Vijay Singh
In the post-Second World War period a number of
Communist Parties made requests to the CPSU (b) for assistance
in drafting their party programmes. The Communist Party of Great
Britain and the Communist Party of India were two such parties
which benefited from these consultations. Stalin and Liu
Shao-chi jointly co-operated in helping in the drafting of the
programme of the Communist Party of Indonesia. The CPSU (b), as
part of the united front of Communist Parties in power, gave its
advice on the advance to democracy and socialism in the People’s
Democracies of Central and South-East Europe and the People’s
Republic of China. The detailed suggestions and advice of the
CPSU (b) in the struggles against nationalism and opportunism in
the leadership of the communist parties of the new democracies
is apparent from the contemporary documentation and the
materials released after the fall of the Soviet Union. The
entire gamut of these materials reveal a unified approach to the
advance of democracy and socialism right across the globe.
The contribution of Stalin in the writing of the
British Road to Socialism was the object of controversy in the
midst of the period of the polemics of Albania against Soviet
revisionism when both Khrushchev and the Albanian communists
referred to it in 1963. However, in the absence of the relevant
documentation the nature and significance of Stalin’s
contribution was always opaque. There were clear grounds for
supposing that the interpretation of Khrushchev and the
Twentieth Congress of the CPSU of the ‘peaceful’ and
‘parliamentary’ path to socialism did not correspond to the
known views of Lenin and Stalin on these questions. Equally it
was apparent that the early British criticisms of the British
Road to Socialism had not taken a number of questions into
account.
The British Road to Socialism was published in
January, 1951 after being adopted by the Executive Committee of
the CPGB and a new, revised edition was issued in the April of
the following year after its adoption at the XXII National
Congress of the Communist Party. The new programme replaced the
earlier ‘For Soviet Britain...’ which had been adopted by the
CPGB at its XIII Congress in February 1935. The British Road to
Socialism underwent a number of modifications after the 20th
Congress of the CPSU. A comparison of the programmes on the
cardinal questions of the workers’ councils, parliament, the
relation of the Communist and Labour Parties in the transition
to socialism, the dictatorship of the proletariat and the
attitude to be adopted to the British Empire, indicate the
changes which occurred in the understanding of the international
communist movement and the CPGB over intervening years.
The CPGB programme in 1935 rejected the possibility
that capitalism could be ended and socialism established by the
election of a majority in the House of Commons as suggested by
the Labour Party as the capitalist class would not permit itself
to be expropriated by successive Acts of Parliament. The fact
there was no ‘peaceful, gradual’ way to socialism was revealed
by the rise to power of Fascism in Europe which showed that the
capitalists themselves had thrown overboard all forms of
democracy to preserve their power and profits. The Labour Party
in Britain did not tolerate united action amongst the workers
against Fascism and war just as the German Social Democrats had
rejected the United Front against Fascism and so opened the way
to the success of Fascism in Germany. The only way to win power
was through a workers’ revolution founded upon a united front of
the working class around the elementary demands against
wage-cuts, high rents, speed-up, wholesale dismissals as well as
the fight against Fascism and for colonial liberation. Civil war
was forced upon the working class by the capitalists which meant
that the overthrow of capitalism would be a forceful one. The
conquest of power by the workers is facilitated by the men of
the armed forces who after all were only workers in uniform. The
CPGB rejected the possibility that the parliamentary system
could serve the workers’ dictatorship after capitalism had been
overthrown as it was but one part of a machinery of government
which included the Cabinet, the civil service, the military and
the judiciary and the police which maintained the rule of
capital.
Under conditions of the workers’ dictatorship,
through the Workers’ Councils, the capitalist machinery of the
government would be broken up and replaced. After taking power
the workers’ councils would immediately proclaim the right of
all countries in the British empire to complete
self-determination up to and including complete separation. All
British armed forces and police would be withdrawn from the
colonies and all the claims of British imperialist finance would
be cancelled. Freed of the burden of imperialism the less
industrially developed would be in a position to exchange their
products for the industrial equipment required to build up their
own industry.
