I. Introduction
The past decade has seen the reemergence of major class battles in a series of imperialist countries: France, Italy, Portugal, and Spain. There have been sharp class confrontations in Britain and elsewhere. The process of working-class radicalization has begun in the United States, Canada, Oceania, Japan, and Germany.
There has been a tendency for the urban proletariat and semi-proletarian masses to come to the fore in the upsurges in the semicolonial countries as well. The most striking recent examples were the sustained mobilizations, revolutionary general strike, and mass insurrection that overthrew the shah of Iran; and the decisive role played by the urban masses of Nicaragua in the overthrow of the Somoza dictatorship and the establishment of a government that advances the interests of the workers and peasants.
At the same time that the class struggle has sharpened in the centers of world capitalism, the crisis of Stalinism has also deepened. The "Prague Spring" of 1968 and the struggles of the Polish workers in the 1970s have been the high points of the fight of the workers in Eastern Europe against the Stalinist bureaucracy in this period. Although as yet narrowly based, the dissident movement appeared in the Soviet Union itself.
In the last year major demonstrations in Poland and even China were notable for their urban and proletarian features.
In the context of upsurge in the class struggle many Western European Communist parties are no longer able to unconditionally and uncritically defend the policies of the Soviet bureaucratic caste to their working class followers. They have been forced to take some distance from the worst crimes of their fellow Stalinists in the USSR and Eastern Europe.
The internal conflicts in the bureaucratic caste in China are indications of massive discontent and have provided certain openings for its public expression. These conflicts, as well as the crass class collaborationism Peking is practicing with Washington, have undermined the false notion, prevalent a decade ago, that Maoist policy is fundamentally different from and more progressive than the Kremlin's class collaborationism. The specter of Moscow and Peking vying with each other in their efforts to reach a counterrevolutionary "détente" with imperialism has further exposed Stalinism.
Contributing to the crisis of Stalinism has been the emergence of leaderships with a mass following who bypass Stalinism from the left and have mighty revolutionary accomplishments to their credit. The Castro leadership is the prime example. The leadership of the Nicaraguan FSLN is the ne west.
The unfolding world crisis of capitalism points to deepening radicalization of the working class and the toilers in all three sectors of the world revolution. There will be major class showdowns that will pose the question: which class shall rule. In contrast to the situation in Russia in 1917, however, what is lacking is a large tested nucleus of worker-Bolsheviks that can grow into a mass party in a revolutionary situation leading the majority of the toilers toward political power. Yet never before has the program of Bolshevism, of the first four congresses of the Communist International, of the Transitional Program of the Fourth International, been more timely or urgent than it is today. The period we have entered is favorable to the construction of proletarian parties around this program—the program of world socialist revolution—which is today defended by the Fourth International and its sections and sympathizing organizations throughout the world. Never, since the Stalinization of the Communist International, has the situation been more propitious for the regroupments and fusions that can lead toward building a mass world party of socialist revolution.
An essential part of that program is the Marxist and Leninist position on the relationship of socialism and democracy. This question has become more prominent in the context of rising class-struggle moods among the workers, the deepening crisis of Stalinism, and the growing predominance of urban struggles and proletarian forms of organization.
Among the questions involved are the relation between the fight for democratic rights under capitalism and the struggle of the workers to conquer and hold state power; the role of democracy in the dictatorship of the proletariat; how to restore workers democracy in the degenerated workers state of the USSR and how to win it in the deformed workers states of East Europe and Asia. The purpose of this resolution is to reaffirm the programmatic position of the Fourth International on these questions, and to apply and amplify it in light of the concrete experiences of the class struggle over the past decades.
The question of the forms through which workers power is exercised in Cuba today has been deliberately left aside and will be taken up later.
Reform vs. Revolution
a. The fundamental difference between reformists and centrists of all varieties, and revolutionary Marxists, regarding the need for a socialist revolution, the conquest of state power by the workers, the nature of the proletarian state, and the meaning of the dictatorship of the proletariat consists of:
1. The recognition by revolutionary Marxists of the class nature of all states and of the state apparatus as an instrument to maintain class rule.
2. The illusion propagated by the reformists and many centrists that "democracy" or "democratic state institutions" stand above classes and the class struggle.
3. The recognition by revolutionary Marxists that the state apparatus and state institutions of even the most democratic bourgeois state serve to uphold the power and rule of the capitalist class, i.e., represent a social dictatorship of the capitalist class, and therefore cannot be instruments with which to overthrow that rule and transfer power from the capitalist class to the working class.
4. The recognition by revolutionary Marxists that the destruction of the bourgeois state apparatus, in the first place of the repressive apparatus, is a necessary prerequisite for the conquest of state power by the working class.
5. The recognition by revolutionary Marxists of the necessity for the development of the consciousness and mass organization of the workers in order to consolidate a workers government and carry through the expropriation of the bourgeoisie in the transition from a capitalist state to a workers state.
6. The recognition by revolutionary Marxists of the necessity for the proletarian state to be based on organs of workers democracy of the soviet or council type in order to carry through the transformation to a classless society on a world scale.
Despite the tragic Chilean experience, which re confirmed so many previous lessons of history, Stalinists, Social Democrats, and many centrists alike still proclaim that the labor movement can fully attain its socialist goals within the framework of bourgeois parliamentary institutions, through reliance on parliamentary elections and the gradual conquest of "positions of power" within these institutions. This reformist concept must be energetically opposed and denounced for what it is. It is a cover-up for abandonment of the struggle for state power by the proletariat; a cover-up for abandonment of the struggle for the expropriation of the bourgeoisie; a substitution of ever more systematic class collaboration with the bourgeoisie for the policy of consistent class struggle; a disarming of the proletariat in the face of the violence unleashed by the capitalist class; and, therefore, capitulation to the class interests of the bourgeoisie at moments of decisive economic, political, and social crisis.
Far from reducing the costs of "social transformation" or ensuring a slower but peaceful transition to socialism, this policy, if it should determine the political attitude of the toilers in a period of unavoidable class confrontation, can only lead to bloody defeats and mass slaughters of the Spanish, Indonesian, and Chilean type. Adherence to such a policy by the German Social Democracy was also a major factor in the triumph of fascism in Germany.
The German CP, following Stalin's ultraleft "Third Period" line, label led the Social Democrats "social fascists" and refused to call for a united front to fight the fascists. Under the slogan "after Hitler, our turn," it failed to organize any effective struggle against the Nazis. The CP thus failed to provide a class struggle alternative to the policy of the SPD leadership which could have prevented the fascist victory.
b. Just as the reformists deny that the state in all capitalist countries, no matter how "democratic," is a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, they deny the necessity for the working class to have its own state, a dictatorship of the proletariat, in order to carry through the transition to socialism.
c. Finally, flowing from their class collaborationism, the reformists fail to effectively mobilize the toiling masses for the defense and development of democratic rights under capitalism. Some ultralefts and centrists down play the importance of this struggle.
II. The Fight for Democratic Rights Under Capitalism and the Fight for Workers Power
a. Whatever democratic rights the masses enjoy under capitalism—from the right to free speech, to the right to organize labor unions and workers parties, to the right of abortion—have been won by them through struggle.
b. Revolutionary Marxists fight for the broadest possible democratic rights under capitalism. The greater the degree of democratic rights, the greater the possibilities for the workers and their allies to struggle for their interests; to organize themselves on the union and political levels; to raise their standard of living, level of culture and education; and to win other gains that improve the relationship of class forces for the proletariat in preparation for the showdown struggles with the capitalists for power.
c. It is in the class interests of the workers to fight to defend every conquest of the masses, including democratic rights, against capitalist reaction. History shows that the working class is the only class that can consistently do so.
We will fight any attempt by rightist or fascist forces to overthrow the institutions of bourgeois democracy and install outright military or fascist dictatorships, which first and foremost are aimed at restricting or crushing the workers and toilers and their organizations. In this struggle, the workers, under the leadership of a Leninist party, will fight to impose their own solution to capitalist reaction by eliminating its cause through a socialist revolution.
While we are ready to make a bloc with all forces, including bourgeois forces, who will fight against fascist or military coup attempts, we give no political confidence to any bourgeois forces. By their class nature, they are incapable of consistently opposing fascism or a military take over. The working class needs political independence in this struggle as in all others, to put forward its own solution of socialist revolution, as the only guarantee against fascism or military dictatorship.
Likewise, in the fight against capitalist reaction we place no confidence in the capitalist state or any of its institutions. Every restriction by a bourgeois government on democratic rights, even those ostensibly aimed at fascists or other reactionaries, will inevitably be utilized tenfold against the working class and especially its most revolutionary wing. Fascism can only be stopped by the workers and their allies in consciously led united front mass struggle.
d. Capitalism in its decay breeds reaction. The extent of democratic rights and freedoms enjoyed by the masses at any particular time in any given country are determined by the relationship of class forces. Although there are oscillations within this historic trend, the long-term tendency for capitalism in the imperialist epoch is to more and more restrict democratic rights in face of the deepening class polarization. Today this can be seen most clearly in the many brutal dictatorships in the semicolonial countries, dictatorships pro pp ed up and in many cases directly installed by imperialism. For example, torture is state practice in a majority of the semicolonial countries today.
