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International Communist Movement and Its Historical Lessons

The following excerpts are from the Document of the Second National Conference of the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist). This is reprinted from "A World To Win, issue No. 27" and it was published first in English in "Himalayan Thunder" (May 2001), quarterly bulletin of the CPN (M),.

Born together with capitalism, the proletariat is the last, revolutionary and international class of history. In Europe, its emergence and struggle against capitalism paved the way for the propounding of Marxism. Of extraordinary talent, Karl Marx along with his very intimate friend, Frederick Engels, discovered the world outlook of the proletariat -dialectical and historical materialism. Known as Marxism, this scientific discovery was nothing but in essence 11 supreme synthesis of the experience and knowledge mankind achieved in thousand of years. This science, synthesised with the revolutionary objective of transforming the world, not merely explaining it, brought an unprecedented revolution in the thinking of mankind, and provided a scientific device to understand and transform the world, and to fight against all kinds of dogmas, superstitions and evils of society.

Marxism proved irrefutably how a unique production relationship is maintained between some people and other people, with the development of the productive forces in the process of production and reproduction for the fulfilment of material needs, and how the total development of history after the stage of primitive communism is the history of class struggle, as determined by definite scientific laws. This is the allegation of historical materialism about history as a whole.

Exposing the real cause of capitalist exploitation and the accumulation of capital in the hands of a handful of capitalists in society, Marx put forward the great theory of surplus value. Also, Marxism made it clear how capitalism has created a vicious circle of exploitation by turning human labour into a non-living thing in order to make more profits, and, at the same time, how it is developing huge battalions of the modern proletarian class and is ultimately digging its own grave.

Considering the unprecedented development of the productive forces, and the contradiction between the socialisation of the production process and the private appropriation of production, Marxism presented, bearing the responsibility for social revolution on the shoulders of the proletariat, a scientific ideal of golden communist society by demolishing classes and states, and ending all kinds of exploitation of man by man. Marx and Engels laid the foundation of basic principles relating to the strategy for the proletariat to pursue to achieve the great ideals of communist society. In total, they presented fundamental views on the dictatorship of the proletariat and the socialist state as an inevitable need for the transitional period from capitalism to communism, the need of violent revolution, the need of the destruction of the old capitalist state and the concept of the development of armed masses. Throughout his whole life, Engels fought fiercely against bourgeois trends appearing in the workers' movement to establish this scientific view.

Against the concept of bourgeois nationalism developed for the security and needs of the market, Marxism upheld the banner of proletarian internationalism. Loudly chanting the slogan "Workers of all countries, unite!", the first Communist International was founded at the initiative of and under the leadership of Marx and Engels. It spread the scientific ideas of The Communist Manifesto among the workers and, simultaneously, fought vigorously against various opportunist trends appearing in the international communist movement. It is in this context that in Paris, France, the proletariat, for the first time in history, seized the state through armed revolt. Renowned as the "Paris Commune" alluvia the world, this historical revolt not only justified the basic principles of Marxism but also helped Marx and Engels to refine these with the synthesis of experience. Though lasting for a short period of only 72 days due to its inherent mistakes, Marx and Engel's declared that its experiences would live forever.

It is particularly remarkable that the views of Marx and Engels on the Paris Commune have been serving as historical inspiration even today to identify.,   and fight against revisionism and opportunism in the communist movement. Due to the defeat of the Paris Commune and the conspiracy of opportunists within, the First Communist International was dissolved. However, after the death of Marx and as per the needs of the new situation, the Second Communist International was formed under the leadership of Engels in 1889, which played a significant role in disseminating Marxism in the primary stage. But after Engels' death, the leaders of the Second International, mainly Karl Kautsky, knelt before bourgeois parliamentarianism and betrayed the revolutionary principles of Marxism. In the course of the hard struggle against reformism and parliamentarianism, a Bolshevik party and revolutionary struggle of a new type developed under the leadership of Lenin, and the socialist revolution was completed in Russia in 1917" During the life and death struggle against revisionism for the defence of its scientific and revolutionary teachings, Marxism developed into Marxism-Leninism. Lenin highly stressed that there can be no struggle against reaction unless it is linked with that against opportunism. He elevated the philosophy of dialectical materialism to a new height. The fact that the principle of the unity and struggle of opposites is the only fundamental principle of dialectics was further explained. By analysing and researching the characteristics of imperialism, Lenin contributed Qualitatively in the field of political economy and defined the new era as the "era of imperialism and proletarian revolution", which made a great contribution in devising the strategy and tactics of revolution. His analyses, which were well justified by later events, are equally correct even today. Lenin not only enriched Marxism on the total aspects of scientific socialism, including the concept of a new party, the strategy of socialist revolution, the struggle against revisionism, uniting the peasants for revolution in the backward countries and the significance of full democratic revolution, the proletarian view on the right of nations to self-determination, the need for proletarian revolution to lead the national liberation movement in the eastern countries, and regarding the development and struggle of the workers and masses in the capitalist countries, which developed in the imperialist period, but also elevated it to a new height of development.

