotskyism was decisive to the construction of socialism. "There is no doubt that the triumph of the 'Left' deviation in our Party," wrote Stalin, "would lead to the working class being separated from its peasant base, to the vanguard of the working class being separated from the rest of the working class masses and, consequently, to the defeat of the proletariat and to facilitating conditions for the restoration of capitalism." After their defeat in the Soviet Party, the Trotskyists joined with international capital to slander and sabotage socialism in the Soviet Union.
The Struggle Against Bukharinism
The second major struggle was against Bukharin and the Right opportunists. Bukharin claimed that socialism could be built automatically, and peacefully without class struggle. They protested against the elimination of the kulak (rich peasant) economy and its replacement by collectivized agriculture. They argued that the kulaks and the other capitalist elements remaining in Soviet society would "grow peacefully into socialism." They also demanded that the state's monopoly on foreign trade be relaxed to allow for the growth of capitalist merchants, that the rate of industrialization be cut back and that the struggle against bureaucracy be curtailed, claiming that it undermined the Soviet state apparatus. Stalin warned that "A victory for the right deviation would mean a development of the conditions necessary for the restoration of capitalism." He reaffirmed Lenin's thesis that the defense of the dictatorship of the proletariat required a fierce class struggle against the remnants of the overthrown exploiting classes, the agents of international capital and new capitalist elements which arose within Soviet society. "Either we vanquish and crush them, the exploiters," warned Stalin, "or they will vanquish and crush us, the workers and peasants of the USSR."
Stalin pointed out that bureaucracy, the tendency of party and state officials to place themselves above the control of the masses, was "one of the most savage enemies" of the socialist order and could only be success-fully combated by "raising the fury of the masses of working people against bureaucratic distortions in our organizations." "The abolition of classes," taught Stalin, "is not achieved by the extinction of class struggle, but by its intensification."
In addition to the struggles against "Left" and Right opportunism within the Soviet Party, Stalin led the struggle against similar tendencies in the international communist movement. Of particular importance for the communist movement in the United States, was the intervention of Stalin and the Communist International in 1929 to correct the problems of factionalism, "American exceptionalism" and right opportunism which plagued the Communist Party, USA (CPUSA). Stalin told the U.S. communists, who were then divided into two unprincipled factions:
"The error of both groups is that they exaggerate the significance of the specific features of American capitalism which are characteristic of world capitalism as a whole... It cannot be denied that American conditions form a medium in which it is easy for the American Communist Party to be led astray and to exaggerate the strength and stability of American capitalism. These conditions lead our comrades from America, both the majority and minority, into errors of the type of the Right deviation."
The intervention of the Communist International resulted in the purge of the right opportunist Lovestone faction from the CPUSA and set the Party on a clear path of revolutionary struggle. The finest period of the revolutionary activity of the CPUSA followed, during the early 1930's. Marxist-Leninists today have much to learn from the leadership Stalin provided for the CPUSA and for the communist movement as a whole.
The Struggle Against Yugoslav Revisionism
The third major ideological struggle waged by Stalin took place after World War II and was directed against Tito and the revisionist leaders of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia (CPY). The Yugoslav revisionists were the first revisionists to hold state power. After they came to power in 1944, the Yugoslav revisionists pursued a liberal and opportunist policy of alliance with the capitalist elements of the city and the countryside, and they maintained close ties with the U.S. and British imperialists. In 1948, the Soviet Communist Party, at Stalin's initiative, openly criticized the Yugoslav policies before the international communist movement in a series of letters. The main ideological criticism concerned the question of class struggle in the construction of socialism.
"[The] spirit of the policy of class struggle is not felt in the CPY... the capitalist elements are increasing in the cities and the villages and… the leaders of the Party are not undertaking any measures to check the capitalist elements....
"The denial on the part of these comrades of the strengthening of the capitalist elements, and in connection with this, the sharpening of the class struggle in the village under the conditions of contemporary Yugoslavia, arises from the opportunist contention that, in the transition period between capitalism and socialism, the class struggle does not become sharper, as taught by Marxism-Leninism, but dies out, as averred by opportunists of the type of Bukharin, who postulated the decadent theory of the peaceful absorption of the capitalist elements into the socialist structure.