The example of Italian and German fascism demonstrates that this trend assumes its most virulent form in the fascist movements of imperialist countries and the totalitarian dictatorships they impose to maintain capitalism. We have seen how the ruling class sometimes utilizes military dictatorships or Bonapartist regimes which can pave the way for the seizure of power by mass fascist movements.
e. History shows that before fascist movements have their chance to install a totalitarian form of capitalist dictatorship, the workers and their allies will have their chance to defeat the fascists and impose their own solution to the capitalist crisis. The fascists can win only when the workers movement has lost its opportunity, remains demoralized and divided in face of the fascist threat, and has lost its attractive power to mobilize its allies. When thus disoriented, labor's potential allies divide and can furnish support to "radical" rightist solutions.
f. Fights for democratic demands are part of the struggles of the allies of the proletariat—including oppressed nationalities, women, working farmers or peasants, and small independent producers. Large numbers of these allies of the working class often form part of the working class, as well. In order to unify the working class and cement the alliance with its allies, especially the working farmers or poor peasants, the workers movement must support the progressive demands of these allies, including their democratic demands.
g. In the semicolonial countries the basic tasks historically brought to the fore by the bourgeois-democratic revolutions have by and large not been completed, including land reform, actual independence from imperialism even if formal independence has been won, and the development of an industrialized economy free of imperialist-imposed distortions and backwardness. Political democracy is precarious or nonexistent. Democratic tasks in these countries therefore assume special importance. These tasks cannot be carried through by the national bourgeoisie, however, and it falls on the working class in alliance with the poor peasantry to achieve them. The democratic tasks become intertwined with transitional demands and the socialist revolution, along the lines of the dynamic of the permanent revolution.
h. It is in the immediate class interests of the workers and toilers of the imperialist countries—as well as their long-term interests—to support the struggles of the workers and toilers of the colonies and semicolonies. This includes fighting for the democratic right of self-determination for the peoples of the colonies or semicolonies. The importance of such a struggle by the workers of the imperialist countries was illustrated by the anti-Vietnam War movement, especially in the United States. It gave vital aid to the Vietnamese revolution, had long-term effects on the antiwar and anti-imperialist consciousness of the American worker and heightened their opposition to Washington's utilization of American troops abroad. It strengthened the American working class and made it more able to resist the employers' offensives. It helped shift the relationship of forces on a world scale to the detriment of imperialism.
Support for the right of the colonies and semicolonies to self-determination is part of the fight against imperialist wars. Such wars are not only against the interests of the workers of the world including the workers in the imperialist countries, but threaten to engulf humanity in a nuclear holocaust.
Another aspect of this fight is the struggle for the democratic rights of citizen-soldiers impress ed into the imperialist armies. They are of key importance to every movement against imperialist wars.
i. Within the workers organizations, first of all the trade unions, and the organizations of the allies of the proletariat, we fight for the broadest possible rank-and-file democracy and independence from the capitalist government.
Rank-and-file democracy and control over the fundamental policies and leadership of the trade unions is necessary to mobilize the power of the unions behind class-struggle policies against the bosses. It is necessary to unleash the power of the unions to act in solidarity with their fellow workers and their allies and break from political subordination to the ruling class. The labor bureaucracy st if les union democracy in order to protect its privileges and defend its fundamental policy of class collaboration. This petty-bourgeois layer draws its special tribute from the trough of union funds and acts as a transmission belt for the interests of capital into the labor movement. Even when it is forced to defend the union against the bosses in order to defend the base of its privileges, it does so with its own ultimately self-defeating class collaborationist methods. Rank-and-file democracy in the unions is an essential plank in the program of any class-struggle left wing. The fight for it is an essential part of the struggle to transform the unions into revolutionary instruments, a struggle that must come up against the policies of the labor bureaucracy and will lead to its removal and replacement by a class-struggle leadership,
j. As the class struggle intensifies, the fight to transform the unions into revolutionary instruments deepens. Progressively broader organizational forms of the workers struggle appear, including strike committees, factory committees, and finally, in a revolutionary upsurge, soviets or councils.
This process reflects deepening class consciousness. At the same time, such organizations of the toilers become advanced schools for political education. In the crucible of class combat, the workers test the various programs and proposals of the different workers parties. Revolutionary Marxists will be in the forefront of helping to build such organs as the broadening class struggle convinces the workers they are necessary. We will fight inside them for the revolutionary perspective.
As Trotsky explained in the document drafted for the founding conference of the Fourth International:
". . . the deepening of the social crisis will increase not only the sufferings of the masses but also their impatience, persistence, and pressure. Ever new layers of the oppressed will raise their heads and come forward with their demands. Millions of toilworn little men,' to whom the reformist leaders never gave a thought, will begin to pound insistently on the doors of the workers' organizations. The unemployed will join the movement. The agricultural workers, the ruined and semi ruined farmers, the oppressed of the cities, the women workers, housewives, proletarianized layers of the intelligentsia—all of these will seek unity and leadership.
"How are the different demands and forms of struggle to be harmonized, even if only within the limits of one city? History has already answered this question: through soviets. These will unite the representatives of all the fighting groups. For this purpose, no one has yet proposed a different form of organization; indeed, it would hardly be possible to think up a better one. Soviets are not limited to an a priori party program. They throw open their doors to all the exploited. Through these doors pass representatives of all strata drawn into the general current of the struggle. The organization, broadening out together with the movement, is renewed again and again in its womb. All political currents of the proletariat can struggle for leadership of the soviets on the basis of the wide st democracy. The slogan of soviets, therefore, crowns the program of transitional demands.
"Soviets can arise only at the time when the mass movement enters into an openly revolutionary stage. From the first moment of their appearance the soviets, acting as a pivot around which millions of toilers are united in their struggle against the exploiters, become competitors and opponents of local authorities and then of the central government. If the factory committee creates a dual power in the factory, then the soviets initiate a period of dual power in the country.
"Dual power in its turn is the culminating point of the transitional period. Two regimes, the bourgeois and the proletarian, are irreconcilably opposed to each other. Conflict between them is inevitable. The fate of society depends upon the outcome. Should the revolution be defeated, the fascist dictatorship of the bourgeoisie will follow. In case of victory, the power of the soviets, that is, the dictatorship of the proletariat and the socialist reconstruction of society, will arise." ("The Death Agony of Capitalism and the Tasks of the Fourth International" in Transitional Program for Socialist Revolution, pp. 136-137.)
Exactly how such councils will arise, of course, depends upon concrete circumstances. Forms such as factory committees may begin to play the role of soviets, or they may even be initiated by revolutionary unions. In any case, revolutionary Marxists will fight for their development, coordination, and centralization. To fulfill their role as revolutionary organizations of class combat, they have to have the broadest internal democracy and seek to include all struggle organizations as well as tendencies and groupings in the working class. In this sense, they are the highest form of the united front.
k. The soviets have to be won to the revolutionary perspective, which requires a struggle by a revolutionary Marxist party to win a majority inside the soviets. The First Congress of the Communist International held in 1919 put the tasks of Marxists this way:
"1) to explain to the broad mass of the workers the historic significance and the political and historical necessity of the new, proletarian democracy which must replace bourgeois democracy and the parliamentary system;
"2) to extend the organization of soviets among the workers in all branches of industry, among the soldiers in the Army and sailors in the Navy and also among farm laborers and poor peasants;
"3) to build a stable Communist majority inside the Soviets." (Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 28, p. 475.)
Moreover, "The rise of soviets as the historical basic form of the dictatorship of the proletariat does not in any way diminish the leading role of the communist party in the proletarian revolution. When the German 'left' communists say . . . that 'the party too is more and more adapt ing itself to the Soviet idea and assuming a proletarian character' . . . that is a confused expression of the idea that the communist party must merge in the soviets, as though the soviets could replace the communist party." ("Theses on the Role of the Communist Party in the Proletarian Revolution Adopted by the Second Comintern Congress." The Communist International 1919-1943, Documents, Jane Degras, editor, Vol. I, p. 132.)
A revolutionary Marxist party of the Bolshevik type is necessary at all times to fight for the line of class struggle and class independence, in order to help prop el the working class and its allies forward. Only by participating in such struggles will the revolutionary party be built. As it becomes steel ed in the class struggle, the revolutionary party will be able to win the vanguard of the working class and the support of the decisive proletarian layers. It will be able to lead the mobilization of the working class and its allies in a struggle for power. In the process, the workers must counter the violence that the capitalist class will unleash against the toilers, break up the old capitalist state, build soviets, establish a workers and farmers government, expropriate the bourgeoisie, and thereby establish the dictatorship of the proletariat and begin the construction of socialism.
III. Democracy and the Dictatorship of the Proletariat
a. Based on the experience of the revolutionary upsurge of the French working class in 1871, Marx and Engels concluded that the form the dictatorship of the proletariat would take would be that of a workers democracy of the Paris Commune type. This was confirmed by the experience of the October revolution in Russia.
Following Marx and Engels and the Bolsheviks, revolutionary Marxists reaffirm that the workers democracy they fight for will be a state power of a new type. Under all previous forms of class society, the state represented the forcible suppression of the immense majority by a minority ruling class. Under the dictatorship of the proletariat, however, the state represents the interests of the great majority and forcibly suppress es the special prerogatives of the former minority ruling class, the bourgeoisie. Further, the workers state is the instrument of a propertyless class, the working class, whose interests lie in the construction of a classless society. Its form, therefore, will fit its function. The workers state is transitional; it will wither away as the classless society comes into being on a world scale.
In order to best defend the working class against the dispossessed capitalists and advance toward socialism, the state institutions of a workers democracy are radically different from those of the capitalist state, or any previous state. The soviets or councils—through which the proletariat organizes its revolutionary struggle against the capitalist state—become the basic institutions of the workers state after the revolution. Lenin outlined some of the fundamental norms of such a workers democracy in State and Revolution: the election of all functionaries, judges, leaders of the workers or workers and peasants militias, and all delegates representing the toilers in the state institutions; regular rotation of elected officials; restriction of their income to that of skilled workers; the right of the toilers to recall them at any time; exercise of both legislative and executive functions by the workers councils; radical reduction of the number of permanent functionaries and greater and greater transfer of administrative functions to bodies run by the toilers themselves. "Instead of the special institutions of a privileged minority (privileged officialdom, the chiefs of the standing army), the majority itself can directly fulfill all these functions, and the more the functions of state power are performed by the people as a whole, the less need there is for the existence of this power." (Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 25, pp. 419-420.) In this sense, a workers state in any given country begins to "wither away" as it develops these norms and institutions, although it must build up its armed power as long as the imperialist threat remains.
The dictatorship of the proletariat is established through the proletariat's forcible breaking up of the capitalist state machine and expropriation of the bourgeoisie. It is a social force to prevent the re-establishment of capitalist state power or of private property in the means of production. It thereby prevents any reintroduction of the exploitation of wage earners, and moves to radically eradicate the oppression of national minorities and of women. It is the opposite of dictatorial rule by a minority over the vast majority of people.
