GREECE

Movement for the Reorganization of the Communist Party of Greece (1918-1955)

Reactionary anti-communist bourgeois theories
that conceal the restoration of capitalism in the Soviet Union (1953-1990)
Part b

B. The reactionary anti-communist bourgeois theory of “developed socialism” of Khrushchevite social-democracy

After the violent overthrow of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat and the triumph of the Khrushchevite revisionist counter-revolution in the Soviet Union in 1952, while pursuing the scheduled and systematic policy of gradual restoration of capitalism facilitated by the implementation of capitalist economic reforms, the leading anti-communist group of Khrushchev-Brezhnev of what had become the bourgeois social-democratic Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), sought to formulate a suitable theory to conceal this reactionary process of going back from socialism-communism to capitalism.

In their attempt to formulate a new and suitable “theory” concealing this reactionary process and the emerging society of restored capitalism, euphemistically called “developed socialism” (!), the Khrushchevite-Brezhnevite revisionists came up with the well-known theory of “advanced socialism.”

Both the theory of “developed socialism” promoted by the Khrushchevite traitors and the theory of “convergence” promoted by Western bourgeois reaction are anti-communist reactionary bourgeois theories because, during the period of their dominance (1955-1990), they were directed against the communist perspective of the Proletariat, they obscured the Proletariat’s communist prospect, presenting the restored capitalism of the Soviet Union as the “communist” future while, at the same time, they were in total breach of the objective historic progress of society toward socialism- communism. The class character and content of the two theories was based on the defence of capitalism: the theory of “convergence” defended the traditional capitalism of the Western countries, while the theory of “developed socialism” defended the restored capitalism of the Soviet Union and the other revisionist countries. (Details can be found in “Anasintaxi”, no. 373, August 2012, p. 3.)

Since the treacherous, renegade Khrushchev-Brezhnev group “managed”, at the 20th Congress of CPSU in 1956, to arbitrarily and provocatively present capitalist- fascist Yugoslavia of Tito as “socialist”(!) – a view imposed on the international communist movement (N.S. Khrushchev: “Report to the 20th Party Congress, 1956: “Much has also been achieved in the building of socialism in Yugoslavia”, a clear proof that the Khrushchevite clique had decided to follow Tito’s counter-revolutionary, capitalist path – and promoted a kind of “socialism”(!) that would come about “peacefully” without the need for the Dictatorship of the Proletariat. This group officially confessed and publicly admitted, during the 22nd of Congress of CPSU (1961), that there was neither a Dictatorship of the Proletariat nor a revolutionary communist party in the Soviet Union of that period and that these had been replaced by the “state of the whole people” and the “party of all the people” and mentioned, for the first time, the “transition period from capitalism to socialism” to which the Dictatorship of the Proletariat “corresponded”. At the same time, they formulated the theory of “developed socialism” without using yet the terms that became well-known later: “developed socialism” and “advanced socialist society”.

The theory of “developed socialism” promoted by the Khrushchevite renegades constitutes, as will be shown below, a complete revision and a blatant, crude rejection of revolutionary Marxism.

As a theory, so-called “developed socialism” has nothing in common with the revolutionary theory of Marx-Engels-Lenin-Stalin; it amounts to its negation and is an anti-communist bourgeois theory. The much advertised, but non-existent “advanced socialist society” was nothing more than the restored capitalism of the Khrushchevite-Brezhnevite period as shown in previous articles. According to the anti-communist Brezhnev, this type of society had already existed in November of 1967, that is to say, when capitalism had been fully restored (on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the October Revolution, he had declared that “In the USSR a developed socialist society has been built”).

The theory of “developed socialism” later dominated the new bourgeois constitution (i.e. the constitution of restored capitalism) of the Brezhnevite period, while the euphemistically named “advanced socialist society” found its full expression in this – a constitution which, for the first time, officially legalized and confirmed not only the state-capitalist (articles 1011) and collective-capitalist ownership (article 12) but also the individual capitalist ownership (articles 13-17) in the Soviet

Union’s society of that time. It also legalized capitalist competition between autonomous enterprises, the “socialist commodity producers”, and capitalist profit (article 16). In this constitution, the content of the “advanced socialist society”, that is, of the Soviet Union’s restored capitalism is generally described.

