Democratic centralism as a source of opportunism in the Communist Party
Part I
The problem is still not solved
As you know, since the collapse of the First International, all created communist parties declined after a while and left the historical stage. However, one fallen party was replaced by new ones and, in spite of repressions, terror and persecution, the parties with communist names exist today all over the world, except those countries where European colonialism and religion do their best to stop the cultural development of people. The European experience of the last decade shows that the expansion of red flags at demonstrations of European workers is caused only by capitalism itself, and, especially, for a wonder, by American one.
Anticommunists do not understand a simple thing. The complete destruction of the communist movement needs liquidation of its cause: the institute of hired mental and manual labor, i.e., the exploitation of man by businessman.
Actually it would be great if communism directly comes from capitalism as capitalism directly comes from slavery and feudalism, being another advanced form of parasitism. Communism is a product and dialectic negation of capitalism and all types of exploitative, parasitic social orders. Historical originality of communism, its fundamental difference even with primitive communism makes the fight for communism quite complicated in theory and in practice, destined to the intense resistance of all parasitic forces.
The classics of Marxism, in due time, made a lot of research work, specified some historical reasons of the Internationals collapse. Certainly, decisions and organizational arrangements were made, but none of it led to the desired result. Collapse of the communist parties occurred long before accomplishment of its historical mission.
Each following collapse proves that the main “antidote” is still not found, and the question remains: what will happen first - the worldwide victory of communism or the destruction of human civilization in the third World War, started by the oligarchs for redistribution of already divided world. Anyway, the oligarchs do not waste time and do their best to start a world war being fully prepared.
You have to be completely unscrupulous person to think that the classics of Marxism had to give future communists all answers concerning the theory of party construction, so that there will be nothing for future generations of party members but to be proud of their leaders, to quote them and to use blindly CENTURY-OLD methods of the party building. The classics seriously hoped that the next generation of the communists will develop the theory deeply and particularly. But the theory development is inexcusably ignored by the existing communist movement.
The constitution stands in a way of some “communists”
Not long ago, First Secretary of the RCWP (Russian Communist Workers' Party, www.rkrp.ru) V. Tyulkin and President of the Labor Academy Fund M. Popov have issued a common paper, 40% of which consists of randomly selected quotations from Marxism-Leninism classics and... Bukharin. And since 30% of the text, on the average, belongs to Tyulkin, and 30% belongs to Popov, the paper is quite eclectic. If we do not take into account such formal phrases, as “Lenin learnt... said... specified... wrote...” or “as stated in the USSR Constitution of 1936...”, it turns out that no more than 25% of meaningful phrases belong to the authors.
The meaning of the paper of Tyulkin and Popov lies in the following thesis. The collapse of the Soviet Union and the CPSU [the Communist Party of the Soviet Union] in 1991 was caused by … the USSR Constitution of 1936, which, supposedly, abolished the dictatorship of the proletariat [this refers to the fact that the elections by production districts were replaced by the elections by territorial districts. In fact, cancellation of production principle changed nothing, as the overwhelming majority of deputies continued to be nominated by the industrial proletariat, or particularly, by the enterprises workers - translator`s note].
The authors pretend they do not understand that the “guilt” of the USSR Constitution of 1936 could be proven only if all the following general secretaries of the CPSU led the party according to the Stalin Constitution. During 55 years after Stalin's death, five general secretaries of the CPSU, replacing and blaming each other one by one, changing the party program and the USSR Constitution, however, if we believe Tyulkin and Popov, blindly and strictly, especially Khrushchev, followed the Stalin Constitution till August 19, 1991 and therefore led to the collapse of the party, to a big surprise for CIA and the United States.
Of course, the authors may say they meant only that Stalin`s refusal of proletariat dictatorship in the Soviet Union was premature. But if there was the abolition of the dictatorship of the proletariat in 1936, it would mean the restoration of the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. However, even the official economist Popov would never say that the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie was restored in the Soviet Union in 1936. This way it turns out: the dictatorship of the proletariat is liquidated, the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie is not restored, then, it is to assume that the authors, as Trotsky, blame the CPSU in establishing its own dictatorship.
Therefore, we have to admit that, firstly, the leaders of the RCWP and the Labor Academy Fund, stand on the Trotsky-Khrushchev's position in the estimation of the CPSU history, and secondly, they think that dictatorship of the proletariat and the election of deputies to the Soviets by production districts are the same. And this is an absolute khvostism [following in the tail] and misunderstanding of dialectic essence of the working class dictatorship [we recommend to read about the dictatorship of the proletariat “The Foundations of Leninism”, “The Questions of Leninism”, “Questions and Answers” by Joseph Stalin].
Before that only dissidents used such logic in the description of the CPSU history. It may be enough to Popov and Tyulkin, instead of covering the issue in a hurry, to reflect on the question, for example, why the Communists need a constitution, if there is a scientific theory and based on it party program. But the leaders of the RCWP and many of today's Left fall in truisms: “How come? All civilized countries have a constitution, and why can't we be as good as them?” Many members of the Communist parties who fight for classless society, do not notice the absurd in their own actions when admire constitutionalism born by the defects of the class society. These comrades collect signatures required by the bourgeois constitution, bring the lists to the Ministry of Justice, beg for the registration to participate in the bourgeois parliament, mourn, if the officials do not give them registration documents, which breaks the democratic principles, as many members of the party think.
The members of the left parties, admiring the constitution, have to understand that the constitution, both in form and in content was created by slave owners, not the Bolsheviks. Originally it is detailed indulgence for the force institutions to maintain the order beneficial for the oligarchs only.
