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"Socialism Betrayed: Behind the collapse of the Soviet
Union," by Roger Keeran and Thomas Kenny remains a good read.
Chapter 7 - Conclusions and Implications contains theoretical
implications and statements as facts that reveal that far to many Marxists in
the American Union have yet to get honest with themselves . . . with historical
events and our own history.
The economic thread of Chapter 7 is riveted to the unregulated
character of the second economy or black market and the enormous shifting of
labor and resources allowed by the Gorbachev clique. As an individual I
misunderstood the profound meaning of "market socialism" between the years 1985
and 1989 and than Gorbachev's policies would bring an end to the Soviet Union.
The battle over economic policy in the Soviet Union goes all the way back to
1917 and I could not and did not predict the collapse of the Soviet Union and
the overthrow of public property relations. During this time frame I understood
the impact of the Reagan Revolution as a radical assault on the lowest sector of
the proletariat within the USNA and external pressure on the Soviets . . .
although it was clear that counterrevolution was gaining strength after the
events in Poland and the reactionary Solidarity Movement.
I had a gut instinct that became a theoretical framework
concerning the Soviet revisionists that was born of the great polemics that was
called the Sino-Soviet split. When our tiny party mass published "The Program
and Principles of the Revolutionary Soviet Communists" in 1979, my generation
was given an opportunity to understand the complex struggle within the Soviet
Union on the basis of the Soviet Communist themselves.
Economic policy was articulated as political direction
internally and externally and this was the context of the polemical battles
between 1956 and say ... the early 1970s.
In this pamphlet the Soviet communists speak directly to the
communist approach to the peace movement and the profound implications of the
policy of the Soviet Revisionists and why it would lead to the defeat of the
Soviet proletariat and disorient the communist and workers movements world wide.
In this regard Chapter 7 and the assessment of the Sino-Soviet spilt is less
than honest. Here is what is stated:
"A clear analysis of the Soviet Union was also undoubtedly
hindered by the difficulty of sorting out legitimate criticism from the mass of
generalized hostility directed the Soviet Union's way. The Chinese Communists
did condemn "Khrushchev revisionism" in 1956-1964. Their polemics, however,
struck many as crude, dogmatic, and self serving. The Chinese policy veered from
left to right, and included Mao's de facto anti-Soviet alliance with the US For
anyone with a shred of sympathy for the Soviet Union, the Chinese criticism
increasingly lacked credibility. On the other end of the spectrum, the
Eurocommmunists merely echoed the hoary criticism of the social democrats."
Everything is wrong with the above.
I began reading the criticism of a section of communists in
China in 1969 at age 17 by way of the "Peking Review" and the documents under
the heading "Proposals Concerning the General Line of the International
Communist Movement." Their criticism was not crude at all and has to be assessed
based on the literature of the period indicated. The Soviet Communist devote an
entire Chapter to the question of peace and defense of the position of the
Communists of China and Albania in this period.
In the fourth paragraph on the very first page of the Soviet
Communists statement they state:
"it is necessary for us to speak about those projections (of
the Soviet revisionists) from our own concrete experience, thereby
substantiating and concretizing what our Chinese and Albanian comrades have
already stated."
The Soviet Communist say nothing about an alleged crude
criticism and in fact state the very opposite in the third (preceding) paragraph
on the very first page of their document. Here is what they state:
"In their exposure of modern opportunism the Chinese and
Albanian Communists have given proof of a most profound adherence to
revolutionary principles as well as devotion and self sacrifice. The documents
of the Communist Party of China and those of the Albanian Party of Labor expose
the path of class collaboration and betrayals of the interests of the Socialist
revolution, upon which the leadership of the CPSU embarked after the death of
Stalin."
Mr. Keenan and Kenny basically combine Nixon's visit to China
- almost a decade later, with the period 1956-1964 to distort the evolution of
the struggle against Soviet revisionism. This distortion is a class phenomena
rooted in the upper stratum of our working class and the material tendency to
collaborate with ones own bourgeoisie . . . and this tendency is an ideological
_expression_ of the material bond that exist between workers and capitalists as
past of our social system of production.
The leaders of newly liberated China - 1949, could not accept
the "peace initiatives" of the Khrushchev clique. China had also just sacrificed
one million of its most noble sons in the war against US imperialism over Korea.
China was threatened with nuclear destruction and could not surrender its
territory to imperial bandits. Khrushchev told the leaders of the Albanian Party
that the rats in the Soviet Union ate more wheat from their warehouses than what
it takes to feed the entire people of Albania and then treated them with
contempt because they rejected collaboration with US imperialism. This was the
reality of the period 1965-1964.
The polarity did not exist between "crude Chinese
criticism" and whether it was legitimate ("legitimate criticism") and
"Euro-communism" as stated by Keeran and Kenny. In other words the authors have
defined "legitimate criticism" without stating their meaning . . . or
rather call the criticism of the communists of China crude and not legitimate
because it served only one-fourth of humanity directly and represented the
striving of the slaves of imperial bondage.
