Part 4 - Continued from previous page

In the course towards the active resistance, many new phenomena and unknown situations will appear. Communists must be able to detect them, realize their importance, and evaluate them. The future will by no means be a simple repetition of the past. It has never been and it will not become one now. This is where Mao’s words fit: “Expensive things are not won at a cheap price” (On Protracted War, 1938, point 49). In this struggle it is clear that the most advanced detachments of the international proletariat, those opening paths, with liberated areas, fighting in guerrilla zones, striking serious blows to the enemy, following People’s War and connecting it with a general line corresponding to the present stage, are playing and will play a vanguard role. The broad mobilization of the popular masses for the support and strengthening of these movements is very important for their victory and the fulfillment of the strategic objective, as we determined it. At the same time we ought to pay proper attention to all the authentic mass movements, outbreaks, revolts all over the world, because they pose a whole series of serious issues and subjects. The movements of the working class and of the youth. all over the world and in the imperialist metropoles, can teach the revolutionaries a lot, no matter where they are and the conditions under which they fight. Through these trials on a worldwide scale, in different conditions and through the dealing with unknown situations, the new world vanguard will be steeled, the international communist movement will be reconstructed. From its lines the objective law of the development of the class struggle in the present period will be discovered.

3.2.5. About the position of the timeliness of communism

A century is over. The bourgeoisie and its various headquarters are feverishly preparing several accounts. We believe that the communist movement has nothing to fear of these accounts. It must enter the discussion, and it must do so from a dominant position. But the bourgeoisie makes its accounts talking about a “new era” and new potentials, mainly based on the new technological and scientific discoveries, which are of course monopolized by it to an unprecedented extent. 

When Mao stressed, in socialist conditions, that, as regards the correlation in the ideological front, Marxism was still weak, he also took into account both the frenzied activation of imperialism to respond to the challenge of the communist movement, which had the initiative in the first decades of the century, and the inculcation of bourgeois and idealist ideology in people’s conscience throughout the centuries. It was impossible for Marxism to “get rid” of all this in a few decades. Consequently, the overuse of superlative adjectives such as “unbeatable”, “always young”, etc., for the term Marxism did not lead to its domination.

Capitalism today launches the spontaneity or even the automatism of progress through science and technology, in an arty packaging and a popular version at the same time, that is, a version of broad consumption in all the parts of the globe (not only where it might be more widely spread). Many of the problems appearing are interpreted as the necessary adjustments that countries or regions must make in order to get a privileged position in the cosmogonic changes occurring… The way this is presented or conveyed, brings us against a constant, continuous substitution of the communist plan:
- The derision of the dreams of the communist plan for the abolition of class differentiation: the salaried society is offered in its place (we are all salaried).
- The reduction of the socially necessary labour to the lowest limit through the development of the productive forces etc.: the “Scientific and Technological Revolution” with its results is offered instead.
- Elimination of the contradiction between manual and mental labour: automation is offered instead.
- Elimination of the contradiction between conception and execution: the abolition of intermediate managers as a prospect and the constantly developing artificial intelligence is offered in its place.
- Elimination of the difference between city and countryside: the urbanization, together with the incorporation of agricultural economy in the peak technologies, etc. etc., is offered instead.
And, finally, the greatest mockery: decline of the state, anti-statism, and the like.

Recently Bill Clinton said that each one should change 5-6 professions in his/her life. Instead of the program aim of communism, that human shakes off the slavish subjugation (subordination) to the division of labour, imperialism “offers” the flexible, life-long trained worker. If this constant, uninterrupted offer of substitutes is interpreted correctly by the revolutionaries, it demonstrates more clearly than ever the objective ripening of the conditions for a qualitative leap to a higher form of social organization. The bourgeoisie tries to make it “unnecessary” since the very spontaneous-planned evolution presents social forms as substitutes or realizations of this plan. In any case, communism is accused of being incompatible with this spontaneous automatic advance to progress through technology and science, since it is loaded with ideology and cannot lead to the prosperity and happiness of the people.