It is known that the earliest constitutions and bills were always ratified by the minority of the population, ignoring opinions and interests of the majority, for example, slaves, children, women, population of the colonies, aborigines, illiterate segment of society, infidels, etc.
Historically, the constitution is a document maintaining by coercion the existing class order, and the maximum benefit of this order always goes to the oligarchs. In particular, even a bright representative of American oligarchs Zbigniew Brzezinski was shocked by the effects that covered America after the collapse of the Soviet Union. In 1990 - he said in his interview for “Komsomolskaya Pravda”, - the salary of American companies top-management was only 70 times more than the salary of the average American. Now, this difference increased to 325 times.
What can we say about the intellectual and moral qualities of Brzezinski, if he knew that the difference in payment between higher and lower positions in the Soviet Union did not exceed three times, and the difference in the US was 70 times even at that time? Apparently it was not too difficult to guess that US oligarchs were fighting against the Soviet Union exactly to get rid of all upper limits of income.
But the income gap is not all. The Left must understand that the US Constitution, the Bill of Rights did not stop the practice of Lynch courts or scalping white invaders by the Indians and did not prohibit white men to bury thousands of killed Indians in the ditches. The Bill of Rights, as century-old history of the US shows, did not mind the crucifixion of Obama`s countrymen. This constitution was conceived and stated in such a way that, finally, most of the Indians were buried, and the rest were herded into reservations, the Negros were burned on crosses for a hundred years, and no one was invited to Nuremberg or The Hague to be in charge for that, but the US prisons are still the world leaders in capacity, amount and degree of isolation of prisoners, full of mostly “colored” youth and representatives of the poor. And the oligarchs continue to pay off by money and lawyers. Therefore, only the naive person can see the power of constitution to guarantee someone something democratic.
The constitution is a documentary proof of antagonism in pre-communist social orders based on private property. The constitutions are legal allusions on the fact that eating each other antagonistic classes, clans, nations and religions are restrained only by the power of police, army and prisons, that in the civil, legal society based on the private property, EVERYBODY is ready to destroy EVERYONE, but the rules of the game and the power institutions stated by the constitution, slightly slow down and regulate this process.
But why do the communists have to write the constitutions?
As for the Soviet Union in 1936, it is necessary to take into account that the consciousness of the USSR population just began to come out of age-old traditions of aggressive class relations. At least, an excellent Kremlin dreamer [expression of Herbert Wells, which is considered in Russia to be ironic to the writer, because it shows a very bad understanding of Lenin and his plans of building of socialism, which have been successfully completed - translator`s note] and an optimist, Lenin, supposed that elimination of petty bourgeois anachronism in people minds will take decades, and perhaps a century. Many facts showed that in the mind of some Soviet people of those years remained parasitic “values” of exploiting society. Nothing else can explain Ukrainian SS divisions or “Vlasov Army” [Army of the traitor General Vlasov], which mainly consisted of ethnic Russians - supporters of kulaks [bourgeois peasants] revival in Russia.
That is why the Bolshevik version of the USSR Constitution contains Marxist provisions about destruction of society division into classes and, therefore, for the first time in human history, Marxism as a science has become a settled law, which sooner or later makes constitution unnecessary. The same as professional doctor does not follow the rules of law, but relies entirely on the scientific truth, communist society members interact with each other on the basis of scientific knowledge of the objective laws of these interactions.
According to objective laws, liquidation of class society, first of all, requires EVERY born child to perceive the heights of contemporary culture. That is why it was the USSR (not England, for example), that liquidated the centuries-old mass illiteracy and established a tradition, according to which, for example, Timiryazev, Tsiolkovsky, Pavlov, Zhukovsky, Kapitsa periodically gave academic lectures to representatives of a completely non-academic circles of the Soviet workers, competently involving them into the highest science achievements.
The Bolshevik Party had to develop their own constitutions, i.e. to resolve LEGAL problem, specific only to the class society, not because of the communism building, and not even because of the massive class of small peasant bourgeoisie, but because of the fact that a large mass of peasants, proletarians and intellectuals were not ready to thoroughly investigate Marxism.
In Tsarist Russia, as in all civilized countries of that time, uneducated or far from science philistine was the majority of the population. He did not understand scientific language of communism, and therefore perceived the science-based rules of community life mostly by coercion.
The feudal-bourgeois rulers of Russia even more than their European blood relatives, always tried hard to get rid of peasants, proletarians, foreigners and women in the higher educational institutions of Russia. And the order in the country was maintained, if not by the Inquisition, but by the church, the oprichnina, the Secret Offices, the gendarmerie, the deportation, the hard labor in exile, the mass floggings, the hanging and the executions. It is difficult to find among the Russian tsars the one, who was not trying to prove that he is able to exploit his servants better than his European crowned relatives. There has always been the competition in tyranny between the monarchs.
Five peasant wars and three Russian revolutions convincingly proved that the Russian tsars tyrannized peoples of Russia harder than their relatives, England Queens and German emperors. Moreover, exactly tsarist Russia, not the United States, played the role of European gendarme in the XIX century. That is why before Lomonosov Russia did not have its own scientists in the field of mathematics, physics, chemistry, philosophy, political economy, and was famous only by generals, wooden architecture, icons and fairy tales.
It is a small surprise that in the world culture the tsarist Russia for a long time was known by people of art (from Rublev to Petipa), not by scientists and engineers. This way Russian public conscience before the Bolsheviks had a rich artistic tradition, but low, according to its influence, technical and scientific tradition. The philosophical tradition vegetated for centuries in theology.