The founding congress of the Communist International stated: "Proletarian dictatorship is similar to the dictatorship of other classes in that it arises out of the need, as every other [class] dictatorship does, to forcibly suppress the resistance of the class that is losing its political sway. The fundamental distinction between the dictatorship of the proletariat and the dictatorship of other classes—landlord dictatorship in the Middle Ages and bourgeois dictatorship in all the civilized capitalist countries—consists in the fact that the dictatorship of the landowners and bourgeoisie was the forcible suppression of the resistance offered by the vast majority of the population, namely, the working people. In contrast, proletarian dictatorship is the forcible suppression of the resistance of the exploiters, i.e., an insignificant minority of the population, the landowners and capitalists.
"It follows that proletarian dictatorship must inevitably entail not only a change in democratic forms and institutions, generally speaking, but precisely such a change as provides an unparalleled extension of the actual enjoyment of democracy by those oppressed by capitalism—the toiling classes. . . .
"... all this implies and presents to the toiling classes, i.e., the vast majority of the population, greater practical opportunities for enjoying democratic rights and liberties than ever existed before, even approximately, in the best and the most democratic bourgeois republics." ("Theses and Report on Bourgeois Democracy and the Dictatorship of the Proletariat," Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 28, pp. 464-465.)
Against the reformist and revisionist conceptions of the Stalinist and Social Democratic parties as well as centrist formations, the Fourth International defends these fundamental programmatic contributions of Marx, Engels, Lenin, and the revolutionary workers movement. A socialist society cannot be constructed except through the collective ownership and control of the means of production and the social surplus product by the working class based on economic planning and administration through democratically centralized workers councils—in other words, planned management by the toilers. No such socialization can come into being unless the capitalists are economically and politically expropriated and state power is wielded by the working class through a system of workers democracy.
No socialist society can emerge within the narrow boundaries of the nation-state. It needs the framework of at least the major economically advanced countries of the world and cannot be completely established except on a world scale.
b. All historical experience demonstrates that no exploiting class ever gives up its power and privileges peacefully. And all experience of revolution and counterrevolution in this century—including the horrors of the Nazi dictatorship, the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki designed to terrorize the masses of the world, and the genocidal firepower unleashed by Washington against the Vietnamese and Kampuchean people—demonstrates that the capitalist class is the most ruthless and bloody ruling class in history. The only limits on its willingness to use barbaric violence and brutality, the only limits to the depths of its inhumanity, are those imposed on it by the relationship of class forces.
The capitalist class will unleash civil war against the workers to defend or re-establish its rule. As long as imperialism exists, it will attempt to intervene whenever and wherever it can to prevent popular revolutions and to roll them back where they have occurred before they can lead to socialist victories. Because of this, elements of civil war exist before, during, and after the workers' conquest of power. Exceptions to this law of the class struggle would only be possible following successful revolutions in the major imperialist powers, above all in the United States.
In addition, as Lenin pointed out, there is another "truth: there can be no real, actual equality until all possibility of the exploitation of one class by another has been totally destroyed.
"The exploiters can be defeated at one stroke in the event of a successful uprising at the centre, or of a revolt in the army. But except in very rare and special cases, the exploiters cannot be destroyed at one stroke. It is impossible to expropriate all the landowners and capitalists of any big country at one stroke. Furthermore, expropriation alone, as a legal or political act, does not settle the matter by a long chalk, because it is necessary to depose the landowners and capitalists in actual fact, to replace their management of the factories and estates by a different management, workers' management, in actual fact. There can be no equality between the exploiters—who for many generations have been better off because of their education, conditions of wealthy life, and habits—and the exploited, the majority of whom even in the most advanced and most democratic bourgeois republics are downtrodden, backward, ignorant, intimidated and disunited. For a long time after the revolution the exploiters inevitably continue to retain a number of great practical advantages: they still have money (since it is impossible to abolish money all at once); some movable property—often fairly considerable; they still have various connections, habits of organisation and management; knowledge of all the 'secrets' (customs, methods, means and possibilities) of management; superior education; close connections with the higher technical personnel (who live and think like the bourgeoisie); . . . and so on and so forth.
"If the exploiters are defeated in one country only—and this, of course, is typical, since a simultaneous revolution in a number of countries is a rare exception—they still remain stronger than the exploited, for the international connections of the exploiters are enormous. That a section of the exploited from the least advanced middle-peasant, artisan, and similar groups of the population may, and indeed does, follow the exploiters has been proved by all revolutions, including the Commune (for there were also proletarians among the Versailles troops. . .).
"The transition from capitalism to communism takes an entire historical epoch. Until this epoch is over, the exploiters inevitably cherish the hope of restoration, and this hope turns into attempts at restoration. . . ." (Lenin, "The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky," op. cit., pp. 253-254.)
While the size and cultural level of the working class has risen in the imperialist countries since this was written, and more than one country has thrown off capitalism, Lenin's general points remain valid. The exploiters still retain the relative advantages Lenin mentions. Until the power of world imperialism has been broken, the danger of capitalist restoration remains real and pressing.
c. The workers state will take whatever steps are necessary against the violence of the bourgeoisie to preserve the democratic rule of the working class. In this sense, the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat is maintained against the bourgeoisie through rule "unrestricted by any laws." (Ibid., p. 236.) Depending upon specific circumstances, the measures any particular workers state will have to take to defend the toiling majority will vary greatly.
The early Soviet republic, for example, found it necessary to disperse the Constituent Assembly, which counterposed itself to the democratic rule of the workers councils.
Likewise, the early Soviet constitution barred the right to vote to the bourgeoisie and rich farmers who exploited labor. Such a step was "a nationally specific and not a general question of the dictatorship [of the proletariat]. ... It would be a mistake, however, to guarantee in advance that the impending proletarian revolutions in Europe will all, or the majority of them, be necessarily accompanied by restriction of the franchise for the bourgeoisie. It may be so. . . .
" This aspect of the dictatorship [of the proletariat! did not make its appearance 'according to the plan' of any particular party; it emerged of itself in the course of the struggle." (Ibid., p. 256 and p. 272.)
In early 1921, as the civil war was coming to an end, the Bolsheviks were faced with the "tragic necessity" (as Trotsky was later to describe it) of suppressing the notorious rebellion of the sailors at Kronstadt. The situation internally was such that the country was in a state of near-total disorganization. Industry was on the point of collapse; agriculture had been neglected for years, a fact that, several months after Kronstadt, was to cause immense famine throughout much of the land. From later 1920 to early 1921, looting by armed gangs occurred nearly everywhere. These gangs received support from what remained of the Social Revolutionaries, who used this particular method to pursue their struggle against the Soviet state.
In this situation the Bolsheviks correctly saw that if the Kronstadt rebellion were not swift ly put down, White Army forces—supported by the Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries and backed up by foreign (especially French) imperialism—would utilize it to relaunch the civil war.
The Bolsheviks were the only party ready to defend the socialist revolution and the Soviet system; all other parties were array ed against them in struggle to overturn that system in favor of capitalism. This would have meant a huge bloodbath and the reduction of Russia to a semi colony of imperialism under a fascist-type dictatorship. In order to defend the Soviet state, the Bolsheviks were compelled to suppress not only the bourgeois parties but the Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries too, who were directly conspiring with imperialism and domestic reaction.
d. Unless imperialism overthrows the existing workers states, future socialist revolutions will not be confronted with the same extreme isolation faced by the Bolsheviks. "By anticipation it is possible to establish the following law: The more countries in which the capitalist system is broken, the weaker will be the resistance offered by the ruling classes in other countries, the less sharp a character the socialist revolution will assume, the less violent forms the proletarian dictatorship will have, the shorter it will be, the sooner the society will be reborn on the basis of a new, more full, more perfect and humane democracy. . . . Socialism would have no value if it should not bring with it, not only the juridical inviolability but also the full safeguarding of all the interests of the human personality." (Trotsky, "The World Situation and Perspectives," Writings of Leon Trotsky (1939-40), pp. 155-156.)
Especially in the United States, however, the ruling class will attempt to unleash violence and civil war on a massive scale against the insurgent workers. Until and unless the U.S. rulers are defeated and disarmed of their massive arsenal including nuclear weapons, the American toilers will face a bitter struggle and the toilers of the world a perpetual threat.
Obviously, every workers state must defend itself by any means necessary against attempts to overthrow it and violation of its laws that uphold its property relations—just as constitutional and penal codes under bourgeois rule forbid individual infringements on the rights of private property. In a workers democracy of a stable workers state emerging after the victorious disarming of the bourgeoisie and the end of civil war, the constitution and penal code will forbid private appropriation of the means of production or private hiring of labor. Likewise, prior to the emergence of a classless society, as long as proletarian class rule survives and the restoration of capitalism remains possible, the constitution and penal code of the workers state will forbid and punish acts of armed insurrection, attempts at overthrowing working-class power through violence, terrorist attacks on individual representatives of the workers, sabotage, espionage in the service of foreign capitalist states, etc.
Against terror, the workers state defends itself by repression of the terrorists. Against reactionary ideas, the workers state should defend itself by political and ideological struggle, education, and the general raising of the cultural level of the masses. The workers have no need to fear those who express the opinion that the factories and banks should be given back to private owners. There is no chance that the toilers will be persuaded by such propaganda. The working class in the imperialist countries, the deformed and degenerated workers states, and in an increasing number of semicolonial countries is strong enough not to have to reintroduce the concept of "crimes of opinion" either in its penal codes or in the daily practice of the workers states.