Are we changing century in such an ideological background, or is it not the prevailing issue? If there is an opinion that it is not such, then let’s discuss it. But if it is, then a series of tasks necessarily lie on the communist movement; the communist movement must meet those tasks. It has to conduct a battle on this ground as well, and win it. This means bending over and studying all these issues. There is no other way. It has to present a deep and broad ideological front on this ground. Maoism, when schematized, over-projected, over-highlighted as something standing over Marxism and Leninism, as something which, when accepted, automatically offers over-adequacy and over-sufficiency, is of no use. We should consider the huge work of Marx and Engels in order to rebut the then dominant economic, political, scientific, historical views. Let’s think of the great attention they paid to a series of discoveries, inventions, and technological applications, especially in the most developed capitalist countries. Let’s think of the huge attempts made by Lenin to defend materialism against machism (“Materialism and Empiriocriticism”). Let’s also think of him, when the 1st World War was conducted, being in a library in Switzerland studying Hegel, exclaiming that marxists had been reading “The Capital” for 50 years without understanding it, composing his famous “Philosophical Notes”, stressing that there are no great walls standing between the objective and subjective terms, studying anything written about imperialism with great care. And let’s compare this attitude with the present state of mind and the feeling of adequacy and sufficiency (covered by insufficient knowledge, mechanical repetition of citations, ideologicalization, dogmatism and empiricism).

The formulation of the communist program

The critical issue is whether the task of the construction of an ideological and political front will be set, which will support the position of the timeliness of communism after taking into account all the modern historical, economical, scientific and cultural development. On this basis, a system of different knowledge, which will be antithetic/antagonistic to the dominant one, will be constructed. On this basis conclusions will be drawn for all the sectors of social activity, no powers or arguments will be given as a present to the enemy. It will advance the enrichment of the communist movement. All this process, together with the real advances of the movement, will lead to the formulation of the communist program. More specifically, all this concerns the following problem: with which ideas, which visions, which self-criticism, which “consciousness” the communist movement will be able to play a serious propulsive role in the historical evolution?

The concept “communist program” consists of three categories of issues:
(a) What can be said regarding what type of societies can arise as transitional ones, after all the changes which have occurred.
(b) The self-criticism of the communist movement, the rectification on theoretical and practical level of the imperfections of the first attempts.
(c) The reversal of the delay imposed by revisionism on the communist movement and the confrontation of the New World Order through the promotion of the strategic objective. 

The “view” of this program should be directed to the future, consolidate the position for the timeliness of communism and social revolution on the basis of the existing objective potentials-needs, be connected with the “present” with the need for shattering of the new paper tiger (the New World Order and the restructuring process), and bring closer the international community of the peoples. It has to be such a “broad” view that it will embrace, and will be able to express, the new dimension of the slogan “Proletarians, Unite!”. The new communist program must be aware of the new conditions and difficulties existing, and it must not subordinate to the correlation of power, to cynicism or to pragmatism.

About the self-criticism of the communist movement

The self-criticism of the communist movement is imperative after what has happened, not as apologetics, but as the tracing of the mistakes, the shortages, distortions, etc., made in its course in the past decades, so as to throw the revisionist rust to the rubbish, and so that the communist movement can open again new paths for the human progress in the contemporary conditions. We roughly trace five great categories of subjects to which the search for mistakes, shortages and distortions should be directed. This search will contribute to the enrichment of the communist program, as well. Which are these five axes?

1.  Gradually, the marxist position for the unlimited resources which can be activated through human activity, provided the capitalist relations are overturned, was abandoned. Communism could assure the unlimited development of the productive forces.
All the discussion that takes place now and then about the “deterministic exhaustion of the resources” has always been marked by specific aspirations of the capitalists.
Gradually, the potential of limitless development of the productive forces was attributed to capitalism through the “Scientific-Technological Revolution”. So a series of daring and serious elaborations done by the communist movement were buried and characterized as voluntaristic.
A re-approach of the basic marxist position for the limitless potential of resources, and the historically finite character of capitalism which puts on brakes to the development of the productive forces, is necessary.