"Where, as in Yugoslavia, there is no nationalization of the land, where private ownership of the land exists and land is bought and sold, where considerable portions of land are concentrated in the hands of the kulaks, where hired labor is used, etc., the Party cannot be educated in the spirit of camouflaging the class struggle and smoothing over class controversies without disarming itself for the struggle with the main difficulties in the development of socialism."
The letters further exposed the policy of submerging the proletarian party within the multi-class popular front, which was a reflection of the same right opportunist policy of class conciliation:
"[In] Yugoslavia the CPY is not considered the main leading force, but rather the People's Front... Yugoslav leaders diminish the role of the Party and are in fact dissolving the Party into a non-party People's Front, allowing in this way the same cardinal error committed by the Mensheviks in Russia forty years ago."
"It must be borne in mind that in the People's Front a variety of classes are admitted: kulaks, merchants, small manufacturers, bourgeois intelligentsia, various political groups, including some bourgeois parties. The fact that, in Yugoslavia, only the People's Front enters the political arena and that the Party and its organizations do not take part in political life openly under its own name, not only diminishes the role of the Party in the political life of the country, but also undermines the Party as an independent political force, called upon to gain the confidence of the people and to spread its influence over even broader masses of workers through open political work, through open propaganda of its opinions and its programme."
The letter further criticized the sectarian-bureaucratic nature of the CPY:
"[The] CPY retains a semi-legal status, in spite of the fact that it came into power more that three and a half years ago;… there is no democracy in the Party; there is no system of elections; there is no criticism or self-criticism... the CPY Central Committee is not composed of elected persons, but of co-opted persons."
"[The] Politbureau of the CC of the CPY does not consider the Party as an independent entity, with the right to its own opinion, but as a partisan detachment, whose members have no right to discuss any questions but are obliged to fulfill all the desires of the 'chief' without comment. We call this cultivating militarism in the Party, which is incompatible with the principles of democracy within a Marxist-Leninist Party."
The Yugoslav leaders rejected these criticisms of Stalin and the Soviet Party and continued on their capitalist course, and, after being denounced by the international communist movement, openly allied themselves with U.S. and British imperialism. They claimed to be building a new "model of socialism," in which there was no need to expropriate the capitalists or build a proletarian dictatorship. They returned factories to the old exploiters and threw open the doors to foreign capitalist investment. In 1951, the Soviet government declared that Tito and his clique had already reestablished the capitalist system in Yugoslavia, thereby depriving the people of their revolutionary victory, and transforming the nation into a weapon of the aggressive imperialist powers.
The struggle against Yugoslav revisionism was part of a broader struggle initiated by Stalin against Right opportunist deviations which had been generated during World War II when an alliance was made with the U.S., Britain and other bourgeois democratic states to defeat fascism. This struggle included the exposure of Browderism in the U.S. Communist Party and similar opportunist lines which claimed that the War would be followed by a long period of alliance between the Soviet Union and the Anglo-American imperialists, and that here was no longer any need for revolution in the imperialist countries. The struggle was also carried out in all of the People's Democracies that had been born out of the anti-fascist war, directed against similar deviations to those that were occurring in Yugoslavia. Stalin also initiated a new campaign against Right opportunism in the Soviet Union, targeting deviations in the fields of culture and economic theory.
Stalin's Death and the Victory of Modern Revisionism
This struggle against Right opportunism was cut short by Stalin's death in 1953. Following Stalin's death the Khrushchev revisionist clique, representing a stratum of privileged and bureaucratic Soviet party and state officials, seized power, destroyed socialism and restored capitalism in the Soviet Union. They promoted the treacherous ideology of modern revisionism throughout the world, causing the degeneration of most of the communist parties. This momentous tragedy for the international communist movement was only possible after the death of Joseph Stalin, who, as the central leader of the communist movement, had defended Marxism-Leninism with determination throughout his life.
The genuine Marxist-Leninists, led by the Party of Labor of Albania (PLA) took up the struggle against the onslaught of modern revisionism. In waging this struggle they were guided by the teachings of Joseph Stalin. They had been trained by the struggle Stalin had led against Yugoslav revisionism, which had been the first battle in the struggle against modern revisionism. The Albanian Marxist-Leninists had been particularly schooled in this struggle, in which they had taken a direct part.
