http://anasintaxi-en.blogspot.com/2008/04/concerning-certain-distortions-of.html
Concerning certain distortions of Stalin’s work and L. Martens’ revisionist
view of socialism
This article will appear in the next issue of "Unity & Struggle"
It has been more than ten years since the book “Another view of Stalin” by Ludo
Martens was published. This book was hailed by many unsuspected
and well intentioned communists all over the world as an “excellent pro-Stalin
book”. However, at the same time a number of Khruschevian
revisionist and opportunist parties that have traditionally adopted an
anti-Stalinist line advertised and promoted the book in many ways.
Taking into account the virtually unchanged ideological and political line of
all these parties, Marxists-Leninists-Stalinists should be
suspicious about the “sudden” urge to publish a book about Stalin. Indeed, a
careful look at the contents of this book we will find out
that, at least, in three very fundamental questions, the answers to which
delineate Marxists-Leninists-Stalinists from Khrushchevian
revisionists, Martens maintains essentially revisionist views
Question of Stalin: The question of Stalin, that is, the revolutionary
theoretical and
practical work of the great communist leader of the world proletariat and
classic of Marxism, has been, since the middle of 1920s, at the
centre of a sharp ideological-political struggle between the
revolutionary communists and all kinds of counter-revolutionaries
(social democrats, Trotskyites, anarchists, titoists, Kruschevians and
others). All the fundamental issues of socialism and the revolution
come down to this. It marks the boundary that separates the real
Marxists-Leninists and all kinds of revisionists and opportunists.
In
the first and most important question of the revolutionary movement,
the question of Stalin, to which all the fundamental issues of
socialism and the revolution come down to, Ludo Martens propagates, not
the crude anti-Stalinism of Khrushchev, but a more refined and
camouflaged version that appeared in the communist movement between the
mid-50’s and the beginning of 60’s, namely the “mistakes’ theory”. The
latter is usually comes from various “anti-Khrushchevian” opportunists
and it is formulated in certain clichι phrases such as: “Stalin was
great but he made mistakes”. It is exactly this “mistakes’ theory”, of
an allegedly “left orientation”, that is adopted by L. Martens in his
“criticisms” of Stalin and exposed in the chapter “Weaknesses in the
struggle against opportunism”.
In this context, Ludo Martens
blames Stalin that “this struggle was not done to the extent that was
necessary”, that “he was not able to formulate a consistent theory
explaining how classes and the class struggle persist in a socialist
society”(!) that he “had not completely understood that after the
disappearance of the economic basis of capitalist and feudal
exploitation, that there would still exist in the Soviet Union fertile
ground for bourgeois currents”(!), that Stalin “was not able to
formulate a theory about the struggle between the two lines in the
Party” and “did not appreciate” the dangers of “bureaucracy and
technocratism” and many other things that Stalin “was not able to
do…,understand” etc.
But if there was any grain of truth in
any these accusations related to Stalin’s views on the most fundamental
question of the revolutionary communist movement, namely the one of
socialism-communism, any person of good intentions would ask the
following: in which, then, questions Stalin developed Marxism-Leninism
further if not in this question and how can he be considered a classic
of Marxism since he “committed”, according to his critics, so grave
“mistakes” in such fundamental, theoretical and practical, questions of
the communist movement?
Question of socialism: Stalin, as a Marxist, had, first and most importantly, a
scientific
view of socialism and, secondly, approached the question of the
construction of socialism-communism in a materialistic,
historic-dialectic way in contrast to all the representatives of the
various bourgeois-revisionist currents. He understood the construction
of socialism – the first stage of the communist society which
constitutes a period of class struggle that is inevitable as long as
classes still exist during which the dictatorship of the proletariat is
absolutely necessary” (Lenin) – as a long process of revolutionary
transformations that passes through different phases of historical
development wherein a class struggle is waged in all levels that
becomes sharper as the construction of socialism proceeds. The
transition period from capitalism to communism, as Lenin pointed out,
“cannot be but a period of struggle between the dying capitalism and
the newborn communism or in other words: between the defeated but not
yet liquidated capitalism and the, new born but still very weak,
communism”.