2.  The revolutions of the future have not only the duty to smash the bourgeois state machine and to put the economy they have acquired to the service of the working people through the socialization of the means of production. They also have to smash all the material and technical organization of the capitalist production. They have to decode it, demonstrating all the steps taken in the material “pores” of the production so that the human labour, and the control of human labour on the whole productive process, become shattered.
This is a basic programmatic position. We were led to it through all the experience of socialist construction and through the criticism expressed on these subjects during the Cultural Revolution in China.
This position does not mean any destruction of the techniques and a return to lost paradises. Exactly as the total of the people is a total of people who have specific relationships between them (social relationships), the destruction of these relationships does not include the destruction of the people. The “smashing of the material and technical organization of the capitalist production” means: to create a “new world” out of the existing “old materials” – a “new world” which will liberate the human, the worker.

3.   As regards the above task, the criticism of the “Scientific-Technological Revolution”, and especially of the process of the higher subordination of the science to the capital, must be deeply advanced. The liberation of science from the bonds of the capital unavoidably includes the very organization and production of science, as well as its immediate socialization by the freely associated producers. The destructive force capitalism “releases” through the mummifying of science and its imprisonment (nuclear weapons, DNA cloning, informatization systems, “clever” weapons, etc.) is the one managing the organization and production of science, and this is conveyed to the whole productive process on a second level. 
So, what is nowadays called “Scientific-Technological Revolution” is not just an instrument which is used in a wrong way by the bourgeoisie and which we will take some day and use it correctly. If this “STR” is class-committed in all its moments (birth, development, application, etc.), shouldn’t we think of another type of science, developed on another basis, with a different direction and aim, allowing the participation of the workers, that is: allowing them to have the control of the productive process even when it offers them free time? 
The problem nowadays is not and cannot be that “the art, civilization, technology, science must go to the masses”, but to advance the revolution and to deepen the revolution in these sectors.

4.   Statism must be criticized. Not in the sense the bourgeoisie wants to, by presenting communism as a society with smaller social complexity than capitalism, in which uniformity is imposed by a “party-state” and, therefore, is doomed to die.
Marxism is opposed to state. There will be no state in communism. In the transitional societies, in socialism, the proletariat is organized in a state, it uses the political power (which is very different from that in the bourgeois state), but the main objective is not its further consolidation and, especially, is not its alienation from the working masses. These societies are in need of a constant and renewing process of “advance-consolidation-advance” ensuring, balancing each time, or promoting, deepening the process of the transformation of society. Through this process the antithetical unity of the form of state/movement is solved. The participation of the masses and their mobilization is a basic factor of the communist transformation.
The relationship between the party and the masses must be clear in this process: the party must guide, and not monopolize.
In the transitional societies, from a point on there was monopolization, not real guidance of the masses. The state element was dangerously stabilized and standardizations and formalisms were born, which prevented the masses from expressing themselves (this does not necessarily mean that the masses would express themselves against socialism). 
The role of the Chinese experience is significant from this aspect, as well.
Statism has pestered the international communist movement and helped revisionism establish its power.

5.  We must defend the need for, and the role of the communist movement.
Has the model of the party been exhausted? But what was this model?
And here we reach the … “root of the trouble”, the party. Because all this is related to whether the party is the organized vanguard detachment of the working class, wielding the power initially on behalf of the class, then with the class, and is constantly in a process of advance-consolidation-advance with the masses and for the masses. Whether the party remains a producer of theory and political lines. Whether it applies a suitable line, from the masses and for the masses. Whether it constantly criticizes itself, gets renewed and enriched. Whether it rejects any routine, any standardization, which unavoidably is impressed on it when it wields power, etc. Whether it remains or tries to be such a party: this is the issue.
Despite the differences in the “methods”, this was the ideal type of party.

Has the “ideal” been expressed as “real”, as well? In many cases and at many “moments”. This refers both to parties that came to power and to others which did not. There was also, however, a contrary transformation, which prevailed.
Let’s put aside the terms, titles and the like, and let’s see things without them:
- if there is (or is surpassed?) the necessity of another social form or even of surpassing the dead-ends (that is overcoming them), which has been created and daily intensified by the present system of social relationships,
- if the overcoming of these dead-ends requires radical, revolutionary changes in the mode of production and whatever this brings with it,
- if the terms created require the smashing of the obstacles in such a process, and indicate this process,
- if this process, despite the unfavourable correlation of power, is the only one which will remove these dead-ends,
then it means that the social forces for this overturn objectively exist.
If all this is true, then it means that we cannot talk about struggle against the system without the production of knowledge, organization of this production, programming, elaborating of strategies and tactics by an organized entirety. These are the elements of this communist program, which we are discussing here. Then, and only then, “life” will show things, which are inconceivable for us now. But this cannot happen by letting things come as they will.

