peaccenicked
31st May 2002, 03:59
From internet Marxist encyclopedia
"Peaceful (‘Parliamentary’) Road to Socialism
The Peaceful, or “Parliamentary”, Road to socialism, was the policy adopted, mostly after 1949, by almost all the Communist Parties of the world by which it was declared that socialism could be achieved through bourgeois electoral processes such as Parliament.
The Australian CP has written the Parliamentary Road into its program as early as 1939, but by the mid-1950s, every national section in the world had agreed its “National Road to Socialism” in line with Stalin’s directions. All were Parliamentary or Peaceful Roads except for the South African Communist Party, which remained committed to the revolutionary road until they were legalised in 1991.
For example, whereas the programme of the British Communist Party adopted in 1935 stated:
“... the building of a mass Communist Party within an all-inclusive united working class front is the sole path to the advance of the working class struggle, and ... the victory of working class revolution in Britain and the establishment of the workers’ dictatorship on the basis of Soviet power for the building of socialism”.
in The British Road to Socialism written in 1947, we read:
“... it is possible to see how the people will move towards Socialism without further revolution, without the dictatorship of the proletariat”
This Peaceful Road was adopted by the Communist Parties around the world as part of the policy of “socialism in one country” and “peaceful co-existence”, to serve the foreign policy interests of the Soviet Union.
This illusion was fostered even in conditions where it would prove disastrous. For example, less than a month before Chilean General Pinochet overthrew the elected government led by the socialist president, Salvador Allende in 1973, and installed a regime of torture, the Chilean Communist Party declared:
‘In Chile, where an anti-imperialist, anti-monopoly and anti-feudal democratic revolution is under now way, we have essentially retained the old state machine ... The armed forces, observing their status of a professional institution, take no part in political debate and submit to the lawfully constituted civilian power. ... the working class will gain full power gradually’. [World Marxist Review, August 1973]
The “Peaceful Road” policy is contrary to Marxism. According to the Communist Manifesto, the working class must “win the battle of democracy”, but “winnng the battle of democracy” is only the first stage, the stage of winning broad political support for socialism and rallying the mass of the population behind the working class. But Marxists understand that the façade of democracy is available only so long as the working class does not use its voting power to abolish capital. [See Origin of the Family]. Once the working class actually threatens to extend democracy to the economy and the state, and subject all social positions to elections, to place real power in the masses of the masses, always and everywhere the bourgeoisie abolishes democracy and wheels out the un-elected state machine to protect its privileges.
In countries where the “Parliamentary Road” is (for the moment) open the working masses invariably demand that their leaders work peacefully and legally “within the system” and Marxists support this policy.
Lenin advised in 1920:
“Whilst you lack the strength to do away with bourgeois parliaments and every other type of reactionary institution, you must work within them because it is there that you will still find workers who are duped by the priests and stultified by the conditions of rural life; otherwise you risk turning into nothing but windbags.
“... it has been proved that, far from causing harm to the revolutionary proletariat, participation in a bourgeois-democratic parliament, even a few weeks before the victory of a Soviet republic and even after such a victory, actually helps that proletariat to prove to the backward masses why such parliaments deserve to be done away with; it facilitates their successful dissolution, and helps to make bourgeois parliamentarianism “politically obsolete”. [Left-Wing Communism, Chapter 7]
But workers must be aware that real power lies outside parliament, and just as soon as any government elected by socialists made the slightest in-roads into the rights of capital, the extra-parliamentary power of the bourgeoisie — in the state, in the company boardrooms and the banks and from their overseas allies — will be broad to bear against the government. Consequently, the workers must always be politically and organisationally prepared and aware that it is their own extra-parliamentary power that guarantees the transition to socialism, not seats in parliament.
“One thing especially was proved by the Commune, viz., that ‘the working class cannot simply lay hold of ready-made state machinery, and wield it for its own purposes.’ ” [1872 Preface to the Communist Manifesto ]"
From the same encyclopedia.
