Next
year 40 years will have passed since the bourgeoisie seized power again in the
Soviet Union, 40 years since the formal act (the 20th Congress of the CPSU) by
which Nikita Khrushchev sanctioned the end of the dictatorship of the
proletariat. Those years have been years of complex struggles in all spheres,
characterised by the collapse of Soviet social imperialism, by the general
crisis of modern reformism/revisionism in all its forms, and by the political
and ideological victory of world imperialism, in the first place the USA.
An
epoch has come to an end, and another is emerging. Since 1917, many things have
changed. The revolutions of this century have transformed the social relations
of power on a world scale. The industrial and agricultural proletariat today
represent the most formidable revolutionary force that humanity has ever known.
Although the global domination of finance capital is total, today more than ever
before it is a giant with feet of clay.
All
the inherent tendencies of imperialism, outlined at the time by Lenin, have not
only been realised but have attained an unprecedented level of development.
International monopoly capital has brought under its sway all spheres of
production and trade, of scientific research and its technological applications,
of communication, and all spheres of human activity - health, culture, social
provision, sport etc.
It
is precisely this financial domination that constitutes imperialism's weakness:
the concentration of production has reduced capitalism's social base, as much in
the imperialist countries as in the oppressed continents, where archaic modes of
production are dying out with no alternative but revolution.
The
absolute necessity for capitalism to defend accumulated capital, the oligarchic
structure of financial concentration, the ceaseless search for maximum profits
through the export of loan capital in order to overcome cyclical economic
crises, the fact that these crises have become so frequent that stagnation and
inflation have become permanent features, fierce international competition for
control of primary products, energy sources and markets -all these are so many
incurable pathological afflictions which herald the advent of what we could
define as the third revolutionary wave.
But
we Communists (Marxist-Leninists) know that in addition to the objective
conditions for revolution, there must also correspond subjective conditions.
Without revolutionary theory, without the party, without mass policies capable
of creating the Proletarian United Front and the Anti-Imperialist United Front,
the social crisis will not result in socialist revolution.
It
is for this reason that the question of revolutionary theory becomes of
primordial importance; it is why imperialism is devoting enormous efforts to
ideological activity, to the social democratic and revisionist deviations.
It
would be a grave error to underestimate the current and future role of modern
reformism.
The
demise of Soviet social imperialism liberated enormous revolutionary forces, and
it will be the same with the global economic crisis, which will not be resolved
- quite the contrary - by monetarist policies. In this context it is no accident
that numerous anti-Leninist currents have been reactivated, and if more
tendencies try to play a hegemonic role and to carry out their divisive work. It
is for this reason that the creative development of Marxism-Leninism and the
intransigent defence of our revolutionary science assume a vital importance for
the future of revolution and for the very existence of the movement.
Who
will assume the leadership of these revolutionary processes? It will either be
the proletariat, or the petty bourgeoisie, with all its different ideological
currents.
In
philosophy, in economics, in politics, it will be either Leninism or the old
Brezhnevism, Trotskyism under new guises, or the various Third Worldist
tendencies (Maoism, Castroism etc.)
It
is not by chance that we are today discussing the role and the thought of
comrade Stalin, the architect of the theoretical basis for the construction of
socialism, the defender of Leninism, Stalin, who pointed out all the problems
linked to the danger of capitalist restoration in transitional society,
socialism.
To
attack Stalin is to attack Marxism-Leninism. It is to try to hold back the
development of our movement. Whoever goes down this road puts the Party on to
the path of reformism, and therefore of the national and international
bourgeoisie, or the dead-end of leftist subjectivism, which has already been
buried by history. The crisis of modern revisionism has already
brought
significant revolutionary forces closer to us (in particular in the ex-socialist
camp). Our task is to guide these forces towards correct Marxist-Leninist
positions in order to stop the old Brezhnevite bourgeoisie or the
"new" bourgeoisie around Yeltsin from ensnaring them within parochial
nationalism.
In
a situation of such great potential of the Marxist-Leninist communist
movement, it is curious that we should see the reappearance of forces which are
in fact Trotskyist. It is absolutely necessary to isolate them, to eliminate
them. The reaffirmation of the thought and the work of Stalin, along with
purging the deviations of petty bourgeois "revolutionaries",
constitute a natural process of development.
The
ideological struggle to be undertaken is both large and complex, but our
theoretical and political superiority is evident.
Those
who attack Stalin only look to the past in order to exaggerate the errors or to
support the attacks of the bourgeoisie. They do not adhere to historical
materialism, and they do not know how to determine the real causes of the
defeats.
The
history of the emancipation of the proletariat is not the Nevsky Prospect; it is
not guided by a metaphysical vision.
Our
task is to defend all the positive achievements that have been won, and to move
forward. Everything which Stalin achieved in theory and practice was rigourously
faithful to our doctrine; it is a beacon which still illuminates our path today.
In
no sphere of social science, in nothing that was done under the dictatorship of
the proletariat under Stalin's leadership, will these "critics" find
any arguments to justify their counter-revolutionary activities.
Our movement,
in contrast, will advance victoriously because it is Leninist, because it is
Bolshevik, because it is strengthened by the thought of the great revolutionary
J. Stalin.
"La
Nostra Lotta", August 1995