Ludo Martens, as mentioned above, blames Stalin
that “he was not able to formulate a consistent theory explaining how
classes and the class struggle persist in a socialist society”.
First
of all, the theory of the “persistence of classes” in socialism even
after its economic basis has been constructed, is an anti-Marxist,
bourgeois theory because: in the first place, it contains the bourgeois
revisionist view of socialism according to which the exploiting classes
and the proletariat will be preserved; in the second place it revises
the Marxist-Leninist theory of the classes when it maintains that there
can be exploiting classes without private property, that is, after the
construction of socialism’s economic basis and in the third place it
completely contradicts the final goal of the revolutionary communist
movement which is the liquidation of all exploiting classes in
socialism and, subsequently, of all classes in communism.
Contrary
to the groundless attack of Martens, it is obvious that Stalin, as a
Marxist, neither had formulated, nor could he have done so, a theory on
“how classes persist in a socialist society”, that is, a
bourgeois-revisionist theory because it would directly oppose the
theory of scientific socialism-communism. On the contrary, he followed
and put into practise the Marxist theory on the liquidation of the
exploiting classes in socialism and, subsequently, of all the classes
in communism. This liquidation proceeds gradually and it is completed
together with the construction of the economic basis of socialism, that
is, with the establishment of the social ownership on the means of
production in the form of state- and kolkhoz-cooperative property and
the transition to the unified type of communist property.
Persistence
of the exploiting classes in socialism after the construction of its
economic basis? By purporting the theory “on how the classes persist in
a socialist society”, L. Martens doesn’t specify either which classes
(exploiting or not) or which exactly historical stage of the socialist
society (before or after the construction of its economic basis) he is
referring to; this is an characteristic example of the anti-historical,
anti-dialectic approach of socialism. It is obvious, however, that he
means the persistence of the exploiting classes after the construction
of its economic basis, and concerning the Soviet Union, in particular,
he refers to the phase after the Constitution of 1936 was voted when
Stalin pointed out that in this phase “all the exploiting classes were
liquidated, leaving the working class, the peasants and the
intellectuals” (I.V. Stalin “Questions of Leninism).
Stalin
in his report on the Draft Constitution of USSR (1936), having
scientifically analyzed the new economic, social, class reality of the
socialist Soviet Union, rightly concluded that the country’s class
structure had changed since the 1924 the year the then Soviet
Constitution was established: “The landlord class, as you know, had
already been eliminated as a result of the victorious conclusion of the
Civil War. As for the other exploiting classes, they have shared the
fate of the landlord class. The capitalist class in the sphere of
industry has ceased to exist. The kulak class in the sphere of
agriculture has ceased to exist. And the merchants and profiteers in
the sphere of trade have ceased to exist. Thus all the exploiting
classes have now been eliminated. There remains the working class.
There remain the peasants. There remains the intelligentsia”.
The
above extract from the report should convince even the most
recalcitrant opportunist that Stalin doesn’t talk about “absence of
classes” or “elimination of classes” in the Soviet Union of that period
but only about elimination of the exploiting classes, of landlords,
capitalists, kulaks, merchants-profiteers whereas the classes of workers, the
peasants, and intelligentsia remained.
It
is necessary to emphasize that Stalin’s analysis of the Soviet Union’s
society at that time is the only one carried out on Marxist lines and
its scientific conclusion is absolutely correct, that exploiting and
antagonistic classes neither existed nor could exist since they had
been deprived of the means of production: there are no that exploiting
and antagonistic classes without the existence of capitalist property
on the means of production. “With the term bourgeois class we mean the
class of modern capitalists who own the means of social production and
exploit wage labour. With the term proletariat we mean the class of
modern wage labourers who sell their labour power in order to survive
since they don’t possess no means of production at all” (Engels).