This is not academic talk. 150 years ago, Marx and Engels wrote, on behalf of the First International, the “Communist Manifesto”, the first program of the communist movement. It was the maximum that could be formulated in those conditions in a declaration of the main principles and aims of the communist movement. But this “document”, this appeal, this manifesto shook the world. It was completed not only with texts, but also with the working movement’s historic leaps to the sky. By the way, what would a Communist Manifesto mean today? Which issues, and to what extent, would cover the criticism and the program of the modern communist movement? But also, what attempts are being made to make us aware of the necessity for this program in current conditions?

About revisionism

Excuse us a parenthesis concerning revisionism. Ideologicalization must be avoided here too. It is not enough for a political formation to speak against revisionism, or to discover the bad points of Chrouschev, refer to Stalin in a nice way, but mumble about Brezhnief, or discover authentic marxist-leninist forces in original revisionists (e.g. “KKE”/“communist” party of Greece, AKEL/“communist” party of Cyprus etc.). Such an attitude doesn’t transform such a political formation into an antirevisionist one. But the attitude of the Chinese, also, has offered little to pragmatism in some cases? Their relationships with “fraternal” parties, e.g. with the “communist” party of Romania, a declared revisionist party, as well as their relationship and flirting with euro-communism (at the cost of their relationships with marxist-leninist parties) was based on the very pragmatist idea of joining the weaker revisionism against the strong one. But this had more to do with statism than with an attitude of principles. Aren’t such expressions of pragmatism continued within the contemporary communist movement? Isn’t the emerging of a new-revisionist current evident? Can we seriously support the position for the timeliness of communism on the basis of, for example, the Pyong Yang declaration, which has already been signed by 150 parties (so what)? Can the “Yu-tse thought” and the theory of the genius, as formulated by the North-Korean responsibles, have anything to do with the communist program? Unless the defense of anything named after or reminding of the socialist past is considered as a defense of communism… But even if they wanted to conduct a serious defensive battle, they should not fight this way. In this way there is no enrichment of the theory, no self-criticism, all history is a succession of pressures exerted by imperialism, of good intents of the communist parties, which, however, create traitors within them, who betray socialism for a pizza. All this has nothing to do with the science of historical materialism, all this has nothing to do with Marxism!

In our opinion, modern revisionism in all its versions, including the new-revisionist one, must be exposed in the international communist movement. The main and special features of revisionism must be studied and generalized so as to trace the revisionist rust and the influence of revisionism. Revisionists should be isolated (no matter whether they call themselves revolutionaries, marxist-leninists, internationalists, etc. etc.). We believe that the main characteristics of modern revisionism are the following:
- Modern revisionism denies the deepening of the class struggle. Consequently, it is led to the collaboration with the bourgeoisie, it seeks a concert with the bourgeois state of things. In the capitalist countries, it supports the “national interests” and the “democratic institutions”. It participates, or tries to, in government coalitions together with the bourgeoisie, and it is inspired by governmentalism, granting the bourgeois anti-people policy remission of sins, and, moreover, directly helping its realization. It hauls down the flag of the anti-imperialist struggle and promotes the “responsible and realistic attitude of compromise with the standards of the New World Order”. It refuses to fight against the imperialist integrations and the results of the capitalist restructuring. It does not fight against all the splitting policies within the masses and the working class. It does not fight against racism and xenophobia and it constantly discovers “national routes to socialism”.
- Modern revisionism supports the theory of the productive forces and it adopts productivism. It restricts the role of the masses to the “task” of the acceleration of a supposed automatic process through the “scientific and technological progress”. It adores the “scientific and technological revolution” and it considers it to be an objectively progressive, positive and neutral process. Modern revisionism admired the “successes” of capitalism and tried to “import” them in the transitional societies with the aim of “accelerating the development and increasing the productivity”. The result was totally different, because this was how capitalism was restored. Even nowadays contemporary revisionism applauds the “socialism of the market”.
- Modern revisionism is imbued with statism. It reproduces the superstition of the worship of the state, which has nothing in common with the marxist-leninist conception of the proletarian political power. It is afraid of the mobilization and self-action of the masses, it does not trust the masses and the working class. It is based on bureaucratic and administrative methods and it increases the distance between the mechanisms and the masses. It conveys these views to the relationships among communist parties, having an arrogant attitude and practice, which has nothing in common with the communist ideas. It plays an energetic role in the slander of struggles, organizations, individuals, circles of the revolutionary left, it collaborates with the repressive forces or it even undertakes the role of the repression of a series of demonstrations and militant actions. When in power, it adopts a social-imperialist policy.
Denial of the class struggle, class collaboration, productivism and statism, these are the essential features of revisionism in the contemporary conditions. Declarations, words, etc. cannot really hide this truth. They can fool those intending to be fooled or fervently wishing to join revisionism…