"Stalinism
In contemporary parlance, the word “Stalinism” has come to embody a range of ideologies, specific political positions, forms of societal organization, and political tendencies. That makes getting at the core definition of “Stalinism” difficult, but not impossible.
First and foremost, Stalinism must be understood as the politics of a political stratum. Specifically, Stalinism is the politics of the bureaucracy that hovers over a workers' state. Its first manifestation was in the Soviet Union, where Stalinism arose when sections of the bureaucracy began to express their own interests against those of the working class, which had created the workers' state through revolution to serve its class interests.
Soviet Russia was an isolated workers' state, and its developmental problems were profound. The socialist movement—including the Bolshevik leaders in Russia—had never confronted such problems. Chief among these was that Russia was a backward, peasant-dominated country, the “weakest link in the capitalist chain,” and had to fight for its survival within an imperialist world. This challenge was compounded by the defeat of the revolution in Europe, particularly in Germany, and the isolation of the Soviet workers' state from the material aid that could have been provided by a stronger workers' state. But the pressures of imperialism were too great.
From a social point of view, then, Stalinism is the expression of these pressures of imperialism within the workers' state. The politics of Stalinism flow from these pressures.
The political tenets of Stalinism revolve around the theory of socialism in one country—developed by Stalin to counter the Bolshevik theory that the survival of the Russian Revolution depended on proletarian revolutions in Europe. In contradistinction, the Stalinist theory stipulates that a socialist society can be achieved within a single country.
In April 1924, in the first edition of his book Foundations of Leninism, Stalin had explicitly rejected the idea that socialism could be constructed in one country. He wrote: “Is it possible to attain the final victory of socialism in one country, without the combined efforts of the proletarians of several advanced countries? No, it is not. The efforts of one country are enough for the overthrow of the bourgeoisie. This is what the history of our revolution tells us. For the final victory of socialism, for the organization of socialist production, the efforts of one country, especially a peasant country like ours, are not enough. For this we must have the efforts of the proletariat of several advanced countries. Such, on the whole, are the characteristic features of the Leninist theory of the proletarian revolution.”
In August 1924, as Stalin was consolidating his power in the Soviet Union, a second edition of the same book was published. The text just quoted had been replaced with, in part, the following: “Having consolidated its power, and taking the lead of the peasantry, the proletariat of the victorious country can and must build a socialist society.” And by November 1926, Stalin had completely revised history, stating: “The party always took as its starting point the idea that the victory of socialism ... can be accomplished with the forces of a single country.”
Leon Trotsky, in The Third International After Lenin, called the Stalinist concept of “socialism one country” a “reactionary theory” and characterized its “basis” as one that“sums up to sophistic interpretations of several lines from Lenin on the one hand, and to a scholastic interpretation of the 'law of uneven development' on the other. By giving a correct interpretation of the historic law as well as of the quotations [from Lenin] in question,” Trotsky continued, “we arrive at a directly opposite conclusion, that is, the conclusion that was reached by Marx, Engels, Lenin, and all of us, including Stalin and Bukharin, up to 1925."
Stalinism had uprooted the very foundations of Marxism and Leninism.
From “socialism in one country” flow the two other main tenets of Stalinist politics. First is that the workers' movement—given the focus on building socialism in one country (i.e., the Soviet Union)—must adapt itself to whatever is in the best interests of that focus at any given moment. Hence we find the Stalinists engaged in “a series of contradictory zigzags” (Trotsky, The Revolution Betrayed), from confrontation with imperialism to détente and from seeming support for the working-class struggle to outright betrayal of the workers. In other words, Russia's own economic development comes first, above an international policy of revolution—which was the Bolshevik perspective. The second is the idea of revolution in “stages” —that the “national-democratic revolution” must be completed before the socialist revolution takes place. This, too, runs contrary to Marxism. But because of this theory and as the expression of imperialism within the workers' state—and, by extension, within the world workers' movement—we find the Stalinists assigning to the national bourgeoisie a revolutionary role.