The success of the Great October Socialist Revolution created unprecedented waves in the world. The masses, oppressed for centuries, felt that they had found a new way to real liberation. Fiercely resisting the outlook of the imperialists and reactionaries, the Third International was formed at the initiative of and under the leadership of Lenin in 1919 in order to forge ahead the world revolution in an organised way. Taking the Soviet socialist state, founded in a very large part of the earth, as a base area, he gave emphasis to advancing the world revolution. The revolution of Germany among the developed countries and the issue of the same in countries like India and China among the undeveloped countries were seriously thought over. Declaring that the proletarian revolution in backward countries with a majority of peasants is "very hard and great", he emphasised applying the general principles of communism in accordance with the concrete situation of the country concerned. Eventually, a concept of "National Democratic Revolution" was put forward requiring fighting against colonial and semi-colonial exploitation, too, in such countries. However, Lenin emphasised that the communist revolutionaries of the countries concerned must work out and develop the strategies for revolution themselves. At this juncture, particular attention must be paid to the stress given by the Comintern led by Lenin on the significance of the creative application of the general principles of proletarian internationalism and Marxism in accordance with the national characteristics of such countries.

At a time when struggle is still needed in the international communist movement against the trend which, even today, represents, on the one hand; sectarian nationalism on the pretext of national characteristics, and, on the other, Trotskyism that undermines national characteristics on the pretext of internationalism, the significance of this is evident.

After the death of Lenin, Stalin led the international communist movement. He served the proletarian movement by undertaking historic tasks such as defeating the right liquidationism that emerged in the form of the so-called permanent revolution of Zinoviev, Kamenev and, mainly, Trotsky; establishing Leninism; strengthening the Soviet Union by collective farming and planned economic development; knocking Hitler fascism to the ground in the Second World War; synthesising the experience of Soviet economic development; and leading the whole international communist movement for about three decades.
Nevertheless, the fact that many serious weaknesses prevailed in Stalin and eventually caused some serious problems should not go unheeded. While doing so, our starting point should be, of course, the evaluation of Stalin made by Mao, in which he has divided Stalin's thoughts and works into two aspects and declared 70% of them correct and 30% wrong.

Advancing on the ground of the general guideline about revolution in the colonial and semi-colonial countries of the pre capitalist stage as put forward by Lenin during the initial period of the Third International and greatly influencing the international power balance, the new-democratic revolution was completed successfully in China. This successful revolution in a huge area with the largest population in the world through decades of struggle presented a new model for revolution in the semi-feudal and semi-colonial countries of the pre-capitalist stage. As Lenin had called for, the Communist Party of China led by Mao undertook the "great and difficult" task of revolution in an eastern country by creatively applying the universal principles of Mariism-Leninism in their own specificities. In this context, the Communist Party of China led by Mao enriched and developed the Marxist science. The theory and knowledge of contradiction in philosophy, the analysis of bureaucrat capitalism in political economy, the development of the strategy for new-democratic revolution, the universal principle of people's war, and the concrete concept of the party, army and united front, clearly show the enrichment of Marxism-Leninism.

During the process of revolution, Mao had to fight hard against right and "left" opportunism of various kinds and against elements who wanted to mechanically copy foreign experience, such as Li Li-san, Wang Ming, Chang Kuo-tao, etc. When deeply cogitated, Mao' s struggle against Li Li-san, Wang Ming, etc., seems, in essence, to be related to the struggle against much of the mechanical materialist thinking and working style of Stalin and the Comintern, though Mao never disclosed this. Mao had called upon the people to be alert against the threat of mechanical materialist and metaphysical thinking that existed in the Communist Party of China and the international communist movement not only through his policy of unity and struggle worked out in the case of the united front but also through his great works like "On Contradiction" "On Practice"
 "Reform Your Study", "Rectify the Style of Work", "On New Democracy", etc.

