The revolutionary struggle that brought about the first socialist state in the former Russian Empire in 1917 had its first major upheavals years earlier. The Russian Social Democratic Labor Party (RSDLP) had split into two factions, the Bolsheviks (meaning majority, led by V.I. Lenin) and Mensheviks (meaning minority, led by Julius Martov) in 1903. The RSDLP remained as one party formally, but the two factions, practically, had separate centers, presses, and programs. As The History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks) – Short Course puts it, “on the eve of the first Russian revolution, when the Russo-Japanese war had already begun, the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks acted as two separate political groups.”

The Russo-Japanese war broke out in 1904, and the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks each took a different stance toward the war. “The Mensheviks, including Trotsky, were sinking to a position of defending the ‘fatherland’ of the tsar, the landlords and the capitalists,” says the Short Course. “The Bolsheviks, headed by Lenin, on the other hand, held that the defeat of the tsarist government in this predatory war would be useful, as it would weaken tsardom and strengthen the revolution.”

By 1905 the struggle came to a head. The Short Course sums it up like this: 

“The workers' recourse to mass political strikes and demonstrations, the growth of the peasant movement, the armed clashes between the people and the police and troops, and, finally, the revolt in the Black Sea Fleet, all went to show that conditions were ripening for an armed uprising of the people. This stirred the liberal bourgeoisie into action. Fearing the revolution, and at the same time frightening the tsar with the spectre of revolution, it sought to come to terms with the tsar against the revolution; it demanded slight reforms ‘for the people’ so as to ‘pacify’ the people, to split the forces of the revolution and thus avert the ‘horrors of revolution.’ ‘Better part with some of our land than part with our heads,’ said the liberal landlords. The liberal bourgeoisie was preparing to share power with the tsar.’

In this time of great upheaval, the RSDLP lacked unity over tactics on how to move forward. The Bolsheviks called the Third Congress in order to assess the situation and formulate tactics that the whole party would be bound to carry out. But the Mensheviks boycotted the Third Congress and called their own “conference” in order to formulate their own tactical line apart from the Bolsheviks. 

The Third Party Congress correctly assessed that the liberal bourgeoisie didn’t want complete victory for the revolution but would instead seek compromise with the tsar on the basis of forming a constitutional monarchy. Therefore, it called for the proletariat to lead the bourgeois-democratic revolution, allied closely with the peasantry, since those were the class forces fundamentally interested in complete victory. The Menshevik conference, on the other hand, insisted that the democratic revolution be led by the liberal bourgeoisie, and that revolutionary socialists should make every effort to avoid frightening the liberal bourgeoisie and thereby undermining the revolution. The Bolsheviks advocated the revolutionary overthrow of tsarism, and the continuation of the revolution from its bourgeois-democratic stage to its socialist stage, while the Mensheviks instead advocated a policy of compromise and reform. 

Lenin’s arguments

Lenin’s book, Two Tactics of Social Democracy in the Democratic Revolution appeared two months after the Third Congress, in July 1905. It explained and developed the Bolshevik tactical line as it exposed and criticized the Menshevik tactical line. 

There are three main points in Lenin’s book that must be emphasized. 

First, Lenin argued that the proletariat must be the leader and guiding force of the bourgeois-democratic revolution. Thus, in Two Tactics Lenin writes, 

“Marxism teaches the proletarian not to keep aloof from the bourgeois revolution, not to be indifferent to it, not to allow the leadership of the revolution to be assumed by the bourgeoisie but, on the contrary, to take a most energetic part in it, to fight most resolutely for consistent proletarian democracy, for carrying the revolution to its conclusion. We cannot jump out of the bourgeois-democratic boundaries of the Russian revolution, but we can vastly extend these boundaries, and within these boundaries we can and must fight for the interests of the proletariat, for its immediate needs and for the conditions that will make it possible to prepare its forces for the future complete victory.”

For this reason, Lenin writes, “The outcome of the revolution depends on whether the working class will play the part of a subsidiary to the bourgeoisie, a subsidiary that is powerful in the force of its onslaught against the autocracy but impotent politically, or whether it will play the part of leader of the people’s revolution.” To do this, Lenin held that it was necessary for the proletariat to ally itself with the peasantry, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, to isolate the liberal bourgeoisie and force it out of leadership of the revolution. 

Second, Lenin argued that the means for overthrowing tsarism and achieving a democratic republic was through revolutionary armed struggle. 