It is evident that this programme conformed to the
traditions of Bolshevism and the Comintern of that period. With
the rise to power of Nazism in Germany, the Spanish civil war
and the Japanese invasion of China, the CPSU (b) and the
Comintern re-orientated their activities to defend the
democratic and socialist movement from the onslaught of reaction
by the establishment of proletarian and popular fronts against
fascism and the war danger which was represented by Germany,
Italy and Japan. Because of this the British party programme
became quickly outdated.
The new party programme which was adopted in 1951,
the British Road to Socialism, necessarily took into account the
new correlation of forces on a world scale, the experiences
gained after the Seventh Congress of the Comintern, particularly
with the establishment of the New Democracies and People’s
Democracies in Central and South-East Europe and the Chinese
revolution. The new party programme was not one of establishing
a Soviet Socialist Britain but of establishing a People’s
Democracy in Britain. As one of the sub-headings of the
programme states: ‘People’s Democracy – The Path to Socialism’.
It was the road to Socialism and so it did not envisage the
immediate establishment of Socialism based on Workers’ Councils,
the immediate establishment of the dictatorship of the
proletariat, the destruction of parliament, the civil service,
the police, the military, the judiciary and the rest of the
bourgeois state apparatus. Drawing on the experiences of the
People’s Democracies of Central and South-East Europe the
British Road envisaged the utilisation of Parliament and the
formation of a People’s Government based on the various sections
of the working-class movement: Labour, trade union, co-operative
and Communist based on a parliamentary majority. In the economic
sphere the road to socialism envisaged socialist nationalisation
and workers’ control of monopoly capital and big landed property
but not the properties of the small shopkeepers, businessmen,
small landowners and farmers in the countryside. The British
Empire was to be transformed, inspired it is clear by the
example of the Soviet Union, into ‘a strong, free, equal
association of peoples by granting national independence to the
colonies’.
The British Road to Socialism in the editions of
1951 and 1952 does not refer to a peaceful transition to
socialism. On the contrary the programme anticipated that:
In carrying through these decisive measures to implement the democratic will of the people, every effort of the capitalist class to defy the People’s Government and Parliament will be resisted and defeated.
The great broad popular alliance, led by the working class, firmly based on the factories, which has democratically placed the People’s Government in power, will have the strength to deal with the attacks of the capitalist warmongers and their agents.
The Government will rely on the strength of the organised workers to ensure that the programme decided upon by Parliament is operated in practice, and that attempts to resist or sabotage it are defeated, and the enemies of the working class brought to justice.
It would be wrong to believe that the big capitalists will voluntarily give up their property and their big profits in the interests of the British people. It would be more correct to expect them to offer an active resistance to the decisions of the People’s Government, and to fight for the retention of their privileges by all means in their power, including force.
Therefore the British people and the People’s Government should be ready decisively to rebuff such attempts.
The methods whereby the organised working class
would counter and defeat the resistance of the capitalists were
not spelt out but it may be reasonably supposed that the methods
adopted by the Bolsheviks in the Russian revolution and the
Communist and Workers’ Parties in the revolutionary process in
the People’s Democracies of Eastern and South-East Europe and
the national liberation war in Greece were not unknown to the
CPGB.
The programme did not prescribe a parliamentary or
constitutional road to socialism. The novel element in the
British Road to Socialism in 1951 is that the notion of the
utilisation of parliament in the transition to people’s
democracy was introduced for the first time in a British party
programme.
The theses, ‘The Communist Party and Parliament’,
adopted by the Second Congress of Comintern in 1920 had noted
that parliament had played a certain progressive role as an
instrument of the developing capitalist system but that in the
period of imperialism, of civil war when the proletariat had to
establish its own power the task was to wrest the parliamentary
apparatus from the hands of the ruling classes, destroy it and
replace it with new organs of proletarian power. Parliament
could not serve as a form of proletarian state in the transition
to the dictatorship of the proletariat, or as the state form of
the future society. It could only be used with the object of
destroying it.
