Defending the gains of workers' revolutions
From a talk by Brian Becker at the Dec. 2-3
Workers World Party conference
One of the comrades who had recently been to Cuba raised
the problems still confronting the Cuban Revolution as it
struggles to overcome the legacy of underdevelopment, class
division and racism that was inherited from the past. She
quoted from a statement by President Fidel Castro explaining
the complexity of overcoming these problems, especially in
the context of material scarcity.
This was an important intervention because it raises the
general issue of how we understand and support the Cuban
Revolution and all those countries that have carried out a
working-class revolution. How communists and class-conscious
workers understand and explain their militant defense of
these social systems is not an academic exercise. It has
direct political consequences.
Karl Marx did not spend much time in his writings
hypothesizing on how the future socialist and communist
society would develop. Using the scientific method he
analyzed what actually existed. He investigated and explained
the inner laws of the capitalist mode of production and
demonstrated that the system of bourgeois private property
would invariably be replaced by a higher stage in the
development of humanity, which he and Engels called
communism.
The first stage of communism, according to Marx, would be
characterized by the political supremacy of the working
classes, especially the modern proletariat. They would begin
the process of collectivizing the property of the bankers and
industrialists and using the assets and wealth of society for
the benefit of society rather than the enrichment and power
of a tiny handful. Using the language of the time, Marx's
prognosis was that the "dictatorship of the capitalists"
would be replaced by the "dictatorship of the
proletariat."
The transfer of power from one class to another did not
automatically create socialism and communism. It simply laid
the foundation for the transformation of society.
In one of his few writings on what future socialist
society might look like, a brief document that has been
published under the pamphlet name "Critique of the Gotha
Program," Marx shows that his conceptions were devoid of the
romanticism and idealism that were common to the socialist
thinkers who preceded him.
After the initial workers' revolution and after the
factories, mines, land, and other big businesses have been
made collective property, this does not yet constitute
communism. "What we have to deal with here is a communist
society, not as it has developed on its own foundations,"
Marx wrote, "but, on the contrary, just as it emerges from
capitalist society; which is thus in every respect,
economically, morally and intellectually, still stamped with
the birth marks of the old society from whose womb it
emerges."
Workers World Party defended and still supports all of
what are commonly known as the "socialist" countries, but not
because we think that they have achieved full socialism or
communism.
We supported the Soviet Union against imperialism and
domestic counter-revolution, but not because we thought it
was heaven on earth or because we politically agreed with the
orientation and policy of the Communist Party of the Soviet
Union after Lenin's death.
Our defense was based on the premise that the Russian
Revolution had taken the historic first step in the
transition toward socialism when the workers and peasants
seized the factories and land from the capitalists and
landlords. This laid the foundation for socialism but did not
guarantee its final victory.
The Soviet Union made great strides in economic growth
while providing unheard-of rights for its working people: the
right to a job; free health care, education and child care;
stable food prices and low-cost housing; unparalleled growth
and development for the formerly oppressed non-Russian
nations of the czarist empire.
The Soviets also sent invaluable aid to Vietnam, Cuba, the
African National Congress in South Africa and other
national-liberation movements. The USSR accomplished all this
while suffering 27 million casualties defeating the Nazi
invasion in World War II and suffering the economic drain
from the U.S.-initiated Cold War and arms race.
Yet we never defended the USSR idealistically. We saw that
while there was great economic development, there was also
the growth of inequality and material incentives for
managers. The unprincipled accumulation of privileges inside
the Communist Party transformed the party into a
non-revolutionary apparatus and a breeding ground for
bourgeois restorationists like Boris Yeltsin and his
supporters. These elements eventually rose to power and
destroyed the USSR from within.
Those parties that supported the Soviet Union
idealistically suffered innumerable splits and demoralization
when the USSR collapsed. Their members were not politically
prepared. They saw only the accomplishments, not the
problems. The idealism of millions turned into cynicism about
socialism when this catastrophe took place in 1991.
The transition to socialism and communism after the
revolution is not guaranteed merely by the seizure of power
and the nationalization of capitalist property. It takes a
prolonged period of development. We militantly defend the
countries that have taken the first step against U.S.
imperialism, which works night and day to restore the rule of
capital. And we know that the biggest single contribution
that we can we make to the final transition to socialism
everywhere is to build a truly revolutionary party that can
lead the struggle to overthrow imperialism at its center.
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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