The case of Indonesia in 1965 affords an ideal illustration of the bankruptcy and treachery of the “two-stage theory.” As class tensions mounted among the workers and the peasantry, and the masses began to rise up against the shaky regime of President Sukarno, the Stalinist leadership in Beijing told the Indonesian masses and their mass organization the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) to tie their fate to the national bourgeoisie. In October, as many as 1 million workers and peasants were slaughtered in a CIA-organized coup led by General Suharto, which swept aside the Sukarno, crushed the rising mass movements, and installed a brutal military dictatorship.
The “two-stage theory” has also propelled the Stalinists into “popular fronts” with so-called“progressive”elements of the bourgeois class to “advance” the first revolutionary stage. Examples include Stalinist support (through the Communist Party, USA) to President Roosevelt 1930s. And, taking this orientation to its logical conclusion, the Communist Party in the United States consistently supports Democratic Party candidates for office, including the presidency.
The theory of “socialism in one country” and the policies that flowed from it propelled a transformation of Soviet foreign policy under Stalin. The Bolshevik revolutionary strategy, based on support for the working classes of all countries and an effort through the Communist International to construct Communist Parties as revolutionary leaderships throughout the world, gave way to deal-making and maneuvers with bourgeois governments, colonial “democrats” like Chiang Kai-shek in China, and the trade union bureaucracies.
In his 1937 essay “Stalinism and Bolshevism,” Trotsky wrote: “The experience of Stalinism does not refute the teaching of Marxism but confirms it by inversion. The revolutionary doctrine which teaches the proletariat to orient itself correctly in situations and to profit actively by them, contains of course no automatic guarantee of victory. But victory is possible only through the application of this doctrine.” At best, one can say that the Stalinist orientation has not been one of orienting “correctly."
In terms of the organization of a state, Stalinist policies are quite clear: democratic rights threaten the position of the bureaucracy, and hence democracy is incompatible with Stalinism. In basic terms on a world scale, the forces of Stalinism have done everything in their power to prevent socialist revolution.
Submitted by Scott Cooper,
December, 2000"
Stalinists wake up or go elsewhere to promote your reactionary filth.
"Peaceful (‘Parliamentary’) Road to Socialism
The Peaceful, or “Parliamentary”, Road to socialism, was the policy adopted, mostly after 1949, by almost all the Communist Parties of the world by which it was declared that socialism could be achieved through bourgeois electoral processes such as Parliament.
The Australian CP has written the Parliamentary Road into its program as early as 1939, but by the mid-1950s, every national section in the world had agreed its “National Road to Socialism” in line with Stalin’s directions. All were Parliamentary or Peaceful Roads except for the South African Communist Party, which remained committed to the revolutionary road until they were legalised in 1991.
For example, whereas the programme of the British Communist Party adopted in 1935 stated:
“... the building of a mass Communist Party within an all-inclusive united working class front is the sole path to the advance of the working class struggle, and ... the victory of working class revolution in Britain and the establishment of the workers’ dictatorship on the basis of Soviet power for the building of socialism”.
in The British Road to Socialism written in 1947, we read:
“... it is possible to see how the people will move towards Socialism without further revolution, without the dictatorship of the proletariat”
This Peaceful Road was adopted by the Communist Parties around the world as part of the policy of “socialism in one country” and “peaceful co-existence”, to serve the foreign policy interests of the Soviet Union.
This illusion was fostered even in conditions where it would prove disastrous. For example, less than a month before Chilean General Pinochet overthrew the elected government led by the socialist president, Salvador Allende in 1973, and installed a regime of torture, the Chilean Communist Party declared:
‘In Chile, where an anti-imperialist, anti-monopoly and anti-feudal democratic revolution is under now way, we have essentially retained the old state machine ... The armed forces, observing their status of a professional institution, take no part in political debate and submit to the lawfully constituted civilian power. ... the working class will gain full power gradually’. [World Marxist Review, August 1973]
The “Peaceful Road” policy is contrary to Marxism. According to the Communist Manifesto, the working class must “win the battle of democracy”, but “winnng the battle of democracy” is only the first stage, the stage of winning broad political support for socialism and rallying the mass of the population behind the working class. But Marxists understand that the façade of democracy is available only so long as the working class does not use its voting power to abolish capital. [See Origin of the Family]. Once the working class actually threatens to extend democracy to the economy and the state, and subject all social positions to elections, to place real power in the masses of the masses, always and everywhere the bourgeoisie abolishes democracy and wheels out the un-elected state machine to protect its privileges.