In the period of the Popular Fronts, of New
Democracy and People’s Democracy the perspectives radically
changed: the possibilities of using parliament in the
revolutionary process now came to be actively considered. The
two initial, major examples of this were in the course of the
national liberation wars in Spain and China. The Letter of
Voroshilov, Molotov and Stalin to Largo Caballero of December
1936 argued as follows:
The Spanish revolution plots its course, different from many viewpoints from the course followed by Russia. This is determined by the difference in social, historical and geographic conditions and by the needs of the international situation, different from those the Russian revolution had to contend with. It is very possible that the parliamentary way will show itself to be, in Spain, a more efficient means for revolutionary development than in Russia. But, having said that, we believe that our experience, especially the experience of our civil war, applied in accordance with the peculiar conditions of the Spanish revolutionary struggle, may have a certain importance for Spain. (Our emphasis).
A similar position obtained in China where Mao and
the Communist Party of China dropped the perspectives of
expanding the Chinese Soviet Republic and in the interest of the
united national front against the invasion of Japanese
imperialism now came out in February 1938 for the establishment
of a democratic republic in China:
In the democratic republic which the Communist Party advocates, parliament will be elected by our people, who refuse to be colonial slaves. Elections will be based on universal suffrage without any restrictions. Ours will be a democratic state. In broad outline it will be that state on whose establishment Sun Yat-sen insisted long ago. It is along these lines that the Chinese state must develop. (Our emphasis).
Mao and six other leading members of the Communist
Party of China, in the interests of the joint struggle against
Japan, went on to join the government of China, the National
Political Council, notwithstanding the fact that it was not an
elected body:
‘The Communist members of the Council do not repudiate responsibility on the pretext that the members of the Council are not elected by the people. We realise deeply that the members of the Council are the servants of the people, consequently we will resolutely strive to realise the desires, hopes and demands of the people of China. The unanimous demand of the people is that national unity be strengthened and the Japanese invaders driven out of China. We hope that our fellow countrymen will assist us and criticise us if we commit any mistakes. We hope that all the members of the Council will fulfill the desires of our people.’
The participation in a semi-parliamentary
institution and joining a government headed by Chiang Kai-shek
represented another instance of the changed perception of
utilising parliament during the course of the revolutionary
process.
Subsequently the parliaments of the Baltic states
of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia when faced with the threat of
an aggressive and expansionist Nazi imperialism passed
resolutions in 1940 requesting to be permitted to accede to the
Soviet Union. 1943-44 saw the rise of the Krajowa Rada Naradowa,
the underground parliament of Poland which attempted to lead the
armed struggle of the Polish people. In the post-war period the
working class forces headed by the Communist Party in
Czechoslovakia were able to seize power in 1948 which was
facilitated by the strong positions which the party held within
parliament. In Eastern Europe the political life was
democratised and the judicial and state institutions introduced
by the Nazis were destroyed. As these countries proceeded from
the democratic revolution towards socialist revolution very
diverse means were used to defeat the bourgeoisie including
political demonstrations, the forcible seizure of state
institutions, and the armed suppression of the military
detachments of the bourgeoisie. Step by step the old bourgeois
state apparatus was crushed, including the bourgeois democratic
organs, and replaced by a new popular democratic state
apparatus. In this struggle parliamentary forms of struggle were
used but they were of a subordinate nature, reflecting the
political changes rather than the means of their accomplishment.
The Soviet specialist A. I. Sobolev writing in 1954 registered
the parliamentary forms of the people’s democratic republics in
the different countries of Central and South-East Europe which
were incorporated into the dictatorships of the proletariat:
The parliament elected by all the people on the basis of universal, equal and direct suffrage by secret ballot is the highest organ of state power in the people’s republics. In Bulgaria and Albania this organ is called the National Assembly, in Hungary – the State Assembly, in Rumania – the Grand National Assembly, in Czechoslovakia – the National Assembly, and in Poland – the People’s Sejm.