In Two Tactics Lenin writes, “In order to be able to exercise this pressure from below, the proletariat must be armed—for in a revolutionary situation matters develop with exceptional rapidity to the stage of open civil war – and must be led by the Social-Democratic Party. The object of its armed pressure is that of ‘defending, consolidating and extending the gains of the revolution,’ i.e., those gains which from the standpoint of the interests of the proletariat must consist in the fulfilment of the whole of our minimum program.”

Against the Mensheviks, who advocated for reform during a revolutionary situation, Lenin wrote, “under the circumstances … amendments are moved by means of street demonstrations, interpolations are introduced by means of offensive action by armed citizens, opposition to the government is effected by forcibly overthrowing the government.” 

Third, Lenin argued that the revolution should have two stages, and that the revolution must not come to a halt with the victory of the bourgeois-democratic stage. Instead, it must strive immediately to pass into the socialist stage.

Therefore, Lenin writes in Two Tactics, “The proletariat must accomplish the socialist revolution, by allying to itself the mass of the semi-proletarian elements of the population in order to crush by force the resistance of the bourgeoisie and to paralyze the instability of the peasantry and the petty bourgeoisie.”

The Short Course points out, “This was a new theory which held that the Socialist revolution would be accomplished not by the proletariat in isolation as against the whole bourgeoisie, but by the proletariat as the leading class which would have as allies the semi-proletarian elements of the population, the ‘toiling and exploited millions.’” It goes on to explain, “According to this theory the hegemony of the proletariat in the bourgeois revolution, the proletariat being in alliance with the peasantry, would grow into the hegemony of the proletariat in the Socialist revolution, the proletariat now being in alliance with the other laboring and exploited masses, while the democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry would prepare the ground for the Socialist dictatorship of the proletariat.”

The hegemony of the proletariat in the bourgeois-democratic revolution, the necessity of revolutionary armed struggle, and the importance of carrying the revolution forward from the democratic to the socialist stage: these are the most important lessons to draw from Lenin’s Two Tactics. 

Two Tactics today

After 1905, the democratic revolution in Russia entered a period of retreat, and wouldn’t be completed until February of 1917, after which the Bolsheviks did indeed push the revolution forward to the victorious October socialist revolution. 

Regarding Lenin’s book, Two Tactics, the Short Course says, “Its invaluable significance consists in that it enriched Marxism with a new theory of revolution and laid the foundation for the revolutionary tactics of the Bolshevik Party with the help of which in 1917 the proletariat of our country achieved the victory over capitalism.”

It is important that revolutionaries study this cornerstone of Marxist-Leninist theory today. Indeed, it explains in clear terms how revolutionaries should relate to the movements for democracy and the other class forces involved in those movements. It lays out the basic principles at the core of Leninist tactics. The lessons of Two Tactics apply to our own struggle in the U.S., where different class forces are united in struggle against monopoly capitalism. At the core of this united front is the strategic alliance of the multinational working class on the one hand and the movements of the oppressed nations and nationalities for liberation on the other hand. Lenin’s Two Tactics explains clearly the importance of the leadership of the proletariat and its need for allies. And while we must push forward and develop the struggle to defend and expand democracy in a revolutionary way, we must advance to the overthrow of the capitalist system and struggle for socialism.

#RevolutionaryTheory #Socialism #MarxismLeninism #MLTheory #RedTheory

Minneapolis, MN – The Revolutionary Science of Marxism-Leninism, published by the Freedom Road Socialist Organization, is a concise and fantastic book detailing the fundamentals of Marxism. Written by J. Sykes, the book is an excellent introduction for those looking to learn the science of revolution, the history, methods and outlook of scientific socialism. It breaks down complex questions of philosophy, organizing and others into easily understandable terms, making it good for beginners and an excellent primer for those who already have a grasp on Marxism-Leninism and are looking to sharpen their understanding. For those seeking to do away with capitalism and its system of corporate exploitation, class oppression and national oppression, this is the book for you.

Introducing the science of revolution

The book begins with an explanation, not only of the purpose of its publication, but of a brief history of Marxism-Leninism. Sykes makes clear that Marxism didn’t just fall out of the sky one day, it arose out of the three component parts: socialism, political economy, and philosophy, and was (and continues to be) refined over the course of the practical experience and application of it in the struggles of working and oppressed people the whole world over.

