At the same time as it revised the revolutionary theory,
Marxism-Leninism, Khrushchevism capitulated to imperialism.
Greece
Movement for the Reorganization of the KKE (1918-1955)
3. Transition period "from capitalism to socialism" or "from capitalism to communism"?
The question of the exact, but in the first place correct definition of the ‘’transition period’’ is one of the most significant and central questions of Marxist theory, because with this, at the theoretical level, are connected directly and closely (and without separation) the questions of:
1) The Marxist perception of socialism-communism that, in addition to others, has as a basis and recognizes only two phases of the unified communist society and,
2) The Dictatorship of the Proletariat, more accurately the necessity of its preservation until classless communist society, which on the political-practical level is connected to the fate of socialism, and its preservation, establishment and development or its destruction, as occurred in the Soviet Union after 1953: a) with the violent overthrow of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat that, at the same time, abolished socialism at the political level (there is no socialism without the Dictatorship of the Proletariat); and b) in the economic sector, that put in motion the gradual restoration of capitalism, with the application of financial reforms of a capitalist character, a restoration that was completed in the mid 1960s.
Exactly on that central question of fundamental theoretical and political-practical importance, the traitorous revisionist social-democratic group of Khrushchev-Brezhnev devised, after 1953, a counter-revolutionary NEW anti-Marxist position called the "transition period from capitalism to socialism" – replacing the known Marxist position of the "transition period from capitalism to communism" – restoring a blatant category and altogether failed attempt to falsify Lenin. To apparently "persuade" with their conscious falsification they quote ONLY one part of an excerpt of Lenin contained in the "Greetings to the Hungarian Workers" (May 27, 1919), concluding, with its "help", in the distortion of Marx: "therefore, according to Marx and Lenin, the state of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat is the state of the transition period from capitalism to socialism" (N. Khrushchev: "The 22nd Congress of the CPSU", page 206, Athens 1961).
This crippled distortion by Khrushchevite anti-communism of Lenin’s above-mentioned text was widely used in later decades, in the reports of international Khrushchevite revisionism, of which we quote only case: in the "Political Economy of Socialism" (Moscow 1971), in German: "Politische Oekonomie des Sozialismus" page 51, Berlin-GDR 1973.
First, before exposing the distortion of Lenin, that is, the mutilation of his excerpt, let us emphasize that there is no reference to the "transition period from capitalism to socialism" anywhere in the works of Marx and Engels. It was a Khrushchevite social-democrat falsification at that infamous Congress and that is exactly the reason why they do not quote even a single relevant excerpt from their work.
Ever since, after the counterrevolutionary 22nd Congress (1961), the anti-Marxist "theory" of the "transition period from capitalism to socialism" dominated the reports of the capitalist Soviet Union of the era and those of the countries of restored capitalism in Eastern Europe; it was proclaimed the official position and became the dominant bourgeois theory in those countries and, at the same time, was the position of every anti-Stalinist Khrushchevite revisionist social-democratic party in the world (including the "K"KE).
From the hundreds of publications (articles, books, brochures, comments, etc.) let us mention as an indication just four characteristic examples. According to the Khrushchevite revisionist academician P. Fedoseyev, “the period of transition from capitalism to socialism begins with the victory of the socialist revolution and the establishment of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat and ends with the elimination of capitalist property” (“Voprosy Ekonomiki” No. 5/1975, page 27): the “transition period from capitalism to socialism” begins “with the seizure of political power by the working class and ends with the establishment of socialism” (“Politische Oekonomie des Sozialismus”, page 51, Berlin-GDR 1973, Moscow 1971): “the transition period in every country begins the moment the political power of the working class is established, and ends with the completion of socialist transformations, with the establishment of socialist relations of production” (“Manual of Political Economy”, page 8-9, Moscow 1979); and finally, according to Prof. Anatoli Butenko, an economist: “the transition period from capitalism to socialism is a historical period of growth, which begins with the political revolution and the establishment of the power of the working class and ends with the total elimination of the exploitation of man by man, with the victory of socialist relations of production, with the creation of the bases of socialism” (“Sozializm Theorie und Praxis, Monatliches Sowjetisches Digest”, 3/1979, page 55, APN-Verlag, Moscow 1979).