One of the objective reasons that most of the intellectuals become just artistic, lies in the fact that scientific and theoretical type of consciousness is more complicated to learn, and artistic type of consciousness is mostly based on natural instincts, on emotions, it easily creates in a person the illusion of his exclusiveness. Those who had inborn artistic potential usually started early to be thirsty for glory and popularity. Among these glory hunters were Dostoyevsky, Solzhenitsyn, Nureyev, Rostropovich, Rasputin, Astafyev, Zhvanetsky, Khazanov, Bykovs, Belovs, Baklanov, Nagibin, Granin, Iskander, Yerofeyev, and many other anti-Soviets and anti-communists.
Solzhenitsyn's book “Russia under Avalanche” is the best literary monument to a man and all dissidents, whose conscience was strangled by vanity and ignorance. This literary “Moses” who had been leading the dissidents for forty years and led them into market democracy and, demonstrating unprecedented dishonesty, asks indignantly: “Is there in the world history such a massive betrayal of its sons by Motherland, how instantly we left the sixth of the Russian people beyond the borders of Russia without any protection and care?” For real, the history does not know the betrayal on this scale. But the name of the Nobel Laureate, who made more than anyone else for these betrayers formation, she knows exactly. Solzhenitsyn.
But when the lack of scientific consciousness is compensated by good conscience, society gets Lermontov, Pushkin, Nekrasov, Chernyshevsky, Tolstoy, Gorky, Andreev, Mayakovsky, Sholokhov, Jalil, Rozhdestvensky, Gamzatov, Karpov, Prokhanov. But in the current market conditions, artistic talent hardly ever combines with moral and political purity.
Therefore, taking into account the gap in the scientific level of public conscious, the party had to include middle peasants and artistic intellectuals into building non-exploiting society by more familiar to them, legally enforceable standards of conduct. Even today, there is no evidence in the information space that even one member of intelligentsia have studied the “Science of Logic” by Hegel and, therefore, got rid of disordered, chaotic “way of thinking”. The Communist Party had to appeal to legal tools because of the dissident spirit of intellectuals, which extremely gets in the way of a new man, who is free of political show-off, self-obsession, who is passionate about creating new, non-antagonistic society.
Reading books and memoirs of many writers of that time - Bunin, Oseev and Aleksey Tolstoy, even Bulgakov or Platonov - it was easy to saw how much they suffered from the absence of bourgeois charms of life, such as oysters, champagne with pineapples, “rooms” with prostitutes, opportunity to overspend while millions of workers and peasants were in giant material austerity, among backwardness and destruction left by the tsarism, the imperialistic war, the white band and 14 civilized countries-interventionists.
If you took any repentance of White Guard ex-supporter, which changed sides and became a simple representative of the Soviet artistic intelligentsia, if you got acquainted with the current self-assessment of his behavior under socialism, you would see that, on the one hand, he “created” socialist realism, and on the other hand, he needed up-to-the-minute popularity and recognition from the party leaders. Under socialism they accepted awards from Stalin and Brezhnev, under capitalism - from Yeltsin, “crying with joy” every time. In one of his recent books, defector V. Aksenov mockingly quotes enthusiastic poem of young Yevtushenko about... Stalin, demonstrating by that lick-spittling of his rival.
But those who under socialism did not have a chance to gain popularity because of absolutely mean abilities, now say that they proudly and bravely did not make a deal with the “regime” and as if it was the reason they could not publish their works. Although, after fall of the regime most of them did not create anything worthwhile or anything at all.
Many artistic intellectuals, talking about “the state of law”, the popular phrase during Perestroika, have not understood that every provision of law is a form of personality averaging. Therefore, while each citizen is an individual (sometimes microscopic), at the same time, this individual is free in civil society only within the constitution, not his potential in science and art.
Is Charlie Chaplin, Sacco and Vanzetti, the Rosenbergs were not crushed by the US Constitution? Is the tragic end of Jack London, Ernest Hemingway, Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley, John Lennon, Michael Jackson, Whitney Houston not bright demonstration of “civil society” nature, that can not guarantee to a talented man right to life in the market constitutional state.
They may say that the Soviet model of socialism also dealt with intellectuals hardly and cruelly. Yes, but the fact is that all representatives of the Soviet punitive authorities and the party leaders of NKVD era were born and educated not in communism, but in a religious, feudal and bourgeois-democratic Russia, and for them a prison, hard labor, gallows, firing squad and a war were absolutely everyday occurrence. In his memoirs, Kerensky specified that the first officers of the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission (the Cheka), until the mid-30s, consisted of ex-nobles, gendarme officers, “professionals” who joined the Bolsheviks after Kerensky dispersed the gendarmerie. And it is hard to wait for sentiments of these gendarmes, taking to account their mentality. It was necessary to control them and to punish. Many people complain about the informing against others, supposedly prevailed in the Soviet society. And who reported on whom? There is even no need to delve in archives of the KGB. Until 1937 only one category of people in the USSR could fluently and convincingly write reports to the authorities - pre-revolutionary intellectuals. Why ALL Bolsheviks went through the prison and hard labor? Because all of them were systematically informed against. Could the informant be rectified for ten years after the revolution? No.
The constitution and the science, philistines and communists
“Dulles' Plan”, and born by this plan the Fulbright Program, the works of Gene Sharp, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Krieble Institute, whose work during “perestroika” in USSR was so fruitful that the brain of a modern Russian intellectual still perceives anything related to communist science and practice as something meaningless in general, although the decisions and actions of democratically elected presidents prone to alcohol, whether it's Nixon, Yeltsin or Bush, and verdicts of randomly selected jury, or the laws passes by the lobbyists in the parliament, like a lamb accepts as legal, regardless of its irrational and criminal character. They think that the solution, found in the fight at the Duma tribune, more lawful, civilized, democratic, than the solution, found by the genius near the lake Razliv [a reference to the fundamental work of Lenin “The State and Revolution”].