In addition to dealing with the basics of Marxism, the book addresses problematic bourgeois ideological currents like post-modernism, Sakai’s take on settler colonialism, and pragmatism, which are harmful to the efforts to construct a revolutionary movement in this country.

Theory and practice

As Sykes says,

“Practice is the sole criterion of truth”, continuing, “Revolutionary theory is a guide to action, and it changes and develops as the world changes and develops, building upon itself just as Marx and Engels built upon the advanced theory of their time. In the early part of the 20th century, Vladimir Lenin and the experience of the October Revolution and socialist construction in the Soviet Union further developed the science of revolution in many ways. Lenin’s analysis of the further development of capitalism into monopoly capitalism led to his development of the theory of Imperialism and the importance of anti-imperialist struggles for national liberation.”

This is why The Revolutionary Science of Marxism-Leninism doesn’t focus simply on communist theory in the abstract, separated from real world conditions and struggles, but in the source (practice) its application, and use of it in those struggles. It also doesn’t take Marxism as an unchanging dogma, but as a science that is constantly being developed and enriched in its source, practice, as a tool that becomes sharper, not duller, with use.

Sykes explains how knowledge and theory develops from practical experience, to be summed up and learned from, to apply again. The book as well explains the “mass line,” the communist method of organizing and leadership from and to the masses, and how not only we as revolutionaries learn with it, but how the people as a whole learn from the process of taking our felt needs, issues and demands, studying and breaking them down, and synthesizing them into actionable plans, demands and slogans, and so raising the consciousness of the people.

A book for revolutionaries new and old

Throughout the entirety of The Revolutionary Science of Marxism-Leninism, important concepts such as imperialism, historical materialism and national oppression are all explained in an easily digestible manner. Questions of organizing, history and leadership are explained in clear and concise terms, and the book never steps away from discussing the practical use and understanding of each concept, and ties Marxist-Leninist theory firmly with the struggles of the masses that continues to develop and enrich it.

This book comes at a period of major importance today. As Mick Kelly, political secretary of the Freedom Road Socialist Organization, states in the forward, “Not since the rise of the new communist movement in late 1960s and early 70s have we seen such large numbers of people arriving at the conclusion that monopoly capitalism is a failed system, and that revolution and socialism are necessities. Many new revolutionaries are making the leap and helping to build revolutionary organization.”

For those revolutionaries, new and old, looking to build such an organization, this book will undoubtedly be a vital and practical read.

The book can be purchased from FRSO organizers, or by visiting tinyurl.com/revsciMLbook.

#MinneapolisMN #BookReviews #MLTheory #redTheory

After waging revolution from 1927 to 1949, Mao Zedong proclaimed from Tiananmen Gate that “the Chinese people have stood up!” This marked the end of imperialist domination in China and the beginning of socialism in the newly founded People’s Republic of China, led by the Communist Party. The Chinese revolution has continued through socialist construction from then until today, and we would do well to sum up some of its many heroic achievements in order to better understand, from a Marxist-Leninist perspective, the process of socialist revolution and socialist construction.

The achievements of socialism in China during Mao Zedong’s lifetime were tremendous. In 1949, Chinese life expectancy was 38 years. By the 1970s it had risen to 68 years. As John Ross says in his book China’s Great Road, “China’s rate of increase of life expectancy in the three decades after 1949 was the fastest ever recorded in a major country in human history.” China’s current life expectancy has overtaken that of the U.S. and is now 78.2 years.

Literacy also dramatically increased. In 1949, approximately 80 to 90% of China’s population was illiterate. The Communist Party launched a mass literacy and education campaign, and within ten years adult illiteracy fell to 43% and has steadily declined since. By 1979 illiteracy was only 16.4% in the cities and 34.7% in the countryside. Currently, the literacy rate in China is 99.8%, greatly exceeding the U.S. at 79%.

All of this was achieved as a direct result of the socialist system, which avoids the anarchy of production and the chronic cycles of boom and bust. In fact, since 1978, China has had the fastest sustained growth in a major economy in all of human history, with an annual average growth rate of 9.5%. Because China isn’t a capitalist country, the economy isn’t affected by the cyclical crises that are characteristic of and plague the capitalist mode of production.