What has outraged the communists of the imperial centers and
the Soviet Revisionists for a generation is an event in 1957. Chairman Mao
responded to an argument about the threat of nuclear holocaust by telling the
Italian Communist leader Palmiro Togliatti:
"Who told you that Italy must survive? Three hundred million
Chinese will be left, and that will be enough for the human race to continue."
This attitude - political and ideological stance, of Chairman
Mao outraged . . . basically the communists of the imperial centers and these
communists represented basically a section of the upper stratum of labor and the
organized section of the working class called the trade unions.
Where is it heavenly ordained that Italy has to exist?
The communists of China have always played their cards against
their vest and never tilt their hand in international relations . . . unless one
tries to impose their will on them. We need to understand events and the issue
on various levels at the same time . . . always keeping in mind the political
environment of that time frame.
The leaders of China - the most populous country on earth with
the longest unbroken history . . . in the history of planet earth . . . facing
nuclear destruction . . . are lectured and challenged by communists . . . who in
fact were nothing more than representative of the bourgeoisie in communism by
way of the upper stratum of workers in the imperial centers! These communists
and Communist Party's in the imperial centers were more than less divorced from
the lowest strata of the population in their own countries and this is most
certainly true in the American Union.
In other words Keeran and Kenny show their cards - their
theoretical and political hand . . . and out right genuflecting and bootlicking
attitude . . . to call the polemics from China during this period crude. What
were these polemics crude in relationship to . . . and what authors from this
period serve as the base of comparison?
What is really meant is that dropping napalm on people
resulting in the death of millions - not to mention imposing starvation of the
world people . . . is preferable to a nuclear exchange between the proletariat
and the bourgeoisie. Nuclear destruction or exchange would probably result in
the destruction of the oppressing people of earth.
I of course will be charged with having a crude attitude . . .
but I have no principled position on death by nuclear versus napalm . . . only a
practical attitude. Nuclear means "blowback" and your death along with
mine. Any communist who lacks the manliness to understand this basic logic
may as well surrender to the bourgeois order and sell their wives and daughter
as whores and prostitutes to the degenerate thugs of capital.
One must not forget that this was the period of history -
1956-1964, when the Soviet Revisionists and bourgeois communists in the imperial
centers, put forth the peaceful transition to communism. Was Premier Zhou Enlai
correct to walk out of the meeting of eighty-one communist parties in Moscow,
when that buffoon Khrushchev attacked tiny Albania in November 1960?
Keeran and Kenny . . . without flinching . . . have the
audacity to state . . . "Their polemics, however, struck many as crude,
dogmatic, and self serving."
Who . . . or is it "whom," by chance is one referring to as
"many" . . . and . . . who are the "many" that thought the polemics of the
communist of China was crude and dogmatic? What are the names and parties that
constitute this mysterious "many?"
Intellectual honesty demands that one at least examine the
documents between 1956-1964 . . . rather than pontificate on the basis of
hindsight.
Well, . . . there is no need for me to put words in other
folks mouths . . . but part of this mysterious many is the leaders of the CPUSA
up to and including Gus Hall. Gus Hall is presented as a man with principled
criticism against the Soviet revisionists but during the era of Nikita he was a
first rate bootlicker. This was during an era when the militant African American
Freedom Movement was in open combat with the state. Montgomery had broke out
December 4, 1955. The militant bravery ingenuity and steadfastness of the
African American people in Montgomery was the catalyst to activate broad section
of the black masses and the left. Birmingham exploded in 1963 and Malcolm's
famous "Ballot or the Bullet" speech was delivered April 1964 and it foretold
the explosion in Watts 1965.
One must approach the totality of the ideological struggle
understanding the economic, political and social context and content of the time
frame in question. Peaceful transition to socialism and the struggle for peace
as the focal point and general line of the International Communist Movement . .
. was outright betrayal of revolutionary movements throughout the planet.
In America our churches where being bombed and our little
girls murdered . . . with thousands being jailed . . . over eating a freaking
hamburger . . . who but a honeyed mouth bourgeois liberal can call for a
peaceful transition to socialism . . . when the bourgeois order would not let us
get on the bus and take the first open seat? This was the period of 1956-1964.
The only people who talk like this are those who the seats are
being reserved for. I immediately fell into the polarity that was on the China
side of the China-Soviet polarity . . . which Keeran and Kenny pretends was a
"China - Euro communist polarity"
My only regret is that in November 1961 . . . I was nine years
old and denied by history the opportunity to walk out of the meeting in stride
with Premier Zhou Enlai. I of course lack the tact of the leaders of China and
would have started fighting because jail and death has been in our future for so
long it is taken as a given and natural fact of life.
"Socialism Betrayed" has a clear political line and
theoretical underpinning designed to cover the historical betrayal of many of
the American Communists and the petty bourgeois CPUSA led "left" by glossing
over the facts and distorting real history.
Those who have lived much of this period of history and/or
have studied it . . . cannot agree to a proposition that places the political
polarity between China and Euro-Communism, when an entire body of literature
exists that shows the reason it was called the "Sino-Soviet Split" is because a
polarity emerged between China and the Soviet Union and not China and Europe.
Subsequent events in Peoples China is not the issue but the
period of 1956-1964 . . . which the authors use as an index.
Melvin P. |