Democratic journalists, for example from “Novaya Gazeta” [the voice of Russian liberals], seem inadequate when systematically scream about the widespread corruption, about catastrophic moral decadence, about organized crime and police atrocities, at the same time, do not want to understand that all these deformities are the result of market constitutional democracy, which they protect from the communists. These deformities are caused by the market constitutionality as the darkness is caused by the sunset. Many intellectuals do not understand that everything that they face today and call the most abusive epithets is a product of their free choice, the inevitable consequence of the constitutional system of any class society. Because of these and many other objective reasons, the constitution can not be the basic document for the formation of the communist behavior. The constitution is a palliative, whose existence caused by the ignorance of the exploited.
Strictly speaking, the 1936 Constitution was written not for the communists but by the communist for the undereducated segment of the population. The constitution just certifies the fact that there is a long way to communism, and that it is necessary to build current social relations taking into account the heterogeneity of society, including the use of violence to persons resistant to the implementation of scientifically verified program of communism building.
Therefore, under socialism it takes place the opposite construction of value system, which requires the power protection. The bourgeois constitution declares private property to be sacred and inviolable. The socialist constitution declares public property to be science-based and priority protected. And then, according to the experience of many international interventions against the Soviet Union, the principle “who wins” works, both domestically and in international relations. Marxists have never concealed or hidden this inevitable necessity of the first phase of communism.
Tyulkin and Popov never wondered if the Russian proletariat could build socialism before 1936 without the theory of Marxism-Leninism. It is pity. The answer is obvious. NO, he could not! Therefore, what should the communists be guided by first of all? By the theory of Marxism or the constitution? It is clear that, without the development of the theory, the communist can not adequately improve the constitution and life at the local level, especially considering the rapidly changing situation and conditions of communism building. Only philistine can be satisfied by the constitution. But the communist can and should be guided ENTIRELY by scientific ideology.
For example, Trotsky`s attitude to scientific theory and its role in the authority of the party, was clearly demonstrated in his article in the newspaper “Pravda” dated April 23, 1920: “Lenin - Trotsky wrote - is all in revolutionary action. His scientific work is only a preparation for action”. And then we see absolutely Trotskyist ideological sabotage. “If he [Lenin] did not published in the past a single book, he would forever go down in history as the leader of the proletarian revolution, the founder of the III International”. It is hard to think up bigger nonsense.
Or is it possible? At least while reading the paper of Tyulkin and Popov, you start to doubt.
It is obvious that exactly the books of Lenin proved to young revolutionaries, that there was a real candidate for a leader among them. Stalin finally won Trotsky because he was definitely more qualified Leninist, creative thinker, who left behind all his opportunistic enemies, especially in theoretical form of the class struggle. As history showed, without Stalin neither Beria or Molotov or Kaganovich could stand against even a liberal-primitivist Khrushchev. And Khrushchev himself could oppose Stalin only a few years after his death.
It is anti-scientific to address the problems of the “proletarian dictatorship” without asking such questions as: were the USSR Constitutions of 1918 and 1924 and production principle in the Soviets elections the key factors in Stalin's victory over all forms of Trotskyism and imperialism until 1936 or vice versa, only the rational application of Marxism theory by Stalin in the changing historical situation made it possible to develop the legal conditions when the working class dictatorship in the USSR practically eliminated the system of big bourgeois tyranny and let the party neutralize the opportunist leaders who used terroristic and diversionary methods of defending their “point of view”? What did Stalin address to in difficult situation? The text of the constitution or the works of the classics of Marxism? Where did he find victorious answers to current problems - in the constitution or in Marxism?
Even the simple fact that for the first seven years of socialism building in the USSR two constitutions were adopted, shows how quickly legal norms became obsolete, how often they should have been changed for bringing the law into accordance with the political achievements. But being adopted, the constitution turns into a thing of the past, it is ossified, and life goes forward rapidly.
Certainly, the question arises, why are the constitutions of many developed capitalist countries so stable? Only because conservatism is a critical need of the oligarchs turned into uncrowned emperors who found a successful constitutional way to preserve their inherited power for centuries, declaring that the cause of all troubles is publicly elected presidents and prime ministers. Philistines and all today`s left do not understand it.
In the years of perestroika they shouted “Down with Gorbachev!”, then ten years screamed “Yeltsin`s gang on trial!”, now ten years struggling with Putin “regime”, to the delight of the oligarchs, who only occasionally and pointlessly are mentioned in the left-wing press. And voting of deceived investors and depositors for oligarch Prokhorov is not treatable.
It follows from the content of the paper that Tyulkin and especially Popov never asked the question: is it possible to consider communism as the sum of communisms built at all enterprises of the country under the guidance of the Soviets, elected by production principle? Or, can the proletariat hope for long dictatorship, questioning the leading role of the scientific vanguard - the Communist Party? Irrationality of these suggestions could help the authors to move to the science direction. But most of today's left do not understand that dialectic materialism is, first of all, the method, which requires the ability to ask YOURSELF important questions, the method of competent dispute... with your own STUPIDITY, which much easier than wisdom is born by immature consciousness.
Marxism assumes that the building of communism is a matter of all working people of the USSR under the dictatorship of the WORKING CLASS of the whole country, ignoring any of their professional, national or religious interests and accepting the leading role of the communist vanguard only, if, of course, it is as such.
