The eighth discriminating factor - Second part

3. The class’ struggle in the socialist society

giovedì 18 ottobre 2007.
 

  1. The long lasting revolutionary popular war
  2. The new democracy revolutions
  3. The class’ struggle in the socialist society
  4. The mass line
  5. The struggle between the two lines in the communist party

The historical contributions of the socialist countries built during the first wave of the proletarian revolution and the teachings of their experience.

 

It is impossible to carry out the rebirth of the communist movement beyond an elementary and spontaneous level without a balance of the socialist countries’ experience. The Soviet Union, the Popular Chinese Republic and the socialist camp had assumed a very important role in the world proletarian revolution. First the degeneration and then the collapse of the socialist camp have produced and produce negative effects over all the world communist movement and over every part of it. In 1926 Stalin said: “What will happen if the capitalism would succeed in smothering and destroying the Soviet Republic? It will succeed an era of the darkest reaction in all the capitalist and colonial countries. The working class and the oppressed people will be repressed. The positions of the international communism will be lost” (17) . What he said in the late 1926 has happened a little more than 60 years after and still weighs on us.

Still today the bourgeoisie tells the story that Reagan and his struggle against the “empire of Evil” and Woytila with his Madonna of Fatima have made collapse the socialist camp. Every communist must clearly understand why the socialist camp and particularly the Soviet Union first degenerated and then collapsed. This is necessary both for the ideological strength in the struggle we have to carry out both for not repeating the mistakes before done. Besides, the even short history of the first socialist countries illuminates with a new and fruitful light all the doctrine and the experience of the communist movement. It does it as generally every more advanced experience allows understanding better also the past and the more backward experiences.

Mao Tse-tung developed a systematic and relatively complete balance about the tract of transition from capitalism to communism done in the first socialist countries. Particularly he shows the laws of transition on the basis of the experience done in USSR and in the Chinese Popular Republic (18) .

Marx, Engels and Lenin repeatedly showed some points of the doctrine of the communist movement, and also Stalin did it (even if with some contradictions about the level reached by the extinction of classes’ antagonism in USSR). Those points were the following.

1. The socialism was the phase of transition from capitalism to communism, of the transformation of the production relations, of the other social relations and of the ideas, conceptions and feelings corresponding to them, in order to eliminate the foundations and the manifestations of the capitalist society and to establish social relations founded on the principle “from everyone according to his capacities, to everyone according to his needs”, with the corresponding conceptions.

2. This transition had to last an entire historical period and would end on a world level with the consequent extinction of the States, of the barriers of race and nation that divide all men and of each form of oppression on women.

3. Until the end of this process, the States and divisions between exploited and exploiting classes would survive, even if in a specific and decreasing way. The class’ struggle continued to be the drive of the transformation of society.

Mao showed that it needs to clearly consider three different aspects of the production relations in order to understand the class’ struggle in the socialist countries:

1. the property of means and conditions of production,

2. the divisions among men in the productive activity (divisions between manual and brain-work, between men and women, between the city and the countryside, between advanced and backwards zones and sectors, etc.),

3. the relations of distribution of the product.

Considering all these three aspects it was possible understand with certainty where the bourgeoisie was in the socialist countries. It was constituted by that part of the leaders of the party, of the State and of the other social institutions who supported the way towards capitalism (who opposed the march towards communism). Therefore it was possible to do a complete class’ analysis of the socialist societies and so to direct the oppressed classes’ struggle within the new political and cultural conditions specific of the socialist society. The proletarian Cultural Revolution was a practical manifestation of the strength that the class’ struggle can release for communism in the socialist society.

Mao showed that the transformation of the social relations and of the connected conceptions and feelings proceeded by stages (and every stage alternated gradual evolutions and leaps). The transformation so could be studied precisely (“with the precision of an experimental science”). Then in a certain measure the transformation can be directed in accordance with its own laws which had to be searched, discovered and applied (19) . It was possible both to advance as to withdraw. In the socialist society there were two possible paths: to advance towards communism or to withdraw towards the capitalist system. Two classes fought between themselves (the bourgeoisie and the working class) and then two lines contended for the direction of the communist party, of the State and of the other institutions of the society. This also offered the basis to face the struggle against the restoration after the modern revisionists took the direction (20) . No analysis of the socialist countries outside Maoism allows valorizing their experience, showing the limits and the real problems and indicating the path for the advancement. All the analyses try to understand the socialist countries with the distorting lens of categories relative to backward societies (State capitalism, Asiatic way of production, bureaucratic system, etc.). Owing to its overall backwardness the Popular Republic of China was not able to replace the Soviet Union as basis of the world proletarian revolution and fell under the modern revisionists’ rule (Teng Hsiao-ping and his successors). Nevertheless the Maoism allows to the communists of the entire world to understand the experience of the socialist countries and to draw constructive lessons from it.

Mao Tse-tung directed the Cultural Proletarian Revolution and the struggle to drive out the leaders of the party and of the State who supported the capitalist way. Nevertheless he indicated that the results obtained in the Chinese Popular Republic were precarious and there were many chances that the modern revisionists succeeded in seizing the direction of the PCC, making the Republic regress from the achieved positions, if there would not have been upheavals in Soviet Union (21) . Also this confirms the depth and exactness of Mao Tse-tung’s balance on the socialist society.


-  The five main contributions of Maoism to communist thought

  1. The long lasting revolutionary popular war
  2. The new democracy revolutions
  3. The class’ struggle in the socialist society
  4. The mass line
  5. The struggle between the two lines in the communist party

NOTES

17. Relation on the Russian question done by Stalin on 7th December, at the 7th Plenum of the Enlarged Executive Committee of the Communist International (November-December 1926).

18. On the Historical Experience of the Socialist Countries in Rapporti Sociali , n. 11, (November 1991).

19. National Secretariat of the CARC, Project of Manifesto-Program , pages 45 onwards.

20. The Restoration of Capitalism in the Soviet Union, in Rapporti Sociali , n. 8 (November 1990).

21. The importance of this alarm launched by Mao shows up even more if we remember that, on the contrary, Henver Hoxha did not have any suspect of the upsetting in preparation in Albany, neither at the beginning of the Eighties. He did not suspect of it, in spite of the tenacious defense of the revolutionary positions that he led against the modern revisionists.