In
the Soviet Union of that period, there were no antagonistic classes but
remnants of exploiting classes and the new bourgeois elements that
inevitably appear during the transition period from capitalism to
communism. Of course, it is perfectly possible that the numerous
remnants of the exploiting classes and the bourgeois elements (which
are not classes according to the Marxist since they
had lost their domination in the means of production) can form illegal
organisations and wage their struggle against socialism-communism in a
coordinated way and in increasingly acute forms.
It is
therefore obvious that when the revisionist L. Martens attacks Stalin
blaming him that he hasn’t formulated a “theory on how the classes
persist” in socialism, in essence, he criticises him for applying the
Marxist theory on liquidation of the exploiting classes in the course
of socialist construction instead of the bourgeois theory on the
“persistence of the classes” (in other words, of the exploiting
classes)!
The class struggle during socialism. L. Martens falsely claims that Stalin
didn’t formulate a theory
explaining “how class struggle persist in a socialist society” when, as
known to everybody, the theory maintaining the continuation of class
struggle in socialism had already had already been enunciated by Lenin
– “the dictatorship of the proletariat is period of class struggle
which is inevitable as long the classes are not liquidated” – and it
was defended and further developed by Stalin who stressed that “the
progress we make, the more successes we achieve, the sharper forms of
struggle these remnants (of the exploiting classes) will adopt, the
more harm they are going to cause to the Soviet State, the more
desperate methods of struggle they are going to employ, as the last
resort of people doomed to disappear”.
Consequently, the
further development of the theory maintaining the continuation of class
struggle in socialism by Stalin lies in the thesis that the more
socialist construction advances, the sharper the class struggle
becomes, a thesis that was fully confirmed by the historical course of
USSR when, following Stalin’s death, the dictatorship of the
proletariat was overthrown.
When the opportunist L. Martens
claims that Stalin “thought that the class struggle in the ideological
sphere would continue for a long time”, he distorts his thesis even
more: first because he restricts the class struggle only in the
ideological sphere and second because he rejects the thesis of the
sharpening of the class struggle with the advance of socialist
construction.
But this is not sufficient for L. Martens
since, as we saw, he makes the provocatively false claim that Stalin
allegedly didn’t even have a theory on “how class struggle persist in a
socialist society”, obviously implying that he allegedly deviated from
Leninism, that is, he had abandoned the theory of class struggle
already formulated by Lenin!
Another claim made by L. Martens
is that “this struggle was not done to the extent that was necessary”
and that “after 1945, the struggle against opportunism was restricted
to the highest circles of the Party”, rendering, thus, Stalin
responsible for the appearance of revisionism which is refuted by the
activity of the Bolshevik Party during that period: first, during the
war and afterwards, the Bolshevik Party headed by Stalin waged a
continuous ideological-political struggle against the
bourgeois-revisionist ideology and the various degenerate phenomena;
there are the well-known party decisions and wide discussions held on
questions of art-literature (1946), philosophy (1943 and 1947),
political economy (1947-1952), music (1948), linguistics (1950) etc.
Second, the revisionist counter-revolution didn’t prevail during
Stalin’s lifetime but after his death. Stalin’s great
historical contribution to the construction of socialism lies in the
scientific analysis of the competitive and the non-competitive
contradictions in the soviet socialist society and the successful and
victorious waging of the class struggle against the internal and
external enemies, preventing thus the restoration of capitalism.
We
conclude with two brief observations: the one has to do with Martens’
claim that Stalin “was not able to formulate a theory about the
struggle between the two lines in the Party” and the other with the
claim that he “had not completely understood the dangers emanating from
bureaucracy”. Regarding the first claim, we note that Stalin as a
Marxist could have never formulated a revisionist theory “about the
struggle between the two lines in the Party” which presupposes the
existence of two factions in a party and, as a result, leads to the
negation of the revolutionary party of a new type defended by Stalin. A
revolutionary, communist party has only one line: the
Marxist-Leninist-Stalinist line and fights all revisionist, opportunist
deviations. As for the second claim, there is nothing to be said except
that it emits the unpleasant odour of Trotskyism.