Through a continuous process of struggle the
transition took place of the first stage of the People’s
Democratic states identified as a form of the democratic
dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry to the second,
socialist, stage of People’s Democracy in which the functions of
the dictatorship of the proletariat were carried out and the
process of socialist construction was accelerated.
The British Road to Socialism of 1951, as a
Programme of People’s Democracy, cannot be separately read from
the understanding of People’s Democracy as a new form of
political organisation of society considered applicable across
the globe from Mongolia to the United States of America. The
experience of the People’s Democratic States in Central and
South-East Europe as well as those of Asia was of paramount
importance here. Within this it was understood that the process
of the break-up of the bourgeois state structure and the
carrying out of the functions of the dictatorship of the
proletariat was an elongated though uninterrupted one. In his
report to the Fifth Congress of the Bulgarian Communist Party in
December 1948, Dimitrov graphically illustrates this in the
context of Bulgaria. The September 1944 anti-fascist uprising in
conjunction with the advance of the Soviet Army in the Balkans
swept away the fascist regime in one blow. The bourgeois-fascist
police was ‘smashed to pieces’ and a people’s militia formed.
Political power was wrested from the monarchy and the
bourgeoisie which was allied with German imperialism and passed
to Fatherland Front which under the leadership of the Party
united the workers, peasants and intellectuals. The old
bourgeois state machine was partially broken up in September
1944 and later completely so enabling Dimitrov to argue in 1948:
Embodying the rule of the working people under the leadership of the working class, the People’s Democracy, in the existing historical situation, as is already proved by experience, can and must successfully perform the functions of the dictatorship of the proletariat for the liquidation of the capitalist elements and the organisation of a socialist economy. It can crush the resistance of the overthrown capitalists and landowners, crush their attempts to restore the rule of capital, and organise the building of industry on the basis of public ownership and planned economy.
Similar experiences were reported from elsewhere in
Central and South-East Europe by Hilary Minc, Boleslaw Bierut
and Matyas Rakosi. The understanding of People’s Democracy
elaborated in this period gave no exemption to Britain on the
question of establishing the dictatorship of the proletariat
under the British Road to Socialism through the path of People’s
Democracy.
This perspective was reversed in Central and
South-East Europe with the rise of revisionism and ‘market
socialism’ after 1953. In Yugoslavia the revolutionary process
had already been halted and reversed in 1948-49. In the People’s
Republic of China after 1949 the people’s democratic state
incorporated the middle bourgeoisie and its political parties
into the state structure. As an editorial of Pravda dated
23rd September, 1950 pointed out:
While noting the fact that the Chinese People’s republic is a people’s democratic state and that it fights with the whole democratic camp for common aims and tasks, one cannot fail to see the difference between the people’s democracy in China and in the countries of Central and South-East Europe. It is known that in the Central and South-East European countries the people’s democratic regime is performing the functions of the dictatorship of the proletariat in the struggle for building the foundation of Socialism.
At the present stage, the people’s democracy in China is not a form of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Socialist construction has not yet been placed on the immediate order of the day in China.
However as is known the middle bourgeoisie and its
political parties were never removed from the National People’s
Congress or the state structure of the Chinese Peoples’ Republic
so that the people’s democratic dictatorship never came to
exercise the functions of the dictatorship of the proletariat.
This is apparent from a reading of the 1954 and subsequent
Constitutions of the People’s Republic of China. Over half a
century the People’s Republic of China has remained frozen as a
people’s democratic dictatorship which never developed towards
carrying out the functions of the dictatorship of the
proletariat. The failure to achieve any progress in this sphere
paralleled the rise and expansion of ‘market socialism’ in the
country.