The proletariat, the party leadership, the constitution and the counter-revolution
It is strange that Popov and Tyulkin trying to investigate the problem of the dictatorship of the proletariat, ignore the thing that almost all the works of Lenin start with a profound analysis of the HISTORICAL EXPERIENCE. And concerning this issue, the international practice shows that the proletariat weakness in all countries of the socialist block appeared when and where the communist parties were weak. Strictly speaking, they were communist in name only. I.e. at first the party had degraded or failed to become the Communist Party, and after that the dictatorship of the proletariat disappeared. That is why socialism in Eastern Europe was established later, but fell earlier than in the USSR.
We must not forget that the proletarian class, objectively, as the most revolutionary class in the epoch of capitalism domination, at the same time, consists of the most uneducated sellers of “labor power”. Quite close to the proletarians of physical labor are all kinds of deceived sharers, investors and depositors of mental labor.
Without real communist vanguard, as shown by the centuries-old practice, the proletariat is able only to compromise with the bourgeoisie. Moreover, the proletarians of mental labor, more than the proletarians of physical labor, see only advantage in their vendibility and do not even blush when they sell themselves. And the more expensive they are sold, the more they love themselves.
The facts proves the reactionary character of the proletarian struggle without communist component. Strikes of the trade unions helped Pinochet to come to power in Chile. Strikes directed by the trade union “Solidarity” led to the fall of socialism in Poland. Strikes in 1990 led to the collapse of the USSR and proved destruction character of trade unions when party influence weakens. And all this happened in spite of the fact that the trade union committees and the Soviets of labor collectives were formed by the labor collectives themselves. Today low political efficiency of the proletarians, left without the leadership of communists, is brightly illustrated by the behavior of the proletarian masses in Arab countries, whose “victory” is already used by clericals and American oligarchs.
But Tyulkin and Popov do not mention these history lessons. Also they do not say that the reason of wage SLAVERY of proletarians during several centuries is their absolute non-ability to win by themselves the constitution of exploitative society. Unfortunately they still do not know how to do it, as well as the leaders of the RCWP.
In a strange way, these authors do not try to explain to yourself and to others dialectically contradictory essence of the dictatorship of the working class. Because the loss of the bourgeoisie its exploiting potentials is proportional only to the decrease of proletarian qualities of the proletariat. Only those people become and remain proletarians, who are not allowed by the capitalist system to develop to something more than cheap appendix of a machine. The key to the victory of communism is not to make impossible for bourgeoisie to exploit proletarians but the hard work of the communists to erase from the proletarians the reason of their plight - ignorance. Lenin in theory and Stalin in practice raised the most of the factory workers in the USSR at the unprecedented social height. It is enough to say that all large factories in the USSR had institutions on fundamental training of engineers from workers in a particular industry. It can be considered as a mistake, that these factory institutions did not have Marxism-Leninism departments.
If we take into account the international importance of communism building in the USSR by 1936, against domination of colonial democracy and fascism in the world, then, in the triumphal conditions of the second five-year plan, when for the first time in human history, more than one-third of the state budget was spent on science, culture and education, and defense spending went to the last place in the budget, when the education of peasantry class was accomplished, in these conditions, the adoption of another USSR Constitution and changes in the electoral law played a role of effective act of propaganda in foreign policy, to complicate the work of West propaganda machine, presenting the fight against the bourgeoisie in the Soviet Union as something that does not correspond to the legal norms of civilized society, as something lawless.
According to the laws of the distribution and acquisition of information, even the rumor that the Soviet Union adopted a new constitution caused criticism in the bourgeois press and led to the increased interest of really progressive and thinking part of bourgeois society. No doubt that this political act, against fascist aggression in Spain, increased the pro-Soviet sentiment in the world and influenced positively on the position of the masses in some imperialist countries of market democracy after the attack of Nazi Europe on the Soviet Union.
The use of legal and, in fact, bourgeois procedures in the USSR, familiar to the mentality of the Western philistine, led to the fact, that, for example, a talented, bourgeois writer Lion Feuchtwanger, who personally attended the public trial in 1937, was forced to admit that, not only logic and facts of the case, not only dozens of personal confessions of the accused, but also from the point of view of the bourgeois legal procedure, the trial of the Trotskyists left no doubts in its legitimacy, i.e. in the guilt of the accused. Feuchtwanger carefully looked for the signs of beatings or tortures or effects of psychotropic drugs in the behavior of the defendants, but found no evidences and this way complicated a lot his further life in the West. But today only few intellectuals can boast that they have read the book of Lion Feuchtwanger.
So, tactical maneuvers in law made by the party and the real changes in class characteristics of the Soviet population had not only internal, but also some positive international importance. Today, it seems to be completely idiotic to represent SCIENTIFIC, absolutely innovative, unprecedented work of communism building in the 30s - i.e., creating objective conditions for the WITHERING AWAY of the classes, the state and the law - not as the exclusive competence of the Communist Party, but as the achievement of the deputies elected in the factories. Flirtation with the proletarian masses has nothing in common with the fundamental party policy in working environment.
Of course, Marxism has always insisted on the necessity to develop mass political initiative of the population, but this requirement denies leaving it “to their own fate“, i.e. diminishing the role of the Communist party in this development. In his work “A Great Beginning” Lenin wrote about the most important goal of the PARTY, of the full support of labor collectives initiatives, focusing on the fact that the point was not in Subbotniks popularization, but in the development of the science-based initiative of workers. But only absolutely qualified communists can bring scientific character to the workers initiative.
There are the opportunists who try to separate the proletariat and the communists. For this purpose they can use the constitution, which places Roman slave law above the science. But the Stalin Constitution legislatively placed the science above the law and proclaimed the scientific worldview the only criterion of morality and the law itself.