In the international communist movement, Mao defined the party as a unity of opposites, and not as a monolithic and homogenous unity, and he clarified the fact that two-line struggle inside the party is, in deed, always the motivating force for the party's life. In addition, clarifying the inter-relation between class struggle in society and two-line struggle in the party, he presented a scientific explanation of the fact that as long as classes are there, the party exists, and as long as the party exists, ideological struggle prevails. He declared the concept of monolithic unity to be anti-dialectical and flatly rejected it. His view on the party added a new dimension to the Leninist view of the militant party of a new type. According to Mao, a struggle between right and wrong ideas always runs inside the party, and at a certain stage wrong ideas appear as revisionism, turning this into a hostile struggle with the revolutionaries. If non-proletarian ideas prevail in the party, the whole party changes its colour. Therefore, the revolutionaries should be always continuously revolutionising the party through two-line struggle.

Thus, the Chinese revolution grounded in Marxist-Leninist thought goaded millions of workers and peasants on their way to be the masters of their own destiny. The Communist party of China led by Mao put forward a programme for socialist revolution right after the success of the new-democratic revolution under the leadership of the proletariat. In this historic cal process of socialist revolution, the contradictions between the revolutionaries and the people who had been influenced by the bourgeois character of the new-democratic revolution and joined the revolution intensified. Right at that period, Stalin died in the Soviet Union. Khrushchevite revisionism seized the leadership in the 20th Congress in a counter-revolutionary coup in the Soviet Union, and capitalism was restored. The Khrushchevite clique was successful in overturning socialism and the dictatorship of the proletariat, using the pretext of struggle against the personality cult of Stalin. This event shocked the revolutionaries all over the world. Terrorising with nuclear arms, the clique rejected the decisive role of the people in the making of history. The renegade Khrushchevite clique advocated class conciliation instead of class struggle in the name of the "three peacefuls". Khrushchev cloaked his blatant advocacy of bourgeois parliamentarianism with possibilities rising from the changed world situation. Encouraged by the restoration of capitalism in Russia, the Chinese rightists intensified their attack on the proletarian revolutionaries in the party. The Peng Tehuai event is a concrete example of this.

In the face of this complex situation, Mao seriously thought over the class struggle under socialism and upheld the banner of struggle against Khrushchevite modern revisionism outside the country and right opportunism inside the party. During this fierce struggle, Mao put forward, with a scientific analysis of the class struggle in socialism, a concept of continuous revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat as the principle to prevent the restoration of capitalism, and he led the Great Proletariat Cultural Revolution, which is considered an unprecedented mass revolution in the whole history of mankind. With this
earth-shaking revolution, Mao armed the proletarian class with a new weapon to prevent the restoration of capitalism in socialist society. This great contribution established Mao as the propounder of a new, third and higher stage of Marxism, i.e. Marxism-Leninism-Maoism. This great revolution prevented the restoration of capitalism in China for 10 years, Notwithstanding the success of the capitalist-roaders in restoring capitalism in China through counter-revolutionary plots, due to various national and international reasons after Mao's death, the significance of the principle he developed has not declined at all, but instead has grown as a beacon for future revolutions.

What is notable here is that Mao, after the Khrushchevite clique succeeded in restoring capitalism in the Soviet Union without any serious resistance, fought, on the one hand, to safeguard the achievements of the world's first socialist state, and on the other, persevered seriously in studying the weaknesses that caused such an irreparable loss. It is in this context that we must understand his defence of Stalin against the attack of the Khrushchevite clique and Mao's explanation of his various mistakes and weaknesses. Mao's evaluation of Stalin stands apart against both rightist revisionism, which negates him completely, and against sectarian dogmatist revisionism, which accepts even his mistakes and weaknesses. In the international communist movement, the former trend is led by Trotsky, Tito, Khrushchev, etc., while the latter trend is led by Enver Hoxha, etc. Another important point to note is that Euro-Communism, on the pretext of opposing Stalin's concept of monolithic unity and bureaucracy, began opposing the integrated dialectical materialist science of Marxism from a bourgeois anarchist pluralist angle.
When the debate was going on in the international communist movement, and Khrushchev, the ring-leader of modern revisionism, along with imperialism was simultaneously defaming Stalin from a counter-revolutionary angle, it was but necessary to defend Stalin, emphasising his essentially correct and positive aspects. Doing so did not mean defending him alone but also the whole communist movement, socialism, and overall Marxism-Leninism itself. But today things have changed greatly; Khruschevite revisionism, later turning into social-imperialism, has fallen completely with the dissolving of the Soviet Union. In China, the Chinese Khrushchevites have usurped power through a counter-revolutionary coup and restored capitalism after Com. Mao's death. Today there is not even a single socialist state in the world.