Stalin’s interventions in the framing and content
of the British Road to Socialism confirm that he saw the
programme of People’s Democracy as the path to Socialism in the
country, approved of the utilisation of Parliament and saw the
programme as ‘in its essence’ as ‘a suitable document for the
Communist Parties of USA, Canada, Australia and other
Anglo-Saxon countries’. He authored the suggestion for a free
association of the peoples of the empire based on the right of
self-determination. Stalin furthermore gave his concurrence and
support to the electoral tactics of the CPGB in relation to the
Labour Party in the General Elections. The stands of the CPGB on
all of these questions have been contentious and the attitudes
of Stalin the object of conjecture so it is invaluable to have
his suggestions and observations available in the public domain
for scrutiny by the communist movement.
The turn to ‘market socialism’ and revisionism
registered at the Twentieth Party Congress of the CPSU and the
Eighth Party Congress of the CPC reverberated around the
people’s democracies and the international communist movement.
It resulted in the radical restructuring of the British Road to
Socialism. A Commission was established to prepare a new draft
of the programme and a revised text was submitted to the Party
Congress in 1957, together with 1,500 amendments from Party
organisations. The final text was adopted by the Executive
Committee of the CPGB in January 1958. The new programme dropped
the references to People’s Democracy as being the Path to
Socialism in Britain. It retained the understanding that
Parliament required to be utilised but toned down the portion of
the original programme which warned of the dangers presented by
the resistance of the big capitalists to measures depriving them
of their property and profits. New clauses were inserted which
argued that ‘a transition to socialism without armed conflict is
possible today in many countries’ (our emphasis), and this was
‘particularly true of our country, whose powerful Labour
movement embodies the British workers’ fighting ability and
experience of struggle, and where there is a strong tradition of
democratic institutions.’ By this the notion of a peaceful path
to socialism was endorsed. In line with the Twentieth Congress
of the CPSU the programme accepted ‘decolonisation’ theory,
authored by Kautsky, under which colonial countries such as
India were deemed to have become independent without the
eradication of the hold of metropolitan finance capital. The
right of all subject peoples to self-determination was retained
(it had been repudiated three years earlier by the Communist
Party of India) but the proposal for the formation of a free
association of the peoples of the former empire was removed.
The British Road to Socialism of 1951 which had
originally spoken of the use of parliament on the road to
People’s Democracy and Socialism was now transformed in 1958 to
a parliamentary path to Socialism without armed conflict.
In the polemics which arose in the 1960s between
the CPSU and its allies and the Party of Labour of Albania and
the Communist Party of China the theses embodied in the British
Road to Socialism became the object of analysis and discussion.
In Britain the pioneer critic of modern revisionism was Michael
McCreery who headed The Committee to Defeat Revisionism for
Communist Unity from its formation in November, 1963, until his
early death from cancer at the age of 36, in April 1965. The
formation of the CDRCU was a major milestone in the development
of the Marxist-Leninist movement in Britain and it had an
international presence such that its materials were on sale in a
number of countries including India.
A re-reading of two of McCreery’s articles, The
British Road to Socialism and The Way Forward
suggests that the author did not distinguish between the two
radically different versions of the British Road to Socialism of
1951 and 1958, and, also did not consider the events in the
post-Leninist period and their theoretical summing up by the
Communist movement. McCreery confined his criticisms to the 1958
programme. It is noticeable that the names of Dimitrov and
Stalin, as well as those leading Communists who had written on
the questions relating to People’s Democracy, are absent from
the collection of his writings available to us. McCreery
criticised the propositions put forward in 1958, which had not
been present in 1951, that Parliament could be transformed ‘into
the effective instrument of the people’s will through which the
major legislative measures of the change to socialism will be
carried’ and that is was possible to build Socialism in Britain
‘without armed conflict’. He based his criticisms on Lenin’s
writings which stressed the need to establish the dictatorship
of the proletariat and to break up and destroy the existing
state structure. Moreover he understood the falsity of the views
projected by the leaders of the CPGB such as James Klugmann
that, because of the alleged strengthening of the socialist
system and the ‘weakening’ of imperialism, a transition to
socialism was possible without armed conflict in Britain.