The party, the constitution and the first phase of communism
From the internal point of view, the 1936 Constitution was adopted in the year when the big bourgeoisie in Russia had already been entirely liquidated as a class and had to leave the country or to make living by mental or physical labor as all regular people. The ex-bourgeoisie in the USSR had nothing left but defected by money mentality and natural for that uncovered greed. In the new situation the party was out of the routine legal work, giving it to the hands of the institutions set by the constitution, but which finally got socialist features and content, practically free from traditions of feudal-market corruption. Members of the party were in the minority in every Soviet institution, but it was exactly the thirties when the personal responsibility of the Communists was more than ever, and the trials of 1937 and 1938 made the party for a while, really consolidated and authoritative.
The Great Patriotic War showed that ALL soviet socialist science-based party institutions, examined in detail by the CPSU long before the adoption of the 1936 Constitution, were enshrined in 1936 ONLY legally, as already established forms, demonstrated an unprecedented survivability and efficiency in the tragic 1941.
By 1936 the population of the USSR, of course, became a socially consolidated, not perfect yet, but it was almost completely free of absolute power of the parasitic elements. The concept of the “Soviet worker” expanded on the whole nation, not just on the industrial workers. Endemic illiteracy, kulaks, organized gangs, profiteers in grain surpluses, private traders, unemployed and homeless were eliminated. Socialist-minded engineering and scientific intellectuals were educated. As the result, conscious industrial and scientific-technical sabotage of the intellectuals, raised by the market relations, not completely, but seriously decreased.
Nevertheless, the character of economic development was determined, first of all, by the level of competency of the USSR Academy of Sciences and giant, according to global standards, scientific and design institutions in all sectors of the social production. In power industry, engineering, aviation, the country reached the necessary production level, that was competitive enough to determine the victory of the USSR in the war against the whole Nazi Europe.
The majority of urban and rural workers, after living for a while under socialism, understood the material and nonmaterial benefits, which building of communism leads to. Neither in Tambov region, nor in Kuban region, nor in Central Asia no one had to be persuaded to lay down arms, to join collective farms or to use the machine and tractor stations. As it turned out on the trial of 1938, the right-wing opposition already in 1936 lost the hope for anti-Soviet mass protests, and hoped only for a plot.
Most of the young people had no more doubts in the simple Communist truth. From now, the development of each individual will depend, first of all, on the development of the productive forces of the entire society, on the development of labor productivity, rather than on the intensity of his personal labor. Welfare of citizens will grow under steady reduction of the working day and the working week, under stable wages, free accommodation, education, medicine and sport, under steady decrease of all prices and reduction of the retirement age. The workers saw plainly this perspective. Now everybody knows which expired products of mass poisoning under rising prices are fed to today`s voters.
In this condition, as historical practice showed, the counter-revolution in the USSR remained only in the form of conspiracy: in the Central Committee of the CPSU and in some Central Committees of the union republics, in the NKVD, among leaders of trade unions, senior military commanders and staff of People’s Commissariat for Foreign Affairs.
Perhaps the most exact explanation of such conspirators nature was made by Dostoevsky in his “Demons” by demonstrating a gallery of mentally defective and morally damaged middle class, literate, but obsessed by political devilry, primarily because they never had a chance for even temporary self-affirmation or public recognition in any field. Maria Spiridonova, Trotsky, Bukharin, Yagoda, Tukhachevsky, Yezhov, Khrushchev, Gorbachev and Yeltsin… were such “demons”. Conceit, misanthropy, lack of conscience and creative principles - these are the main features of character of the party opponents.
Nevertheless, we can say that the building of communism, the authority of the CPSU among industrial workers, students and schoolchildren was so real in 1936 that allowed socialism resist to betrayal of “demons” among the leaders of the CPSU and military commanders, to mass harmful repressions of Yagoda and Yezhov, to invasion of fascist Europe.
As it is known, a little earlier, market democracy in Italy and Germany fell under the attack of internal fascism. Bourgeois democracy in Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Denmark, Norway, France, Greece, Yugoslavia rapidly fell under the attack of external fascism and fascizated themselves. British colonial democracy was hanging by a thread. The Soviet system, facing the cruel attack of the entire world fascism, defeated.
Basis of the dictatorship of the working class
Each USSR Constitution is a document, which only fix the party experience in the development of the rights, duties and freedoms of citizens under objective and consistent weakening of the exploiting class, but an insufficient level of development of productive forces to switch the whole society from legal to a scientific basis. It is easy to note that, due to the organizational principles developed by the Party in the Stalin era and reflected in the Constitution of the USSR, the country, up to the Kosygin reform [pro-market reform of Khrushchev-Brezhnev - translator`s note], showed the highest in human history rate of development, especially in the field of culture, science and technology.
Seems like it is enough to read The Communist Manifesto, to understand finally that the dictatorship of the proletariat is simply impossible without LEADING role of its vanguard, or the real communist party. As shown by two hundred year history, no matter how intensive the economic struggle of the proletariat is, it CAN NOT lead the proletariat to the dictatorship. The dictatorship of the working class is possible as soon as the proletariat is guided by its vanguard, possessing uncompromisingly scientific knowledge. That is why, while fighting for the purge of the Party, for scientific uncompromising of the party, Lenin at the same time demanded of the Communists to learn “to merge with the masses to a certain degree”.
While reading the works of Tyulkin and Popov it turns out that the place of the Soviets formation, but not the role of communists, forms the communist qualities of the Soviets. As if a deputy is elected at a macaroni factory, it is reliable, and if he is elected according to the place of residence, it is vague. It is a strange “logic”. As if a badly working deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, for example, of defense, could be easily recalled by the workers of macaroni factory, but the tenants of the house ¹ 8 can not do this, especially if, for example, the chief of the General Staff lives in this house.