In countries where the “Parliamentary Road” is (for the moment) open the working masses invariably demand that their leaders work peacefully and legally “within the system” and Marxists support this policy.
Lenin advised in 1920:
“Whilst you lack the strength to do away with bourgeois parliaments and every other type of reactionary institution, you must work within them because it is there that you will still find workers who are duped by the priests and stultified by the conditions of rural life; otherwise you risk turning into nothing but windbags.
“... it has been proved that, far from causing harm to the revolutionary proletariat, participation in a bourgeois-democratic parliament, even a few weeks before the victory of a Soviet republic and even after such a victory, actually helps that proletariat to prove to the backward masses why such parliaments deserve to be done away with; it facilitates their successful dissolution, and helps to make bourgeois parliamentarianism “politically obsolete”. [Left-Wing Communism, Chapter 7]
But workers must be aware that real power lies outside parliament, and just as soon as any government elected by socialists made the slightest in-roads into the rights of capital, the extra-parliamentary power of the bourgeoisie — in the state, in the company boardrooms and the banks and from their overseas allies — will be broad to bear against the government. Consequently, the workers must always be politically and organisationally prepared and aware that it is their own extra-parliamentary power that guarantees the transition to socialism, not seats in parliament.
“One thing especially was proved by the Commune, viz., that ‘the working class cannot simply lay hold of ready-made state machinery, and wield it for its own purposes.’ ” [1872 Preface to the Communist Manifesto ]"
From the same encyclopedia.
"Stalinism
In contemporary parlance, the word “Stalinism” has come to embody a range of ideologies, specific political positions, forms of societal organization, and political tendencies. That makes getting at the core definition of “Stalinism” difficult, but not impossible.
First and foremost, Stalinism must be understood as the politics of a political stratum. Specifically, Stalinism is the politics of the bureaucracy that hovers over a workers' state. Its first manifestation was in the Soviet Union, where Stalinism arose when sections of the bureaucracy began to express their own interests against those of the working class, which had created the workers' state through revolution to serve its class interests.
Soviet Russia was an isolated workers' state, and its developmental problems were profound. The socialist movement—including the Bolshevik leaders in Russia—had never confronted such problems. Chief among these was that Russia was a backward, peasant-dominated country, the “weakest link in the capitalist chain,” and had to fight for its survival within an imperialist world. This challenge was compounded by the defeat of the revolution in Europe, particularly in Germany, and the isolation of the Soviet workers' state from the material aid that could have been provided by a stronger workers' state. But the pressures of imperialism were too great.
From a social point of view, then, Stalinism is the expression of these pressures of imperialism within the workers' state. The politics of Stalinism flow from these pressures.
The political tenets of Stalinism revolve around the theory of socialism in one country—developed by Stalin to counter the Bolshevik theory that the survival of the Russian Revolution depended on proletarian revolutions in Europe. In contradistinction, the Stalinist theory stipulates that a socialist society can be achieved within a single country.
In April 1924, in the first edition of his book Foundations of Leninism, Stalin had explicitly rejected the idea that socialism could be constructed in one country. He wrote: “Is it possible to attain the final victory of socialism in one country, without the combined efforts of the proletarians of several advanced countries? No, it is not. The efforts of one country are enough for the overthrow of the bourgeoisie. This is what the history of our revolution tells us. For the final victory of socialism, for the organization of socialist production, the efforts of one country, especially a peasant country like ours, are not enough. For this we must have the efforts of the proletariat of several advanced countries. Such, on the whole, are the characteristic features of the Leninist theory of the proletarian revolution.”
