Originally posted by
[email protected] November 22, 2007, 2:45 p.m.
This is different from the method used by Stalin, which was basically to "purge it all out" mechanistically without relying on the masses. This is very incorrect because the lines of people like Trotsky and Zinoviev are never throughly repudiated, so it gives a strong basis for revisionism later on and actually ends up crippling the consciousness of the masses.
Some comrades think that people can only be checked up on from above, when the leaders check up on subordinates, on the results of their work. This is not true. Check-up from above is necessary, of course, as one of the effective measures for verifying people and checking up the fulfilment of tasks. But verification from above does not exhaust by far the whole business of verification. There is still another kind of verification, the check-up from below, in which the masses, the subordinates, verify the leaders, point out their mistakes, and show the way of correcting them. This kind of verification is one of the most effective methods of checking up on people.
The rank-and-file members verify their leaders at meetings of active Party workers, at conferences and congresses, by listening to their reports, by criticizing defects, and finally by electing or not electing some or other leading comrades to the leading Party organs. Precise operation of democratic centralism in the Party as demanded by our Party statutes, unconditional electiveness of Party organs, the right to put forward and to withdraw candidates, the secret ballot and freedom of criticism and self-criticism -- all these and similar measures must be carred into life, in order to facilitate the check-up on, and control over, the leaders of the Party by the rank-and-file Party members.
The non-Party masses check their economic, trade union and other leaders at meetings of non-Party active workers, at all kinds of mass conferences, where they hear reports of their leaders, criticize defects and indicate ways or correcting them. Finally, the people check leaders of the country during the elections to the Soviet Union organs of power, through universal, equal, direct and secret ballot.
The task is to link up the check from above with that from below.
J.V. Stalin, Mastering Bolshevism (http://www.marx2mao.com/Stalin/MB37.html)
Everybody, from the Anarchists, Trotskyists, and even the Maoists, who attribute every achievement or mistake in Soviet, Chinese or other communist history to Stalin and Khrushchev and Mao, etc. alone are in the wrong. Attributing everything that went wrong to individuals is not studying the historical question in the dialectical materialist manner. It's purely "Great Man" thinking- idealism. Processes of history happen by classes, not by individuals.
People ask, what is revisionism? Well, Lenin said (http://www.marx2mao.com/Lenin/DELM10.html)
The principal tactical differences in the present-day labour movement of Europe and America reduce themselves to a struggle against two big trends that are departing from Marxism, which has in fact become the dominant theory in this movement. These two trends are revisionism (opportunism, reformism) and anarchism (anarcho-syndicalism, anarcho-socialism). Both these departures from the Marxist theory and Marxist tactics that are dominant in the labour movement were to be observed in various forms and in various shades in all civilised countries during the more than half-century of history of the mass labour movement.
...
Not infrequently, the bourgeoisie for a certain time achieves its object by a "liberal" policy, which, as Pannekoek justly remarks, is a "more crafty" policy. A part of the workers and a part of their representatives at times allow themselves to be deceived by seeming concessions. The revisionists declare that the doctrine of the class struggle is "antiquated", or begin to conduct a policy which is in fact a renunciation of the class struggle. The zigzags of bourgeois tactics intensify revisionism within the labour movement and not infrequently bring the differences within the labour movement to the point of an outright split.
Revisionism says the class struggle is antiquated. We can live in "peaceful co-existence with the bourgeoisie. Peaceful co-existence of the two social systems (socialism and imperialism) is a definite possibility. We do not armed struggle to win a revolution, mere parliamentary vote is all that is required." Khrushchev once mentioned that the capitalist encirclement of the U.S.S.R. had ended, despite the presence of N.A.T.O. and U.S. army forces. Then the Bay of Pigs and the Cuban Missile Crisis showed that the capitalist encirclement is still a danger. Revisionism said we could sustain a long-term peace with imperialism. Yet the Cold War, and now this War on Terror show that peace can never be possible, so long as imperialism exists. For imperialism, as a social system, requires markets and resources to ensure the survival of monopoly-capitalism. And in the end, war is the logical result of imperialism's desires to acquire said markets and resources.
Khrushchev said at the 20th Congress, "Stalin’s report at the February-March Central Committee Plenum in 1937, 'Deficiencies of Party work and methods for the liquidation of the Trotskyites and of other two-facers,' contained an attempt at theoretical justification of the mass terror policy under the pretext that class war must allegedly sharpen as we march forward toward socialism. Stalin asserted that both history and Lenin taught him this. Actually Lenin taught that the application of revolutionary violence is necessitated by the resistance of the exploiting classes, and this referred to the era when the exploiting classes existed and were powerful."
Khrushchev, as representative of the revisionist degeneration of the C.P.S.U., wanted the masses to believe that class war was antiquated, that the exploiting classes no longer existed in the Soviet Union since the Russian Civil War. History proved otherwise. You had the agents and spies of the bourgeoisie constantly harassing the Soviet Union throughout the 1920s and 1930s, bureaucratic rot in the Communist Party that, if left unchecked, would destroy the socialist revolution. In fact, Stalin said in that very paper which Khrushchev is citing, that "How can it be explained that our leading comrades, who have a rich experience of struggle against every kind of anti-Party and anti-Soviet trend, proved to be so blind and naive in this case that they were unable to recognize the real face of the enemies of the people, were unable to discern the wolves in sheep's clothing, were unable to tear the mask from them?" If the Party is not led by the masses, does not fight these revisionist trends, it will rot and degenerate into a bureaucratic nightmare. Which is precisely what happened in the Khrushchevite period. The Khrushchevites essentially renounced the class struggle so that they could get away with their bureaucratic deficiencies. Changes quantitatively in the base and superstructure began to occur with a new criminal code, a new party program, economic reforms that allowed more market involvement. Gradually, as the years would pass, this would all lead to the breakup of the Soviet Union.
An entire article, discussing the class origin of the Khrushchevite counter-revolution in the U.S.S.R., was composed by Alexei Danko and has been published in Northstar Compass. Feel free to browse it here: http://www.northstarcompass.org/nsc0612/pg26.htm
China launched the Cultural Revolution. Although there were excesses, revisionism in one form had been liquidated. But you have to remember, that the existence of imperialism, and the presence of contradictions in the socialist country, still create the conditions for a revival of revisionism. But revisionism takes on a new form, it assumes a new character. The class war was growing more sharper. It was this new round of revisionism that the Cultural Revolution did not fight, and ultimately, revisionism got the upper hand because the Red Guards and mass cadres trained to fight, had slipped behind and did not launch a new struggle against this new form of revisionism.
And so China, under the Dengists, also renounced the class struggle. As Hu Jintao said at the 17th Congress of the CPC (http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2007-10/25/content_6204663_2.htm): "We must never forget that the great cause of reform and opening up was initiated by the Party's second generation of central collective leadership with Comrade Deng Xiaoping at its core leading the whole Party and the people of all ethnic groups in the endeavor. In a precarious situation left by the "cultural revolution" (1966-76), the second generation of central collective leadership, persisting in emancipating the mind and seeking truth from facts and displaying immense political and theoretical courage, made a scientific appraisal of Comrade Mao Zedong and Mao Zedong Thought, thoroughly repudiated the erroneous theory and practice of "taking class struggle as the key link," and made the historic policy decision to shift the focus of the work of the Party and the state onto economic development and introduce reform and opening up. It established the basic line for the primary stage of socialism, sounded the clarion call of the times for taking our own road and building socialism with Chinese characteristics, founded Deng Xiaoping Theory, and led the whole Party and the people of all ethnic groups in striding forward on the great journey of reform and opening up."
That is why the Khrushchevites were revisionists.