The elements from which the theory of “developed socialism” was made are the following: “the party of all the people”, “the state of the whole people”, “transition period from capitalism to socialism”, “three phases of communist society”, “socialism: a new autonomous mode of production”. Concerning the theory of “advanced socialism” and the euphemistically named “advanced socialist society”, there is a vast literature of many articles and books. However, we will make a limited use of them and cite only those extracts that highlight the counter-revolutionary essence of this bourgeois reactionary theory.

1. “Party of all the people” or revolutionary communist party?

At the 22nd Congress of the CPSU (1961) it was stated: “our Marxist-Leninist Party, which arose as a party of the working class, has become the party of the entire people”,

an anti-Marxist view which later passed into the new Brezhnevite bourgeois constitution (1977), where it was formulated as: “The CPSU exists for the people and serves the people”. (Article 6 of the Soviet Constitution, 1977.)

Some quick comments on the anti-Marxist view “party of all the people”:

1. The adoption of this view meant the abandonment of the Marxist theory not only of the revolutionary party of a new type but also about all political parties considered as separate organisations that defend the different interests of particular classes.

2. The Khrushchevite social-democrats promoted the well-known bourgeois view according to which parties stand above classes and they are, therefore, defenders of the interests of “most” or “all classes”.

3. As is known, according to revolutionary Marxism there are no organisations and parties that belong to “all the people”, that is parties of all classes. Since the Khrushchevite revisionists themselves admitted that there was no longer a revolutionary communist party in the Soviet Union of that period, because, according to them, the Marxist-Leninist party had been replaced by the party of “all the people”, then the new CPSU, that is the so-called party of “all the people” could not be anything else but a bourgeois, social-democratic party. Consequently, the CPSU, that was revolutionary until the beginning of the 1950’s, changed its class character: from a Marxist-Leninist party of the working class, it became a bourgeois party, a defender of the class interests of the emerging soviet bourgeoisie.

The character of a party, according to Marxism, is determined first of all by its ideology and, among other things, by its programme. The new CPSU, that is, the so-called “party of all the people”, was no longer guided by the ideology of revolutionary Marxism, that is, Leninism-Stalinism, but by the counter-revolutionary ideology of Khrushchevite revisionism (which is a version of bourgeois ideology).

Nikita Khrushchev and Leonid Brezhnev, the revisionist bigwigs who drew up the anti-Marxist “theories.”

In the following decades the new CPSU of Khrushchev-Brezhnev as well as the Khrushchevite parties of all countries were (and still are) bourgeois, social-democratic parties because: a) they were not guided by revolutionary Marxism, b) they had reformist programmes that cannot lead to the overthrow of capitalism, c) they adopted an anti-Marxist view of socialism-communism since they advertised the restored capitalism of the Khrushchev-Brezhnev-Gorbachev period as “socialism”(!), in other words they claimed that there was allegedly “socialism” in the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1991.

4. Neither can socialism exist nor can the construction of socialism continue without a revolutionary communist party of a new type, that is, of the Leninist-Stalinist type. Therefore, after 1953, it was inevitable that the construction of socialism in the Soviet Union finally stopped and the new CPSU, that is, the “party of all the people”, was at the forefront of the capitalism economic reforms that completely eliminated socialism and resulted in the full restoration of capitalism by the mid-1960’s.

5. Socialism-communism cannot be constructed without a Marxist-Leninist-Stalinist party, precisely because this party “has put forward a class policy, the organization of the proletariat as an independent political party, as the primary condition of its struggle, and the dictatorship of the proletariat as the immediate aim of the struggle” (Engels, The Housing Question, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1970) and also it is the party that: first, is the organiser and leader of the giant work of socialist- communist construction and second, without this party the Dictatorship of the Proletariat cannot possibly exist. That is why Stalin is very right to point out that “the dictatorship of the proletariat is exercised through the Party, that without the Party, a united and monolithic party, the dictatorship of the proletariat is impossible” (“Joint Plenum of the Central Committee and Central Control Commission of the C.P.S.U.(B.), July 29 – August 9, 1927”), that “the dictatorship of the proletariat can be implemented only through the party, as the guiding force of the dictatorship” and that “the dictatorship of the proletariat can be complete only if it is led by one party, the Communist Party, which does not and must not share the leadership with other parties” (“Interview with the First American Labour Delegation, September 9, 1927”) (both in Stalin, Collected Works, Vol. 10).