The abolition of capitalist state power and private property in the means of production does not immediately lead to the disappearance of privileges in the field of personal wealth or cultural heritage, not to speak of the disappearance of all elements of commodity production. Long after bourgeois state power has been overthrown and capitalist property abolished, remnants of petty commodity production and survival of elements of a money economy will continue to create a framework in which primitive accumulation of capital can still reappear. This is especially true if the level of development of the productive forces is still insufficient to guarantee the automatic appearance and consolidation of genuine socialist relations of production. State power of the working class is indispensable in order to prevent these "islands of bourgeois influence" from becoming bases for the restoration of capitalism. Long after the bourgeoisie has lost its positions as a ruling class politically and economically, the influence of bourgeois and petty-bourgeois ideologies, customs, habits, and cultural values will linger on in relatively large spheres of social life and in broad layers of society. But it is completely wrong to draw the conclusion that administrative repression of bourgeois concepts or values is a necessary condition for the building of a socialist society. On the contrary, historical experience confirms the counter productive character of administrative measures against reactionary bourgeois and petty-bourgeois ideologies. Suppression merely drives those who hold such views underground and prevents the revolutionary party from keeping its finger on the pulse of the masses. In fact, in the long run such methods even strengthen the hold of reactionary ideas and place the great mass of the proletariat in the position of being ideologically disarmed before them, because of lack of experience with genuine political struggles and ideological debates and the consequent lack of credibility of official "state doctrines."
The only effective way to eliminate the influence of bourgeois ideology upon the mass of toilers lies in: (1) The creation of objective conditions under which these ideas lose the material roots of their attraction and the basis upon which they reproduce themselves; (2) The waging of a relentless struggle against these false conceptions in the field of ideology and politics itself, which can be fully successful only under conditions of open debate and confrontation; (3) The utilization of education. The educational policy of a workers state should be based on teaching the new generation in a scientific, materialist spirit.
At the same time, freedom for religious observance creates the best circumstances to gradually defeat obscurantist ideas in the course of free and open confrontation with scientific ideas.
Only those who have confidence in neither materialism nor the proletariat and the toiling masses can shrink from open ideological conflict with those who defend the interests of bourgeois and petty-bourgeois layers. Once the capitalist class is disarmed and expropriated, once its members no longer have access to the mass media as determined by their wealth, the validity of Marxism will rapidly assert itself. There is no reason to fear a constant, free, and frank exchange of ideas. Through this confrontation the working class can educate and successfully free itself from the influence of bourgeois and petty-bourgeois ideas.
As the Communist Manifesto says, Marxism is "in no way based on ideas or principles that have been invented or discovered, by this or that would-be universal reformer.
"[It] merely expresses], in general terms, actual relations springing from an existing class struggle, from a historical movement going on under our very eyes. . . ."
Or, as Engels put it, communism is not "a certain doctrine which proceeds from a definite theoretical principle as its core and draws further conclusions from that. . . . Communism is not a doctrine but a movement; it proceeds not from principles but from facts. The Communists do not base themselves on this or that philosophy as their point of departure but on the whole course of previous history and specifically its actual results in the civil is ed countries at the present time. Communism has followed from large-scale industry and its consequences, from the establishment of the world market, of the concomitant uninhibited competition, from the ever more violent and more universal trade crises, which have already become full-fledged crises of the world market, from the creation of the proletariat and the concentration of capital, from the ensuing class struggle between proletariat and bourgeoisie. Communism, insofar as it is a theory, is the theoretical expression of the position of the proletariat in this struggle and the theoretical summation of the conditions for the liberation of the proletariat." ("The Communists and Karl Heinz en," Engels, Collected Works of Marx and Engels, Vol. 6, pp. 303-304.)
In the deformed and degenerated workers states, "Marxism," has been corrupted and transformed from a critical and revolutionary science, a weapon in the hands of the class-conscious proletariat fighting for its emancipation—into a doctrine tail or ed to justify the counterrevolutionary policies of the privileged bureaucratic castes. The result has been a real impoverishment of Marxist thought in the Soviet Union and the deformed workers states. Marxism survived as an opposition and underground tendency. But it can flourish only in an atmosphere of full freedom of discussion and confrontation with other currents of thought.
The democratic norms toward which we aspire cannot be fully implemented under every concrete circumstance. For example, under conditions of civil war, or foreign military intervention—that is, military attempts by the former ruling class and its international allies to overthrow workers power—the rules of war apply. Restrictions on the rights to political organization and, in some extreme cases, even on expression of opinions may well be necessary. No social class, no state, has ever granted full rights to those who actively engage in acts of war to overthrow it, and the dictatorship of the proletariat cannot do otherwise. No political party ever has unlimited debate when it is leading class combat. This is most sharply posed in times of war.
In all cases, however, the workers state will strive to maximize the real democracy enjoyed by the toilers, including under conditions of civil war. This is the best way to mobilize the power of the workers and their allies; heighten their social responsibility, discipline and fighting spirit; raise their self-confidence, consciousness, creativity, and their faith in their capacity to build a workers state and a classless society; and increase their active support of and participation in the administration of their own state.
e. Stalinism has systematically used the pretext of imperialist threat to level slanderous accusations of "collusion with imperialism," "objectively acting in the interests of imperialism," and "anti-soviet" or "anti-socialist" agitation to condemn and suppress any form of political criticism, opposition, or nonconformism. It has organized barbaric repression on a mass scale under these false charges. This has created a profound and healthy distrust among the world working class of the abuse of penal, juridical, and police institutions of a workers state to outlaw certain ideas or thoughts. It is therefore necessary to stress that in a workers state, charges brought against individuals should be strictly circumscribed to criminal acts.
The Fourth International stands for the defense and the extension of the most progressive conquests of the bourgeois democratic revolutions in the field of penal codes and justice. We fight for their incorporation into the constitutions and penal codes of the workers states. These include such rights as:
1. The necessity of written law. The avoidance of retroactive delinquency. The burden of proof to be on the accuser; the assumption of innocence until proof of guilt.
2. The full right of all individuals to freely determine the character of their defense; full immunity for legal defenders from prosecution for any statements or lines of defense used in such trials.
3. Rejection of collective responsibility of social groups, families, etc., for individual crimes.
4. Strict prohibition of any form of torture or forceful extortion of confessions.
5. Suppression of the death penalty except under extreme conditions, such as war.
6. Extension and generalization of public trial by juries of peers.
The last word in all these matters, as well as on the constitution and penal code of a workers state, rests with the workers themselves. The fundamental guarantee against all abuses of state power lies in the fullest participation in political activity by the toiling masses, the broadest possible workers democracy, and the arming of the proletariat.
The workers state can gradually eliminate a professional judiciary by drawing the masses more and more into the judicial functions beginning at the local level and for less serious crimes.
If extreme conditions such as civil war or massive economic dislocation make certain restrictions of democratic rights unavoidable, the basic nature and limitation of such restrictions should be clearly understood by the workers. It is necessary to clearly and frankly explain before the whole working class that such restrictions are inescapable and temporary measures, not part of the social and political norms of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Historically they are the last vestiges of the struggle to eradicate class society; not the harbinger of a new social order. Insofar as restrictions are necessitated by the class struggle, they should be limited, both in scope and time, and rev ok ed as soon as possible. This means also that the workers should be especially alert to the need to prevent such exceptional measures from becoming institutionalized and falsely elevated into the realm of principle.
The direct political and material responsibility for any restrictions of socialist democracy lies with bourgeois counterrevolution and international imperialism. The remnants of the former ruling classes must be on notice from the proletariat that the way they will be dealt with depends upon their behavior.
Military Preparedness
f. As long as imperialism survives in major countries—and certainly in the United States—it will never give up its attempts by economic pressure and military force to stop any further extension of the socialist revolution. Nor will it halt its attempts to reconquer the territories lost for direct exploitation by capital. Such a restoration is not possible in a gradual and peaceful way, any more than the overthrow of capitalism can occur in a peaceful and gradual way. Any workers state or group of workers states will find itself in a permanent condition of armed truce with international capital that could, under certain conditions, lead to open war. Therefore, one of the central responsibilities of the dictatorship of the proletariat is to maintain permanent military preparedness.
While we reject the idea that nuclear world war is inevitable, we likewise reject the idea that antiwar propaganda, agitation, and class organization of the working masses in the capitalist countries is sufficient to permanently prevent wars of aggression by imperialism against workers states and new revolutions. While its political lines of defense and extension of the revolution are what will ultimately be decisive for any workers state, as long as the working class of the main imperialist countries has not actually overthrown capitalist rule at home and disarmed the exploiters, the danger of counterrevolutionary wars remains. The proletariat in power must prepare against that danger, as it has to be ready to help the insurgent masses of other countries facing armed intervention by imperialism.
In the course of the socialist revolution, the proletariat must arm itself against the violence organized by the capitalist class. The program of the Fourth International points out how strike pickets can be the starting point for the organization of workers self-defense groups, which, as the class struggle deepens, will have to unite to form a workers militia.
Following a victorious seizure of power by the proletariat, any workers state will need to build a professional and highly trained army in addition to the militia, as long as the power of imperialism has not been broken. The militia, the "people in arms," serves an important function as a direct expression of the proletarian dictatorship, in addition to providing a backup and reserve for the army. An intermediate formation, for example the regular reserves in Cuba, consisting of trained workers and peasants ready to rapidly leave their jobs and take their place as soldiers, not only broad ens the base of the regular army but helps keep it organically linked to the workers.
The workers army itself is an army of a new type, reflecting its class base. In creating the Red Army, the early Soviet Republic abolished the old officer caste system. The officer caste in bourgeois armies is necessary to maintain capitalist authority over the workers and peasants impress ed into service because they are used to carry out ruling-class objectives that run counter to their own interests. It wasn't until 1935 that the Soviet bureaucracy re introduced the old officer caste system, itself one sign of the Stalinist Thermidor.
The balanced interrelationship of the two systems, of the professional army and the militia, will depend on the concrete international situation any workers state faces, as well as the general level of development of the country. This is because the ability to utilize a militia in any conflict depends upon factors such as how quickly it can be mobilized and transported and how many workers can be spa red from production as well as on the nature of any external threat. In general, the "correlation between regular troops and militia can serve as a fair indication of the actual movement toward socialism." (Trotsky, The Revolution Betrayed, p. 218.) Only as we approach a socialist society will the militia system become the sole form of defense. "The army of the proletarian dictatorship ought to have, according to the program [of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union drawn up by Lenin in 1919], 'an overtly class character—that is, to be composed exclusively of the proletariat and the semi-proletarian layers of the peasantry close to it. Only in connection with the abolition of classes will such a class army convert itself into a national socialist militia.'" (Trotsky, The Revolution Betrayed, p. 216.)