In retrospect we know that far from being
strengthened socialism in the USSR had been reversed in the
period 1954-58 with the means of production beginning to
circulate as commodities in the state sector, labour power
thereby becoming a commodity and profit becoming the criterion
of efficiency of the enterprises; directive planning for
constructing advanced socialism and communism was replaced by
‘co-ordinated planning’ to establish a market economy.
Imperialism far from being weakened went from strength to
strength and ultimately destroyed the camp of socialism and
democracy. McCreery’s criticisms of the 1958 British Road to
Socialism were fundamentally correct. However, he did not enter
into the question of evaluating the programme of 1951 which he
considered contained the ideas of the 1958 programme. He was,
apparently, unaware that the original 1951 version of the
British Road to Socialism was an integral part of a Programme of
establishing People’s Democracy in Britain.
Bibliography;
The British Road to Socialism, The Programme
adopted by the Executive Committee of the Communist Party,
January 1951, London. (Revised edition April 1952, Second
revised edition February 1958, Third revised edition October
1968).
On the Character and Specific Features of People’s
Democracy in the Countries of the East, Institute of Oriental
Studies of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, 1951, Revolutionary
Democracy, Vol. V, No. 2, September 1999.
The Communist Party and Parliament, Theses adopted
at the Second Congress of the Communist International, August
1920, Kamgar Prakashan, Delhi, 1984.
William Z. Foster, Toward Soviet America, New York,
1932.
William Z. Foster, The New Europe, International
Publishers, New York, 1947.
Interview Given by Mao Tse-tung to Mr. Wang
Kung-Tah, Correspondent of the Associated Press, February, 1938,
Revolutionary Democracy, Vol. XI, No. 2, September 2005.
Edvard Kardelj, Political Content of People’s
Democracy, Embassy of the F.P.R. of Yugoslavia Information
Office, London, 7 June 1949.
Letter to Largo Caballero dated December 21, 1936
from Voroshilov, Molotov, and Stalin, New York Times, June 4,
1939, p. 43.
For Soviet Britain, Adopted by the CPGB at its XIII
Congress, February 2nd, 1935, Reprinted by the Communist Action
Group, London, 1995.
George Mathews, Stalin’s British Road? Changes
Supplement, 14-27 September 1991, pp.1-3.
Michael McCreery, The Way Forward, Committee to
Defeat Revisionism for Communist Unity, London, 1964.
Michael McCreery, The Way Forward, Working Peoples
Party of England, London, n.d.
On People’s Democracy in Eastern Europe and China,
A selection of Articles and Speeches, Hilary Minc, Georgi
Dimitrov, Boleslaw Bierut, Matyas Rakosi, Yu Huai, London, 1951.
People’s Democracy in China, Editorials from the
Cominform journal and Pravda, People’s Publishing House, Bombay,
1950.
Bert Ramelson, Pollitt was Not Stalin’s Poodle !,
12-25 October 1991, Changes, p.5.
Record of the Discussions of J.V. Stalin with the
Representatives of the C.C. of the Communist Party of India
Comrades Rao, Dange, Ghosh and Punnaiah on 9th February, 1951, Revolutionary
Democracy, Vol. XII, No. 2, September, 2006, pp. 183-200.
A.I. Sobolev, People’s Democracy as a Form of
Political Organisation of Society, Communist Review,
London, June 1951, pp.3-21.
A.I. Sobolev, People’s Democracy, A New Form of
Political Organization of Society, Foreign Languages Publishing
House, Moscow, 1954.
A.I. Sobolev, Some Forms of Transition from
Capitalism to Socialism, With an Introduction by Ajoy Ghosh,
Communist Party Publication, New Delhi, 1956.
P. F. Yudin, Evropeiskie strany narodnoi demokratii
na putakh k sotsializmu, Moscow, 1950.
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