Among China’s greatest achievements is the elimination of extreme poverty. Over just the past 40 years, the number of people in China living in extreme poverty has fallen by 800 million, accounting for three quarters of total global poverty reduction. This process began in the 1930s, with land reform in the liberated areas at the beginning of the Chinese revolution. This meant the expropriation of the landlords, division of their land among the peasants, and canceling debts. This is how the Communist Party of China (CPC) destroyed feudalism in the countryside.

After taking power in 1949, the CPC expanded land reform from the liberated areas to the entire country, and started setting up agricultural production cooperatives to mechanize agriculture and develop the forces of production throughout the country. The means of production were nationalized. China’s industrial output increased at an average annual rate of 13.5%. By 1977, China’s industrial output was 38 times what it was in 1949 when the revolution took power.

China has also succeeded in building a harmonious society composed of many different nationalities. The CPC helped to liberate the oppressed nationalities, such as the Tibetan people, from feudalism. The People’s Republic of China constitution and laws grant equality to the country’s nationalities and promotes economic and cultural development. Discrimination is outlawed and Articles 112 through 122 of the constitution of the People’s Republic of China detail the rights of the formerly oppressed nationalities to autonomous self-government.

As a result of their vast revolutionary experience, the Chinese communists have also made many great contributions to Marxist-Leninist theory. In the course of the civil war and the war of resistance against Japan, Mao Zedong developed the theory of protracted people’s war, a military strategy of advancing a revolution in stages by surrounding the cities from the countryside, applicable broadly to semi-colonial and semi-feudal countries with a large peasantry like China was.

Mao and his comrades also developed the theory of the United Front and the Mass Line as core strategic methods of organizing and mobilizing the broad masses of the people for revolution. Mao also made important contributions to Marxist philosophy with his essays “On Practice” and “On Contradiction,” among many others. And after Khrushchev came to power in the Soviet Union in the mid-1950s, the CPC made important contributions to the defense of Marxism-Leninism against revisionism in the polemics of the Great Debate.

China has been a beacon to oppressed nations and peoples all over the world, especially in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. In the United States, Mao Zedong and the Chinese Revolution were a guiding light to the Black liberation movement, especially for groups like the Black Panther Party, which used the Little Red Book, Quotations from Chairman Mao Zedong, as a revolutionary handbook. After the Communist Party USA’s abandonment of Marxism-Leninism for revisionism in the 1950s, the young communists who set out to build a new communist party in the 1970s also drew upon the theory and practice of Mao Zedong and the CPC.

In 1985 in the Soviet Union, Gorbachev instituted his liberal reforms, Perestroika and Glasnost, hurling the USSR towards the precipice of capitalist restoration in 1991. Similar counterrevolutionary currents arose in other parts of the socialist world, including China. Many in the USSR and Eastern Europe failed to defeat counterrevolution. Mick Kelly sums up the trajectory that led to a similar situation in China in the 1989 work Continuing the Revolution is Not a Dinner Party: “While the intentions were the best, the ultra-left errors of the Cultural Revolution (1966-1975) slowed the development of socialism in China. Right errors in the post Mao/Hua period then created the material conditions and allowed the political space to open for bourgeois liberalization.” But when right opportunists led by Zhao Ziyang attempted to restore capitalism in China in 1989, the CPC managed to rise to the challenge. They held firm to Marxist-Leninist principles, overcame the crisis, defended socialism and the proletarian dictatorship, and came out stronger on the other side.

The Communist Party of China has proved in practice that it is prepared to avoid the fate of the USSR. As Xi Jinping said in a speech in 2021, “It is easier to breach a fortress from within. In this sense, degeneracy, corruption and betrayal from within the Party have been the gravest threat since its founding. The Party would lose the people’s support if it betrays its political character as a Marxist party and fundamental purpose. Over its century-long journey, our Party has stayed alert to risks of corruption and disintegration, and maintains its progressive and wholesome nature.” In this regard, China has launched a successful anti-corruption campaign to make sure the Party continues to serve the people.

As China develops its productive forces in order to eliminate scarcity and bring common prosperity to the Chinese people, China is also breaking new ground in combining socialist construction with ecological sustainability. In his article, “China is Building a Truly Ecological Civilization,” Carlos Martinez writes that the People’s Republic of China is aggressively pursuing decarbonization, reducing reliance on coal in favor of wind and solar energy. China is also carrying out the largest reforestation project in the world, expanding forest coverage from 12% to 23% from 1980 to 2020. China is able to do this because they have a socialist, planned economy, whereas capitalism can only blindly pursue the highest rate of profit.