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At the same time as it revised the revolutionary theory,
Marxism-Leninism, Khrushchevism capitulated to imperialism.
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In contrast to this intentional distortion in an anti-Marxist direction, that “allowed” the Khrushchevite social-democrats to use the so-called “transition period from capitalism to socialism” of Marx and Lenin, in the famous “Greetings to the Hungarian Workers” (May 27, 1919), Lenin points out among others things: “The chief feature of proletarian dictatorship is the organisation and discipline of the advanced contingent of the working people, of their vanguard, of their sole leader, the proletariat, whose object is to build socialism, abolish the division of society into classes, make all members of society working people, and remove the basis for all exploitation of man by man. This object cannot be achieved at one stroke. It requires a fairly long period of transition from capitalism to socialism, because the reorganisation of production is a difficult matter, because radical changes in all spheres of life need time, and because the enormous force of habit of running things in a petty-bourgeois and bourgeois way can only be overcome by a long and stubborn struggle. That is why Marx spoke of an entire period of the dictatorship of the proletariat as the period of transition from capitalism to socialism (note 64)" (V.I. Lenin: "Greetings to the Hungarian Workers". Vol. 29, p. 388, English edition, Moscow, 1974.)
A simple comparison between this excerpt of Lenin, and that of the Khrushchevites at the 22nd Congress of the CPSU (1961) shows that they have intentionally mutilated the first part of Lenin's excerpt in order to present their new anti-Marxist position of the "transition period from capitalism to socialism," attributing it to Marx and Lenin.
And now some remarks, that unmask the total international distortion of Marx and Lenin by the Soviet Khrushchevite social-democrats of the group of defenders of Khrushchev, Brezhnev, etc., that at the same time constitutes a defence of the Marxist perception of the transition period from capitalism to communism:
First, from the above complete excerpt of Lenin with the addition of what was intentionally "forgotten" by the Khrushchevite social-democrats: "The chief feature of proletarian dictatorship is the organisation and discipline of the advanced contingent of the working people, of their vanguard, of their sole leader, the proletariat, whose object is to build socialism, abolish the division of society into classes, make all members of society working people, and remove the basis for all exploitation of man by man." They did not quote that part in order to "document" their distortion and make it more persuasive. It is apparent that in this text Lenin uses the term "socialism" to mean "communism", because ONLY under "communism" is the division of society into classes eliminated and not under "socialism", where classes still exist even after the establishment-construction of its economic base with its two forms of socialist property (state and cooperative). The "working class, the peasantry, the intelligentsia" remain (Stalin: "Concerning Questions of Leninism", p. 676, 1950, Greek version), as is further confirmed by Lenin's reference to Marx at the end of the paragraph.
Second, furthermore: The note 64 that refers to Marx work: “Critique of the Gotha Programme” confirms the position of revolutionary Marxism on the “transition period of capitalism to communism”, in which it is noted: “Between capitalist and communist society lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other. There corresponds to this also a political transition period in which the state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat." (K. Marx: "Critique of the Gotha Program", written in April – early May 1875 and published in 1891. Foreign Languages Press, Peking, 1972, p. 27-28.)
From this clear excerpt from Marx, which is not open "to many" interpretations, it is evident that when Lenin in the text above speaks of the "transition period from capitalism to socialism" he means from "capitalism to communism", since Marx in his famous excerpt does NOT speak of the "transition period from capitalism to socialism" but on the contrary of the "transition period from capitalism to communism" that is, the complete classless communist society. (Also in: K. Marx/F. Engels: Collected Works, Vol. 24, p. 95, English edition, Lawrence & Wishart, London, 1989.)