Stalin, of course, could not have foreseen the entire process by which the dictatorship of the proletariat would degenerate from within, a process which was concluded only after his death. The Marxist-Leninist analysis and summation of these events, and of modern revisionism in its fully developed form, were left up to Stalin's successors, Enver Hoxha and the PLA, as well as the other genuine Marxist-Leninists. After summing up the causes of the tragedy which befell the Soviet people, the PLA took important measures to correct weaknesses and distortions that had developed in the Soviet system of socialism. These measures were a perfection of the socialism pioneered by Stalin, not a rejection of it. The Albanians relied on precisely the course championed by Stalin (i.e., the continuation of the class struggle, the mobilization of the masses of people in the struggle against bureaucracy, etc.) as the basis of their measures to continually perfect and revolutionize the socialist system. In contrast, the Chinese revisionists, who also denounced Soviet revisionism, used these denunciations as an excuse to discard the basic teachings of Marxism-Leninism and the model of Soviet socialism during Stalin's time. They have ended up building capitalism, not socialism.
The Capitalist and Revisionist Attacks on Stalin
Joseph Stalin has been viciously slandered by the capitalists and revisionists, who make him out to be the devil incarnate. The reason for these unbridled attacks is clear. Stalin's name is synonymous with socialism and the dictatorship of the proletariat. He was, during the years he led the Soviet people, the most formidable and implacable enemy of the capitalist exploiters. Even now that he has died, his ideas and the system that he represents remain a fatal danger to the capitalists and the revisionists. For this reason they must attack him with all their resources; they must use every lie and deception to defame this great working class leader.
Among those who attack Stalin are a whole array of political forces which call themselves Marxists. First there are the Soviet revisionists, who have destroyed the socialist system created under Stalin's leadership and are determined to vilify anything connected with the years when the dictatorship of the working class existed in the Soviet Union, and to attack the basic principles of genuine Marxism-Leninism. (The Communist Party, USA repeats the Soviet revisionists' attacks on Stalin.) Then there are the Trotskyists, the arch-enemies of Marxism-Leninism and Soviet socialism, who have made a profession out of slandering Stalin in the service of the capitalists for over half a century. These anti-Marxist tendencies are joined by various other opportunists, and have recently found a new ally in their attacks on Stalin in the so-called Marxist-Leninist Party (MLP) in the United States. The MLP, which for many years proclaimed affiliation to the international Marxist-Leninist movement headed by the PLA, has, since 1984, shown its true colors in a series of scurrilous attacks on the Party of Labor of Albania and on Stalin. Their arguments are essentially a rehash of the lies and distortions put forward by the Trotskyists for decades.
Stalin: A Touchstone of Marxism-Leninism
All genuine Marxist-Leninists are proud to uphold Joseph Stalin as one of the great teachers of Marxism-Leninism. The question of Stalin and his work is not simply one of historical importance. It is a question of critical importance to the ongoing development of the Marxist-Leninist movement worldwide. All of the basic ideas of Marxism-Leninism and especially the heart of this theory, the necessity of the dictatorship of the proletariat, are tied up with the defense of Stalin. The capitalists and revisionists attack on Stalin is at the same time an attack on the ideas of Lenin and of Marx. The upholding of Stalin is a touchstone differentiating genuine Marxism-Leninism from all of the theories that defend capitalism (although they may do this under a myriad of "radical" and "revolutionary" signboards). Only those who uphold and defend the work and teachings of Joseph Stalin will be able to build the kind of political party necessary to lead the working class to victory and to establish and maintain the dictatorship of the proletariat.
Enver Hoxha, the great Albanian communist who died last year, spoke for all genuine Marxist-Leninists when he said:
"The historic merits of Stalin are undeniable. Those merits constitute his fundamental characteristic as a great leader and revolutionary. The revisionists' slanders against Stalin cannot in the least obscure his outstanding figure and monumental work, which will remain brilliant through the ages and will always serve as a great and inspiring example and a banner of struggle for all Marxist-Leninists of the world."