3.2.6. About the contradictions in the modern world

The Communist Party of China in the “25 points” outlines the basic contradictions in the world as follows: 
“What are the fundamental contradictions in the contemporary world? Marxist-Leninists consistently hold that they are: 
- the contradiction between the socialist camp and the imperialist camp; 
- the contradiction between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie in the capitalist countries; 
- the contradiction between the oppressed nations and imperialism; and 
- the contradictions among imperialist countries and among monopolistic capitalist groups. 
(…) These contradictions and the struggles to which they give rise are interrelated and influence each other. Nobody can obliterate any of these fundamental contradictions or subjectively substitute one for all the rest.” (A Proposal concerning the General Line of the International Communist Movement, Letter of the CC of the CPC, 14 June 1963, extract of point 4).

[Today it seems that almost everybody agrees to eliminate the first contradiction, the one between the socialist camp and the capitalist one. This contradiction, with the form it had in the postwar period up to the ‘60s-‘70s, has disappeared long ago. But we saw and we still see how this contradiction functions in our days as well, in the ideological level – and not only in it. Many of the attacks of imperialism are conducted in the name of “overcoming all the anachronisms”, that is to say, all the “anachronisms” which remind to the masses a different social potentiality. Thus, we see the contradiction functioning, between the socialism as a potentiality (and also as achievements and performances in the epoch of imperialism and proletarian revolution), and the imperialism as a counter-revolutionary force.
For example, the smashing of Cuba pursued by imperialism has not so much to do with economic facts, but rather with the fact that a collapse of Cuba would have important repercussions on ideological level in Latin America. Even if the marxist-leninists are aware that the C.P. of Cuba cannot give a perspective, and goes from compromise to compromise, it can do this only in the name of the revolution, of socialism, etc.]

Chairman Gonzalo, leader of the Communist Party of Peru, in his famous interview of 1989, describes the issue of the contradictions in the modern world as follows: 
“We hold that there are three fundamental contradictions in the overall situation that is unfolding. The first and principal contradiction is between the oppressed nations on one side, and the imperialist superpowers and other imperialist powers on the other. (…) This contradiction is resolved through democratic revolution, through people's war. A second fundamental contradiction is the one between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. This is resolved through socialist revolutions and proletarian cultural revolutions (…). A third contradiction is the inter-imperialist one, between the superpowers, between the imperialist superpowers and the imperialist powers, and among the imperialist powers themselves. These contradictions among them are resolved through aggression, and imperialist wars (…). 
Why do we put the contradictions in this order? Because we consider this to be their order of importance. We insist that the contradiction between the oppressed nations on one side, and the imperialist superpowers and imperialist powers on the other, is principal and of great importance for the world revolution. It has to do, in our opinion, with the weight of the masses in history. It is obvious that the great majority of the masses who inhabit the earth live in the oppressed nations. It is also evident that their population is increasing four times as rapidly as the population of the imperialist countries.” (Interview with Chairman Gonzalo, El Diario, Peru, July 1989).

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