Third, it would not be possible for Lenin to speak of the "transition period from capitalism to socialism" because:
a) he would distort Marx and Engels and revolutionary Marxism in general,
b) he would reject the Marxist understanding of the "transition period from capitalism to communism", if he limited this transition period only until socialism, that is, the first phase of classless communist society,
c) he would reject the necessity of the existence of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat until communism, as the Khrushchevite social-democratic traitors did (they had already violently overthrown it after the elimination of Stalin) without which socialism-communism could never be built, nor, finally, the completely classless communist society, in which the State, according to the classics Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin, will "wither away" when similar domestic and international conditions are created: "For the state to wither away completely complete communism is necessary". (V.I. Lenin: "The State and Revolution", Foreign Language Press, Peking, 1970, p. 113.)
Fourth, in "The State and Revolution", one of his last works (written in August-September 1917, published in 1918), Lenin already refers extensively to the question of the transition period, the two phases of communist society and the "withering away" of the State, while in "Chapter V" entitled " Economic Basis of the Withering Away of the State" and section 2 immediately below the characteristic subtitle "The Transition from Capitalism to Communism" he cites the above quote from Marx in the "Critique of the Gotha Programme", establishing the 'transition period', like Marx, as the "transition period from capitalism to communism" (V.I. Lenin: ibid. p. 102).
Fifth, a few months after the "Greetings to the Hungarian Workers" (May 27, 1919), Lenin again deals with this issue in his article entitled "Economics and Politics in the Era of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat" (October 30, 1919) and defines the "transition period" as the "transition period from capitalism to communism": "Theoretically, there can be no doubt that between capitalism and communism there lies a definite transition period which must combine the features and properties of both these forms of social economy. This transition period has to be a period of struggle between dying capitalism and nascent communism – or, in other words, between capitalism which has been defeated but not destroyed and communism which has been born but is still very feeble." (Lenin: Collected Works, Volume 30, 4th English edition, Moscow, Progress Publishers, 1965, page 107.) And although this passage is very clear as to the "transitional period from capitalism to communism", the Khrushchevite social-democrats, humiliating themselves, "intelligently" replace the word "communism" with the word "socialism" as in this text: " V. I. Lenin based the necessity of transition from capitalism to socialism" (!!!) (“Lehrbuch der Politische Oekonomie des Sozialismus”, p. 28, Berlin-GDR 1972, Moscow 1970). Here the distortion of Lenin is even cruder and more ridiculous than in the first case, that is, the conscious omission of part of the passage, but also completely blatant by replacing Lenin’s word "communism", arbitrarily and deliberately, with the word "socialism".
Finally, equally evident is the distortion of Marx, similar to what they did with Lenin, when the Khrushchevite social democrats argued that "the necessity of the transition from capitalism to socialism was implied for the first time by Marx, in 1875, in his work "Critique of the Gotha Programme", and this despite the fact that they themselves quote the part of the famous passage of Marx, which instead read: "between capitalist and communist society..." and NOT "socialist" as they claim ("Political Economy" (N. A. Tsagolov) Volume IV, pp. 13-14, ed. " Gutenberg", Athens 1980.)
Of course, the anti-Stalinist, Khrushchevite anti-communists were utterly ridiculous to distort Marx’s “Critique of the Gotha Programme” and Lenin’s “Economics and Politics in the Era of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat” by replacing the word “communism” with “socialism”. However, what is of primary interest to the revolutionary communists and the international communist movement is that the anti-Marxist concept of the “transition period from capitalism to socialism” is one of the main parts of the reactionary, bourgeois, anti-communist theory of “developed socialism”,
conceived by the Khrushchevites in order to “justify”: the revisionist
counter-revolution in the Soviet Union, the elimination of the
necessity of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat until communism, the violent overthrow and replacement of the latter with the dictatorship of the new bourgeoisie (that is, the bourgeois “state of the whole people”), the refusal to recognize the contradictions and class struggles under socialism, the covering up of the elimination of socialism and the gradual restoration of capitalism.
This process was presented by the propaganda of the Khrushchevite
social-democratic parties – including the reformist “K”KE – as
something “progressive” that, in fact, was going to lead to “classless communist society” (!!) despite the fact that the “developed” or “actually existing socialism” of Khrushchev, Brezhnev and Gorbachev was nothing more than an actually existing capitalism which inevitably
collapsed following its transformation into the traditional type of
capitalism of the western capitalist countries at the end of the 1980s.
September of 2015
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