2. “State of all the people” or Dictatorship of the Proletariat

In relation to the state of the Soviet Union of that period, it is mentioned in the 22nd Congress that the state of the working class had been transformed into the “all people’s state”: “The state of the whole people is a new stage in the development of the socialist state, an all- important phase on the road from socialist statehood to communist public self-government” (22nd Congress of the CPSU, Report on the Program of the CPSU) and that “the conditions which necessitated the dictatorship of the proletariat disappeared...” (ibid.) for the construction of socialism in the Soviet Union. Later, this anti-Marxist view passed into the new Constitution (1977) – from which the term Dictatorship of the Proletariat had been deleted (justifiably so since it had been already been overthrown in 1953) – and which confirms that the Soviet Union was no longer the state of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat as it was in the era of Lenin-Stalin but the “state of the whole people” (“Constitution 1977”, p. 19: “The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics is a socialist state of the whole people”).

The anti-Marxist view of the Khrushchevites about the “state of all the people” is raising some important questions worth of special consideration:

Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan. Gorbachev finalized the revisionist capitulation to imperialism.

First, by denying the necessity of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat during an important phase of development of socialism-communism, the soviet revisionists-social democrats, and in such an important and central question the reformist Khrushchevite parties, abandoned Marxism and it is known that nobody can be regarded as Marxist without the recognition of the dictatorship of the proletariat. As Lenin noted: “Only he is a Marxist who extends the recognition of the class struggle to the recognition of the dictatorship of the proletariat. That is what constitutes the most profound distinction between the Marxist and the ordinary petty (as well as big) bourgeois. This is the touchstone on which the real understanding and recognition of Marxism should be tested.” (Lenin, The State and Revolution)

Second, it is important to note the open confession and the official admission made by the Khrushchevites that there was no Dictatorship of the Proletariat in the Soviet Union of that period, and it was exactly for this reason that there was no longer any socialism.

Moreover, the construction of socialism had stopped in 1953 after the death-murder of Joseph Stalin. The continuation of socialist construction in a country without the Dictatorship of the Proletariat is totally impossible and inconceivable. Also, the maintenance of socialism is unimaginable without the Dictatorship of the Proletariat since, for Marx, the concepts of socialism and Dictatorship of the Proletariat are inseparable. As early as 1850, Marx noted regarding socialism: “The class dictatorship of the proletariat as the necessary transit point to the abolition of class distinctions generally, to the abolition of all the relations of production on which they rest, to the abolition of all the social relations that correspond to these relations of production, to the revolutionizing of all the ideas that result from these social relations.” (Marx, The Class Struggles in France).

Fourth, the Khrushchevite concept of the “state of the whole people” bears no relation to

Marxism. It is alien to Marxism because according to the Marxist theory there is no state standing above classes, that is to say, “state of all classes” of a society; this is a bourgeois view. On the contrary, the state always has a class character: either it is the state of the bourgeoisie or it is the state of the proletariat. In the period of transition from capitalism to social- ism-communism, there can be either the dictatorship of the proletariat or the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. This is why the famous English Marxist George Thomson, in 1971, very rightly emphasized that the “state of the whole people” declared by the treacherous Khrushchevite clique was in reality “a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie”, or to be more exact, a dictatorship of the new soviet bourgeoisie.

Fifth, the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, according to the teaching of Marx-Engels- Lenin-Stalin, is established right after the victory of the armed Proletarian Revolution and the complete smashing of the old state machinery; it is preserved and strengthened and it is absolutely necessary for the whole transitional period from capitalism to socialism. The state of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat is never transformed into the “state of the whole people” (it is also known that Marx and Engels rejected with irony the so-called “free state” in the “Critique of the Gotha Program”. The Dictatorship of the Proletariat exists until it withers away in the higher stage of communism, in the communist classless society: “For the state to wither away completely, complete communism is necessary” and that “The state will be able to wither away completely when society adopts the rule: ‘From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs’.” (Lenin, The State and Revolution)

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