The question of the dictatorship of the proletariat. As all the
“anti-Khrushchevian” versions of contemporary revisionism,
Ludo Martens doesn’t raise the issue of the overthrow of the
dictatorship of the proletariat after Stalin’s death and in combination
with the 20th Congress of the CPSU – the first and absolutely necessary
condition for the gradual restoration of capitalism in the Soviet
Union. It is more than obvious of every Marxist-Leninist-Stalinist that
the open, official domination of the Khrushchevian revisionist
counter-revolution was preceded by the violent overthrow of the
dictatorship of the proletariat and its replacement with a
bourgeois-revisionist dictatorship. Domination of the Khrushchevian
revisionist is tantamount to the overthrow of the dictatorship of the
proletariat, the ousting of the working class from power, the beginning
of the capitalist restoration. The overthrow of the dictatorship of the
proletariat was ratified by the 20th Congress and the
counter-revolutionary, social-democratic line it adopted.
Question of the capitalist restoration. L.Martens, just like the “K”KE
leadership, regards the period of
Khrushchev-Brezhnev, the period of capitalist restoration in the Soviet
Union, as a period of “socialist construction” and believes that the
breach with socialism took place in the Gorbachev era. He writes that
it is only the 28th Congress, on July 1990, that “clearly affirms a
rupture with socialism and a return to capitalism”. At the end of his
book, after having quoted an excerpt from the “History of the Communist
Party (Bolsheviks) of the USSR” in which, among others, is mentioned
that “it is from within that fortresses are more easily captured”,
Martens makes the following comment: “thus Stalin had foreseen what
would happen to the Soviet Union the day a Gorbachev or a Yeltsin
entered the Politburo”. This comment is quite indicative and revealing
because it confirms the fact that L. Martens is identified with “K”KE
leadership on this important issue.
But the communists, the
Marxists-Leninists-Stalinists, know very well that the fortress was
captured from within not in the time of Gorbachev and Yeltsin, who are
anyway legal “heirs” of Khrushchev and Brezhnev, but almost 40 years
earlier, after Stalin’s death, by the agents of international
imperialism Khrushchev, Mikoyan, Brezhnev, Kuusinen, Suslov and others.
Moreover, contrary to the claims of the Belgian revisionist “the breach
with socialism” – first in the level of political power, and
subsequently in other levels – didn’t take place in the 28th Congress
(1990) but shortly after Stalin’s death and this breach was officially
inaugurated in the 20th Congress which paved the way for the gradual
liquidation of the socialist productive relations, through the
introduction of capitalist reforms, and restoration of capitalism in
the Soviet Union.
There is nothing paradoxical that the
parties of Khruschevian revisionism – including “K”KE – have published
and promoted the book of the Belgian revisionist L. Martens.
Essentially, it expresses their own views on the questions of Stalin,
socialism and the dictatorship of the proletariat. Without abandoning
any of these views, they found an opportunity to wear a “pro-stalin”
mask. The “K”KE in particular, was unmistakeably carrying out its class
mission – as it was when it funded the publication of D. Volgogonov’s
anti-Stalinist abortion “Triumph and tragedy” in 1989 – assigned one of
its chief ideologues, Eleni Bellou, to conclude the book review in
“Rizospastis” with a lengthy presentation of the infamous “mistakes
theory”.
Even within the current of contemporary revisionism
– expressed in the “mistakes theory” – the views L. Martens are
clinging to the right. This is shown by the criticism that these views
received by a party that belongs to the same ideological current as L.
Martens’ Workers’ Party of Belgium, namely the Marxist-Leninist Party
of Germany (MLPD). Stefan Engel writes:
”To pose the question
of power – dictatorship of the bourgeoisie or the proletariat – is
tantamount, for L. Martens, to the “scholastic restriction of reality.
In this way, he rejects the ABC of Marxism. Lenin clearly emphasized
that “there can be nothing intermediate between the dictatorship of the
bourgeoisie and the dictatorship of the proletariat. Any dream for
something else is a petty bourgeois attitude. The vacillating character
of the petty bourgeois thinking is typical for neorevisionism, When
Gorbachev appeared in 1985, the petty bourgeois immediately promoted
him. In total euphoria, L.Martens got attached to this current writing,
in 1991, that “in this ideological confusion comrade Gorbachev emerged;
he unleashed himself like a hurricane all over the hibernating country
to steer up the dormant consciousness of the people” (Ludo Martens,
"The USSR and the velvet counter-revolution”).