To maintain military preparedness against wars of aggression by imperialism means that resources otherwise needed to speed up the evolution toward socialism must be diverted to arms production, the maintenance of an army, etc. This is one more reason to reject the reactionary utopia of "building socialism in one country."
The exigencies of military preparedness by no means imply or justify bureaucratic restrictions on workers democracy, however.
The capacity for self-defense and the armed strength of the workers state are increased by a high level of political understanding and conviction on the part of the masses; a high level of political activity, mobilization and alertness; and internationalist education and activity.
Two key factors in the capacity of any workers state to defend itself are: the degree of social cohesion and political identification by the working masses with the given state and its government; and the average productivity of labor. The broader and less restricted is workers democracy, the greater will be the social cohesion and identification with the workers state and its leadership by the broad masses, and the quick er the growth in labor productivity. Far from being a "luxury" in a world situation characterized by potential wars of aggression by imperialism, workers democracy is a major asset in the hands of the workers state, even from a purely military point of view.
Inasmuch as imperialism cannot embark on military adventures without provoking massive working class opposition at home, it tries to weaken such opposition by increasing repression and restrictions of the democratic rights of the toilers. Workers democracy in the workers states would exercise an increasing power of attraction on the restive and exploited masses of the capitalist countries, undermining the military strength of imperialism.
Against the class collaborationist policy of "socialism in one country" practiced by the bureaucratic castes in the deformed and degenerated workers states today, a regime of workers democracy would represent and express the interests of the workers in the spread of the world revolution. Within the limits of the relationship of forces in world politics, the armed forces of such a revolutionary regime would be placed at the disposal of the world proletariat.
g. Military preparedness of the workers states against threats of imperialist aggression must include special measures against espionage, saboteurs sent in from abroad, and other forms of anti-working class military action that could persist for years, if not decades. Spies and saboteurs should be condemned for spying and sabotage, not for "subversive ideas." Thus, such special technical measures of self-defense by the workers state should strengthen, not restrict, workers democracy.
Role of Political Parties
h. Revolutionary Marxists reject all spontaneist illusions that the proletariat is capable of solving the strategic and tactical problems of overthrowing capitalism and the bourgeois state, conquering state power, and building socialism without the leadership of the most advanced sections of the proletariat, organized into a combat party of the Leninist type, and without the revolutionary Marxist program. The irreplaceable role of this revolutionary vanguard workers party of proletarian cadres educated in the Marxist program and tested in class battles, becomes even more important with the conquest of power by the working class. A strengthened Leninist party must lead the workers in running a state, a much more difficult job than overturning a capitalist state, until capitalism has been uprooted on a world scale. The problems of defense of the workers state internally and internationally against the bourgeois powers; of organizing the economy on new foundations; of consolidating democratic organs of workers power; of building a mass revolutionary international to extend the socialist revolution; of combating prejudices, reactionary ideas, and inequalities inherited from the past—all these problems essential to the transition to socialism cannot be solved spontaneously. They require the leadership of the party to implement the revolutionary Marxist program.
"The working class needs the communist party not only up to the seizure of power, not only during the seizure of power, but also after the transfer of power to the working class. The history of the Communist Party of Russia, which has been in power nearly three years, shows that the importance of the communist party after the working class has seized power does not diminish but, on the contrary, grows enormously." ("Theses on the Role of the Communist Party in the Proletarian Revolution Adopted by the Second Comintern Congress," op. cit., p. 133.)
i. The workers will know how to take the necessary steps to block counterrevolutionary groups seeking to overthrow their power. Any attempt by a privileged stratum to tell the toilers which political parties they may recognize and vote for is a blow not to the class enemy but to the working class; it under mines the exercise of political power by the workers. The working masses themselves, through their free vote, will determine which political parties are part of the soviet system.
The workers must be free to organize groups, tendencies, and parties without a priori ideological restrictions. The give-and-take of discussion and political struggle within the working class is the best way to decide the innumerable problems of tactics, strategy, and theory (program) involved in the titanic task of building a classless society under the leadership of the traditionally oppressed, exploited and downtrodden masses. Freedom for these masses to organize political groups, tendencies, and parties—subject to restrictions the toilers themselves find necessary in defense against the class enemy—is the only road to authentic workers democracy.
The emancipation of the proletariat can be achieved only by the activity of the proletariat itself, not by a self-proclaimed benevolent and enlightened elite. It follows that the role of the Leninist party both during and after the conquest of power is to lead the working class politically; to spur on and develop the mobilization and activity of the working class in defense of its interests; to help the workers engage in decision making at wider and wider levels; and to struggle within the class for majority support for its proposals through political means, not administrative or repressive measures.
The party and the state apparatus remain separate and distinct entities.
j. In the early Soviet Republic under Lenin, all parties except the Bolsheviks ultimately array ed themselves with the counterrevolution against Soviet power. The Bolsheviks had no choice but to rule alone, and they made the correct choice to do so. However, no theoretical document of Marx, Engels, Lenin, or Trotsky, and no programmatic document of the Third International under Lenin or of the Fourth International, contains the concept that a one-party system is necessary to maintain workers power. The Stalinist rationalization, developed after Lenin's death, that social classes have always been represented by a single party, is historically wrong and serves only as an apology for the monopoly of political power usurped by the Soviet bureaucracy and by its ideological heirs and imitators in the deformed workers states.
To the contrary, history has confirmed the correctness of Trotsky's position that Stalin turned the "Marxist teaching of the class nature of the party" into a caricature. "In reality classes are heterogeneous; they are torn by inner antagonisms, and arrive at the solution of common problems not otherwise than through an inner struggle of tendencies, groups, and parties. It is possible, with certain qualifications, to concede that 'a party is part of a class.' But since a class has many 'parts'—some look forward and some back—one and the same class may create several parties. For the same reason one party may rest upon parts of different classes. An example of only one party corresponding to one class is not to be found in the whole course of political history—provided, of course, you do not take the police appearance for the reality." (The Revolution Betrayed, p. 267.) This was true for the bourgeoisie under feudalism and capitalism, and for the workers under capitalism. It will remain true for the working class under the dictatorship of the proletariat.
Revolutionary Marxists reject the anarchist argument, later taken up by ultraleft "councilists" or "sovietists," that political parties by their very nature are bourgeois formations alien to the proletariat and have no place in workers councils. We reject the argument that parties automatically tend to usurp political power from the working class. While political groupings, tendencies, and parties have pro life rated and taken on more developed forms under capitalism, it is not true that they only came into existence with the rise of the modern bourgeoisie. Political groupings developed with the rise of the state, which itself arose with the emergence of class society. These groupings evolved into political parties with the rise of forms of government in which relatively large numbers of people participated to some extent in the exercise of political power (for example, under the urban democracies of Antiquity and of the Middle Ages).
Political parties are a reflection of the class struggle in the sphere of politics, that is, in questions relating to state and government policy. As long as class conflict continues, including under a workers state, political formations will continue to exist. They can disappear only with progress toward world socialism and the withering away of the state.
Anarchist and "councilist" opposition to political parties under the dictatorship of the proletariat leads in one of two equally wrong directions. It can reflect wishful thinking that the mass of toilers will abstain from the formation or support of groups, tendencies, or parties—in which case it is simply utopian. On the other hand, it can serve as a rationale for an attempt to suppress those workers who wish to express their views and engage in political action. This objectively favors the concentration of power in the hands of fewer individuals—the very opposite of what the anarchists and "councilists" claim to seek.
As political parties wither away with the disappearance of classes, other forms of organization reflecting differences in various spheres of social life will come into being and flourish.
As Trotsky explained: "Not for nothing did Engels speak of the Socialist Revolution as a leap from the kingdom of necessity to the kingdom of freedom. The Revolution itself is not as yet the kingdom of freedom. On the contrary it is developing the features of 'necessity to the greatest degree. Socialism will abolish class antagonisms, as well as classes, but the Revolution carries the class struggle to its highest tension. . . . Under Socialism, solidarity will be the basis of society. ...
". . . . the powerful force of competition which, in bourgeois society, has the character of market competition, will not disappear in a Socialist society, but, to use the language of psychoanalysis, will be sublimated, that is, will assume a higher and more fertile form. There will be the struggle for one's opinion, for one's project, for one's taste. In the measure in which political struggles will be eliminated—and in a society where there will be no classes, there will be no such struggles—the liberated passions will be channelized into technique, into construction which also includes art. ...
"All forms of life, such as the cultivation of land, the planning of human habitations, the building of theatres, the methods of socially educating children, the solution of scientific problems, the creation of new styles, will vitally engross all and everybody. People will divide into 'parties' over the question of a new gigantic canal, or the distribution of oases in the Sahara (such a question will exist too), over the regulation of the weather and the climate, over a new theater, over chemical hypotheses, over two competing tendencies in music, and over a best system of sports. Such parties will not be poison ed by the greed of class or caste. ... All will have a purely ideological character. It will have no running after profits, it will have nothing mean, no betrayals, no bribery, none of the things that form the soul of 'competition' in a society divided into classes. But this will in no way hinder the struggle from being absorbing, dramatic and passionate." (Trotsky, Literature and Revolution, pp. 229-231.)
In the transition period leading toward socialism, political parties will gradually be displaced by the kind of "parties" Trotsky describes. With the creation of the classless socialist society, the state, political parties, and politics will all disappear. Instead, the kinds of disputes and formations Trotsky sketch es will be the norm.
Workers Councils and the Extension of Democratic Rights
l. Even in the most democratic bourgeois regimes, the existence of private property in the means of production, class exploitation, and the consequent social and economic inequality result in the violent restriction of the practical application and enjoyment of democratic freedoms by the big majority. Law defends private property in the means of production; and the repressive apparatus of the state is aimed at controlling, and when necessary suppressing, the overwhelming majority.
This is the basis of Marx and Lenin's critique of the limitations of bourgeois democracy. Their conclusion is that workers democracy must be superior to bourgeois democracy both in the economic and social sphere—such as the right to work, security of existence, free education, and leisure time—and in the scope and extent of democratic rights enjoyed by the toilers.
