>Personally, I am not pleased with
>calling the Zyuganov bunch "linked with the working class". They are
>not like the SPS
>or the PDS. They did not exist from 91- 93. Their reappearance was
>to deliberately
>hi-jack what was left of the workers movement, to my view. But I
>haven't done the
>homework. My impression comes from people like Kagarlitsky, and from the
>mealy-mouthed rhetoric they have been speaking (depending on the day
>of the week).
>
>Macdonald
I don't care for Boris Kagarlitsky's politics very much, but he's no
fool, and his analysis of the KPRF has something to recommend itself:
***** Five years of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation
By Boris Kagarlitsky
MOSCOW -- In February the Communist Party of the Russian Federation
(KPRF) celebrated its fifth anniversary. In their commentaries on
this event, Moscow's right-wing newspapers showed a striking
unanimity: all were full of praise for party leader Gennady Zyuganov
and his close associates. In the view of the newspaper Segodnya, the
KPRF under Zyuganov had ceased to be communist and had become a
social democratic organisation, respecting the new social order and
devoted to private property.
Western-style social democracy, however, requires a flourishing
western capitalism. Social democracy first arose in western Europe
under conditions that included developed democratic institutions, a
strong labour movement and extensive room for capital to manoeuvre.
Obviously, social democracy is possible only in the countries of the
capitalist "centre", where the ruling class is able to make
concessions to the workers because it controls additional resources
on the "periphery". Russia is now part of the periphery of world
capitalism, and for this very reason, efforts to construct
western-style social democracy here have been doomed to failure.
So if the KPRF is not being social-democratised, what is happening to it?
When Zyuganov was elected leader in 1993, most observers were
inclined to think that the party would shift abruptly to conservative
and nationalist positions. But the congress delegates who voted for
Zyuganov saw him as a decisive, combative leader, capable of doing
what the other candidate -- the moderate, sober-minded Valentin
Kuptsov -- was not.
The rank-and-file party members wanted action and struggle. The
degree to which they were themselves ready to take part in struggle
was another question -- most of the registered members were of
pensionable age.
Zyuganov and Kuptsov managed not only to restore the party's
organisational apparatus, but also to sideline rivals who stood to
their right and left. The main victims were the radical Russian
Communist Workers Party (RKRP) of Viktor Anpilov, and Lyudmila
Vartazarova's moderate Socialist Party of Workers (SPT). The RKRP
lost many of its activists, and the SPT a mass of passive pensioners.
With these additional supporters, the KPRF became able to wage a
credible struggle for power.
Zyuganov's strength was thus his "will to power". It was this that
united the fragments of the communist movement around him. But
behind the striving for power there was neither a clear program, nor
theory, nor a mass movement capable of taking power and effecting
change spontaneously.
Perhaps sincerely believing that he was saving the party, Zyuganov in
October 1993 took his distance from the armed defenders of the
Supreme Soviet building. To be sure, he saved the party. What he
saved it for is another question.
While the authorities stopped short of forcing the Communist Party
underground, they made quite clear that it would have to respect the
new rules of the game.
Other left organisations were subjected to much more serious
victimisation, and the more radical groups were forced out of legal
politics.
The radicals, however, lacked the boldness, the cadres and the
resources for illegal struggle. There were not even serious acts of
civil disobedience following the bombardment of the parliament
building on October 4, 1993. The leaders of the radical opposition
saved their lives and freedom, but at the price of political death.
Failing to win seats in the State Duma, and losing their positions in
the trade unions and the organs of local self-government, the radical
left organisations finished up out of the game.
Meanwhile, Zyuganov's fraction voted for the government's 1994
budget, showed no particular interest in the miners' strikes that
broke out in the spring of 1994 and, in short, acted as a loyal "His
Majesty's opposition". The authorities, in turn, relaxed their
pressure.
Most workers in Russia are now disorganised and dependent on
management, and many of them have been sent on forced leave.
Consequently, speaking of a labour movement and even of a working
class is possible only with serious reservations.
The social base of the KPRF consists not of workers, but of
pensioners, managers of former collective farms and bureaucrats who
have lost out from liberalisation.