Lenin conclusively proved in the theory and the practice confirmed that the Soviets organized by the production principle, but led by the Mensheviks and supporters of the “socialist market”, will necessarily become an appendix of the bourgeois regime, that the Bolshevist direction of the Soviets is the most important. At the same time it was a period when the concentration of the communists at factories was higher than at the place of residence, and mobilization of workers for the fight against the Whiteguards and interventionists took place directly on the plants. It was natural that the Soviets were formed according to this principle. But in 1936, legally, there was no bourgeoisie at the place of residence or at the place of work. Most of the population did not put into question the role of the CPSU in the organization of election campaigns, in the control of deputies qualities and their activities. Never, no country of the market world took overeating deputies, peculators and “party bastards” to court with the same severity and inevitability, as in the USSR in the 30s.
Who should today`s proletarians follow?
It may be asked, why masses do not follow the “Proriv”? [“Proriv” in Russian means “breakthrough”, www.proriv.ru - translator`s note]. First of all, we are not a party, but a small solid team of litterateurs. However, as soon as we release the journal regularly, for a decade already, more and more people read us, and less and less people abuse, then we can be identified as active workers, and not meaningless protesters. Secondly, we will immediately transform into a party as soon as the number of solid and tried Marxists, working with us will reach the desired, planned level. But we will never compromise on the quality. And if we do not achieve this minimum, it means, objectively, that we have not yet matured as Marxists, to the delight of the enemies. But, in any case, we will not mistake the wish for the reality and run to the Ministry of Justice to register.
Our principle: at first, there should be few dozens of educated Marxist-Leninists, unafraid to rough work, proven in long-term, daily, effective WORK with people, and only then we can start talking about the building of the party.
The experience of all parties, created after the CPSU, showed that the principle - “at first - the party with the communist name, and then, somehow, we will form the complete Communist Party” - does not work. That is why, the “Proriv” chooses the other way. At first we will make all necessary and possible efforts to create a strong, scientifically-based, many times proven basis, and only then we will lead the building of the working class party. Just parties of “elephants” and “donkeys” are created easily and at once.
In spite of the obviously positive attitude towards Stalin and Lenin, demonstrated today by most Russians in the opinion polls, they understand that the leaders are physically dead, and people, quoting them, of course, are good, but by their lengthy quotations they just show the lack in today`s communist parties of qualified professionals in dialectic materialism, who are able to go forward and aim for something bigger, as Lenin demanded.
Will any practical conscious worker, any conscience developed intellectual join the party, which is led by people who are not able to prove the truth creatively, independently, based on the up-to-date material without quotation on each occasion? They do not join and will not join. Even Peter I in the XVIII century, required his contemporaries to speak without notes.
Dogmatism and economism, propagated by the leaders of the RCWP and President of the Labor Academy Fund, led to the predictable results. The existing working-class movement in Russia is infected not only by economism, but its natural consequence - rabid anarcho-syndicalism. The proof of separation of some proletarians from Marxism in general, and from the RCWP in particular, is the ultimatum, made by the electrician, some S.T., addressed to the RCWP.
“Good afternoon! - S.T. writes - I am an electrician of high qualification. Will your party transfer plants and factories into the ownership of the working class? Not into the ownership of nation, because nation is not only workers, not into the ownership of the state because the state is a bourgeois machine of oppression and humiliation.
Today`s workers, especially workers of mineral resources and energy sectors are high-level professionals, who are able to operate without parasitic oligarchs and we do not need the party bureaucracy of the Khrushchev type. DOES THE PROGRAM OF YOUR PARTY PRESCRIBE TO GIVE FACTORIES TO WORKERS? S.T.”
The worker put a silly, but point-blank question. And the RCWP replies on this anarcho-syndicalism of politically immature proletarian, first of all, by proletarian trade-unionism. It turns out that the RCWP encourage “all working people to unite behind the working class and its party”, although in the line above the author of the response, Solovyov Oleg, Secretary of the Central Committee of the RCWP on the workers' movement, tells the worker that the party is only fighting for the proletariat to become a struggling class, i.e. in fact, the class, which could unite “struggling workers”, DO NOT EXIST. It is a very distinct invitation, like in a joke: “Come to the party. Thank you, I will come and what is the address? Let`s dispense with formalities, come just like that, without any address”.
As a result this policy of the RCWP, its flirtation with the trade unions, the propaganda of economism led to bad consequences. And it's not a matter of the selfish worker or the fact that among today`s proletarians he is not alone. The trouble is that today's communist parties for the last twenty years have not prepared the propagandists, who could honestly, competently, clearly explain to the workers the essence of the communist doctrine.
If the “Proriv” received such letter, we would not flirt with the author. We would honestly explain to the worker, and to the readers that, firstly, he is today at the position of a traitor to the working class interests, and secondly, that he demonstrates his ignorance, i.e. he does not know that the experience of proletariat ownership of factories was negative and ineffective in many developed market countries and especially in the former socialist Yugoslavia, which now is totally worthless, with no sovereignty and any meaning in the life of Europe. Not just once nor twice in the history the factories fell into the hands of the assured proletarians and quickly went bankrupt.
If you read carefully the letter of the worker, it is clear that the author is a little bit greedy and coward. It is also clear that the author is indifferent to suffering of others, that only personal satiety and personal material wealth is interesting for him. But he gets right that there are no oligarchs who will give the factories to the “fighters” like him. Not today, not tomorrow. But this worker sees the way the oligarch Prokhorov, who owns such factories, lives. He wants the same.