“The bedazzled
L. Martens used this chance in order to introduce a new appraisal for
the Soviet Union after 1956 and to revise the programmatic basis of the
Workers’ Party of Belgium declaring that: ”New appraisal means also to
take into account that the economic basis and the core of the political
structure remained socialist despite the influence of the dominant
revisionism. New appraisal means, finally, to take into account the
possibility of a positive development, of a Marxist-Leninist
rebirth”(ibid)
“When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991,
neorevisionists regarded Gorbachev as the main culprit. But Gorbachev
didn’t bring the restoration of capitalism, as the Workers’ Party of
Belgium argues. Rather, it is the restoration of capitalism itself that
brought Gorbachev. He completed the capitalist restoration and took
openly the side of the international social democracy. Neorevisionism
covers up the fact that the restoration of capitalism started in
Khrushchev’s time".
“According to L. Martens: it is possible
today to get over the divisions among the Marxist-Leninist parties,
broken up in pro-Soviet, pro-Chinese, pro-Albanian and pro-Cuban
factions and achieve their re-unification”. Such a conglomeration is
doomed to fail” (Stefan Engel: Der Kampf um die Demkweise in der
Arbeiterbewengung, Essen)
“Concerning the defeat of
socialism, the contemporary revisionists reproduced the bourgeois
propaganda: For Erich Honecker, it was “the greatest defeat of the
worker’s movement in global scale”, for the former president of the
German Communist Party Herbert Mis it was “the greatest defeat of
socialism” and for the president of Workers’ Party of Belgium Ludo
Martens it was “an important regression for the communist and
progressive forces al over the world” (Stefan Engel: Der Kampf um die
Demkweise in der Arbeiterbewengung, Essen).
In a speech in
Wuppertall (May 9th, 2002) Stefan Engel underlines that: “A variety of
multi-colored currents of revisionism exists all of which we have
summed up under the term neo-revisionism.
Thus the leader of
the Party of Labor of Belgium (PTB), Ludo Martens, in an adventurous
explanation, says on the times subsequent to the Twentieth CPSU Party
Congress:
This great strength of the socialist system could
still be felt even when the party leadership chose the path of
revisionism, that is, the path of the progressing renunciation of
Marxism-Leninism. In 1975, the Soviet Union had reached the peak of its
power ..., but this power was already thoroughly undermined by the
ideological and political currents which were soon to destroy it.
Breshnevism is the continuation of a great strength inherited by Stalin
and, simultaneously, an ideological and political degeneration which
deepened progressively and which resulted in the complete destruction
of socialism under Gorbachev. ("Leonid I. Brezhnev and the
National-Democratic Revolution," p. 1; our translation from the German)
What an absurd theory!
On the one hand, the CPSU
party leadership is said to gave gone the path of revisionism since
1956. On the other hand, the Soviet Union, in spite of this, could
remain a socialist country and even gain strength until 1975. This
means: socialism can exist and take a positive development even on the
basis of revisionism.
This is not a Marxist-Leninist analysis, this is saying farewell to
Marxism-Leninism, Mr. Martens!”
Concluding,
we want to underline once again that Ludo Martens is a neorevisionist,
anti-Stalinist (“mistakes’ theory”) that has developed as a prima
ballerina of the international Khruschevian revisionism and supports
counter-revolutionary reactonary positions such as that “Parties who
used to belong to different tendencies, who support the positions of
Mao Zedong or Brezhnev, of Che Guevara or Enver Hoxha, can unite on the basis
of Marxism-Leninism, proletarian internationalism and the struggle against
revisionism” (Speech of Ludo Martens in Leningrand Conference, 1997).
Movement for the Reorganisation of the Communist Party of Greece (1918-55)
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