In August 1924, as Stalin was consolidating his power in the Soviet Union, a second edition of the same book was published. The text just quoted had been replaced with, in part, the following: “Having consolidated its power, and taking the lead of the peasantry, the proletariat of the victorious country can and must build a socialist society.” And by November 1926, Stalin had completely revised history, stating: “The party always took as its starting point the idea that the victory of socialism ... can be accomplished with the forces of a single country.”
Leon Trotsky, in The Third International After Lenin, called the Stalinist concept of “socialism one country” a “reactionary theory” and characterized its “basis” as one that“sums up to sophistic interpretations of several lines from Lenin on the one hand, and to a scholastic interpretation of the 'law of uneven development' on the other. By giving a correct interpretation of the historic law as well as of the quotations [from Lenin] in question,” Trotsky continued, “we arrive at a directly opposite conclusion, that is, the conclusion that was reached by Marx, Engels, Lenin, and all of us, including Stalin and Bukharin, up to 1925."
Stalinism had uprooted the very foundations of Marxism and Leninism.
From “socialism in one country” flow the two other main tenets of Stalinist politics. First is that the workers' movement—given the focus on building socialism in one country (i.e., the Soviet Union)—must adapt itself to whatever is in the best interests of that focus at any given moment. Hence we find the Stalinists engaged in “a series of contradictory zigzags” (Trotsky, The Revolution Betrayed), from confrontation with imperialism to détente and from seeming support for the working-class struggle to outright betrayal of the workers. In other words, Russia's own economic development comes first, above an international policy of revolution—which was the Bolshevik perspective. The second is the idea of revolution in “stages” —that the “national-democratic revolution” must be completed before the socialist revolution takes place. This, too, runs contrary to Marxism. But because of this theory and as the expression of imperialism within the workers' state—and, by extension, within the world workers' movement—we find the Stalinists assigning to the national bourgeoisie a revolutionary role.
The case of Indonesia in 1965 affords an ideal illustration of the bankruptcy and treachery of the “two-stage theory.” As class tensions mounted among the workers and the peasantry, and the masses began to rise up against the shaky regime of President Sukarno, the Stalinist leadership in Beijing told the Indonesian masses and their mass organization the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) to tie their fate to the national bourgeoisie. In October, as many as 1 million workers and peasants were slaughtered in a CIA-organized coup led by General Suharto, which swept aside the Sukarno, crushed the rising mass movements, and installed a brutal military dictatorship.
The “two-stage theory” has also propelled the Stalinists into “popular fronts” with so-called“progressive”elements of the bourgeois class to “advance” the first revolutionary stage. Examples include Stalinist support (through the Communist Party, USA) to President Roosevelt 1930s. And, taking this orientation to its logical conclusion, the Communist Party in the United States consistently supports Democratic Party candidates for office, including the presidency.
The theory of “socialism in one country” and the policies that flowed from it propelled a transformation of Soviet foreign policy under Stalin. The Bolshevik revolutionary strategy, based on support for the working classes of all countries and an effort through the Communist International to construct Communist Parties as revolutionary leaderships throughout the world, gave way to deal-making and maneuvers with bourgeois governments, colonial “democrats” like Chiang Kai-shek in China, and the trade union bureaucracies.
In his 1937 essay “Stalinism and Bolshevism,” Trotsky wrote: “The experience of Stalinism does not refute the teaching of Marxism but confirms it by inversion. The revolutionary doctrine which teaches the proletariat to orient itself correctly in situations and to profit actively by them, contains of course no automatic guarantee of victory. But victory is possible only through the application of this doctrine.” At best, one can say that the Stalinist orientation has not been one of orienting “correctly."
In terms of the organization of a state, Stalinist policies are quite clear: democratic rights threaten the position of the bureaucracy, and hence democracy is incompatible with Stalinism. In basic terms on a world scale, the forces of Stalinism have done everything in their power to prevent socialist revolution.
Submitted by Scott Cooper,
December, 2000"
Stalinists wake up or go elsewhere to promote your reactionary filth.