Similarly, as a result of its socialist system, China is able to prioritize public health over profit, as seen by its COVID policy. The United States has had over one million deaths as result of its poor handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, while, at the time of this writing, China’s has had over 1000 times fewer, relative to its population.

What China has accomplished is nothing short of extraordinary. From when Mao and his comrades first set out on their Long March, until today, the Chinese revolution has served to teach and inspire revolutionaries all over the world.

As Xi Jinping said at the recent 20th National Congress of the CPC, “Marxism is the fundamental guiding ideology upon which our Party and our country are founded and thrive. Our experience has taught us that, at the fundamental level, we owe the success of our Party and socialism with Chinese characteristics to the fact that Marxism works, particularly when it is adapted to the Chinese context and the needs of our times,” and “…only by applying dialectical and historical materialism can we provide correct answers to the major questions presented by the times and discovered through practice, and can we ensure that Marxism always retains its vigor and vitality.”

#UnitedStates #PeoplesStruggles #Socialism #MarxismLeninism #MLTheory #redTheory

How is it possible that the Soviet Union, bastion of socialism and proletarian internationalism, collapsed in 1991? What factors led to its collapse, and what were the results? We should look at both the material and ideological basis for the restoration of capitalism in the USSR. As Marxist-Leninists, what lessons can we draw from the experience of the fall of the Soviet Union?

Capitalism was restored in the USSR in 1991, but the process that led to that point began much earlier. Nikita Khrushchev came to lead the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) shortly after the death of Stalin in 1953. Under his leadership, the 20th Congress of the CPSU in 1956 marked the first major turning point towards revisionism in the USSR. Revisionism, in the name of “revising” Marxism, advocates for Marxism in words, but opportunism in deeds.

Ideologically, Khrushchev’s revisionism attacked the foundations of Marxism-Leninism in a number of ways, namely by advocating the transformation of the proletarian dictatorship into a “state of the whole people,” the party of the working class into the “party of the whole people,” by advocating for “peaceful coexistence between capitalism and socialism,” and by advocating for the “peaceful transition from capitalism to socialism.”

Like Trotsky before him, in the name of attacking “Stalinism,” Khrushchev set about to attack Marxism-Leninism. In his so-called “secret speech” Khrushchev launched his campaign of “de-Stalinization.” Of course, this didn’t go without resistance, so in order to carry this out, he maneuvered to defeat the revolutionary left in the party leadership, which made up the majority in the politburo. Molotov, Malenkov, Kaganovich and the rest of the left were all sidelined by Khrushchev as an “Anti-Party group.”

From there, the communists of China and Albania led the way in criticizing the errors of Khruschev’s revisionism and the dangers it posed to the international communist movement. As the Communist Party of China wrote in “On the Question of Stalin'' in 1963, “In repeating their violent attacks on Stalin, the leaders of the CPSU aimed at erasing the indelible influence of this great proletarian revolutionary among the people of the Soviet Union and throughout the world, and at paving the way for negating Marxism-Leninism, which Stalin had defended and developed, and for the all-out application of a revisionist line.” By attacking Stalin’s leadership and the history of the CPSU, Khrushchev struck a blow at Marxism-Leninism itself, weakening the confidence of the international communist movement in Marxism-Leninism.

In a significant article from 1992 entitled “An Assessment of the Collapse of the Soviet Union,” the outstanding Belgian communist leader, Ludo Martens, wrote, “the revisionism of Khrushchev opened a transitional period from socialism to capitalism. Old and new bourgeois elements needed thirty years to grow strong enough to capture and consolidate their power in the fields of politics, ideology and the economy. The process of degeneration, begun in 1956, took three decades to finish off socialism.”

Practically, as Keeran and Kenny emphasize in their 2004 book Socialism Betrayed, “Khrushchev favored incorporating a range of capitalist or Western ideas into socialism, including market mechanisms, decentralization, some private production, the heavy reliance on fertilizer and the cultivation of corn, and increased investment in consumer goods.” After this, the Kosygin Reforms in 1965 further liberalized the economy, emphasizing profitability, material incentives and commodity production to an even further degree. Guided by revisionism instead of Marxism-Leninism, these policies had a corrosive effect on the socialist system.