While all these groups are in one degree or another hostile to the
authorities, they cannot solve their problems through social and
economic change, but only through the redistribution of resources via
the state budget. Here we do not have angry masses, but "clients"
who, in the Soviet tradition, are ready to put up with substandard
treatment in the hope of obtaining state largesse.
If a change of regime is beyond the capabilities of the KPRF, the
demand for structural reforms is not being pursued either. The
problem lies in the party's specific "clientele". The only way the
wants of such a social base can be satisfied is through lobbying;
this requires good relations with the government.
Zyuganov's party is thus once again close to power, but in a sense
quite different from that of 1993. From the spring of 1994, a solid
working relationship grew up between the KPRF and Chernomyrdin's
cabinet (all, of course, justified on the basis of the need to
support the "best" elements in the government against the "worst").
The right-wing press has hailed this policy as "social
democratisation", but the departure from a communist orientation has
meant an equally clear break with social democratic ideas. Social
democracy is oriented toward structural reforms, while the KPRF has
not had -- and cannot have -- a reformist strategy.
The KPRF's actions might be excused on the basis that the parties in
the west that call themselves social democratic have made a clear
break with reformism and the workers' movement, going over to a
strategy of pure lobbying. In this sense Zyuganov is indeed very
close to politicians such as Tony Blair in Britain or Massimo D'Alema
in Italy. If Zyuganov is no longer a communist, Blair and D'Alema
are no longer social democrats.
...Patriotism is used to justify a rapprochement with the
authorities, while at the same time it permits a stance of opposition
with respect to the west. From being a social phenomenon, capitalism
has been transformed into a geographical one. Continuity with the
Soviet past has been maintained, but at the same time the KPRF has
stressed its loyalty to "national entrepreneurs".
By the middle of 1994, the KPRF was not only the sole left party in
the parliament, but thanks to the complete absence of an organised
extra-parliamentary opposition, was the only serious party in the
country.
Paradoxically, the effect was to radicalise the KPRF. Before the 1995
parliamentary elections, the feeling began to spread that however bad
Zyuganov's party might be, there was no alternative to it. Support
for the KPRF rose dramatically, and many people with radical views
joined its ranks. In by-elections for the Duma and for local
assemblies, the Communists scored many victories.
These successes encouraged party leaders in the illusion that they
had a serious chance of winning power. The KPRF voted against the
1995 budget. There was less talk of patriotism, and more of Marx and
Lenin. A program was adopted that included many direct borrowings
from Soviet and Russian new leftists of the period 1989-1993. In the
party leadership, people appeared who were clearly inclined toward
struggle.
The 1995 elections were a triumph for the KPRF, but they nevertheless
disproved any hopes that a renewal of the party had taken place. The
preparations and the selection of candidates were conducted using
pure "apparatus" methods.
Deputies who were suspected of disloyalty to Zyuganov lost their
mandates. In various instances the KPRF conducted its campaign so as
to ensure that independent leftists would not be elected, even at the
price of guaranteeing victory to supporters of Yeltsin and
Chernomyrdin.
In the 1996 presidential elections, Yeltsin made clear that democracy
was permitted only within certain limits. A parliamentary opposition
in a powerless Duma was one thing, but the presidency was something
else entirely. A wave of hostile propaganda crashed onto Zyuganov
and the KPRF.
Combined with ballot-rigging at the local level, the propaganda
assault not only guaranteed victory to Yeltsin, but also showed the
KPRF leaders that standing up to the government was not allowed.
After the summer of 1996 the "will to power" found its only permitted
expression: rapprochement with the authorities. Once again the KPRF
began voting for the budget and supporting "good" ministers against
"bad" ones.
The only problem was that such an approach had little to offer the
party's "clients", not to speak of the masses of workers. A crisis
was ripening within the party.
The KPRF's turn to the right thus provides no grounds for talking of
social-democratisation. What is really occurring is far worse. The
KPRF is becoming part of the regime, one of the props of the existing
order.
But in fulfilling this new role, it is fated to meet with serious
opposition from the very social groups and individuals whom it has
summoned to its banner.
<http://jinx.sistm.unsw.edu.au/~greenlft/1998/313/313p22.htm> *****
Yoshie
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