Shawgi writes;
>See previous and future posts. Check PEN-L archives. If you like I can
>forward you some material on the necessity for an authentic working class
>party, what its character should be, etc.
>
>At any rate, yes, the advanced elements of the working class must point
>the way forward. An authentic Communist party must be miltant,
>enthusiastic, a stranger to frustration, etc. Above all, an authentic
>Communist party must ideologize, politicize and organize the broad masses
>of the people. A genuine Communist party must bring the people to power,
>the exact opposite aim of bourgeois parties, which seek only to come to
>power themselves. The vanguard of the working class and working people must
>create the subjective conditions for revolution, especially at this time
>when revolution is in retreat and the objective conditions are screaming for
>deep-going social, as well as political, transformation.
>
>In order for the transition from capitalism to Communism to take place
>successfully, the proletariat must at once expand democracy and suppress all
>enemies of the people, the exploiters of yesterdaty. This is why, for
>example, the standing army must be dissolved and replaced by a peoples' army,
>by the self-acting armed organization of the population.
>
>Socialism is an extremely unique and special tranistory historical
>period. The resistance of the capitalists will still exist under
>socialism, as may commodity production depending on the ratio of class
>forces. Further, all "bourgeois rights" do not disappear under socialism.
>But, the exploitation of persons by persons will end (has ended) under
>socialism. Only Communism renders the State, the organ of suppression,
>absolutely unneccesary. Only under Communism will antagonisms between
>large sections of the population cease to exist. Under socialism the
>working class and people will enthusiastically suppress all that is Old
>and give rise to the New.
Talking to Soviet Workers.
The Soviet workers have suffered a terrible defeat of a
world-historical significance. First, they had given away political power
to the bureaucracy, had lost the Soviets as the instrument of proletarian
dictatorship and ceased to exit politically as class. Then they had given
away plants and factories--all the means of production and the riches of
the country created by them.
You were told: Think only about your work, leave politics to us,
rely on us; we know the road, we see farther. With us, you'll reach
communism without upheavals, evolutionary, gradually as down the Volga
river. This is what the ruling caste used to tell workers and
peasants, while behind their backs it made deals with the
dealers of shadow economy, with the world bourgeoisie, with the
petty-bourgeois professional class. It had colluded with them until the
day came when they together struck the working class in the back and
unleashed the open class warfare against it. Like a werewolf, they have
shown you their true image: the cynical snout of the bourgeois philistine!
How easily, how scornfully they have done with you! But he laughs best
who laughs last. Now it is your turn, now you have to make a move.
Proletarian revolutions ruthlessly criticize themselves, learn
>from their victories, and most of all from their defeats. What is themain
lesson of your terrible defeat? Winning power is not enough. One
must be able to hold it. Freedom and dignity cannot be preserved simply by
the right of inheritance. They must be defended again and again. Until
the power of Labor triumphs globally, until the International becomes the
master of the planet and class society disappears into the past forever,
until then--every generation of workers will have to confirm its right for
dictatorship again and again. Neither God, nor Tsar, neither Hero nor the
Party will accomplish for the workers what only they themselves can
accomplish. Only the working class itself can become its own liberator.
And it can do so only by having recognized its historical mission
and united on its basis. What then prevents the class organization of
Russian workers at present? There is a number of objective problems. Yet
the main one is subjective. It is the widespread illusion that such
organization, such unity can be achieved through the top, i.e. by the
existing upper-level political organizations and institutions: parties,
unions, and parliaments in which you cannot find a single worker.
In other words, it is the illusion that some "good uncles" over there will do
what only the working class itself can. Yet all these organizations, all
these "good uncles" are creatures of the past and carry over from it the
thinking, psychology, methods, and above all, the
interests of the bureaucracy, the sworn enemy of workers. That is why the
political vanguard of the Russian working class must be created from
within. The class must concentrate, gather itself together, gain
confidence in its own strength. Many workers say: We do not have Lenin
this time. But without the working class of 1917 there would have been no
Lenin. Once you become the revolutionary class you will have your Lenins
too. Don't forget that in 1905 and 1917 it was the working class who
led the Bolsheviks forward and not the other way around. The real
strength of the Bolshevik party were the thousands of anonymous
workers-organizers and leaders.