In those ensuing decades, we see first Brezhnev and then Gorbachev as the principal leaders of the USSR. While Brezhnev corrected some of Khruschev’s worst errors, he continued down the path that Khrushchev set out upon in the 20th Congress. The Soviet Union during the period of his leadership saw the party further divorce itself from the masses of the people as bureaucracy grew. Furthermore, the U.S. made every effort to destabilize the USSR during this period, most successfully by funding the Mujahideen to bog the Red Army down in Afghanistan, draining the Soviet Union’s resources.

Bad leadership, and a lack of Marxist-Leninist scientific clarity, only exacerbated the problem, leading to Gorbachev’s liberal “Perestroika” and “Glasnost” reforms, and finally to the open liquidation of the CPSU and the USSR, against widespread protest, under Yeltsin. In a 1991 referendum, the Soviet people overwhelmingly voted against dissolving the USSR. Nearly 80% wanted to maintain the Soviet Union, but Yeltsin and Gorbachev defied both the Soviet constitution and the Soviet people.

Like Khrushchev before him, Gorbachev put forward his attacks on Marxism-Leninism as an attack on “Stalinism.” The result was “shock therapy” and impoverishment for the masses of the people, total privatization, the rampant plundering of the state and national economy, and the unbridled hegemony of U.S. imperialism no longer counterbalanced by the USSR.

Life expectancy declined dramatically after 1991. The economy of the former Soviet Union suffered a crisis worse than the Great Depression. Indeed, despite all of its flaws during the period from 1956 to 1991, the collapse of the USSR was a disaster for the masses of the people of the USSR and the whole world.

We can draw at least four important lessons from this experience.

First, adhering to the principles of Marxism-Leninism is vital. Marxism-Leninism is the scientific analysis of our concrete conditions and summation of our practical experiences that lets us navigate the complex contradictions with which we are faced. If we abandon Marxism-Leninism for revisionism, accepting ideas like “peaceful transition from capitalism to socialism,” counter to objective laws, we disarm ourselves for the tasks ahead of us. The opponents of socialism love to claim that “socialism is great in theory but doesn’t work in practice.” On the contrary, when the Soviet Union united their revolutionary practice with Marxist-Leninist theory, socialism worked wonders. Indeed, when the USSR held to Marxist-Leninist principles, from 1917 to the mid-1950s, they piled success on top of success. When they cast Marxism-Leninism aside at the 20th Congress, they set about piling difficulty on top of difficulty.

Second, the party and the state must maintain its class character: the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat. The revisionist theories of “party of the whole people” and “state of the whole people” opened up the party and state to the influence of the class enemy. The working class is the only class with no material interest in the exploitation of others, and only the working class is capable of guiding the transition through socialism from capitalism to communism. Furthermore, the dictatorship of the proletariat is a weapon necessary to resist the forces of reaction and capitalist restoration from bourgeois forces within and without. The party of the working class must lead the proletarian state to construct socialism, restrict bourgeois right, and combat the forces of counterrevolution and reaction.

Third, classes and class struggle do not end with the establishment of socialism. This experience confirms what Lenin said in 1919: “The class struggle does not disappear under the dictatorship of the proletariat; it merely assumes different forms.” The communist party must persevere in carrying out the class struggle under socialism in order to restrict and overcome bourgeois right and guide society towards the goal of communism. According to Lenin, the socialist state is tasked with “creating conditions in which it will be impossible for the bourgeoisie to exist, or for a new bourgeoisie to arise.” Starting in the mid-1950s, the USSR took the opposite approach, but there were errors even earlier. Ludo Martens, in his important book Another View of Stalin, writes, “After 1945, the struggle against opportunism was restricted to the highest circles of the Party and did not assist in the revolutionary transformation of the entire Party.” Thus the broad masses and party as a whole were unprepared to resist the revisionist turn of the mid-1950s. Proletarian democracy, mass education in Marxism, and criticism and self-criticism are safeguards to the working class’s success in the class struggle under socialism.

Fourth, capitalist restoration is a protracted process, that ends with a sudden leap. Some in the international communist movement mistook the rise of revisionism in the USSR for the complete restoration of capitalism. This led them to see the Soviet Union as an enemy. Some even went so far as to claim that the USSR was “social-imperialist.” Against this view, Harry Haywood wrote in 1984, “Without a monopoly capitalist class and without capitalist relations of production there is no fundamental and compelling logic in the Soviet economy that creates a need to export capital and exploit other countries through trade. As a result, it also has no colonies and no empire to sustain.” On the contrary, the reality is the USSR was a bulwark against U.S. hegemony and a powerful ally to movements for revolution and liberation all over the world.