At this moment, revolutionaries all over the world are free, without any political pressure, to draw the essence of historical experience, and a great responsibility has been laid on their shoulders, to fulfil which they must work hard, no doubt. In this context, we must go into depth on what has been mentioned in the very beginning of the letter entitled "On the Question of Stalin" during the Great Debate launched by the Communist Party of China led by Mao against Khrushchevite revisionism. It states, "The question of Stalin is one of worldwide importance which has had repercussions among all classes in every country and which is still a subject of much discussion today, with different classes and their political parties and groups taking different views. It is likely that no final verdict can be reached on this question in the present century." The century as stated by the Communist Party of China led by Mao has ended, and the 21st century has already started. We must focus our attention on defending Stalin's 70 per cent positive contributions and drawing lessons from his 30 per cent errors. As stated elsewhere in the same article, "It would be beneficial if the errors of Stalin, which were only secondary, are taken as historical lessons so that ..the Communists might take warning and avoid repeating those errors or commit fewer errors." Another important point is that his errors contain two aspects -the errors committed inevitably due to lack of experience of the dictatorship of the proletariat, and the errors caused by ideological mistakes. It was not possible to prevent the former errors, but the latter ones could have been.

Listing the errors of Stalin, it is stated in the same article of the Great Debate, "In his way of thinking, Stalin departed from dialectical materialism and fell into metaphysics and subjectivism on certain questions and consequently he was sometimes divorced from reality and from the masses. In struggles inside as well as outside the Party, on certain occasions and on certain questions he confused two types of contradictions that are different in nature, contradictions between ourselves and the enemy and contradictions among the people, and also confused the different methods needed in handling them. In the work led by Stalin of suppressing the counter-revolution, many counter-revolutionaries deserving punishment were duly punished, but at the same time there were innocent people who were wrongly convicted; and in 1937 and 1938 there occurred the error of enlarging the scope of the suppression of counter-revolutionaries. In the matter of Party and government organisation, he did not fully apply proletarian democratic centralism and, to some extent, violated it. In handling relations with fraternal Parties and countries he made some mistakes. He also gave some bad counsel in the international communist movement. These mistakes caused some losses to the Soviet Union and the international communist movement."

In the context of the experiences of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, Maoism and the contemporary international communist movement, what is evident today is the fact that, although he was a great Marxist-Leninist, Stalin's ideological mistakes have substantially influenced the world communist movement subjectively, Categorically speaking, he had, some weaknesses in his thinking and understanding and dealing with the fundamental principle of dialectics, the unity and struggle of opposites. Taking the communist party as a monolithic unity, instead of a unity of opposites, led him to errors in identifying the nature of and ways of dealing with two-line struggle inside the party. As a result, it was declared, on the grounds of rapid economic growth through the elimination of private ownership, collective farming and industrialisation, that there was no hostile class contradiction in Soviet society, which violated basic principles of Marxism-Leninism. Such analysis made Stalin think one-sidedly that a threat to Soviet society could occur only from external intervention and conspiracy. The emphasis on the possibility of counter-revolution from external intervention and conspiracy, instead of paying adequate attention to how new capitalists are produced within the communist party itself in Soviet society and how to control them, violated at times Lenin's basic postulates on the relationship between the formation in one country of socialism and the development of the world revolution during the primary period of the Comintern. Though there was no ill intention at all, the emphasis on safeguarding Soviet society from external threat virtually undermined internationalism and exaggerated Russian nationalism, which created a lot of confusion about understanding and advancing the world revolution and the functioning of the Comintern. It is to be remembered that Lenin, while forming the Comintern, had stressed the concept of the world revolution and a world communist party and that everything would be subsumed under it, but under the leadership of Stalin, the world revolution was considered as a part of Soviet society, instead of vice versa. This is what has been pointed out by Mao as Stalin's wrong advice on the international communist movement. Stalin took collective farming, industrialisation and the rapid development of production and the productive forces due to centralised planning in the economic field as sufficient grounds for the guarantee of socialism's success and kept on stressing it one-sidedly. It undermined the importance of resolving the differences prevailing in society and revolutionising the production relations. This helped in developing a new bourgeois class, which was represented later by the counter-revolutionary Khrushchevite clique inside the party, and which established the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie by overturning that of the proletariat.