To grant a single party a monopoly on access to printing presses, to radio, television, and other mass media, and to assembly halls restricts, not extends, the democratic rights of the proletariat. This applies equally to so-called mass organizations or "professional associations" (such as writers associations) controlled exclusively by a single party.
The rights of the toilers, including those with dissenting views, to have access to the material means of exercising democratic rights (freedom of the press, of assembly, of demonstration, the right to strike, etc.) is essential, as is the independence of the trade unions from the state.
m. Under capitalism and even precapitalist forms of commodity production, it is the law of value—an objective economic law, operating blindly and anarchically behind the backs of men and women—that regulates economic life, including the distribution of labor time and economic resources among basic sectors of the economy. The socialist revolution represents a giant leap toward a conscious regulation of humanity's economic and social destiny. While this process comes to harmonious completion only with the emergence of a worldwide socialist society, it begins in the epoch of the dictatorship of the proletariat with conscious planning of the nationalized economy. While the influence of the law of value cannot be completely eliminated during the transition period between capitalism and socialism, its domination must be overcome or the economy cannot be planned.
Planning means allocation of economic resources according to socially established priorities instead of according to blind market forces and the rule of profit. But who will establish these priorities, which involve the well-being oftens and hundreds of millions of human beings?
Experience in the USSR and the deformed workers states has shown that planning imposed by a privileged bureaucracy without democratic participation by the working masses is extremely wasteful and inefficient. This is true not only because of the waste of material resources and productive capacities and great dislocations in the plan, but—most damaging of all—because of the systematic stifling of the creative and productive potential of the working class. Workers democracy greatly reduces these shortcomings.
n. Building a classless socialist society also involves gigantic re molding of all aspects of social life. It involves constant revolutionary change in the relations of production, in the mode of distribution, in the work process, in the forms of administration of the economy and society, and in the customs, habits, and ways of thinking of the great majority of people. It involves the fundamental reconstruction of all living conditions: reconstruction of cities, development of social services that will end the domestic slavery of women, complete revolution of the educational system, restoration and protection of the natural environment, technological innovations to conserve natural resources, and so on.
Previously, the highest acquisitions of culture have been the property of the ruling class, with special prerogatives and privileges accruing to the intelligentsia. Members of this special grouping function as guardians and develop ers of science, art, and the professions for the ruling class. The intelligentsia as a separate social layer will gradually disappear as the masses progressively appropriate for themselves the full cultural heritage of the past and begin to create a socialist culture. In this sense, the distinction between "manual" and "intellectual" labor will disappear, while at the same time each individual will be able to develop their own capacities and talents.
All these endeavors, for which humanity possess es no blueprints, will give rise to momentous ideological debates and conflicting proposals. Any restriction of these debates and groupings can only hinder the emergence of majority agreement around the most effective steps toward the construction of socialism.
Such debates will continue throughout the process of building socialism. They concern the eradication of social evils deeply rooted in class society that will not disappear immediately with the elimination of capitalist exploitation or even wage-labor—the results of the oppression and alienation of women, national minorities, and other oppressed social layers. The eradication of these crippling legacies of class society necessitates freedom of organization and action for independent organizations of women and national minorities—that is, organizations of segments of the population not identical to the working class. The revolutionary party will be greatly aided in the fight to win political leadership in these movements and ideologically defeat various reactionary currents by promoting the broadest possible democracy within their ranks and by uncompromisingly upholding the right of all tendencies to defend their opinions and platforms before society.
In moving toward a classless society, the masses will participate not only through their votes, but also through the actual administration and management of society at all levels. This direct participation cannot be confined only to workers "at the point of production"; Lenin said the vast majority of the population would participate directly in the administration of "state functions." This is an aspect of the withering away of the state that begins as soon as the proletariat becomes the ruling class. The soviets around which the dictatorship of the proletariat will be consolidated are not solely factory councils, but organs of the masses in all are as of economic and social life, including factories, commercial units, hospitals, schools, transport and communication centers. This is indispensable in order to integrate into the proletariat organized as the ruling class its most dispersed and often poorest and most oppressed layers, such as women, oppressed nationalities, rural workers, workers in small shops, and pension ers working only a few hours a week. It is also indispensable in cement ing the alliance between the working class and the lower exploited petty-bourgeoisie, above all the working farmers or peasants. This alliance is decisive in winning and holding onto state power and in reducing the social costs of the building of socialism.
IV. The Political Revolution Against the Stalinist Bureaucracies
a. Stalinists of all varieties; Social Democrats; many centrists, anarchists, and ultralefts; as well as outright apologists for capitalism—each for their own reasons—identify Leninism with Stalinism. The Stalinists do it to try to cover up their flight from Leninism and to justify the bureaucracy's usurpation of power in the degenerated or deformed workers states. The others openly aim to discredit Leninism.
Many opponents of Leninism argue that the rise of Stalinism was rooted in the Leninist concept of the revolutionary centralist organization of the working-class vanguard. They claim that the Bolshevik's efforts to build such a combat party to lead the workers revolution inevitably resulted in a paternalistic, manipulative, and bureaucratic relationship between the party and the toiling masses. This in turn led to a one-party monopoly of power and that, they argue, caused Stalinism.
This unhistoric and idealist argument is false.
Another false idea is the attempt to counterpose Trotsky's writings of the 1930s in his struggle against Stalinism, to Lenin and Trotsky's writings on the dictatorship of the proletariat in the early days of the Soviet Republic. This attempt not only falsifies Trotsky's real positions at the end of his life, it is another way of casting doubt on the record of the Bolsheviks.
The Russian revolution was one of the most profound and sustained mass mobilizations in history, marked particularly by its working-class mobilizations.
The causes of the political expropriation of the working class by the rising bureaucratic caste were material—a combination of social and economic factors. Given the general poverty and backwardness of the country, the Bolsheviks understood that it was impossible for the Russian proletariat to directly hold power for a prolonged period if the revolution remained isolated. They looked to and worked for the extension of the revolution, most immediately to Europe. They knew the first workers state needed aid to break the capitalist encirclement. The catastrophic decline of the productive forces in Russia as a result of World War I, the civil war, imperialist military intervention, and sabotage by probourgeois technicians and other specialists led to conditions of extreme scarcity that fostered the growth of special privileges in the government apparatus, among the intelligentsia, and so on. The same factors led to a qualitative weakening of the already small proletariat, which was exhausted by war and deprivation. In addition, large portions of the political vanguard of the class died in the civil war or left the factories to be incorporated into the Red Army and the state apparatus.
After the beginning of the New Economic Policy, a certain economic revival began. But massive unemployment and continuous disappointments caused by the retreats and defeats of the world revolution nurtured political passivity and a general decline of mass political activity.
The rising bureaucratic caste turned away from the world revolution. This was the meaning of the theory of "socialism in one country." As Stalinism triumphed throughout the Communist International, its member parties were converted from revolutionary instruments into tools of the Kremlin's diplomacy, seeking class-collaborationist deals with imperialism at the expense of the world revolution. This in turn led to further defeats of the revolution, prolonged the isolation of the USSR, fostered conservative moods among the Soviet masses, and reinforced the conditions favoring bureaucratization.
Against the deepening Stalinist degeneration and in defense of the Marxist program of world revolution, the Bolshevik Left Opposition continued Lenin's struggle against the bureaucratic usurp ers. The International Communist Left Opposition, which was to become the Fourth International, thus preserved the Leninist program for the future. But in the given conditions in the Soviet Union, the working class and its Bolshevik-Leninist vanguard were unable to stem the growth of a materially privileged layer. In order to maintain and expand its privileges, this bureaucratic layer increasingly restricted the democratic rights of the workers. Since its greater access to consumer goods and services depended on its monopoly over the state apparatus, the bureaucracy destroyed both the soviets and the Bolshevik Party itself (while using its name for its own purposes). These are the main causes of the bureaucracy's usurpation of the exercise of direct political power by the workers. These material factors underlay the gradual merger of the party apparatus, the state apparatus, and the apparatus of economic management into a crystallized bureaucratic caste.
Attempts to explain the rise of Stalinism as the result of a "one party system" entirely miss the point. In destroying the Bolshevik party, the bureaucratic caste did not replace it with another political party, but with an apparatus designed to ensure its totalitarian rule, which is "Communist" and a "party" in name only.
Far from contributing to this degenerative process, Lenin's concept of the party and revolutionary centralism was at the heart of the program of those who led the workers in the fight against Stalinist bureaucratization. The Left Opposition recognized that Leninism had enabled the Bolsheviks to preserve the Marxist program in face of the massive capitulation to world imperialism by the parties of the Second International. It had created a disciplined proletarian force that could act on the basis of that program.
A Leninist party is the decisive weapon to lead the workers to take and hold power. The proof was in the Russian revolution itself. The Bolsheviks led the working class, and the working class led the nation, in the greatest revolution in history. The Bolsheviks led the proletariat in establishing for the first time the soviet system in power and holding that power against gigantic difficulties and ferocious assaults.
On the other hand, historical experience has confirmed that where such a party is absent or not steel ed and resolute enough, workers councils that form in revolutionary upsurges—for example in Germany in 1918-19, and Spain in 1936-37—do not succeed in conquering state power through overthrowing the bourgeois state. The facts confirm Marxist theory, demonstrating that the best chance for the conquest and exercise of power by the working class lies in the free and democratic organization of the toiling masses in soviet-type structures in which a Leninist party wins political leadership.
Although by 1921 the Bolsheviks found themselves the only party ready to defend soviet power, this did not mean an automatic rise of the Stalinist bureaucratic dictatorship. In the first period after the October revolution, the Bolsheviks actively sought and achieved a coalition with the Left Social Revolutionaries in the Soviet government. But these forces, too, deserted the proletarian revolution. With these realities of the class struggle imposed on them, should the Bolsheviks have given up power? That would have meant the restoration of capitalism, the conversion of Russia into a semi colony of imperialism, the brutal crushing and ruthless exploitation of the Russian toilers by the world bourgeoisie.
The Bolshevik party was an instrument of the working class and an enemy of the bureaucracy. The Soviet leadership—Lenin and Trotsky to begin with—were staunch advocates of world socialist revolution, and they defended it to the full extent of their political and material resources. For them, there could be no question of "socialism in one country."