We have to understand this from a dialectical materialist point of view. Marxism holds that material reality isn’t simply determined by the ideas of a few leaders, and while those ideas can affect material reality, that is a process that takes time. Socialist revolution follows dialectical laws. According to those dialectical laws, the principle and secondary aspect of a contradiction can exchange places in a qualitative leap. Under socialism, the proletariat in power is the principal, determining aspect of this contradiction, and the bourgeoisie is secondary. Quantitative accumulation of strength by the bourgeoisie can flip this relationship, which is exactly what happened over the course of 30 years in the USSR. Revisionism weakened the socialist state and disarmed it against the threat of capitalist restoration. But the Soviet Union’s course towards capitalist restoration wasn’t irreversible, and its final collapse was a tragedy for working and oppressed people everywhere.

Despite the fall of socialism in the USSR, we have the People’s Republic of China, Democratic Korea, Vietnam, Laos and Cuba, which all continue to advance and are a beacon to working and oppressed people everywhere. Imperialism is in decline and the movements for revolution and national liberation are today gaining ground. Socialism may face attacks from within and without, and those attacks may lead to setbacks, but in the long view, the victory of socialism is inevitable. As Mao Zedong once put it, though the road is torturous, the future is bright!

#UnitedStates #PeoplesStruggles #Socialism #MarxismLeninism #MLTheory #redTheory

As Marxist-Leninists in the United States, we can draw lessons from the experiences of others in carrying out revolution and building socialism. While every revolutionary struggle must be firmly based on the concrete analysis of its own conditions, we should still study closely both the successes and failures in the rich experience of the Soviet Union. From that experience we can draw both lessons from their struggle as well as inspiration from their heroic achievements. In the next article we will examine the causes of the collapse of the USSR and draw lessons from it, but here let’s look at all that it achieved.

First, the Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin, developed Marxism-Leninism and applied it to the particular conditions of the Russian Empire. They fused Marxism with the workers movement and built a militant and revolutionary Communist Party that overthrew tsarism and capitalism and put the state into the hands of the toiling masses, the dictatorship of the proletariat. The dictatorship of the rich was smashed and a new democracy based on the Soviets (councils) of workers and peasants, was built in its place.

During the course of the revolution the Bolsheviks advanced the mass-line slogan of “Peace, Land and Bread,” opposing the imperialist war and advancing a program of land reform and ending poverty and hunger. World War I had claimed nearly 3 million dead from the people of the Russian Empire. Lenin mobilized mass anger against tsarist repression and raised the slogan of “revolutionary defeatism” to turn the imperialist war into a civil war through which the working and oppressed masses could throw off the yoke of the tsar, the bourgeoisie and the landlords. Uniting with the poor peasants, the Bolsheviks led the working class through a revolution in two stages, first to defeat tsarism, and then to defeat bourgeois reaction and imperialism. The revolution’s first stage brought about the 1917 February Revolution. The Great October Socialist Revolution of 1917 soon followed, which smashed the bourgeois state and established the Soviet Union.

The counterrevolutionary White Terror, led by the defeated bourgeoisie against the newly founded Soviet government, was aided by the imperialist countries. After a lengthy Civil War, the Soviet Red Army was victorious in defending their revolution and the Soviet Union could set about with the tasks of socialist construction. Lenin set out the basic principles that would guide the process of building socialism, but this had only just begun by the time he died in 1924.

Under the leadership of Lenin, the Third (Communist) International was founded to support revolutionary movements all over the world. The Soviet Union became the center and base of the international communist movement the world over. While Stalin led the Soviet people in building socialism, the Communist International continued to support proletarian internationalism all over the world, from Asia, Africa and Latin America to Europe and the United States. The Communist International allowed the working people of the entire world to come together to coordinate and to share experiences and summation.

From 1924 to 1953, Stalin led the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) and the masses of workers and peasants in carrying out and developing Lenin’s plans for building socialism. Stalin led the Bolshevik party in carrying out this Leninist line against opportunist and counterrevolutionary currents, such as those of Trotsky, Zinoviev and Bukharin.