A few words about the present arrangement of social forces in the
country. The Russian reaction has aptly represented itself in the
double-headed eagle. It is, indeed, of two heads: the parasitic
bureaucracy and the new criminal bourgeoisie nurtured by it. By
themselves, these classes are pathetic and worthless, they are
incapable of independent historical initiative and creativity. Their
strength is due entirely to the support of the world bourgeoisie. Beneath
this double-headed hydra there vacillates the petty-bourgeois mass of the
professional class and the semi-proletarian element. This mass is not able
to advance its own historical program, not capable of sovereign mastery of
society. In the end, it will swing to the side of that class which
will prove to be strongest.
The evil forces of the world reaction to our Revolution are
opposed by two brotherly groups of the working people: the industrial and
agrarian proletariat. There are no contradictions between them, their
interests are the same. It is on this social foundation that we need to
build a militant proletarian organization for the Industrial-Agrarian Alliance.
We need to build it from within: in factories and
collective farms. This organization must be absolutely independent and
represent only the real class interests of the industrial and
agrarian workers. The organization's hard core will be formed by
professional workers--the most experienced part of the working class, its
heart and head. The first task of this organization would have to be the
struggle for the de facto control over industrial and agrarian
enterprises. The enterprise is a social microcosm. Its administration
and owners represent the bureaucracy and the bourgeoisie in general, its
mid-level management belongs to the petty-bourgeois element of the
professional class, the workers represent the ptariat. Today, the
enterprise is under the reign of administrative and even
administrative-mafiosi terror. Today, the workers have become the
hostages of the administration and the owners. They are afraid to talk
with one another, they look across their shoulders in fear to lose their
jobs. Their activists are being decimated by layoffs and physical
violence in the hands of hired thugs. It means that our first task is
to free workers from this terror.
Instead, the administration must become a hostage to workers and learn
to look across its shoulder. And the mid-level management must become an
instrument of workers' power over the bosses, instead of being their
slave-driver. This is an absolutely necessary precondition for the class
to consolidate itself and to launch an offensive. All means that will be
necessary to achieve this goal should be employed. A ferocious and bloody
class war is being waged against workers in our country, and we better
understand this before it is too late, before the enemy succeeds in
intimidating them for long and beyond any glimpse of hope. To have the
spell of fear broken will be the first great victory after so many
defeats. This victory will put an end to demoralization of the workers.
It will make them again to believe in their strength and in the power of
class solidarity. Only then the class will attain its own ideological and
moral existence, independent from the bourgeois society and opposed to it.
Without such life-world within itself, the class cannot struggle.
This real, de facto power on the shop floor will mean that workers retake
their unions and clean these Aegean stables from the traitors of the
working class. Today, you pay for half a million union functionaries who
enforce the anti -labor politics of the union bosses! Down with this army
of parasites! Workers' money must serve their struggle for emancipation,
not for enslavement! In the hands of the militant workers organization,
the material infrastructure of the unions will become a foundation for a
higher degree of class organization and a spring-board for broadening the
struggle against the bourgeois society. Until now the bureaucracy
successfully divided and smashed workers against one another. It must
be other way around. Workers must turn to their advantage the contradictions
between the different sections of the ruling class: to smash them head on
against each other, by using bold maneuver, their plebeian cunning to hit
bureaucracy against the bourgeoisie and vice versa, always using
the enemy, never allowing him to use yourself! This way, by striking now
one enemy, now the other, by uniting itself in comradely discipline, the
industrial-agrarian alliance will become the main class force in the
country.
And do not be afraid of isolation. The working class is
a class that unifies. By defending your own class
interests you defend the interests of all working people. By
liberating yourself you liberate the vast majority of society.
Remember, there were only three millions of them, the Russian
workers who shook the world and changed it forever! But they
carried along with them the bulk of the toiling masses. This
can happen again. If you rise, if you throw back
the counterrevolution, if you show again what workers are
capable of -- there will rise the workers of other countries
in the East, in the South, and, yes, in the North (though the
last ones will a bit slower with their "Second Front" again).
And they will not let their governments to smother you!
In summary.
Only the class alliance between industrial and agrarian proletariat is
capable of stopping and throwing back the counterrevolution in Russia, of
carrying over the second socialist revolution and establishing a soviet
democracy as the form of the proletarian dictatorship. In the present
configuration of class forces in Russia, such alliance can be politically
realized only through a strictly class based organization created WITHIN
the class by the class, and independent from the organizations and
ideologies control in the enterprise. In this struggle, it will gain
strength and authority, bring together and discipline the class
take over the unions, and launch from this base
the offensive against the bourgeois society and the state.
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