While the bureaucracy did not yet have political leadership and a formulated ideology, significant political symptoms and material abuses had already appeared by 1921 in the Soviet Republic. They were openly admitted by the Bolsheviks. The problem of bureaucracy was demonstratively raised by Lenin at the Tenth Congress of the Bolshevik party, in the very same speech where he explained the necessity of crushing the Kronstadt rebellion. Lenin devoted the last two years of his life to the search for a way not only to expose and check the growth of bureaucracy, but to root it out even in the top circles of the party. He proposed to Trotsky that they organize a faction to combat Stalin at the party's Twelfth Congress. In other words, at the time of the Kronstadt uprising, the Bolshevik leadership did not represent the bureaucracy, either ideologically or politically, but rather was its main political enemy.
Another argument—shared by ultralefts and bourgeois apologists—is that some of the defensive measures the Bolsheviks were forced to take paved the way for Stalinism. The suppression of the Kronstadt rebellion and banning of parties organizing to overthrow the soviet power are two of the most oft-cited examples.
The opposite is true. These measures helped stave off the triumph of the "second wave of Menshevism" for a time—time in which the Bolsheviks did everything they could to extend the revolution. This argument leaves out the conflicting class content of Bolshevism and Stalinism. The Bolsheviks, of course, made mistakes, as Lenin and Trotsky were not afraid to admit. But the measures they took against the class enemy and its agents were in defense of the workers state and in the interests of the workers and the world revolution. The measures taken by Stalin were against the workers, in the interests of the rising bureaucratic caste, and against the interests of the world revolution.
This line of argument finally retreats to the assertion that the methods the Bolsheviks used to defend the workers state at least made it easier for the bureaucracy to resort to similar methods later against its opponents in the Bolshevik party and still later against members of Stalin's own faction. But this argument ignores the fact that in struggles between classes similar methods and weapons will inevitably be used by opposing sides. Should the working class therefore renounce the use of force against its class enemies because force might later be used against those remaining faithful to the Marxist program?
b. The political counterrevolution headed by Stalin meant that a petty-bourgeois layer alien and hostile to the working class smashed workers democracy. Democracy is incompatible with the maintenance of the bureaucratic caste's privileges and power. Since it owns no means of production, the bureaucracy would lose its privileges if functionaries were elected by workers democracy and the state apparatus was under proletarian control.
The counterrevolution did not overcome the resistance of the working class to the point where private property was restored in the means of production. State ownership of the means of production and economic planning, necessary prerequisites to socialist development, have been the basis of a rapid growth of the productive forces. But the apparatus of the workers state underwent a complete degeneration; it was transformed from a weapon of the working class into a weapon of bureaucratic violence against the working class. The Stalinist totalitarian political regime most closely resembles that placed in power in capitalist countries by victorious fascist movements. In this respect, the level of political rights enjoyed by the toilers has fallen far below the level attained in struggle by the masses in bourgeois democracies. The USSR thus embodies intense contradictions, combining features leading in the direction of socialism with the most backward features of capitalist rule in imperialism's death agony. The Soviet Union remains a degenerated workers state. As Trotsky explained, the workers are both the ruling class and an oppressed class.
In Eastern Europe, Mongolia, North Korea, Yugoslavia, China, and Vietnam, workers states have come into existence that were deformed from birth due to the Stalinist nature of their leaderships. Privileged bureaucratic castes consolidated power in these countries, blocking the formation of a system of workers democracy.
In the case of Cuba, the Fourth International holds that a workers state was established there in August-October 1960 under a revolutionary leadership, and that while soviet forms have not been established, neither has a bureaucratic caste usurped power. Thus Cuba is unique among all the workers states. Whatever bureaucratic deformations exist, they are of a qualitatively different order than in the deformed workers states or the USSR.
The degenerated or deformed workers states—as well as Cuba—must be defended by the working people of the world against any attempt to restore capitalism, which would represent a giant historical step backward. At the same time, the bureaucratic castes in these countries represent the greatest internal obstacle to defense of the workers' conquests and to the advance to socialism.
The bureaucratic caste is a deeply conservative layer. Content to keep its snout in the trough, it asks nothing more than to be left in peace to consume. That is why all the bureaucratic castes seek a deal with imperialism, even at the expense of each other. In exchange for an elusive and utopian "peace" with imperialism, the Stalinists are ready to put their influence in the international workers movement at the service of capitalism against the world revolution. That is why they all subscribe to Stalin's "theory" of "socialism in one country" ("their" own). This is just one way of stating the bureaucracy's willingness to stab the anti-imperialist and socialist revolution in any other country in the back.
The foreign policy of the bureaucratic castes increases the danger of capitalist restoration by strengthening the hand of a declining capitalism on a world scale. Internally, the rule of the bureaucratic castes distorts and sabotages planned economy and fo st ers all kinds of inequality. The oppression of the workers, women, and minority nationalities weakens the dictatorship of the proletariat. Both internally and internationally, these castes are enemies of the working class and of socialism. Defense of the deformed or degenerated workers state therefore requires the struggle to overthrow the bureaucratic castes, install regimes of workers democracy, and re-establish the Leninist policy of proletarian internationalism.
Timid before the capitalists, these castes will fight ferociously to defend their privileges. They are ready to unleash extreme violence and repression against the workers. In order for these workers states to advance toward socialism, the bureaucratic castes will have to be removed by the proletariat, using revolutionary means. Since the economic foundations and social conquests first established by the October revolution will be preserved by the insurgent toilers in each country, Marxists call the overthrow of the bureaucracy a political revolution.
c. The founding document of the Fourth International, the "Death Agony of Capitalism and the Tasks of the Fourth International," adopted in 1938, outlined the basic program of the political revolution for the USSR. It retains essential validity today and can be extended to the deformed workers states:
"A fresh upsurge of the revolution in the USSR will undoubtedly begin under the banner of the struggle against social inequality and political oppression. [From the experience of Eastern Europe and struggles by oppressed nationalities inside the Soviet Union, we can also add national oppression by the Kremlin.] Down with the privileges of the bureaucracy! Down with Stakhanovism! Down with the Soviet aristocracy and its ranks and orders! Greater equality of wages for all forms of labor!
"The struggle for the freedom of the trade unions and the factory committees, for the right of assembly, and for freedom of the press, will unfold in the struggle for the regeneration and development of Soviet democracy.
"The bureaucracy replaced the soviets as class organs with the fiction of universal electoral rights—in the style of Hitler-Goebbels. It is necessary to return to the soviets not only their free democratic form but also their class content. As once the bourgeoisie and kulaks were not permitted to enter the soviets, so now it is necessary to drive the bureaucracy and the new aristocracy out of the soviets. In the soviets there is room only for representatives of the workers, rank-and-file collective farmers, peasants, and Red Army personnel.
"Democratization of the soviets is impossible without the legalization of soviet parties. The workers and peasants themselves by their own free vote will indicate what parties they recognize as soviet parties.
"A revision of planned economy from top to bottom in the interests of producers and consumers! Factory committees should be returned the right to control production. A democratically organized consumers' cooperative should control the quality and price of products.
"Reorganization of the collective farms in accordance with the will and in the interests of those who work there!
"The reactionary international policy of the bureaucracy should be replaced by the policy of proletarian internationalism. The complete diplomatic correspondence of the Kremlin should be published. Down with secret diplomacy!
"All political trials staged by the Thermidorian bureaucracy should be reviewed in the light of complete publicity and controversial openness and integrity. Only the victorious revolutionary uprising of the oppressed masses can revive the Soviet regime and guarantee its further development toward socialism. There is but one party capable of leading the Soviet masses to insurrection—the party of the Fourth International!" (Op. cit. pp. 145-146)
Workers councils will arise in the course of the political revolution. "They will be created by those layers of the toilers who are drawn into the movement. The significance of the soviets consists precisely in the fact that their composition is determined not by formal criteria but by the dynamics of the class struggle. Certain layers of the Soviet 'aristocracy' will vacillate between the camp of revolutionary workers and the camp of the bureaucracy. Whether these layers enter the soviets, and at what period, will depend on the general development of the struggle and on the attitude which different groups of the Soviet aristocracy take in this struggle. Those elements of the bureaucracy and aristocracy who in the course of the revolution go over to the side of the rebels will certainly find a place for themselves also in the soviets. But this time not as bureaucrats and 'aristocrats,' but as participants in the rebellion against the bureaucracy." (Trotsky, "It is Necessary to Drive the Bureaucracy and Aristocracy out of the Soviets," ibid, pp. 184-185.)
d. Antibureaucratic struggles in the degenerated or deformed workers states since 1938 have confirmed the overall correctness of this program. The Hungarian revolution of 1956 came the closest to a full-scale political revolution. The "Prague Spring" of 1968-69, while not so fully developed as the Hungarian revolution, had the benefit of occurring under more favorable conditions in a country where the proletariat is the overwhelming majority of the active population, with a stronger tradition of socialist and trade-union organization.
Both these experiences, as well as the more limited workers struggles in Poland, confirm that the program of workers democracy defended by revolutionary Marxists is the conscious expression of what millions of workers and toilers fight for when they rise against the totalitarian rule of the bureaucracy. It reflects the strategic line of march of the proletariat in the degenerated and deformed workers states.
The struggle against Russian national oppression, against the secret police, for the liberation of political prisoners, against repression of trade-union activities outside the control of the bureaucracy, against press censorship, against judicial arbitrariness (i.e., for written law and the right of defendants to a fair trial and a fair defense), against the dictatorship expressed by the totalitarian control of all aspects of life by the Stalinist party and for freedom for other workers parties to organize, against the bureaucracy's control over the social surplus product and its economic mismanagement: all these demands were key motives that brought the Hungarian and Czechoslovak masses into the streets against the bureaucratic caste. They will bring them into the streets tomorrow or the day after in the USSR and the People's Republic of China, too.
While other layers initiated these upsurges, the workers quickly came forward as the backbone of the struggle. In Hungary, workers councils were formed and centralized; they became the main vehicle of the fight against the bureaucracy even some months after the Kremlin's occupation. In Czechoslovakia, factory committees appeared just before the Soviet invasion.