Moreover the worker have heard somewhere that the Communists are going to take enterprises from the oligarchs. What if it works? The worker does not know how the communists are going to do that, and according to the letter, he is not going to participate. But as the communists succeeded at once, he realizes that they will do it again. And if so, he can try to take their word and as soon as the communists expropriate oligarchs, they immediately will give the enterprises to workers. The communists themselves will step aside, passively watching how workers bankrupt their enterprise. And the most important - no one has the right to ask for food from the workers. Neither the children, nor the disabled, nor the elderly.
Over the last twenty years the Communist Party of the Russian Federation and the RCWP did nothing for the theoretical form of the class struggle, but played parliamentarism, economism, Labourism and signatures collection. They still have no time for communism and formation of the working class from existing proletarians.
That is why, unfortunately, current anarcho-syndicalists do not understand that if workers can not take plants from the oligarchs themselves, the communists, who know how and why private ownership of the principal means of production is nationalized, they have no reason to give national wealth in the hands of politically illiterate speculators. And there is no need to cast pearls before the petty bourgeoisie, who do not dream of workers brotherhood in the struggle for universal happiness, i.e. Communism, but dream of personal wealth only. Before uniting with someone, at first, it is necessary to give scientific explanations.
So is there a guarantee against degeneration and collapse of the Communist Party
Therefore, we can say that, Marxism managed to prove that progressive development of communist organizations and the dictatorship of the working class are unavoidable, and at the same time, this theoretical concept and objective laws were not enough for individuals raised and educated in the centuries-old feudal-bourgeois traditions. It's unfortunate that, for the same reason, the pedagogical community of the USSR rejected achievements of pedagogical systems of Makarenko and Frunze on the communist education of the youth. Almost the entire system of education in the USSR was built by bourgeois teachers of secondary and high schools on the basis of the most primitive elements of Ushinsky pedagogical system.
Nevertheless, there is no doubt, that the most important practical and theoretical contribution to the development of the world communist movement in the XX century made the CPSU of Leninist-Stalinist period. In the 1950-s the USSR was closer than any other nation of the world to the practice of Communism building. This experience was the most representative, the most substantive, the most dynamic, the most useful. As the example of a “classical British capitalism” was enough to discover the absolute economic laws of motion of the capitalist system in general, this experience was enough to specify the absolute laws of the Communist Party and communist society development. The strength of Stalin`s socialism in the USSR was enough to get through a decade of Khrushchev's primitivism and twenty years of Brezhnev`s stagnation, and at the same time to hold the status of a superpower, having military-strategic parity with NATO.
The analysis of the CPSU history leads to the conclusion that the history has two branches - ascending and descending.
The existence of the ASCENDING branch in the history of the CPSU is proved by the constant growth of the authority and influence of the Bolsheviks among the working class and the peasantry, by the failures of many force action efforts taken by the oligarchs all over the world to defeat the Soviet Union. It turned out that even the joint military power of the Entente and Germany with Poland, all Russian nobility and the bourgeoisie, was not enough to overthrow the power of the Bolshevist Soviets at the beginning of its formation. During this period, neither economic blockade nor sabotage of the nobles, intellectuals, Western experts nor corruptive effect of the New Economic Policy (NEP) did not bring the results desired by the international anti-communism.
The existence of the ASCENDING branch in the history of the CPSU is also proved by the victory of the USSR in the war against European fascism, while democratic colonial countries of the West condoned fascism for years.
Until the mid-60s, i.e. until Kosygin reform, nobody in the world could say about the scientific, educational and technological backwardness of the Soviet Union. Research in near-Earth space still use Soviet technologies of the 50s, while the American lunar and near-Earth programs collapsed, burying 16 astronauts, i.e. four died American astronauts versus one died Soviet cosmonaut. Today, all countries deliver the astronauts on the ISS, using, practically, the Soviet space rockets, although, the number of the satellites, crashed into the ocean naturally grows as far as Russia turns into the market country.
However, the collapse of the Soviet Union and the dissolution of the CPSU prove the existence of the DESCENDING branch in the history of the party. And if we focus on the “economic” indicators, we will have to admit that its systematic decline began with Khrushchev's seven-year plan, became stable with the beginning of the Kosygin reform and crashed after Andropov`s election as General Secretary of the CPSU, i.e. since initiated by him the transit of the USSR economy to the principle of cost accounting (khozraschet), which meant the full restoration of capitalism and the market in the USSR with all the following destructive consequences.
Therefore, it is necessary to clarify the main aspect, specific to the CPSU on the ascending phase, but for some reason had no influence on the organizational strategy within the party. However, it is clear that the weakening of a certain factor, which played a role of political immunity against opportunism on the ascending phase, led to the growth of opportunism, that turn into the party content.
It stands to reason that by 1938 the CPSU was the only party, that was able to keep for a whole decade the highest degree of centralism, based on the scientific approach to all problems solution. There were almost no people in the leading bodies of the party, who consciously and purposefully were fighting for another organizational policy. Speaking about structure, the party really began to get rid of any organized forms of the rightism and leftism. This fact played a crucial role in the victory of the Soviet people in the Great Patriotic War, in the organization of the fast recovery of socialist production and the systematic reduction of prices. Without the real centralism in the control of complex social systems there could be no effective results.
But the practice has proved that this unity was temporary and, as soon as Stalin died, the leading bodies of the party again turned into the battle arena for, in simple words, the two main approaches in the party. Formally it looked like a confrontation between pro-Stalinist and anti-Stalinist approaches. In fact, it was a conflict of insufficiently competent and completely incompetent elements in the party. Ironically, but in the process of this confrontation the most incompetent wing within the party defeated.