Drawing lessons from the errors of Stalin due to historical limitations and  ideological weaknesses, Mao studied seriously economic policy and pointed out its positive and negative aspects to elevate the Marxist-Leninist principles regarding the class struggle in a socialist society to a new height in order to prevent the restoration of capitalism, and he presented a new model of socialist economy that required one to be red and expert, to walk on two legs, etc. Collective ownership of production alone does not guarantee the success of socialism, because many kinds of differences, such as mental and manual labour, city and village, and the capitalist stage of the production of commodities, still exist in society and continue to provide material ground for the growth of a new capitalist class. Therefore Mao made it clear that characteristics of both communism and capitalism exist in socialism, and there remains the danger of capitalist restoration. He aptly presented the scientific truth that the march towards communism is possible by regulating capitalism through the process of continuous revolution after the proletariat sizes political state power.

On the basis of this principle, he led the people to exercise the right to rebel against the capitalist-roaders of the party who advocated the Khrushchevite line that advocated that it was good to be rich. He drew a clear demarcation line between the Marxist revolutionaries and the revisionists with the principle of 3 Do's and Don'ts; "Practice Marxism, not revisionism; Unite, don't split; Be open and above board, don't conspire and intrigue". With the slogan, "Bombard the bourgeois headquarters", he called upon the people to invade the revisionists' fortress. During the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, through the struggle against the renegades Liu Shao-chi, Lin Piao and Teng Hsiao-ping, he further developed the dialectical method of achieving new unity on a new basis in the party through a process of unity-sttuggle-transformation and emphasised the need to form party committees according to the principle of 3 in 1, with old people, adults and youths in order to transfuse new blood into the party. However, it was not possible to sweep away all the rightists who had reached higher echelons in the party and government, because of several negative effects of the international communist movement and the historical limitations of the class struggle, and since it had been virtually late in exposing them. But it has enhanced the importance of the principle developed. Some people do not realise the complexity of the Cultural Revolution period and blame Mao for a number of compromises in the later period, which is completely wrong. He had been promoting the rise of revolutionaries, including Chiang Ching and Chiang Chun-chiao, as a revolutionary core in the party. He was in fact leading the so-called gang of four and was the most far-sighted.

In this regard, an important question may be raised: why didn't he take any initiative towards building a new communist international, though he had the experience of waging the historic struggle against Khrushchevite revisionism and conducting the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution ? In reply, several negative experiences of the Comintern in the latest period might be put forward, but that simply cannot be the major factor. As a matter of fact, Mao had been ideologically leading the international communist movement by waging struggle against Khrushchevite revisionism and by leading the Great Proletarian Cultural
Revolution, and by supporting, co-operating with and disseminating national-liberation, new-democratic and socialist revolutions all over the world. But objectively there were some serious practical difficulties in giving these an organised form. Among the visible ones were the dogmatist-revisionist, centrist and chauvinist communist parties of Albania, Vietnam and North Korea, etc., who rejected the universal contributions of Mao. And it was not possible to form the communist international by ignoring all of them at that time.

But today the situation has changed greatly. There is not even a single socialist state in the world. Genuine revolutionaries have upheld Maoism as higher stage of Marxism-Leninism. A new wave of revolution is appearing on the horizon. Now, Marxism-Leninism-Maoism is there as an ideological foundation for the creation of a new communist international. All the communist revolutionaries need to march forward seriously so as to give it an organised form through class and ideological struggle. Today the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement has already emerged as an embryo of it. Everybody has to attempt to refine and develop it. Special attention must be paid to conduct discussions and interactions with revolutionaries outside RIM, and unite them in the Movement.

While doing so, the communist revolutionaries should seriously look into the experiences of the Comintern and try to resolve the issues of evaluating the Seventh Congress of the Comintern, the Second World War and the dissolving of the Comintern, the suggestions given to the communist parties of several countries to form a government with the anti-fascist bourgeoisie and Lenin's criticism of Millerandism, the position of the communist parties of Greece, Italy, France, Spain, India, China, etc., and Stalin's role, etc. These questions lie in front of the international communist movement as challenges. Maoism has already provided the scientific basis for the answers to these questions. Therefore, the communist revolutionaries of the world need to accelerate their initiative to learn from the positive and negative experiences of the past by applying Maoism.

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