In order to justify their counterrevolutionary suppression of these mass uprisings with the Soviet army, the Moscow Stalinists level the false slanders that the aim of the rebels was the restoration of capitalism. Although rightist elements naturally tried to take advantage of the political and social turmoil, the Hungarian and Czechoslovak workers, the most cohesive and powerful sector of the masses, viewed preservation of the nationalized and planned economy as a defense of their own most basic interests. And they were right. Their consciousness that the new property forms were theirs, and their willingness to defend them, demonstrates the working-class nature of these states in spite of the Stalinist deformations and misrule.
After a long and passionate debate, the Hungarian workers councils and the Central Workers Council of Budapest came out for both defense of the nationalized property and freedom for all political parties except fascists. In Czechoslovakia, demands for freedom of political organization, of political clubs, tendencies, and parties, were first taken up by sizable tendencies inside the Communist Party itself and supported by the great majority of the trade unions and factory committees. Demands for freedom of expression in the press and for general access to press, radio, and TV facilities for the masses were especially strong in the working class.
Significantly, the Stalinist spokesmen of the Czechoslovak bureaucracy, who prepared and collaborated with the Soviet invasion, concentrated their fire on demanding the silencing of the so-called irresponsible or probourgeois writers, while the workers supported their right to be heard, Similar confrontations will occur in the future political revolutions, including in the USSR and China. Revolutionary Marxists align themselves with the toiling masses in such cases. We are confident that the expansion of democracy will strengthen the working class and that the workers will know how to deal with any counterrevolutionaries trying to overthrow the workers state, as well as with Stalinists trying to crush the masses and reimpose bureaucratic totalitarian rule.
e. The Stalinists do not openly justify their rule in the same way as capitalists or previous ruling class. That is one reflection of the fact that these bureaucratic castes are not a new ruling class. They don't even admit their own existence! They cover up their rule and their privileges, claiming the mantle of Leninism, the working class, and socialism.
But the Stalinist parties long ago ceased to represent the interests of the workers, or to be revolutionary. They are counterrevolutionary, representing the interests of one or another of the conservative ruling bureaucratic castes. Class collaborationist to the core, they are transmission belts for bringing bourgeois interests, pressures, and ideas into the workers states and the working-class movement.
Genuine Leninist parties are characterized by their working-class composition, their political homogeneity around a revolutionary internationalist program, their revolutionary centralism, and their internal democracy. Their iron discipline is the opposite of the fear and mindless toa dying that characterizes Stalinist bureaucratic centralism. Leninist discipline ultimately depends on a proletarian composition as well as a revolutionary program, common class-struggle experience in fighting to implement the program, and party democracy. It reflects the loyalty the membership develops toward their party and their confidence in its democratic structure and democratically-elected leadership. It is grounded in consciousness of the need for discipline in order to carry out the party's revolutionary program in face of a ruthless class enemy. Party democracy is indispensable for hammering out correct policies and rectify ing mistakes in the course of applying the revolutionary program to ever-changing reality. It is needed to preserve the revolutionary program and fiber of the party, and to keep its leadership in intimate contact with the ranks, through which it keeps its finger on the pulse of the masses.
Party democracy includes the right to form tendencies and factions within the party to fight to correct what members may view as serious mistakes. The further unfolding of the class struggle then re gist ers whether or not the majority orientation is correct and what alterations should be made.
In their need to crush all democracy, including in their own parties, the Stalinists forbid tendencies or factions. In doing so, they refer to the decision by the Bolsheviks to temporarily ban them during the difficult situation facing the Soviet workers state in 1921. In making this false equation, the Stalinists have to ignore the fact that the whole history of the Bolshevik party was one of lively internal debate, with the formation of tendencies and factions and free and open discussion. They must ignore the fact that the Bolsheviks continued to defend the right to form tendencies and factions in the other parties of the Communist International and in the International itself even in the most difficult days of the Russian revolution. They must ignore the fact that even this temporary ban on factions was neither intended to nor resulted in the suppression of differing view points or the open expression of dissent in the party.
The Bolsheviks took this drastic and temporary emergency measure to better lead the working class under exceptional circumstances in face of the class enemy. The rising bureaucracy, however, prolonged it, transformed it into thought control, and then elevated it into a dogma to justify crushing democracy within the party and the oppression of the working class.
f. The fight for proletarian democracy is difficult under current conditions in the degenerated and deformed workers states. These conditions would be altered qualitatively by a proletarian revolution in one or more of the industrially advanced capitalist countries. Such a revolution would give an enormous impulse to the struggle for democratic rights throughout the world. It would also immediately open the possibility of increasing labor productivity on an immense scale, eliminating the scarcities that are the root cause of the entrenchment of a parasitic bureaucracy in a workers state.
A political revolution in the deformed or degenerated workers states, particularly in the Soviet Union or the People's Republic of China, would also signify an upsurge of proletarian democracy with colossal repercussions internationally.
V. A Clear Stand Is Necessary to Win the Masses for the Socialist Revolution
a. The defense of a clear and unequivocal program of workers democracy is an indispensable part of the struggle against the reformist leaderships that seek to inculcate bourgeois-democratic myths and illusions in the working class in the imperialist countries. It is likewise indispensable in the struggle against procapitalist illusions and anti-Leninist prejudices among various layers of rebels and oppositionists in the degenerated and deformed workers states, thereby advancing the struggle for political revolution in these countries.
b. The world proletariat is justifiably repel led by the historical experiences of the rise of fascist movements and the establishment of various types of reactionary bourgeois dictatorships in the capitalist world and by the dictatorial rule of the Stalin and Mao regimes and their successors in the workers states. The workers of both the imperialist countries and the degenerated or deformed workers states hold a deep distrust of any justification for restricting democratic rights of the workers after the overthrow of capitalism. This distrust objectively conforms to the basic course of all proletarian revolutions up to now. The direction of the masses has always been toward the broadest possible democratic rights.
c. The ruling class utilizes all the means at its disposal to identify bourgeois parliamentary institutions with the maintenance of democratic rights. In Western Europe, North America, and Japan, for instance, the capitalist rulers seek to appear as champions of the democratic aspirations of the workers and plebeian masses.
One of the key components of the struggle for leadership of the masses consists in properly understanding the importance of their democratic demands and leading the fight to defend them. This not only creates the best conditions for anticapitalist struggle, but also counter acts the strenuous efforts of the reformists to co-opt the struggle for democratic demands and divert it down the blind alley of dependence on bourgeois parliamentary institutions.
The task of stripping from the reformists their pre tens es to speak for the democratic aspirations of the masses is thus crucial for revolutionary Marxists. Programmatic clarification and propaganda—important as they are—are insufficient to achieve this objective. The masses learn through their practical daily experience; hence the importance of going through this daily experience with them and drawing the correct lessons from it.
As the class struggle sharp ens, the reformist leaders who trumpet the alleged benefits of the bourgeois parliamentary system will sound less and less convincing. These labor lieutenants of capital will justify repressive measures taken by the employers against the insurgent masses. The workers will increasingly challenge the authority and prerogatives of the ruling class on all levels. The workers themselves through their own organizations—from trade unions and factory committees to workers councils—will begin to assert their authority, and they will gain confidence in their ability to run things better themselves.
In order to carry out their struggles more effectively with the broadest mass involvement, the workers will see the need for the most powerful and thus the most democratic form of organization to defeat their class enemy. Through this experience of struggle and participation in their own democratically run organizations, the masses will have more freedom of action and more liberty in the broadest sense of the word than they ever exercised under bourgeois parliamentary democracy. They will learn the irreplaceable value of proletarian democracy.
d. It has been argued by some apologists for repressive bourgeois or Stalinist regimes in semicolonial countries that the above arguments apply only to those countries in which the wage-earning class already represents a clear majority of the active population and are not faced with a great majority of petty independent producers. It is undeniable that such a social relationship of forces puts objective obstacles on the road of a full flowering of workers democracy. It is also true that in some countries of that type—for example, in China and Vietnam—exceptional political conditions (the extreme weakness and decomposition of the native ruling classes, the possibility to gain wide support among the peasantry for the cause of national liberation, the explosive nature of the agrarian question, etc.) enabled deformed workers states to come into existence; workers democracy was crushed from the start.
But it is necessary to underline the exceptional character of these experiences, which will not be repeated in most semicolonial countries and cannot be repeated in imperialist countries. It is necessary, furthermore, to stress that even in these countries, the main responsibility for the absence of democratic organs of the toiling masses during and after the victorious revolution does not lie in objective circumstances but with the petty-bourgeois nature and Stalinist character of the Communist parties that controlled the mass movement.
Furthermore, inasmuch as a growing number of semicolonial countries are at present undergoing a process of distorted, partial industrialization, their proletariat today is often already of much greater weight relative to the active population than was the Russian proletariat in 1917 or the Chinese proletariat in 1949. This proletariat, through its own experience of struggle, speedily rises toward levels of consciousness that will place the organization of broad united front proletarian organs of combat on the agenda from the beginning of a revolutionary crisis.
e. The measures that the workers will have to take to defend their rule will vary according to the conditions they face, as will the specific forms of workers democracy.
A semicolonial country where the proletariat is a small minority and which is surrounded by powerful imperialist states will obviously face more immediate threats of a capitalist counterrevolution than the victorious workers of the United States. But the best way to face and solve the problems confronted by any workers state is through the maximum possible amount of workers democracy.
Degenerated or deformed workers states have come into existence. We will see revolutions with other deviations from the norms of the Marxist program of a less severe nature. But the revolutionary Marxist program of workers democracy is not merely one "model" of workers states among others, nor is it a utopian scheme imposed on reality. It represents the interests of the working class and the necessary path to the victory of the world socialist revolution—in the degenerated and deformed workers states, in the imperialist countries, and in the semicolonies. In this sense, the program of Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Trotsky for workers democracy as the norm in organizing the dictatorship of the proletariat, as it has been enriched in the light of experience since the Russian revolution, remains the program to unite the workers of the world, establish their rule, and construct socialism.