Industrialization was achieved between 1921 and 1941, developing the productive forces to the point where the basic needs of the people could be met. The priority of the government was to see that people were fed, clothed, housed and guaranteed quality health care and education. Millions of peasants were educated, creating the first fully literate society in history. The Soviet Union guaranteed free and compulsory education in the arts and sciences. Educated and freed from capitalist relations of production, the Soviet Union advanced from a backwards, semi-feudal country to a major industrial power in just 30 years. In the countryside, landlords (Kulaks) were expropriated and farming was collectivized and mechanized. Horse-drawn plows were replaced by modern tractors.

According to Roger Keeran and Thomas Kenny in their book Socialism Betrayed,

“In fifty years, the country went from an industrial production that was 12 percent of that in the United States to industrial production that was 80 percent and an agricultural output 85 percent of the U.S. Though Soviet per capita consumption remained lower than in the U.S., no society had ever increased living standards and consumption so rapidly in such a short period of time for all its people.”

The Soviet Union guaranteed not only free education and health care. Trade unions had the power to veto firings and even recall managers. Prices were regulated by the state and basic food and housing was subsidized. Rent took up only 2 or 3%, and utilities only 4 or 5% of a family’s income. While socialism still has a wage scale with higher and lower incomes due to the persistence of bourgeois right (the lingering inequalities carried over from capitalism), the highest paid individuals in the USSR only made ten times that of the average worker. To put that gap in perspective, Keeran and Kenny point out that by the late 1990s, corporate executives in the U.S. made 480 times the wage of an average worker.

The Soviet Union fought tooth and nail to uproot both national oppression and gender oppression. The Soviet Republics of the formerly oppressed nations exercised their self-determination and their autonomy and national development was prioritized. Every effort was made to stamp out racism, bigotry and national chauvinism. At the same time, the Soviet Union worked tirelessly to abolish the gendered division of labor and dismantle the laws and customs that upheld gender oppression, misogyny and male chauvinism.

In 1936, the so-called “Stalin Constitution” set about to take proletarian democracy in the USSR to even further heights. As Anna Louise Strong wrote in her book The Soviets Expected It,

“Stalin’s great moment when he first appeared as leader of the whole Soviet people was when, as Chairman of the Constitutional Commission, he presented the new Constitution of the Socialist State. A commission of thirty-one of the country’s ablest historians, economists, and political scientists had been instructed to create ‘the world’s most democratic constitution’ with the most accurate machinery yet devised for obtaining ‘the will of the people.’ They spent a year and a half in detailed study of every past constitution in the world, not only of governments but of trade unions and voluntary societies. The draft that they prepared was then discussed by the Soviet people for several months in more than half a million meetings attended by 36,500,000 people. The number of suggested amendments that reached the Constitutional Commission from the popular discussions was 154,000. Stalin himself is known to have read tens of thousands of the people’s letters.”

The red banner of socialism flew as a beacon of hope to the workers and oppressed peoples of the world. Following the bitter experience of the Civil War period, the CPSU knew that the imperialists would not let such a challenge go unanswered. In 1931, ten years before the German Nazi invasion of the USSR, Stalin said, “We are fifty or a hundred years behind the advanced countries. We must make good this distance in ten years. Either we do it, or they will crush us.” Stalin was correct in his assessment of the challenge and the danger that faced them, and they did close the distance. Likewise, Stalin led the CPSU in defeating the organization of a “fifth column” of enemy agents, spies and saboteurs with the USSR. The Soviet people heroically built their industry and developed their productive forces so that they were able to eventually turn the tide of the German invasion at Stalingrad and push the Nazis all the way back to Berlin. The Soviet Union lost 20 million people in this life or death struggle, bearing the brunt of the war and taking the lead in saving the world from fascism. During and after World War II, the Soviet Union was pivotal to the establishment of socialism in China, Korea and Eastern Europe.

After Stalin’s death in 1953, despite the growth of opportunist and revisionist currents within the CPSU, especially following the 20th and 22nd Congresses in 1956 and 1961, the Soviet Union continued to be a force for peace and democracy against imperialism and war. It aided and defended revolutionary movements all over the world, from defending Eastern European socialism from imperialist-backed counterrevolution, to supporting socialist revolution in Cuba and Vietnam.

The achievements of socialism in the USSR prove that the working class, guided by Marxism-Leninism, can create a society based on serving the people instead of the blind pursuit of profit, and despite all of the imperialist propaganda that would have you believe otherwise, can accomplish truly amazing things.

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